“I’m not sure. My partner and I got called out on another case before that happened.” This strange look crosses his face and I can tell he’s calculating his next words carefully. “It was really strange, you know. A girl in the road in the middle of the night with no identification on her. Some of the cops thought you were a runaway or a drug addict with how strange you were acting, but then your mother shows up out of the blue, like she knew you were there, but she said she didn’t. And then there was that fire just a few miles down the road…” He itches his cheek. “Very strange.” The way he says it sounds like he doesn’t think that it’s strange, that it wasn’t a coincidence, that he’s accusing me of something.

“What fire?” I wonder.

He shrugs, lowering his hand to his lap. “Just a building. No one got hurt or anything, but still...”

I don’t like the accusation in his voice at all. “Well, don’t you have a file or something that says if I was involved in any of this?”

His gaze is unwavering. “Maybe, but that doesn’t really matter at the moment. I came here to question you about Sydney.”

“You brought it up.” What the hell am I doing? Stop arguing with the detective.

“I know.” His tone conveys speculation, his eyes lock on me as if he’s ready to turn bad cop and break me open. “Tell me, do you or have you ever gotten into trouble Maddie? Or should I call you Lily?”

Fucking asshole. “No, I’m perfect. Just ask my mother,” I say wryly. “And it’s Maddie.” Is it?

His expression is indecipherable, but I have a feeling I’m in deep trouble. “What about that bar you work at? Does your mother know about what that turns into after hours? I’m guessing no.”

“If you know what it turns into afterhours, then why don’t you shut it down?” I question with a curve of my brow.

“I’m working on it.” There’s a silent warning in his eyes.

“Well, I’m not part of it,” I lie breezily. “My job title strictly sticks to during hours.”

I can tell he doesn’t believe me. I don’t know why I care, but I do. I’m about to insist he’s wrong about me, that I’m a good girl that never does anything wrong when his cellphone beeps inside his pocket.

He checks it and then quickly gets to his feet. “I have to go. I have a lot more rounds to make today. If you can think of anything else at all, feel free to call me.” He rushes for the door and it takes a hell of a lot of restraint not to grab his collar, throw him to the ground, pin him down, and force him to tell me everything he knows, then eliminate him because he clearly knows something, or thinks he does anyway.

“Okay, but what’s the I number I can call you at?” I round the coffee table after him.

He hands me a card from his wallet. “My number is on the card. Feel free to call me day or night.” He pulls open the door and I itch to slam it shut in his face. Lock him in here. Torture everything out of him. “It was nice talking to you Maddie.” He pauses with the door cracked. “Why did you say you were Lily that night, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Maddie’s my first name.” I’m fighting really hard to keep it together as I lay my way out of this mess. “Lily’s my middle name.”

“Hmmm…” That’s all he says and then he steps outside into the frosted air and sunlight, turning on his heels as he reaches the path in front of the house. “Take care Maddie Lily Asherford,” he says, flashing a grin at me from over his shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”

I have no clue what the grin is about—it seems more sinister than anything. Still, I give him a wave, then close the door as he walks toward his car in the driveway. I slide the chain over, like I’m locking all the bad out, even though it’s living inside me.

Bravo. You really fucked that one up.

“Oh, go to hell.”

“Maddie, what was that all about?” My mother asks as she tentatively enters the room, rubbing her hands up and down the sides of her arms like she’s cold. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

I’m leaning against the shut door, arms to my side, hands tremulous, palms bleeding from where my nails split open the flesh. “Why would I be in trouble?” I ask, watching her reaction. “If what you say is true, then I never get into trouble.”

I detect a hint of a nervous fidget in her hands as she fiddles with the buttons on her shirt, her hair—anything she can get a hold of. “Maddie, please don’t start with this,” she says. “Just tell me what the detective wanted.”

I don’t know what comes over me. Or maybe I do and I don’t want to admit that I’m allowing Lily to control me so much at the moment because I’m frazzled and irritated. I stand up straight, calm as can be, embracing the darkness, the anger, instead of fearing it. “He wanted to see if I murdered Sydney Rawlington.”

Her skin turns pale and I get a sick gratification over it. This is who I am and what I want to know is if my mother knows who I really am too. If I’ve been this person my entire life and she’s just trying to keep it hidden, hoping it’ll go away.

“Maddie Asherford, you will not take that that tone with me.” She aims for a stern tone but it comes out quivery.

“Don’t you mean Lily?” I observe the way she blinks, note the way she moves her hand to the bottom of her neck where her necklace rests, a nervous habit of hers.

Her jaw drops. “Maddie, what are you talking about?”

I move toward her, past the coffee table, the sofa, the pictures of me on the wall when I was younger, taking each step calculated. “That detective said he was there that night of the accident.” I halt only a few long steps away from her. “And that I was calling myself Lily and that somehow you knew about the accident before they even called you. Who’s Lily mother? Because by the look on your face, I’m guessing you know something about it. And how did you know I’d been hit if no one called you?”

She shakes her head and I can see her pulse hammering in her neck. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. The police called me and I’ve never heard you call yourself Lily before, so I can’t help you with that one.”

