Beneath Blackwater River Leslie Wolfe (me reader txt) 📖

room. High cheekbones poked through her skin, rendering her gaunt face an almost skeletal appearance, compounded by her thin, dry lips and her expressionless blue eyes. Her arm was like a stick, and her long, trembling fingers seemed too frail to operate the remote.

They approached quickly and stopped by the side of the bed. Evangeline turned her head toward them, but didn’t make eye contact. Kay frowned and shot the nurse an inquisitive look. She shook her hand, pressing her lips together.

Evangeline Caldwell was blind.

Elliot shot Kay a quick glance with an unspoken statement, and she nodded, certain she understood where his mind went. Evangeline’s blindness could explain why Rose had been living under the same roof as her daughter and she didn’t notice. A mother would’ve noticed the tiniest difference in the color of her hair, the curve of her lips when she smiled, the way her dimples deepened when she laughed.

“Thank you for speaking to us,” Kay said, keeping her voice friendly and calm. Careful to not tip her hand and understanding why Bill Caldwell had kept the news of Alyssa’s death from his dying wife, she started by offering an explanation for their presence. “We’re investigating the kidnapping of a girl of your daughter’s age, Rose Harrelson.”

The nurse breathed with ease, slowly, and nodded with gratitude toward Kay. The woman evidently knew about Alyssa’s death; Evangeline was probably the only member of the household who didn’t.

Evangeline raised her hand, but then let it fall back on the covers. “A friend of Alyssa?”

“This kidnapping happened fourteen years ago,” Kay clarified, and Evangeline seemed to lose interest. “But, yes, Alyssa and Rose might have been friends at the time.”

A flicker of a smile tugged at Evangeline’s withered lips. “Fourteen years ago? Alyssa would’ve been three.” A cloud of darkness swept across her face, but she didn’t say a word.

“Tell me about Alyssa’s childhood,” Kay asked. Getting the right answers without being able to ask the right questions and provide context was proving to be a difficult task. “Did she have any friends? Whom did she play with?”

Evangeline turned her head away from them as her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve been bedridden since she was one year old. I missed my baby’s entire childhood. I never played with her, and never met her friends. And I thought that was the worst part, but when she was three, Alyssa nearly died.” She stopped talking, struggling to breathe. Gina adjusted her oxygen and Evangeline settled.

“What happened?” Kay asked, seeing that the woman wasn’t continuing her story, and knowing she was close to uncovering an important piece of the puzzle.

“Alyssa contracted a bad case of viral meningitis,” she explained. “Doctors here tried everything they could, but she was dying. Then darling Bill, he managed the impossible… He chartered a plane and took her to a fancy clinic on the East Coast somewhere. They saved her.”

“Amazing,” Elliot replied. “Did she have any lasting effects from the disease?”

“No,” Evangeline whispered, a faint smile fluttering on her lips. “They were gone a while, but the best experts in the field worked on her case and gave me back my sweet girl.” She swallowed with difficulty, and Gina quickly brought a glass of water fitted with a lid and a straw.

A cohesive scenario was starting to form in Kay’s mind. Alyssa was dying of viral meningitis, and she eventually died. For some reason, Bill decided to kidnap Rose Harrelson and replace Alyssa with her, but why? For the inheritance? And how did he manage to pull that off? Evangeline’s vision might’ve been declining or gone because of her MS, but how about the rest of the household? Staff, family members, had no one noticed it wasn’t the same girl? How long would a child have to be gone for people to forget details such as the curls of her hair, the way she pronounced certain words, the sound of her voice?

“What a heartwarming story,” Kay said, smiling widely. “How long were they gone?”

“I don’t remember… a few months. Four, maybe six. Time passes by slowly when you’re stuck in a bed. I wish—” She stopped talking and squeezed her eyelids shut, sending tears down her cheeks. “I should’ve died a long time ago. It’s not doing anyone any good for me to keep on living, but I do.”

“Thank you very much for your time,” Kay said. “Seems to me Alyssa didn’t know Rose Harrelson after all.”

“No. I don’t imagine my daughter knew anything about that missing girl; she didn’t have any friends at the time. She couldn’t have. Even after her return, she spent a lot of time sleeping. Her recovery was long and difficult.”

Or the little girl had been sedated, until gradually everyone had grown accustomed to her well enough to stop noticing any slight differences to the girl they once knew as Alyssa.

46Daylight

Kirsten had waited for him the entire night, despising herself for wishing him there, because he brought heat and light and sustenance. Because she wanted to live. Yet she dreaded what his arrival meant, the shower ritual that seemed to turn him on, his hands on her wet body, the endless pain brought by his twisted desires.

When the sky had started to turn gray, and he still hadn’t turned up, she’d resigned herself to the cold and hunger, and curled up on the couch, wrapped in mold-smelling, raspy blankets that belonged to a different era, wishing she could fall asleep for only one hour. Fear had kept her awake for days now, giving her moments of dozing off when she least expected, only to bounce back from slumber fully awake, ready to fight for her life, exhausted beyond belief.

She knew he would kill her sometime; there was no doubt in her mind. She felt powerless against him, with his large knife and remote control and whatever his devious mind thought of next. She knew she would die. She just wished it would be painless, and soon, to end her suffering.

When the