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

untangles herself from her mother’s clutch. “I have no idea why you think I’d have this dress. Let’s think about this calmly, Mother.”

Her patience isn’t soothing but irritating to Deborah. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” Deborah cries. “Where the hell did you get this? It was supposed to have burned a long time ago. Did you take it with you when you left?”

Sibley protests angrily, “You told me it was in the pantry, yet it never materialized there.”

“Then explain to me how it appears out of nowhere in my closet?”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Sibley glares at her indignantly. “You told me there was a stranger in the house!”

“There was! I’ve never seen him before!” Deborah spits out. “And I originally found the dress in your room.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Sibley raises her hands and takes a step backward. “But what would you like me to do with it?”

“Nothing,” she snaps. “Just get out of my room.”

With an exasperated sigh, Sibley slams the bedroom door behind her, and Deborah fumbles to lock it.

After making sure her closet isn’t hiding any live skeletons, Deborah closes the closet door with a bang.

She goes into her bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet to uncap a new bottle of pain pills. She takes a few more than the usual dosage, but anyone in her position would understand. Lingering on the toilet seat, she stares at the trembling bottle in her hand. Deborah wonders what it would be like to take all of them—if they would intoxicate her system immediately or slowly eat her intestines up. Would the pain intensify, or would it all go away as she drifted off to sleep?

CHAPTER 38

Sibley

Frightened by my mother’s outburst, I need to defuse the situation, but she wants me out of her sight. From the other side of the door, I inform her I’m going to check the upstairs. If she hears me, she doesn’t respond.

When I come back down, I gently tap and try the handle. I’m surprised to find it’s locked. “Coast is clear. No one is here.”

“Did you check the closets?”

“Yes.”

“Under the beds?”

“Even the bathtub.”

Deborah’s response is a ragged sigh. “I’m going to lie down.”

Frustrated that my mother’s response to any problem is to lock herself in her room, I pace the faded pattern on the floor, feeling trapped and isolated.

I need a drink.

Just one.

Or maybe two.

I grab some vodka from the fridge, disguised as water, since I know how my mother feels about alcohol.

If I’m honest, we both retreat in our own ways—my mother to her bed, me to the bottle.

After the weird turn of events, I feel like a caged animal; an anxiety attack threatens to cripple me. Unable to breathe, I heave open the screen door and gulp the fresh oxygen outside. Even with the faint smell of manure and grass, if someone asked me what scents I identified with clean air, this would be my answer. As I walk outside, I don’t have a destination in mind; I just want to feel the sun and forget the image of the bloody dress and my mother’s mask of terror.

The liquid burns so good down my throat. Promising myself I’ll only take a few sips, I savor each swallow, ignoring how fast the vodka disappears into my stomach.

I don’t know if it’s the heat or the brisk pace of my drinking, but a dizzy spell hits me as suddenly as a slap across the face. Before I know it, I’m at the entrance to our root cellar.

The root cellar is nothing more than a partially underground pantry used in centuries past to store produce when the farm was an efficient operation and they had to freeze, dry, process, and can their own food. When I was growing up, it doubled as a storm shelter, and there were many times we took cover from tornadoes cycling over the prairie.

The lock that kept it safely shut before has been cut, the chain dangling loosely off the double doors. The chief did say he had put a lock on it to avoid someone using it as their private hideaway.

Fearfully, I hesitate at the double doors. If it weren’t for my liquid courage, I wouldn’t consider entering the dark abyss. I tell myself it’s because I’m scared to find a convict using it as their living quarters. In reality, the dungeon-like quality of the large room has always made me afraid, since my mother accidentally locked me down here as a child when I was playing hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids.

My bare-bones phone doesn’t have a flashlight, so I’m forced to settle with my liquor in the dank atmosphere. The wooden steps are uneven, and it’s a rough descent, just like the staircase in the house, except this one delves into the sodden earth.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. My hands are squeezed at my sides, and I tell myself I can turn and run back up the stairs if I’m confronted with someone seeking shelter.

I scan the rickety wooden shelves, which hold mason jars of various types of fruits and vegetables, now collecting dust. Relieved I’m not face to face with a living, breathing person, I take tentative steps toward the center of the room, focused on staying calm.

A wave of panic consumes me. I’m glancing over my shoulder, double-checking that the door hasn’t closed behind me, when I trip over a sleeping bag rolled up on the floor. There’s a lighter next to it, as well as a couple tins of food, but nothing else.

I wish this convinced me that my mother isn’t off her rocker, but there’s a nagging unease that I can’t put my finger on. Originally, I questioned my mother’s story of a stranger in the house. It’s understandable that she’d be paranoid, with the rash of home invasions. There are so many hiding places and outbuildings on these farms; it’s no