Free Dark Legacy by Anna DeStefano

the secret, no matter what…
    “Maddie,” her mother prodded. “Your thumb. I—”
    “Do you think I give a fuck about my thumb!” Maddie cringed as more laughter accompanied her words. Sarah’s laughter. Laughter only Maddie could hear.
    “What’s gotten into you?” Phyllis’s hand rose to her throat.
    “Could it be the same thing that got into Sarah?” Maddie could taste her mother’s weakness now, the same weakness that had assigned Maddie the emotional role of parent for a decade. “You remember Sarah, don’t you? The daughter languishing in a coma at a psychiatric care facility so specialized, there’s only one of its kind in the country. A hospital too far away to visit, or so your excuses went. My excuses.”
    The ugly truth was that Maddie had been relieved to let her twin go when she and Phyllis had moved away from their mountain home in Lenox. She’d never been able to bring herself to face Sarah’s rehab hospital. Phyllis had been adamant that leaving her twin at peace, with experts to care for her, was the best thing for all of them. And Maddie had drunk her assurances down. Except—
    “She’s been here all this time, hasn’t she?” Maddie’s glare dared her mother to keep lying. “We didn’t move to Boston to start over near my college, and then stay for my job. We moved so you could be near her, while you let me pretend she didn’t exist.”
    “Who?”
    “Sarah! You wanted to be close to her. No matter what happened to Daddy, or what you said afterward. But…” Maddie dove back into the files, leaving a smear of blood on the first folder she grabbed. “…but you didn’t want me near her. Why? Because you were afraid something like this might happen if we were ever together again?”
    “Some…Something like what?”
    Maddie ripped folders from the drawer, yanking them open, then flinging them to the carpet.
    “Mr…” her mother asked.
    “Keith,” Jarred answered. “Dr. Keith. I’m a friend of your daughter’s at St. Chris.”
    Maddie snorted.
    Friend.
    Unwelcome images cavorted through her mind. Flashes from their dates. From that morning and what little she could remember of the last hour. Jarred’s anger when he’d wrestled the gun away. The gentleness of his touch…his thoughts…even then. The sting of his concern, wrapping around her while he’d pushed her to confront what she’d never wanted to know.
    “What’s going on?” Phyllis’s tone achieved the pitch reserved for when she was truly scared. Crazy scared. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”
    “Maddie’s been having a difficult time,” Jarred began. “And…”
    Leaving him to his doctorspeak, Maddie dug until she found a folder hidden at the bottom of the drawer. The tab wasn’t typed like all the rest. Trinity had been handwritten instead, in Phyllis’s loopy script. She pulled it free and confronted the woman she’d believed was the one person on earth she could trust unconditionally.
    “What have you done?” She threw the folder at Phyllis and ignored the roaring in her ears. Roaring that soundedtoo much like her twin’s haunted summer storm. Like the truth hurtling toward Maddie on a raven’s wings.
    “I…” Phyllis tried pulling her into a hug. She began to cry when Maddie shoved her away. “You have to understand. I wanted to protect you and Sarah both, but—”
    “Protect us from what? From knowing that we’re insane, all of us? Ten years after the accident, and Sarah’s still a vegetable. You can barely leave the house on your own. I’m turning into a raving lunatic. Whatever your secrets have accomplished, they haven’t protected any of us from a damn thing.”
    Maddie looked from the fragile woman standing before her to Jarred’s frown, then back. She could remember the bite of the pistol against her temple. The pistol she hadn’t bought. Hadn’t put in that drawer. And hadn’t been able to let go of without Jarred’s help.
    “Protect Sarah and