“You told me you had a great childhood. You said—”
“In my mind, maybe. It was hell. I was alone. Abandoned. Stuck in that jack hole of a place they have the audacity to call an orphanage, because the foster care people didn’t want me in the system.”
“Why not? What was wrong with you?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing was wrong with me,” she answered, voice rising, edging closer, her eyes narrowed. “Nothing has ever been wrong with me. I was made this way. Made by you, Mom.”
Her voice rang through the room now, bouncing off the books.
“I didn’t make you, Ivy. I took you in when you showed up in town, friendless, alone. You came in from the rain, sat dripping at my table in Starbucks, looking for all the world like a drowned kitten, knowing I would take pity on you and take you in. I introduced you to my friends, to my family. I allowed you in my world. I shared my life with you, willingly, happily. And how do you repay me? By drugging my husband, murdering my child, kidnapping a stranger and burning her to death, and trying to destroy my life? You’re sick. Sick and twisted and your soul is black.”
“I didn’t burn her to death. I strangled her first. She was expendable, a means to an end. But yes, you’re right. My soul is black. It’s the same color as my mother’s.”
“You’re insane.”
Ivy laughed. “That I’ve known for a long time. Other people saw it immediately, and cast me aside. Not you. I find it amusing that you of all people never, ever guessed. You are so stupid. So vacuous. You’re incapable. You’re empty. You and your silly, embarrassingly bad little books. Even Ethan thinks your ‘work’ is shit.”
“Not true,” Ethan said, but Sutton talked over him.
“At least I’m earning an honest wage. What do you actually do, Ivy? You’re certainly not a stockbroker, like you claim. All those business trips, all the stories you told about things you did on the road, the places you saw, the people you met. All lies, aren’t they?”
Ivy went to the window, looked out. “Oh, I’m so much better than a broker. You think the hack I did on your world was something? You should be proud, Mom. You gave birth to a certifiable genius. I’ve forgotten more about computers than you will ever know. More than Jobs and Gates combined. I can make them do whatever I want. Attack. Siphon. Inform. All without a trace.”
“You left traces here,” Ethan said. “You changed the password on Sutton’s computer between the time you got into it for me and when I handed it over to the police. Ethan killed our baby was a bit over the top, don’t you think?”
“I think it was highly appropriate, and I left the trace because I wanted you to know. Did you think I was going to let you walk away unscathed from all of this, either of you? Things have gone perfectly. Exactly how I planned, from start to now. The big finish.”
“Oh?” Sutton said, an eyebrow cocked. “So perfectly the police know who and what you are? They’re going to hunt you down like a dog.”
Ivy laughed again. Sutton realized she was enjoying this.
“Did you know, Mom, I was almost adopted once? It was a foster family, and I’d been so good. It happened when I was nine. I was theirs for less than three months before they sent me back. They didn’t like me. They thought I had an edge. That’s what they told the orphanage. I had an ‘edge.’”
“I can imagine,” Ethan said, sotto voce, but Ivy was lost in memory, and ignored or didn’t hear him. She was stroking her cheek with the edge of the revolver, gently caressing herself with the metal.
“They had a dog. Oh, don’t get all weepy, I didn’t hurt the dog. They were assholes. I put steak bones in their bed one night so the dog would attack them. How’s that for an edge?”
“You are utterly and completely mad,” Sutton said.
Ivy grinned, a perfectly sweet smile Sutton had seen on her face hundreds of times before. “Oh, yes, I am, thanks to you. You abandoned me. You didn’t want me. What sort of woman doesn’t want her child? Oh, that’s right. You. You’ve never wanted a child. Not then, not with Dashiell, and not now.”
“I was thirteen, Ivy. I was in jail. What did you expect, that the moment I got out I’d go searching for you and we’d live happily ever after?”
“Sutton,” Ethan cautioned, but Sutton wasn’t going to sit back and be cowed.
“Ethan, let’s be real. Ivy’s holding a gun. She’s already killed two people herself and had two more murdered in her name. We aren’t going to talk her out of killing us. Bullets in our heads are a foregone conclusion.”
Ivy laughed. “You’re right. You’re both so dead. No one’s coming to save you. There’s been a sighting, you see, down in Murfreesboro. The ones who aren’t tied up with the little situation on the square are already on their way south. By the time they realize they’re mistaken and get back up here, you’ll be dead, and I’ll be gone.”
“Planned it all out, did you?” Ethan asked.
“I’ve been planning this for years, you swine. You’re terrible in bed, by the way. Limp dick. Couldn’t get it up. Sloppy kisser, too. I don’t know how she stands it.”
And to Sutton, in a completely new tone, curious, watchful. “I thought you’d at least recognize me when I found you.”
“You look nothing like me.”
“Oh, but I do. If you cross me with your sweet punk rocker, Hayden Stone, add in some red hair, and give me blue eyes, I am a dead ringer. Can’t you see me? Or are you being dense, Elizabeth?”
Sutton flinched at the use of her given name. She flashed back to the stringy black hair and sophomoric homemade tattoos of Hayden Stone. She could barely pull his face into her memory, her hazy memory, so conveniently erased after all these years removed from the situation she placed herself in. At least she knew, now, who’d gotten her pregnant that night. Bile rose in her throat.
“He was a sick fuck. Taking advantage of me like that. If he is your father, I see you get your psychopathy naturally.”
“He told me you wanted it. He told me you asked for it. Yes, that’s right, Mom. I talked to dear old Dad. He remembers you fondly. Remembered, I should say. He’s gone now, too. Don’t think I did it for your honor. He was a waste of space, like you are.”
Sutton shook her head, her newly dark hair raining around her face like a shroud. “What a disappointment you are, Ivy. After all this time, instead of simply telling me who you are like a normal person, you had to make this into an event to make yourself feel more special.”
Sutton stood up. The gun wavered briefly.
“Sit down.”
Sutton took a step, then another. “I could have been a mother to you. I was a friend, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough for you, will it? No one will ever be enough.”