Page 144 of Nobody's Fool

“But she was,” Thomas insists. “To them. To me. To all of us. That’s the point. I loved her. And she loved us. I know that with every fiber of my being. You may not believe that—”

But of course, I do believe it.

Anna’s last words still ring in my ear:

“I love them with all my heart, Kierce. Mom, Dad, Thomas, Maddy, my nieces—especially my nieces. I love them. And I love my life.”

“—but we became a family,” Thomas says. “A good family. A loving family. She brought us together. Healed us.”

“I didn’t force her into this,” Archie says. “I told her she could change her mind at any time. We’d let her go. But she didn’t want to leave.”

I see Anna’s pleading face in the park again:

“I love them. And I love my life.”

“She was happy,” Archie says. “We were happy. That’s the crazy part. We all became better people for it. And as for my wife—” He stops here, bites down on his knuckle, closes his eyes. When he startsup again, his voice has a choke in it. “It saved Talia’s life. I can’t put it any plainer than that. My wife lived through eleven years of hell. Every day waking up and wondering what had happened to her daughter. She imagined fresh hells every single morning. You spoke to Judith Burkett. I’m sure she told you about my wife’s suffering. The pain and guilt of not knowing—and now suddenly she had her daughter back. Don’t you see?”

But suddenly I didn’t see it.

How had I missed this?

“Hold up,” I say.

I thought I had it. It’s why I wanted to see the whole family. Including Talia.

But I was wrong. I had put so much of it together but not this part.

But it makes sense, doesn’t it?

It is all starting to fit.

“Your wife didn’t know,” I say.

“Of course not.”

“She wasn’t in on this.”

“Don’t you see?” Archie says. “Talia was the whole motivation for doing this.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “She was the mark.”

“No, not like that,” he says. “Don’t you get it? My wife was drowning every day. For eleven years. Every day she woke up crying, wondering where Victoria was. I tried everything to comfort her. But nothing worked. Until this. Until I made ‘Victoria’ come home to her.”

My brain is swirling. “So the reason you hired Anna to play Victoria—”

“Hiredisn’t the right word.”

“Whatever the hell you want to call it,” I snap. “The reason was… to fool your wife?”

“Not fool her. Give her back what she’d lost.”

It’s starting slowly to sink in.

“And your wife was skeptical at first,” I say. “I remember she told me that. Then, what, you told Anna to ask her to read that kids book?”

“Are You My Mother?”

“Right. Jesus. That’s so damn manipulative.”