Page 134 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Where’s Tommy?” I ask, realizing that this is the room he’d been in the day before when I’d questioned him about his sister.

“They moved him to another wing,” he says. “In light of his history. With Odette. With Jessica. They didn’t want the two of them anywhere near each other.”

“This is a knot that’s going to take a long time to untangle, I think.”

“Yes,” he says. “The FBI have started going through everything. Dwight and Elaine’s property. Any evidence they can find on Tommy Hoyle’s past crimes. Everything that links anyone to Deena Drake. The way she was involved with Jacobs, the way Kerridge helped her ten years ago. I think there’s going to be a lot of report writing in my future.”

“So much of crime fighting is what happens after the action,” I say. “In the end, we spend most of our time just doing paperwork. I suspect that’s the real reason Batman wears a mask. Filing reports and logging evidence and giving testimony in court is way less sexy than punching a bunch of guys and disappearing into the shadows. But it’s just as heroic.”

“You think so?”

“Well, no,” I say. “If I could, I’d be Batman. But real-life law enforcement officials tend to take a dim view of masked vigilantism.”

He laughs softly, and pauses in the hall and looks at me.

“You did a good job, Annie,” he says. “You found the truth.”

“Yes,” I say. “Not in time for Molly, though.”

“But in time for Lucy. In time for Shiloh. In time for Jessica and Mandy. And Max will heal. It’ll take time. But at least he won’t be stuck in limbo anymore.”

I nod. AJ had already found the letters Molly had written to Max over the years. Already made copies of all of them and given them to him. And already Max had read them, with his father at his side, and then put them into the box he kept in his closet.

“He’ll heal,” AJ says, again. “Thanks to you.”

He gives my shoulder a squeeze and we walk a little farther in relative silence, the hospital noises buzzing around us. He stops at another door and says, “You ready?”

“Yes.”

Inside, Jessica Hoyle is sitting in a hospital bed. She’s wearing a pale blue hospital gown, and the tape from her wound dressing peeks out from above and below the sleeve. She is handcuffed to the bed.

Mandy Hoyle sits beside her. Mandy looks at me when I enter, and her eyes instantly brim with tears. She stands and comes to me and wraps her arms around me and gives me a hug far stronger and tighter than I’d ever have imagined she could manage. It was a mistake, I know, to have ever thought of Mandy as frail or weak. An easy mistake. She has the hands, the arms, the strength, the embrace of a mother.

“You found her,” she says. “You said you would.”

I look over her shoulder to the young woman sitting on the bed, glaring at us. I know this isn’t the reunion Mandy wanted. But itisa reunion. It is something. Her daughter is alive. She’s here.

“Mandy—” I start, as she pulls out of the embrace. But she shakes her head, a soft sad smile on her mouth. There’s not really anything else to say.

“I’m going to go get some coffee while the two of you talk,” she says.

She pats my arm and straightens her purse on her shoulder and leaves.

The door shuts behind us. AJ stands against it. I go and sit in the chair beside Jessica. She stares at me the whole time. I rest my hands in my lap and look at her. She looks at me. Her eyes are rimmed in red. She glances at AJ and then back at me.

“You ruined it,” she says, finally.

“I know,” I say.

“I was a princess,” she says. “I was a princess in a castle and soon I was going to leave and have my own life.”

“I know.”

She sniffs. Her hair is still braided. It coils in a long, white-gold rope over her good shoulder and into her lap.

“I didn’t want to kill Molly. I—” She pauses when her voice cracks, then goes on in a whisper. “I loved her. She was my sister. I… I wasgoing to take us far away. But… as soon as you came, and she heard about Max…”

She bows her head, and tears fall into the braid in her lap.