“Are you sure about that?” I ask skeptically. “You seem nervous.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she says, lowering her hand to her side and shuffling away from me. “Now stop acting crazy, go change, and come eat dinner with me.” With that, she turns on her heels and hurries out of the room.

I want to scream at her to tell me truth. But would there be a point, since I think I already know the answer. It’s one that I’ve been burying inside me since the moment I woke up in the hospital.

That I am crazy.

That I am Lily.

And that I might be a killer.

Maybe I started the fire that night.

Maybe I killed the man who hit me with his car.

Just like I probably did Sydney.

Chapter 12

Maddie

I thought things couldn’t get worse, but I was wrong. Bella won’t return any of my messages or phone calls, so I still have no insight to what I was up to on March 15, which leaves me overthinking everything, and coming up with the worse possible scenarios.

Then comes lockdown. Late one afternoon, my mother gets a phone call while we’re having dinner. She instantly leaves the room, her face draining of color as she glances at the screen. I hear her muttering something and when she returns, she seems shaken up, but won’t tell me why. The next day she installs a security alarm. Changes all the locks on the door. And tells me that I need to stay in the house as much as possible and that it might be best for me to stay home from work until the murderer is caught.

“To keep us safe,” my mother explains as she checks the locks on the front door and then crosses the room, me following at her heels.

“Safe from what exactly?” I ask, watching her mess around with the alarm system on the living room wall.

She sets the alarm and it beeps as it prepares for lock down. No going in or out any of the doors or windows without the siren shrieking like the devil himself. “Maddie, that poor girl was murdered only twenty minutes from here,” she says. “We need to be safer with all the craziness that’s out there.”

“Out there?” I lean against the wall with my arms folded as I stare out the window at the frosted grass, the grey sky, the trees, the “out there” she’s referring to. “You’re the one being crazy. You can’t just lock us in the house and expect us to stay here.”

“I’m being crazy,” she says unfathomably. She has dark circles under her eyes, her hair is pulled into a messy bun, and her clothes are wrinkled. She looks like a hot mess—a hot, stressed out mess. “You’re the one laughing about this. This isn’t funny, Maddie.”

I shake my head, aggravated. It’s not like I mind missing work—I’m worried about going there after the detective talks to River. But being locked up in the house. There’s no way I’ll survive. “Well, can I have the passcode in case I need to go somewhere?”

“No.” She closes the lid to the security box. “If you need to turn it off, you can have me do it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Anger burns venomously in my veins. This can’t be happening.

I can’t be a prisoner again.

“No, I’m not kidding you.” She breezes by me quickly, striding toward the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “It’s safer this way. I promise.”

I think there’s a hidden meaning in her words and I have to wonder whether she got the alarm to lock the bad out or to lock me inside—lock Lily inside.

* * *

Things only get progressively worse from there. My mom takes my car keys away while I’m getting something to eat one day. She actually goes into my room and gets them from my bag. While I’m looking for them, pretty much tearing my room apart, she walks into my room.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, watching me dig through my dresser drawers.

“I can’t find my car keys,” I say, searching the pockets of a pair of jeans.

“That’s because I took them,” she replies, leaning against the doorframe. She has a pair of slacks on a peach sweater that matches her shoes and her posture is portraying confidence, but there’s a lack of it in her eyes.

“What the hell for?” I ask, tossing the jeans onto the floor. I’m more testy than usual, but that’s because I haven’t slept in days, afraid once I shut my eyes, I’ll be relinquishing control to Lily, handing it over to the killer side in me.

“Because I don’t want you going anywhere,” my mother says simply. “Not until things have blown over with this Sydney thing and you quit dressing like a whore.”

You’re a whore!

You’re a whore!

I have to bury my instinct to slap her when she calls me that name. The good inside me tells me to respect her, but that part has been rapidly dying over the last few days and the bad easily takes control over my mouth. “I’m twenty-one years old, mother. I’ll go wherever I want whenever I want and be a whore if I want to.”

“You may be twenty-one,” she replies curtly. “But you have the maturity of a fifteen year-old and so I’m going to treat you like a fifteen year-old.”

“You have no idea how mature I am.” I kick some clothes out of the way and walk toward her. “Mom, please stop doing this. You can’t just keep me locked up in the house. It’s not right.”

Her eyes skim up my short skirt and tight shirt that barely covers anything. “Maybe you should take a good hard look at yourself before you say that.” She backs out of my room, almost if she’s afraid of me and I have to wonder if she knows what I am. Not Lily, but potentially a psychopath. “And I’m not giving you your keys back. Not until you can get your act together and be the daughter I used to know.”

“And who exactly would that be? Because I honestly don’t know.” I reach the doorway, my voice raising and filling with a silent warning. I grip onto the doorframe, fighting to hold myself in my room, because every muscle of mine is yanking me toward her. If she keeps it up, I might have to teach her a lesson. Chase her down and make her give me the keys.

My mother’s expression snaps cold, but there’s a hint of nervousness there beneath the surface. She hovers back, picking up her pace as she backs up the hallway. “This is for your own good. You’ll thank me one day for it,” she says, then turns around and goes into her bedroom, shutting the door.

As soon a she disappears, I calm down, like a fire simmering out. Prying my fingers away from the doorframe, I step back into my room and shut the door.