“Do you think of them that way, really? Like, do you carry them around like that?”
She scooted to the floor so she was sitting beside him on the other side of Willow, who was still stretched out, enjoying the attention he was giving her.
“I don’t know. I don’t mean to. But probably. It makes the wins sweeter, though...”
Elsie frowned, then stood up.
“Elsie? Where are you going?”
“Give me a second...” Her mind was spinning, something in what she had thought or said turning the wheels of her mind in a way that was confusing and clarifying all at the same time. Wins...
“Why did someone start coming after me now?” she muttered as she dug through the piles that had accumulated on her small table in the last couple of days.
There it was, the newspaper article from the successful rescue that had taken place only days earlier...two days before the threat against her had surfaced? No, only one. The rescue itself had taken place one day, the article had come out the next, and that night someone had broken into her cabin.
“What if someone...?” It was too strange to voice aloud the thoughts formulating in her mind, so Elsie paused and went back to the file. Pulled out another case.
“Here.” She handed it to Wyatt, who looked it over. She sat back down beside him.
“Three-year-old found...island... Wait—this is...”
“Yes. It’s me.”
She waited for his reaction, anxiety and excitement building within her, and she started to wonder more and more if she was right. “I know I said this earlier, but I can’t get it out of my head. What if someone wanted me dead? Like, what if it wasn’t just child neglect or abandonment? My whole life I assumed no one wanted me. Like I was forgotten there and not worth going back for or something.”
He recoiled like she had hit him.
Elsie held up a hand to stop him before he even started. “I know it bothers you that I would think that way, but you need to let it be. You can’t do anything to change all of that. What I’m wondering is... What if I was wrong? What if someone actively wanted to get rid of me?”
“Like murder instead of neglect? Like you really did witness a crime?”
He put into words what she could not, but she still flinched a little at the word murder. It seemed so harsh, but in reality, leaving a three-year-old on an island, even without such stated intentions, was just as cruel.
“Yes,” Elsie said even as she hoped it wasn’t true. Who would want that in their past?
She pulled her phone out and started googling. If different memories kept appearing when she was on the island, triggered by smells or sounds, would it be possible to trigger memories herself?
Every angle she could try to search, she did so. Murdered women and then the year. Alaskan women murdered. Domestic violence Alaska.
Nothing.
“One more idea...” she mumbled. Elsie typed in the phone number for the Office of Children’s Services and asked around until she found someone who could pull up her old file.
“Is there anything in my file,” she asked, hoping desperately that her one last attempt to trigger some kind of flashback wouldn’t be a failure, “that points to domestic violence or violence of any kind?”
If the woman on the other end of the phone thought it was a strange question, she didn’t say so. She just told Elsie she was looking.
“No... There’s really just not enough detail...” The woman stopped. “Maybe one thing.”
Elsie definitely believed in leaps at this point. “I’d love to hear anyway. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”
Across from her, Wyatt had looked up from the files and was watching her, though she knew he could only hear her end of the conversation.
“There’s a note that you kept repeating ‘Mommy crying.’ No mentions of violence specifically, but...”
“Thank you for the help,” Elsie said even as a chill ran down her arms. She hung up the phone.
Crying.
The darkness. No, not just darkness. The hall closet. Hidden behind the coats. Screaming. Crying. Her mother.
Her mother had been crying. The woman in the dream was her mother.
Breaths coming rapidly now, Elsie nodded. “It fits.” She swallowed hard against the emotion building, tears threatening to fall even as her throat stung. “I think someone wanted to get rid of me—murder me—” she stumbled over the word again “—because the flashback...there’s more to it and...I think they killed my mother and...I was there.”
“Oh, Elsie.”
He reached for her and Elsie was surprised at how easy and natural it felt to be in his arms. The longer he held her, the more she felt herself relaxing into him and the more what had started as a hug of reassurance moved, at least for her, into a deep awareness of how close she was to Wyatt.
And how much it could take her mind off even the darkest elements of her past.
He pulled away, his face a muddle of emotion.
It was a lot to take in, Elsie realized, even for someone who, well, wasn’t her. Wyatt looked stunned, and she’d, of course, not delivered any of those thoughts as graciously as she could have because she was still stumbling through explanations and guesses herself.
“Even reading this...” He trailed off as he waved the packet she’d handed him about her rescue. “And you saying you didn’t think anyone wanted you...”
“When I was a kid,” she felt the need to clarify, as she definitely didn’t need his pity.
