House of V (Unraveled Series) (14 page)

“I think it would be risky staying
with you. He’s got an eye on your department. It’s evident through the dumping
of the first body. He wants you to play his little game. I think it will be
better for me to stay by myself, just outside of Appleton
- ”
I started. If Sanchez wanted me to find Sister Josephine, I was going to need
some breathing room to do it. I couldn’t have the whole police department
breathing down my neck.

“Not a chance,” Sanchez said.

“What about Mark’s?” Delaney
interrupted. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, and whoever it is probably wouldn’t be
watching Mark. You could put a patrol on the street if you wanted.”

“I don’t know,” Sanchez said.

“I’ll go with,” Delaney blurted
out.

“You can’t, Delaney,” James said,
standing up. “There’s no way I am letting you near a psychopath that’s looking
for
Evie
.”

“I can help,” she said. “Look,
Evie
and I found Holston, didn’t we?”

“Sure, but this is a dangerous
situation,” Sanchez said, “I can’t have that responsibility and the last thing
I need is for this perpetrator to set his targets on more of your family.”

“I have access to all Holston’s
property,” Delaney defended.

“His house in
Appleton?”
I asked.

“Everything is pretty much gone.
The FBI took what they needed and then we got rid of the rest for the most
part. Donated or sold it. Way under market value; a serial killer’s property
isn’t exactly high on the priority list for most people,” James replied.

“The cabin?”
I asked.

“We didn’t get that far yet,” James
said.
“Still there.”

“The house in
Amberg
,”
Delaney added. “Ann wouldn’t agree to bulldoze it since it was such a beautiful
home. We’re in the process of finding the right person to donate it to.”

“Fine,” Sanchez interrupted,
rubbing his temples. “But neither of you are coming to the station. Besides
that, there will be paroles at Mark’s house twenty-four seven. One officer will
parole the subdivision and another will be assigned to the house.”

“It’s a plan.” Delaney smiled at
James, who was shaking his head.

“Then I’m going with you, too,”
James added begrudgingly. I knew he didn’t want anything to do with this, or
me, for that matter.

“Good, it’s a party,” Sanchez
grumbled, tucking his folder in his arm. “It should only be a night or two
anyway. I plan on finding this son of a bitch.”

I nodded my head and looked at
Delaney’s peach lips and clear blue eyes. We both had our mother’s beautiful
eyes and suddenly, there was something I needed to do before going to Appleton.

“Good. I plan on finding the son of
a bitch, too.” I moved to stand up, Delaney and James following my lead. “But
I’ve got one request before we head to Appleton.”

Everyone stared at me, their eyes
waiting for the latest demand from the smallest person in the room.

“I want to see Ann and Michael
Jones.”

***

Large oak trees lined the streets
of the residential area, their branches sweeping over Seventh Street like a large,
encompassing canopy. I watched from the passenger seat of Sanchez’s squad car
as the houses ticked by. The older, middle class neighborhood was quaint and
well-kept. Delaney and James were on their way back to their house in Milwaukee
to pick up a few things before they were escorted back to Appleton. I was
relieved because I wanted to do this alone.

Sanchez slowed as he picked up the
yellow post-it note Delaney had scribbled the address on. It was the address of
her childhood home, and what should have been
our
childhood home. I wondered if Ann and Michael Jones would have
ever left
Amberg
had it not been for the fire. They
could still be living a quiet life in the north woods of Wisconsin.

We stopped at the craftsmen
bungalow. The numbers of the address were posted on the house like every other
house on the street. The yard was pruned to perfection with a line of rose
bushes just beginning to bloom in the front. Sanchez pulled the squad car into
the driveway. The wheels rolled closer as I held my breath. I needed to do
this.

The car stopped and my fingers
grasped the handle of the door when I suddenly realized what this scenario
might look like. I was arriving on my parents’ driveway in a police car
twenty-seven years after I was kidnapped from their home; I couldn’t say that
most people would find that comforting.

