Julia’s knees went weak. “What . . . what do you mean?” She shook her head. “No, that’s . . . that’s not possible. You must be confused.”
“I’m not confused. Somehow, your mother ended up back on the farm with your grandparents. And you were with her.”
“My grandparents?” At first, Julia didn’t know who he was talking about, then it hit her and she dropped the flashlight and sank to the ground. My God. The people she thought were her parents were really her grandparents. And Lilly was her mother, not her sister. Her mind reeled with a thousand questions, but she could barely string two thoughts together. “But how . . . why . . .” She struggled to find the right words. “Why on earth would she ever come back here?”
He shrugged.
She stared at the gravestone, dizzy and light-headed. “How did she die?”
“Mr. Blackwood said it was pneumonia.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I had no reason not to.”
“How old was I?”
“I’m not sure. Just a baby.”
“But how . . . ?” She paused, suddenly nauseous. All those stories “Mother” had told about being on bed rest while pregnant, about how happy they were when she was born healthy. They were lies. Nothing but lies. And what about her memories? What about “Mother” singing lullabies and tucking her in at night? Were they real or just a figment of her imagination?
“So my parents . . . I mean, my grandparents . . . told everyone I was theirs?”
He nodded.
“How did they explain that?”
“There wasn’t much need to explain anything. After Mrs. Blackwood sold your mother to the circus and Mr. Blackwood started drinking, things got pretty bad. The farm was prospering, but their lives were a mess. They stopped seeing friends, turned down invitations to social events, and the only people who came by the barn were clients. It was easy for them to tell everyone the doctor put Mrs. Blackwood on bed rest while she was ‘expecting’ and she wasn’t up to visitors, especially after the story about your ‘sister’ being stillborn. And after you were ‘born,’ they said you were too fragile to come out of the house and no one was allowed to come by until you got stronger. They put a sign on the front door telling people to go to the barn and ask for me. I was ordered to call the house and let them know who it was, and they turned nearly everyone away, or your grandfather came over to the barn. I believe you were a toddler the first time I saw you outside.”
She buried her face in her hands. Of course her grandparents had to lie, otherwise they would have been forced to admit what they’d done to their daughter. All this time, she had been blamed for her “father’s” drinking and death. All this time, she wondered why she was unworthy of her “parents’” love. With a strange mixture of shock and relief, she realized everything she’d believed about herself and her “parents” was a lie. On one hand, she was thankful to know the truth. On the other, between burning down Blackwood Manor and the bombshell that Lilly was her mother, it was almost more than she could bear.
She took slow, deep breaths and tried to pull herself together. She scrubbed the tears from her face and touched the grave marker, the dead cold of stone biting through her skin. This was her mother. The mother she never knew. A woman—an albino—who had been locked in an attic as a child and sold to the circus. It was incredible and wretched and heartbreaking all at the same time. And yet it answered so many questions. Except one. How could her parents—her grandparents—have been so cruel? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered what her life would have been like if her biological mother hadn’t died. But trying to imagine a woman she’d never met as her mother was too overwhelming for her muddled brain right now. And trying to imagine growing up in a circus was impossible. She wouldn’t even know where to start.
“So her name was Lilly?” she said.
“Yes.”
“And my father?”
“Mr. Blackwood said he was dead, killed in some type of accident.”
Julia pushed herself up on shaking legs. “And you helped bury my mother?”
“Yes.”
“You helped take the body into the woods?”
“Yes.”
“Where was she?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where was Lilly when she died?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, then looked at her with tortured eyes. “In the attic.”
CHAPTER 33
LILLY
A yellow shaft of morning light penetrated the darkness, waking Lilly from a fitful sleep. She blinked and opened her eyes. A headache pounded at the back of her skull and her mind was slow and foggy. She felt like she’d been in a fight, every muscle aching and sore. She had no idea where she was, but she was lying on a bed. The sheet beneath her was cold and wet, and the was air filled with the stench of urine and the metallic odor of blood. A square of sunshine landed on a brick wall across the way, forming a silhouette of what looked like a narrow window covered with curly branches. She squinted, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Then a feathery shadow trembled at the bottom of the silhouette, like leaves on a branch. It was a bird. On a sill.
She drew in a sharp breath. It all seemed so familiar and strange at the same time, like something she had seen in a recurring dream. She looked up. Flowered wallpaper covered the arched ceiling above the bed—the same wallpaper her father had hung in her nook a hundred years ago. Her heart skipped a beat, then pounded hard in her chest. She turned her head and glanced around the room.
There was her dollhouse and her bookshelf full of books.
There was her tea set, complete with a lace doily, silver serving tray, and china cups.
There were her model farm animals, lined up on a shelf above her bookcase, all facing the same way.
She pressed the heels of her palms against her flooding eyes.
Was it all a dream? Had seeing the circus out her dormer window given her nightmares?
No. It was real. Merrick, Glory, the elephants, Cole.
Phoebe.
She put her hands to her chest. I’m a woman now. A mother. It was real. All of it. Panic exploded in her mind. Where is my baby? And how did I get back in this room? Then she realized she was wearing a hospital gown and could feel tight bandages around her middle. She remembered trying to save Pepper, being knocked by the crane to the ground, and someone saying they were taking her to a hospital. The image of Pepper hanging from the derrick cable flashed in her mind and a hot rush of grief ripped through her insides.