Chapter 6 - The Red Room
The police separated us.
Mark was questioned.
Diane was detained pending the child-safety investigation.
Emma was transferred for observation.
By evening, her tests were stable enough for me to breathe again.
But my life had become impossible.
I called the only person still alive from my childhood.
My mother’s older sister, Aunt Helen.
She went silent when I said Rebecca.
“Helen?”
“Where did you hear that name?”
So she knew.
“Was that my name?”
She began crying.
“Rachel, please.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt less than the hesitation.
“Do I have a twin named Laura?”
“No.”
Finally something contradicted Mark.
Then Helen added:
“You had two sisters.”
My entire childhood cracked open.
Laura was my half sister.
The other girl was Hannah.
Hannah and I were twins.
“What happened to her?”
Helen whispered:
“She died.”
“When?”
“When you were six.”
The red room.
The girl beneath the bed.
My stomach turned.
Helen told me there had been a fire at our childhood home.
Not a large one.
But enough smoke filled an upstairs bedroom that Hannah never recovered.
Afterward, my mother suffered a breakdown.
My parents moved us.
They changed my middle name.
Eventually they began using Rachel because hearing Rebecca reminded my mother of Hannah.
“Why don’t I remember her?”
“You did.”
“What does that mean?”
“For months.”
Then apparently I stopped.
Doctors called it trauma.
My parents removed photographs because I became hysterical whenever I saw Hannah.
Laura, my father’s daughter from an earlier relationship, lived primarily with her mother.
She blamed my parents for Hannah’s death.
Years later, she disappeared from our lives.
“Why would she tell Mark I disappeared?”
Helen had no answer.
Then I asked the question that mattered.
“What caused the fire?”
Silence.
“Helen.”
“The official report said electrical.”
“Official?”
“Your mother never believed it.”
“What did she believe?”
“That someone had been inside.”
I thought about Diane.
Impossible.
She had not known my family then.
Or had she?
I asked Helen if she recognized the name Diane Patterson.
Her breathing stopped.
“Helen?”
“Rachel…”
“What?”
“You need to get Emma away from that family.”
“I’m already doing that.”
“No. Tonight.”
My skin prickled.
“Why?”
“Because Patterson wasn’t Diane’s original last name.”
“What was it?”
Helen answered.
“Collins.”
The name meant nothing.
May you like
Then she continued.
“Diane Collins was the babysitter who was supposed to be watching you and Hannah the night of the fire.”
