The Imposter by Marin Montgomery (ebooks online reader txt) 📕

to make rash decisions like running out on her husband, not to mention driving on a suspended license.

But what does Deborah know?

It’s been sixteen years.

But still . . . it rubs her the wrong way.

Is the visit simply a matter of bad timing or a sly attempt to garner sympathy? She’s ashamed for thinking this way, since Sibley is clearly having a tough go of it.

The middle console is empty except for some spare change and a cheap-looking black cell phone with prepaid minutes.

Why would Sibley have a prepaid phone?

Baffled, Deborah presses the power button.

There’s no pass code on this phone, no photos, nothing.

Only three names and numbers are stored as contacts. Deborah doesn’t recognize any of the three names. One is Wingwoman, another Nico, and the third Chuck.

Stranger yet, there’s no Holden saved.

Sibley’s an attorney and has to have more friends and acquaintances, not to mention business contacts.

Tapping a finger on the steering column, Deborah realizes she hasn’t seen Sibley on her phone once since she arrived. Not to check messages, not to call anyone.

Most people are glued to their devices, so why would she be any different?

True, she could be using it out of sight, but something doesn’t add up.

Maybe this is a secondary phone for work? Deborah hasn’t considered the fact that maybe Sibley doesn’t like giving her phone number to clients. Perhaps this fits the bill for when she wants to be discreet.

Or is she really who she says she is?

A movement catches Deborah’s eye in the upstairs window. The blinds are open, and she’s startled to see a figure standing there, watching and waiting.

Just like back then.

The shadow crosses her arms, and a moment of déjà vu throws Deborah back to when Sibley was a child, watching from her upstairs perch.

But is it really her?

That always reminded Deborah of Rapunzel trapped in a tower. When Jonathan would disappear into the night or Deborah would silently creep outside to be alone in the root cellar or the barn, she used to feel guilt at the wounded eyes of her offspring.

The night of Jonathan’s death, Sibley witnessed the blood and mayhem and was forced to run to the neighbors for help because the phone cord had been cut. Then, though, her face was pressed against the glass as she watched. Now, there’s ample distance between her and the window, as if she’s part of a covert operation.

Deborah pictures the guilty look on her face when she caught Sibley going through the cupboards. She’s about to call the contacts in the phone, but a prick in her foot causes her to cry out.

Gasping in pain, she stares down at the slipper, once pink but now turning red as blood soaks the cotton.

When Deborah looks back up at the window, the blinds are closed.

Much to her chagrin, a curse word slips out of her mouth, and she limps back into the house to bandage her foot.

CHAPTER 27

Sibley

When I wake up, I’m disoriented, and instead of feeling a soft mattress under my back, I find myself lying on something hard and unforgiving, and I’m curled up in an old horse blanket.

My nose immediately wrinkles at the pungency of old hay and caked-on mud, and I’m rattled to find I’m in the loft of our barn. The heavy material of the blanket now clings to me like I’m in a hot oven as sunlight peers through the tiny crevices. The air is as still and immovable as in my bedroom, a sauna in these summer months.

I haven’t been up here since before Jonathan’s fall out of the loft.

As I slowly ease up into a seated position, my vision’s out of focus, as if I’m in the optometrist’s chair, reading the fuzzy screen from a distance.

I move to stretch my arms, and the pain’s instantaneous, a searing more excruciating than a migraine. Automatically, my fingers go to my forehead to rub the tension, but they connect instead with a large bump, sore to the touch.

No wonder my head hurts, I think. My splitting headache needs something to dull the pain, and I can’t conjure up why, the memories of last night a gaping hole.

I rub my watery eyes and sniff at the burgeoning sweat from my armpits, soaked up by my ripped camisole. I’m surprised to discover I’m barefoot and wearing a pair of cotton athletic shorts that are two sizes too small.

After unraveling myself from the stable blanket, I scoot across the hard floor of the loft. The roof isn’t high up here, about four feet, so I don’t have enough space to stand. I have to either crawl or inch my way toward the unsteady ladder.

In my childhood, this was my hiding spot when I was in trouble. Funny how I always thought I was outsmarting my parents by choosing to hunker down here, as if they didn’t know it existed.

With a shaky grip, I drag the horse blanket down the rickety ladder, my eyes focused on each rung instead of the missing slats. My father built a wooden railing to act as a safety guard after a neighbor boy broke his arm at my seventh birthday party when he was roughhousing with another kid. The irony isn’t lost on me that it failed to save him.

But after my father’s drunken antics, it was never replaced. Now just a few jagged boards remain. I keep my eyes from glancing down at the asphalt floor, where a concave indentation marks the place he took his last breaths. His toxicology results indicated he was at three times the legal limit when he splintered the railing.

Hanging the heavy blanket back up on the hook in the tack room takes skill, and as I try and throw it awkwardly over the metal hook, my elbow jams into the wall, and I keel over in pain.

An old chest rests against the wall, and when I sink down onto it to cradle my sore arm, a rough board catches the back of my