Innocent in Death (In Death #24)(102)

“He was my baby. He was my boy.” Tears gushed now.

“But you don’t have pictures of your baby, you don’t have memories of your boy sitting out, in the open. Why is that?”

“It’s painful. It’s upsetting to…”

“To Rayleen. She doesn’t like it, does she? Doesn’t like you or Oliver looking at pictures of another child. It needs to be about her, only her. She never liked sharing the attention, did she?”

“It’s natural, it’s perfectly natural for a first child to be jealous of a new baby. To have a period of adjustment. Sibling—sibling rivalry.”

“It was more than that, wasn’t it? Then she finally did something about it, on that Christmas Eve. Why should she have to share those toys? Why should he get your time, when she was first. So she got him out of bed, she led him to the top of the stairs. Didn’t she?”

“It was an accident.” Allika covered her face with her hands, rocked. “It was an accident. She was asleep. We were all asleep. Oh, God, please, don’t do this.”

“No, she wasn’t asleep. You know she wasn’t.”

“She didn’t mean…she couldn’t have meant…Please, God.”

“Tell me what happened that morning, Allika.”

“It was just as I told you. We were all asleep, all asleep.” She dropped her hands now, and her face was ghost white, her eyes dull.

“How much longer can you keep it inside without breaking?” Eve demanded. “How much longer can you mask it with pills and busy work? With pretense? Until the next Reed Williams?”

“No. No. That was one time, that was a mistake.”

“You know you can’t live with it, Allika. You need to tell me. Tell me what she did to your little boy. To your baby.”

“She was only seven.”

Seeing the fissure in Allika, Peabody did her job. She moved over, sat beside Allika. “You’re her mother, and you want to protect her. You want to do what’s right for her.”

“Yes, of course. Yes.”

“You wanted to protect Trevor, too. You want to do what’s right for him. Telling the truth now, you have to know that’s what’s right for both of them.”

“My babies.”

“What happened Christmas morning, Allika?” Eve demanded. “What happened to Trevor?”

“Children wake up early on Christmas morning,” Allika murmured as tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s natural. So much excitement, so much anticipation. She came in, Rayleen came into our room just before dawn, jumped on the bed. So excited, so happy. We got up, Oliver and I. We got up, and Oliver said he would go get Trev.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth. “The year before, his first Christmas, Trev was so young, not even a year old. He didn’t understand any of it. But this year, he was nearly two, and he was…It would be his first real Christmas. Oliver said he’d go get Trev, and we’d all go down together and see if Santa had come.”

“Where was Rayleen?” Eve prompted.

“Rayleen stayed with me while I got my robe. She was jumping up and down, clapping her hands. So happy, her face just shining as a little girl’s would on Christmas morning.

“And I saw…I saw she was wearing the little pink slippers I’d tucked in her stocking the night before. The one’s she’d seen and wanted so much when we’d gone shopping one day.”

Allika’s face went blank, as if everything inside her had gone away. “Rayleen was wearing the slippers,” Eve said.

“They had sparkles on them, pretty sparkles all over them, spelling out her name. She loved things to have her name on them. I started to say something, to tell her she shouldn’t have gone down there by herself—how Daddy and I, we’d promised we’d get up whenever she woke. But then I heard Oliver cry out. He cried out as if his heart had been ripped away, and I heard him running down the steps. And I ran, I ran, and I saw…My baby. Oliver was holding our baby at the bottom of the stairs, and I ran down. And he was cold. My sweet little boy. There was blood on his face, and he was cold.”

“What did Rayleen do?”

“I don’t know. I—it all blurred. Oliver was crying, and I think, I think I tried to take Trev from him, but Oliver was holding Trev so tight. So tight. I…yes, I ran to the ’link to call for help, and Ray…”

“What did she do?”

Allika closed her eyes, and she shuddered. “She was already playing with the dollhouse Oliver and I had set up under the tree. She was just sitting there in her pajamas, wearing her sparkly pink slippers, playing with her dolls. Like nothing had happened.”

“And you knew.”

“No. No. She was just a little girl. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t have understood. It was an accident.”

No, Eve thought, no, it wasn’t. And some part of this woman was being eaten away, day after day, because she knew it.

“Allika, you don’t have soundproofing in your home, not because you’re afraid something might happen to Rayleen and you wouldn’t hear. You don’t have it because you’re afraid of Rayleen, and what you might not hear.”

“She’s my child. She’s my child, too.”