Devious - Lisa Jackson [72]
“But you know your parents’ names? Your name?”
“Yes. Mary and Michael Brown.”
“Common names.”
“Yeah, I know. But why would they lie? Mom and Dad—Nadine and Gene—what would they be hiding?”
“Maybe that’s what Cammie was trying to find out.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, thinking about her sister. Cammie always did have a flair for the dramatic, an overactive imagination.
Slade tilted his head back, and she watched his throat move as he took another long pull from his bottle. “Maybe that was why she was killed.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense. It happened so long ago. . . .” She tried to pin down the facts, the details of her parents’ deaths. She’d been told that a plane crash had taken her parents’ lives. A day trip. Valerie and Camille had been left with a family friend when tragedy had struck and the plane had gone down. With both sets of grand-parents already dead, the small, grief-ridden family had to scramble to find a suitable home for the children. Valerie and Camille had been sent to St. Elsinore’s until the family could sort things out.
The end result had been placement with the Renards, as Nadine was a third cousin to Mary Brown, the only relative with the means or desire to take in a preschooler and an infant.
“Cammie didn’t tell you she was looking into your biological parents?”
“No.” Val shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I would have told her she was nuts, that she was chasing ghosts.” A dry, penetrating wind swept through her soul, upward through the cracks in the foundation of her life, sweeping aside all the memories she’d held as true. Her throat closed in on itself as she met Slade’s gaze. “Because if it’s true, if Mary Brown wasn’t our mother,” she whispered, the flyer crinkling in her fingers, “then my entire life has been a lie.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession,” Sister Asteria whispered the words that were so familiar while making the sign of the cross. On the other side of the screen, deep in the shadows, a priest was ready to listen. Father Paul, thank goodness, rather than Father Frank. She tried to ignore her trip-hammering heart as she folded her hands and took in a steadying breath.
At the whispered encouragement from the priest, she closed her eyes and began to unburden her heart. “I was once in love with a man who turned out to be married, and as soon as I found out, I left him.”
His face was hidden, unrecognizable in the semidarkness, but she knew she had his full attention. He sat, rapt, as she continued.
“I was determined never to make that mistake again, to never fall in love with a mortal man, to follow Jesus as my savior, as my strength, as . . .” She felt tears fill her eyes. Her voice caught as she let out a shuddering breath.
“Slowly, my child. Gather your thoughts and confess.”
She did, pouring out everything that had been torturing her for the past few weeks. “My thoughts have been impure,” she admitted, “and my actions—” Her voice caught, and she steeled herself. Whatever the penance, surely it would be easier to bear than the burden of her private, sinful secrets.
Asteria thought she heard another sound, a quiet footstep outside the door to the confessional.
Her back muscles tensed.
Surely no one would be hovering nearby or listening in. No, her confession was between herself and the priest . . .
And yet, she was certain she heard someone, or rather sensed someone, nearby. Wasn’t that the sound of a gasp being stifled?
Her unease intensified, and she could almost feel the presence of another person nearby.
Friend or foe?
She swallowed hard.
“Go on, my child,” the priest encouraged in his soft rasp, and Asteria reined in her wild imagination. Her fantasies and dreams and nightmares had always been her undoing, getting her into trouble.
Now, in the wake of poor