Chapter 4

I didn't confront Cora that night.

I didn't sleep either. I sat in the kitchen with the baby monitor on the table, listening to the quiet sounds of the old inn settling, and I thought about the woman I had married ten years ago. The woman who had read river histories to me in bed. The woman who laughed when Bea took her first steps. The woman who had, according to a hospital file I hadn't yet seen, been diagnosed with schizophrenia a year after our daughter was born.

I had been so blinded by grief that I hadn't seen the cracks. Cora's mood swings, her paranoia, her sudden rages-I had chalked them up to the stress of new motherhood. She had told me she was fine, and I had believed her, because I wanted to believe her. I wanted the fairy tale. The beautiful wife, the perfect daughter, the historic inn on the river.

I had ignored what didn't fit.

The next morning, I told Cora I had to run errands in town. I drove to the courthouse and pulled the records from my mother's death. The death certificate said stroke. The attending physician had been Priscilla's colleague from the hospice. There was no indication of foul play. No investigation. Nothing.

Then I drove to the psychiatric hospital in Baton Rouge. It took me two hours to convince the records clerk to release the file, and another hour to read it.

Cora had been admitted three times in eighteen months. Each admission followed a psychotic episode. She had been found wandering the riverbank at night, talking to the water. She had been arrested twice for trespassing on private docks, convinced that the owners were hiding her daughter. She had once tried to burn down a neighbor's house because she believed the neighbor was a demon.

The final admission had come two weeks before Bea was born. Cora had stopped taking her medication because she believed it was poisoning the baby. She had been stable for six months after Bea was born-long enough for everyone to relax. Then, when Bea was eighteen months old, Cora stopped taking her medication again.

The day she tried to drown Bea, she had been off her meds for three months.

I sat in my truck outside the hospital and read the file until the sun went down. Then I drove home.

Bea was already in bed. Cora was in the dining room, setting the table for dinner as if nothing had happened. She had put on one of Priscilla's old sweaters. She had pinned her hair back with Priscilla's barrettes.

"You were gone a long time," she said.

"I was at the hospital."

Her hands stilled on the plates. "What hospital?"

"The one in Baton Rouge. I read your file."

She turned to face me. Her expression didn't change-still calm, still tired, still the victim. But her eyes were different. Sharper. Calculating.

"I was hoping you wouldn't find that," she said.

"You lied to me."

"I told you what you needed to hear." She picked up a knife from the table-a butter knife, harmless, but her hand was steady around the handle. "Priscilla locked me in a room, Miles. That part is true. She fed me through a wall. She kept me away from my daughter. That part is true."

"You tried to drown Bea."

"I was trying to save her." Cora's voice was matter-of-fact. "The river spirit was inside her. I could see it. It was making her sick, making her cry, making her suffer. I had to let the water take it out. I had to purify her."

"She was two years old."

"She was possessed."

I stared at her. She stared back. And for the first time, I saw the full depth of her delusion-the unshakable certainty, the complete absence of doubt. She truly believed what she was saying. She had built an entire reality around it.

"You told Bea to say Priscilla pushed my mother down the stairs."

Cora's lips curved. It wasn't a smile. It was something older and colder, something that had been waiting behind her eyes the whole time.

"Bea is a good girl. She listens to her mommy."

"You're not going to take her."

"I already have her, Miles. She's mine." Cora set the knife down on the table. "She's always been mine. You were just keeping her warm for me."

I heard a sound from the hall and turned. Bea was standing there in her pajamas, holding her stuffed rabbit, her eyes wide.

"Mommy?" she said. "Daddy? Are you fighting?"

"No, sweetheart," Cora said, her voice instantly warm, instantly maternal. "Come here. Mommy will read you a story."

Bea ran to her. Cora scooped her up and carried her toward the stairs, and over Bea's shoulder, she looked at me and mouthed words I would never forget:

Try and stop me.

I called the sheriff that night. I told him everything-the baby monitor, the hospital file, the things Cora had said. But the sheriff was skeptical. Cora was the victim, as far as the law knew. Priscilla had already confessed to the imprisonment. There was a warrant out for her arrest, and she was in jail. The baby monitor recording was helpful, but it was my word against hers, and Cora was Bea's biological mother.

"We'll look into it," the sheriff said. "But I can't just take a child away from her mother without cause."

I hung up the phone and stood in the kitchen, shaking. I had one week before the custody hearing. One week before a judge decided whether Bea would live with Cora or with Priscilla's lawyer, who had filed for emergency guardianship on my behalf.

One week to prove that the woman I had mourned for six years was a monster.

That night, I set up a second baby monitor in Cora's room. I hid it behind the curtains, where she wouldn't see it. Then I went to bed and waited.

At 3:17 a.m., I heard her voice.

"Get up, sweetheart. It's time."

I heard Bea's small feet on the floor. I heard the creak of the guest room door. I got up and followed.

Cora was leading Bea down the back stairs, toward the dining room. Bea was carrying a small bag-packed, I realized with a sick lurch, with clothes and snacks. They were running. They were running tonight.

I followed them into the dining room and watched as Cora pulled open the dumbwaiter panel-the panel I had pried open, the panel that still hung loose from its hinges. Behind it, the steel door was ajar.

"Come on, baby," Cora whispered. "We're going somewhere safe. Somewhere Daddy can't find us."

"Where?" Bea asked.

"To the river. The river will protect us."

I stepped out of the shadows.

"Bea," I said. "Come here."

Cora spun. Her face twisted, and for a moment she was not the beautiful woman I had married-she was something else, something feral and desperate.

"You can't stop me," she hissed. "She's mine."

"She's not yours," I said. "She never was. You made her, Cora, but you don't own her. And I won't let you drown her."

Cora grabbed Bea's arm. Bea cried out-not in fear, but in confusion.

"Mommy, you're hurting me."

"Shut up," Cora snapped. "Just shut up and come on."

I lunged for Bea, and Cora pulled her back. There was a scuffle-brief, violent, ugly. I heard Bea scream. I heard the dumbwaiter crank snap. And then, out of the darkness behind Cora, a figure emerged.

Priscilla.

She had a crowbar in her hands, and her face was streaked with tears and blood-she had been released on bail an hour earlier, and she had come straight here, straight to the inn, straight to us.

"Let her go," Priscilla said.

Cora laughed. "You're too late. You're always too late. You locked me in a room, and I still won. I have Bea. I have Miles. I have everything."

"No," Priscilla said. "You don't."

She swung the crowbar. It caught Cora in the shoulder, and Cora stumbled, her grip on Bea loosening. I grabbed Bea and pulled her out of the way. Cora recovered and lunged at Priscilla, and the two of them went down together in a tangle of limbs and rage.

I heard sirens in the distance. Someone had called the police. Maybe Priscilla. Maybe a guest. Maybe the sheriff himself, finally convinced.

The police found us in the dining room-Cora pinned beneath Priscilla, screaming. Bea crying in my arms. The steel door open behind them, the river tunnel yawning black and cold. They arrested Cora. They handcuffed Priscilla again.

And Bea, my sweet, brave, broken girl, looked up at me and said:

"Mommy lied."