Chapter 3

The hospital released Cora two days later.

I brought her home because I didn't know what else to do. She had no money, no clothes, no identification. The sheriff's department was investigating Priscilla's arrest, and the whole town of Natchez was talking. The Holloway House had been in my family for three generations, and now it was front-page news in the Natchez Democrat: INNKEEPER'S WIFE ARRESTED FOR KIDNAPPING. PRESUMED-DEAD FIRST WIFE FOUND ALIVE.

Cora slept in the guest room next to Bea's. She ate soup and toast and said very little. She let me brush her hair, and when I saw the knots and the lice, I had to leave the room so I wouldn't cry. Her wrists had scars from the restraints Priscilla had used. Her ankles had scars too. She was so thin I could count her ribs through her nightgown.

Bea wouldn't leave her alone. She sat beside Cora's bed for hours, holding her hand, singing the river song. Cora taught her new verses, whispered games, secrets that made Bea giggle. I watched them together and felt something crack open in my chest-something that had been frozen since the day I lost Cora and never thawed.

But I couldn't stop thinking about Priscilla.

She had been my wife for two years. She had managed the inn with ruthless efficiency, kept the books, charmed the guests, raised Bea when I was drowning in grief. She had held me through nightmares about the river. She had put flowers on Cora's empty grave every year.

And now she was in the Adams County jail, charged with unlawful imprisonment, and she wasn't fighting it. Her lawyer had asked for bail and been denied. She had refused to speak to reporters. She had refused to speak to me.

On the third day after Cora came home, I drove to the jail.

The visiting room was small and gray. Priscilla sat across from me in an orange jumpsuit, her auburn hair pulled back, her face bare of makeup. She looked smaller somehow, younger.

"You should be resting," she said. "You look exhausted."

"Tell me why, Priscilla. Tell me why you did it."

She looked at me for a long time. Her nurse's watch was gone-they had taken it at booking-but she kept glancing at her bare wrist as if she had lost something vital.

"When I found her in the hidden room eight months ago," she said, "Cora told me she was going to kill Bea. She told me exactly how she was going to do it. She said she would wait until I was asleep, and she would take Bea to the river, and she would hold her under until she stopped fighting. And then she would come back and kill me, and then she would kill you."

I stared at her. "Why would she-"

"Because she's sick, Miles. She's schizophrenic. She had a psychotic break six years ago. That's what the hospital file says-the one from the psychiatric unit in Baton Rouge. She was diagnosed after Bea was born. She was never stable. She was never safe."

My mouth was dry. "You have a file?"

"I've had it for years. I found it when I was nursing your mother. Cora had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Baton Rouge three times in the year before she disappeared. She wasn't just depressed. She was delusional. She believed Bea was possessed by a river spirit. She believed she had to drown the demon inside her daughter."

I remembered the day at the river. Bea was two years old. I had come home to find them both soaked, Cora crying, Bea wailing. Cora had told me Bea fell in and she had to jump in to save her.

I had believed her.

"I should have told you," Priscilla said. "I should have told you the day I found her. But she said she would kill Bea if I did. She said she had a plan, and if I told anyone, she would take Bea and disappear and I would never see her again. So I locked her in. I fed her. I medicated her. I tried to keep her stable. I thought-" She stopped and pressed her hand to her mouth. When she lowered it, her lips were trembling. "I thought I could keep everyone alive until I found a better solution."

"You locked a woman in a room for eight months."

"Yes."

"That's a crime."

"I know."

"And you knew she was Bea's mother. You knew I was still grieving her. And you said nothing."

Priscilla's eyes filled with tears. "I knew you were grieving her. I knew if you saw her-if you saw the state she was in-you would have believed her. Just like you believe her now."

I wanted to argue. But I couldn't. Because she was right.

"Bea is under her spell," Priscilla said. "She always has been. Cora started humming to her through the walls two years ago, when Bea was still four. She's been grooming her. She's been telling Bea that I hurt her, that I tried to kill her, that I'm the reason she can't come out. She's been teaching Bea to lie."

I thought of Bea's nightmares-the ones Priscilla had told me about. The ones where Bea cried for her "other mommy." The ones I had dismissed as grief and confusion.

"I don't know what to believe," I said.

"Then watch her," Priscilla said. "Watch what Cora does when she thinks no one is listening."

I left the jail with her words echoing in my head.

That night, Cora sat with me on the inn's veranda, wrapped in a blanket, looking out at the river. Bea was asleep. The storm had passed, leaving the air clean and cool.

"Thank you for believing me," Cora said.

I didn't answer.

"Priscilla always hated me, you know. She was your mother's nurse, and your mother loved me. Your mother said I was the daughter she never had. I think Priscilla was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"Of me. Of us. Of what we had." Cora reached out and took my hand. Her fingers were still too thin, but some color had returned to her cheeks. "She wanted you, Miles. She wanted the inn. She wanted my daughter. And when she couldn't have them, she locked me away and tried to make everyone believe I was crazy."

I looked at her hand on mine. Her wedding band was still there.

"I'm starting to remember things," Cora said softly. "From before. From the river. I don't think I tried to drown Bea, Miles. I think I was trying to save her."

I heard a sound behind me and turned. Bea was standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.

"Mommy," she said. "I had a bad dream."

Cora opened her arms, and Bea ran into them.

"They're going to put Priscilla in prison, aren't they?" Bea asked, muffled against Cora's shoulder.

"Maybe," I said.

"Good," Bea said. "She hurt you, Mommy. She's a bad person."

Cora stroked Bea's hair and looked at me over her daughter's head. And for just a moment, I saw something in her eyes-something cold, something sharp, something that didn't match the exhausted victim she had been playing.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

I went down to the dining room to check the locks, and I noticed something odd. The baby monitor on the sideboard was still on. It had been on since Bea was a toddler, a habit I had never broken. I picked it up and heard a voice.

Cora's voice.

"Good girl," she was saying. "You did so good today. When Daddy asks you again, you tell him Priscilla pushed Grandma down the stairs. That's what we practiced. You remember how we practiced?"

"Yes, Mommy," Bea whispered.

"Cora didn't push Grandma. Priscilla did. Say it for me, sweet girl."

"Priscilla pushed Grandma."

"Isn't that why Grandma died? Because Priscilla pushed her?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"And we can't let Priscilla hurt anybody else, can we?"

"No, Mommy."

The recording captured it all. Every word. Every whisper.

I stood in the dark dining room with the baby monitor in my hands and listened to my dead wife coaching my daughter to accuse my current wife of murder.