Page 28 of Darkwater Lane

I consider her offer. Normally, my internal alarm bells would be ringing like mad at this point. And while they’re definitely dinging, they’re not so loud that I automatically turn down her offer. Meeting with Madison may be a risk, but I’m willing to take it. Especially if it can help us take down the Lost Angels.

I press my fingers against my eyes. I can’t believe I’m about to say this. “Okay, I’ll meet with you. Call me when you get to town with the details.”

When I call Sam to tell him about the meeting with Madison, he’s unsurprisingly shocked. “You want to talk to the woman who’s actively screwing with our lives?”

“I know. I felt the same way, but I think she might be a victim in all of this too.”

He snorts. “Oh, really? Did she also loseherjob? Doesshealso wonder which of her acquaintances now thinks of her as a murderer? Is she afraid of some whack job coming out of the woodwork to kill her and her family?”

His bitterness is justified.

“She left the Lost Angels on bad terms,” I tell him. “According to her, she recorded the entire podcast and handed it over per their contract. Apparently, the second episode originally included evidence exonerating you of Leo’s murder, and when Rowan listened to it she got pissed and fired Madison. After that, Rowan recut all the episodes and inserted herself as a co-host. So when Madison left, she took a bunch of files with her and is offering to hand them over.”

“Do you trust this woman?”

I laugh. “Of course not. I mean, I think she’s telling the truth about the files and her willingness to hand them over. I just don’t know if she has other motives as well.”

It’s obvious he’s skeptical. Even so, he says, “You know I’ll support any decision you make.”

I smile. “I do. And I appreciate it.”

“You also know I’m going with you to that meeting,” he adds.

This time I laugh. Of course he wouldn’t be comfortable with me meeting Madison on my own, though I’m not sure if he’s going in order to protect me or her. He’s well aware of my temper, and while I’m usually good at keeping a tight lid on it, there’s always a first time for everything. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”

Madison texts later in the day to let me know she booked a room at the Hyatt near the airport and suggests we meet at their bar for drinks. It seems as good a place as any, so we agree to meet at 5:00 p.m.

It takes a bit of shuffling our afternoon schedules, but Lanny is thrilled to take Connor to the barn because it means she has full use of the car. I remind her that he’s working late and they should grab dinner on the way home. She waves her calculus textbook at me and tells me not to worry; she has plenty of school work to occupy her time.

After they leave, I spend some time using my work resources to do a background check on Madison. It’s easy to verify the few things she told me. She was indeed a student at Wichita State during my trial, and I’m able to dig up a few articles she wrote about it in the school newspaper. Nothing exceptional, mostly basic reporting of the facts. I also unearth an old social media account she abandoned after college. It has the usual stuff: photos with friends, outfits of the day, angsty selfies taken in bathroom mirrors.

When I dig deeper, I learn that her parents were killed in a car accident when she was thirteen. It appears she shuffled around a lot after that, initially living with various distant relatives and eventually ending up in foster care. With that in mind, I flip back to her abandoned social media page and take a closer look. Not at her but at her surroundings.

You can learn a lot about a person by examining the background in their photos. A lot of people pay attention to what’s immediately behind them, but they fail to think about reflectivesurfaces. I zoom in on mirrors and windows, teasing out what lies outside the picture. I’m able to get a pretty good idea of the layout of her college apartment. I note the lack of family photos and the sparseness of her walls. Her furniture is a mix of Ikea and secondhand, with little touches here and there that scream someone influenced by social media: a fuzzy rug that was popular several years back, a collection of scented candles on the mantel, a fake fig tree in the corner.

It’s a stark contrast to the photos taken at her friends’ places: common areas cluttered with books and computers and shoes piled by the door. Her friends’ apartments look lived in, whereas Madison’s does not. It makes her life seem empty and lonely. Devoid of vibrancy.

Even in the photos with her friends, Madison is always the one on the edge of the crowd or at the end of the row of girls. Perilously close to being left out altogether.

I widen my search, looking for photos of Madison that others might have taken and posted. I come across one of her flung across an oversized chair in her apartment. She’s sideways, her legs curled over one arm and her back against the other. She’s holding her phone up at arm’s length, fingers caught mid-flight across the screen.

Something about the photo seems so familiar, and I struggle to understand why.

Then it hits me: she reminds me of Lanny. Of all the times I’ve wandered into our family room to find Lanny in the same position, thrown sideways across the chair, engrossed in her phone. It’s such a stereotypically teenage thing to do that I almost laugh.

Until I realize this could be Lanny next year. I check the date on the photo of Madison. It was posted by a college friend when they were freshmen, which would make Madison in the picture nearly the same age as my daughter now. I suddenly can’t stop imaginingLanny like that: in that beige chair, in that half-empty apartment with its white walls. Clinging to the edge of a friend group but never truly belonging.

There’s another picture posted by that same friend later in the year. It’s of Madison standing with her hands wrapped around a splintered deck railing. She’s staring out at a sky awash with the colors of sunset. The only way to describe her expression is hungry.

I’ve seen the same thing in Lanny. Looking to the horizon as if being pulled to it. Anxious, ready for what’s out there. Eager to conquer anything that stands in her way. They have the same drive and determination, that gleam in their eyes.

My chest squeezes. Now that I see the similarities, I can’tunseethem. I imagine Madison alone in the world without a mother, or father, or siblings—no safety net to catch her if she fails. I ache for her.

Which pisses me off. I don’t want to feelanythingfor her, especially not sympathy. Besides, she’s no longer that same girl she was in those photos. Since then, she’s graduated from college, gotten her degree, found jobs, moved around, and produced a podcast that fucked me and my family over.

Unless she’s telling the truth about Rowan re-editing what she created. Which still remains to be seen.

While I’m on Instagram and thinking of Lanny, I login to my secret account and navigate to her profile. She posted something new since the last time I visited. It’s a picture of a form with her hand covering most of it. I know it’s her because I recognize her hand instantly. I remember when she sat in the family room three nights ago painting her nails that particular shade of purple. And I remember noticing this morning that she’d chipped most of it off her index finger.

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