“
You going
in? Or are you just going to sit here for ten minutes?” Sanchez asked, turning
the key to silence the engine. He rested his hands on the wheel and looked at
me. “Ten minutes. I’ll be here in the driveway the entire time. If you even
think of
- ”

“I’m not running, okay?” I said,
fully aware of my heart beating in my chest. Somehow I could manage to drain a
bullet in Holston’s head
easily,
however I couldn’t
get out of the car to
meet
my
parents. Drops of sweat gathered in my armpits. Seriously, what was wrong with
me?

“Good.”

“I’m just trying to prepare
myself.”

Sanchez studied me and finally let
out a sigh of understanding. “They are your parents, and they haven’t seen you
in over twenty years. I think it doesn’t matter what you say, they’ll be happy
to see you anyway.”

I turned toward him to see his
usually hard eyes that had, in a brief moment, gone soft just like they had at
the zoo and when he had showed me Holston’s list. Sanchez did have a heart.

“No kids?” I asked.

“Never had any myself, but my
ex-wife did. I don’t get to see Gavin as much as I would like to, but when I do
see him, hell, nothing else matters than him. It’s an amazing thing.” Sanchez’s
voice cracked at the end.

I banked on his words, hoping that
this wasn’t a mistake. I counted to five and opened the door to step onto the
pavement of a driveway that was foreign to me. A house and its inhabitants were
complete strangers, yet I was supposed to call them my parents.

As I walked to the black front
door, the sheen glistening in the sun that was beginning to fall on the summer
evening, I felt my legs twitch. The urge to run pulsed through my entire being
and my body constricted as walls caved in toward me. I was trapped and being
squeezed tighter as I moved my hand up to the door to knock.

Instead of my hand hitting the
door, it fell forward as the door opened to a beautiful, middle-aged woman. Her
brown hair fell just to her chin, a short, wavy bob not much shorter than my
own. A pink flush ran through her cheeks as recognition melted into her face.
Her blue eyes began to glisten and a small tear formed in the outermost corner
near the small wrinkles that lined her eyes.
My mother.

I stood there in sheer panic,
feeling my chest rise and fall with each labored breath. I
stumbled
a small step back, fearing what she would think of what I had become. She
didn’t want me here.

“Oh, Anna,” she whispered, her hand
flying to the back of her ear. The small diamond twisted against the skin of
her earlobe. “I never thought I would see you again.”

My legs buckled beneath me, barely
supporting the weight of my body, as I shoved my hands in my jeans.

“Me, neither,” I said, my voice
shaky and barely recognizable. Run,
Evie
. I turned my
head, looking back at Sanchez who had moved out of the squad car and was now
leaned against his door. He nodded his head and pulled his aviators down over
his eyes. He was trying to encourage me, give me the strength that I needed. I
turned back to the shocked face of my mother. I couldn’t understand how
emptying a bullet into Holston’s head had been so easy, but this… this was so
hard.

“Michael?” she called behind her
into the house with her eyes still fixated on me. “Anna,” she whispered as she
moved toward me, her arms outstretched much wider than my body actually was.

I let her surround me, her thin
body holding me tight as I inhaled and smelled the sweet scent of lavender and
roses. I wanted nothing else than to bury my head in her neck and crawl into
her lap as she stroked my hair. I wanted her to love me, to tell me that
everything was going to be okay. That my life for the last twenty-seven years
hadn’t been a waste and that, above all, she wanted me. I desperately needed
her to want me, to take me in; to find the true Anna Jones underneath the
facade of
Evie
Parker. I was lost and wanted to be
found.

So we stood there, two grown women
embracing for the first time.
Mother and daughter.

I had a mother.

“I’ve missed you for so long,
Anna,” Ann said, her voice wavering as she slowly pulled away from me. “I guess
I should call you
Evie
.”

She studied me with two large
tracks where tears streamed. I suddenly felt incredibly self-aware of how
disheveled - let’s be honest, horrendous - I looked. Just a few hours of sleep
on the plane mixed in with jet lag and no real food, I probably looked like a
mangled, unfed dog wagging on her porch. I smoothed my hair down and tucked it
behind my ear. Welcome, home long-lost daughter.

