Free Dark Legacy by Anna DeStefano Page B

Whatever’s wrong with our entire family. You sacrificed her so—”
    “There’s…there’s nothing wrong with our family.”
    “Really? Then why are you shaking, Mom? Like everything I say, every horrible thing I’m thinking, hurts you—physically hurts you. Why did Sarah and I have to hide all those years exactly how much we knew and felt about everyone else, so no one would know we were there, somehow, in their minds? Why have I been avoiding you for months, so I wouldn’t upset you more? Why do I feel like if I let myself explode right now, I might take both of you and this entire house with me!”
    Sarah’s laughter was back, as if Maddie’s twin was enjoying the show.
    “You have to calm down,” Phyllis insisted. “You’re talking like—”
    “A crazy person?” Maddie’s glance to Jarred challenged him to deny that’s exactly what he saw.
    Phyllis stumbled to a nearby chair, the fear and fight draining out of her. Until her expression was the kind of blank page Maddie had seen too many times.
    “It is crazy…” Phyllis mumbled through her tears. “It’s not true. It can’t be true…It was just a stupid piece of paper. A family myth. Witch trials and public executions…because someone hundreds of years ago thought she could read people’s emotions and make them do whatever she wanted…it’s crazy…”
    “A myth?” Jarred asked as Phyllis’s rambling petered off. “Reading…”
    “People’s…feelings,” Maddie finished, childhood secrets bubbling up until they found the crack that Jarred had become in her control. “Sarah and I have always…felt more than we should…”
    “There’s a fix…” Her mother was rocking now. Forward and back, her arms wrapped around herself like a child. “There has to be a fix…The doctor said they’d try to help Sarah. Then, if you needed it, they could help you, too.”
    “Help with what?” Jarred demanded. When Maddiecould only stare at her mother, he knelt in front of Phyllis. “Help your daughters with what?”
    Phyllis swallowed, her head shaking, her gray-green eyes vague. Glassy. She was gone, the same way she’d left Maddie in the hospital ER ten years ago. The way Phyllis was always gone whenever knowing the awful truth about their family had mattered most. “I did it all for Maddie. For Maddie and Sarah…Sarah was asleep. Gerald was dead. Then the scientist at the research center said he might be able to find some way to stop…the legacy. And I couldn’t lose Maddie, too. It…it’s crazy. It can’t be true. It just can’t be.”
    Phyllis couldn’t help Maddie. She’d never been able to. Maddie was on her own, same as always, finding the answers she needed. And without her mother’s help, Sarah and the Trinity Psychiatric Research Center were Maddie’s last hope.

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN
    “Your mother thinks all this has something to do with one of your ancestors being persecuted in the witch trials?” Jarred followed Maddie out of her mother’s house.
    He tripped over the uneven brick sidewalk and glanced back through the open front door. Phyllis was no doubt still sobbing in the den, unaware that they’d left.
    “Did you hear something?” Jarred asked.
    “Something?” Maddie stopped beside his car. Dug into her purse for her phone. “You mean like a menacing bird swooping down on us, only it’s not really there?”
    “What?”
    “Sorry.” She shrugged, pressing send. “Must just be me.”
    He grabbed the phone and flipped it shut, disconnecting the call.
    “What the hell’s going on, Temple?”
    “What the hell are you doing talking to a patient like that?” She figured sarcasm was preferable to pitching another nutty. “You’re losing your edge. Your professional boundaries. Get in your car and head back to your sane life before you lose even more.”
    Maddie grabbed for her phone, missed, and her fingers brushed the back of Jarred’s hand. The shock of the contact rattled her already-misfiring