Page 22 of Ghost Hunted

It feels like in one second, I’ve lost the whole of the relationship I built with Piper over these past few months. We’re back to the start. She looks at me like I’m a stranger, while all her love goes out to the heartless woman who abandoned her.

“I’m sorry, Piper,” I say. “You know I would never hurt you.”

“No.” She puts on a show of bravado, but her voice is shaking. “No, of course you’d never hurt me. You’d only kill the woman you’re in love with. My mother. And I know you kidnapped her back then and held her against her will, and threatened to bring her back to her rapist of a husband and kill her. I know all that.”

Lia lets out a tiny choked sob, but I don’t allow myself to look at her.

“Well, I didn’t kill her, did I?” I ask, trying hard to ignore the fact that if she knows, it’s because Lia told her.

“That’s a form of torture, you know!” Piper cries out. “To make someone believe they’re going to die. It’s cruel! You’re cruel!”

“You know what’s cruel, Piper?” I take a threatening step forward, and Quill flattens himself against her, his eyes narrowing at me. “What’s cruel is abandoning you and playing dead for eighteen years. That’s what’s cruel.”

“Well, why don’t you ask her why?” Piper’s voice comes out muffled from behind Quill. “Or maybe you already know. Maybe it’s because you literally kidnapped her and held her against her will, and threatened to bring her back to her rapist of a husband and kill her.”

“It’s not…” begins Lia.

“It’s not normal to run from the person who’s supposed to love you,” continues Piper angrily. “It’s not normal to have to use a fake name so the person who’s supposed to love you doesn’t hunt you down and kill you. That’s not normal, and it’s not her fault. It’s your fault, because you’re cruel and you scare her!”

“So you do remember,” breathes Lia.

“I didn’t, but now I do. It’s like… like… a grey-out. Like what happens after I drink a fuck-ton of alcohol, Logan,” adds Piper, “which I don’t usually do, but I’m twenty-two, and every so often, I have a few glasses. And I’m allowed to! And when you said that, Lia… I mean, mom… mother…”

Her voice chokes up.

“Mama. I think you used to call me mama.” Lia hesitates. “And you called Logan… papa.”

“Mama,” repeats Piper tentatively, like she’s trying out the word.

My chest tightens when she doesn’t try out the other word. Papa.

“A grey-out,” murmurs Lia. “Did they give you…” She swallows. “Did they give you Memoril?”

I can’t help it—my head snaps around and I stare at her. “How the fuck do you know about that?”

“Uhm…” She sits down on a kitchen table chair, her eyes still resolutely on Piper. Or rather, on the parts of Piper visible from behind Quill. “I think that… I think that I was injected with it. By my father.”

“Your father, who’s lying dead in the shed outside,” I say, somehow hoping she doesn’t know and that it hurts her.

But then I remember what Piper said. I guess since it really was Lia on the phone, the other part must be true too. About how she killed her father.

“Why’d you do it, by the way? Pretty sure the Catholic Church doesn’t condone patricide.”

She stares at her hands. “Well, because he was injecting me with Memoril.”

I frown at this information I had disregarded at first. “What do you mean? Regularly?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Every week, he’d give me some medication. He didn’t tell me what it was for. Then one week, he couldn’t do it, so he told my mother to.”

“Your mother,” repeats Piper. “My grandmother. Is she here?”

“She was. We were in hiding.” Lia twists her hands in her lap. “My father was hunting us. But he found us, and...”

“I don’t care,” I interrupt, and she wilts under my murderous gaze. “I don’t care how scared you were of your father. It doesn’t matter. You should have contacted me. You know I would have protected you.”

She doesn’t answer me, only staring at the floor.

“Why did you go back to Ireland?” Piper asks her in a cheerful voice I know she’s using to ease the tension. “Why didn’t you stay in America?”