“Come in. Please, come in.” Ann
waved her arms at me, ushering me across the threshold and into the house.

“I have about ten minutes,” I said
as I walked into the living room, assessing the furniture; a small fireplace,
cozy furniture, a TV. The house was lived-in. It was a home.

It was perfect.

“Oh, okay.” Her face fell before
she grabbed my hand and held it in her own. “Ten minutes is better than
nothing. I will take it.”

“Michael?” she called again. I
heard a scrape in the kitchen and a shuffling noise before Michael Jones
emerged from the kitchen in a casual walk.

“Yeah,” he called back, making it
three steps into the living room before he stopped and brought his empty hand
to his chest. The towel in his other hand hung low to the ground, his fingers
barely gripping it.

“Anna?” he whispered into the air,
as if I wasn’t real, as if he had seen a ghost. I touched my own leg, making
sure I was there. God, that was stupid. I was here. “Is that you?”

Ann nodded her head wildly and
turned toward him with a huge smile spread across her face. “It’s her, Michael.
It’s Anna. Well,
Evie
.”

My father’s face broke and his eyes
immediately flooded with tears as he whipped the towel over his shoulder and
moved past my mother. His hair was a silvery gray and his glasses were set
ahead of disbelieving eyes. In khaki shorts and a Miller beer t-shirt, he was
dressed like the father that I wanted him to be. He was dressed like a father
should be.

“
Evie
,”
he said my name louder, as if by declaring it that I would exist in real life.
I nodded my head. I was here.

“It’s me,” I answered, letting him
study my face before he pulled me into an embrace. His arms shook around me and
his body wept in the same joy that I could feel, though my body couldn’t
express it. I felt his warmth consume me and his strong arms squeeze me tight.

“Your father is a crier,” Ann
teased from behind him as she placed her hand on my shoulder. “And you on the
other hand, it looks like you got my genes.”

“You women,” Michael said through
tears. “How can you not cry?”

“I did,” Ann said, rubbing her
hands across her dry cheeks. “But there’s nothing to cry over anymore. She’s
here.”

“She is,” Michael whispered,
finally pulling away from me. I stepped back and let him study me. I was over
the smoothing and tucking of my hair; no amount of silly tugging was going to
make me look any better. I was who I was. “Your eyes changed. You had blue eyes
when you were little.”

“Contacts,” I said with a smirk.
“You both are making me realize how horrible I look and how this all probably
appears. Showing up, not showered or fed, escorted by a squad car.”

“The police are here?” Michael
asked
,
poking his head out the front window to see
Sanchez still leaned against the car.
“Appleton Police
Department.
Is that Sanchez?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay,
Evie
?”
Ann rushed. “They didn’t arrest you or anything, did they? Where were you?”

I wanted to start fresh with my
real parents. No more lies.

“I was in Europe, with a friend,” I
started, taking a deep breath before continuing, “Delaney contacted me because
of
- ”

“Sister Josephine,” Michael
interrupted. “This is about Sister Josephine, isn’t it? Delaney told me about
it yesterday. She told me to keep an extra eye on your mother.”

“What are you talking about? You
didn’t tell me anything about a Sister Josephine,” Ann said, putting her hands
on her hips and shooting an accusatory glare at her husband.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think much of
it, and I didn’t want you to worry,” Michael responded, wrapping his arm around
her waist.

“Neither of you has anything to
worry about,” I interjected. “Delaney contacted me because Father
Haskens
, a long-time friend of mine, died of a heart attack
after an intruder snuck into his house a few days ago. Sister Josephine wanted
me to know that she thought she might be in danger. Long story short, Sister
Josephine is missing, and I was arrested when I came back into the country.
Sanchez offered an agreement that I took. In exchange for dropping the charges
on me, I agreed to help him find Sister Josephine. So I’m headed to Appleton.
But I didn’t come here to talk about Sister Josephine. All you need to know is
that you’re not in any danger, but you might see an officer every once in a while
checking up on the house over the next few days.”