“What are we going to do?” I ask.

Nia draws invisible patterns on the table with one hand and rubs her eyes with the other. “We need to stop that woman.”

“She’s smart,” I say. “She didn’t take Aaron. She got Logan to do that so it would look like a game.”

“And our parents fucking thanked her,” Nia whispers. “We can’t let her get away with it. She thinks she’s so strong, but there must be a way of taking her down.”

Mum used to talk about strength. She would whisper to me as we fell asleep in the same bed, just a door between us and the devil roaming the rest of the house.

“We need to be strong,” she would say. “Can you do that for me?”

I was only a kid, so it wasn’t easy. But I tried. And, eventually, Mum’s bravery held just long enough for us to break free.

Nia looks like Mum did the day she’d had enough. “Jane will get what’s coming to her. All we need is proof that Logan isn’t who she says he is.”

“We’ll need his DNA for that,” I say. “You heard her. She won’t let them anywhere near us now. I missed my chance.” I wanted to save Amy, and I failed. I was in Logan’s room, and it would only have taken a second to pick up a hair from his pillow.

“I messed up,” I say. “And now Aaron…I’m so sorry, Nia.”

“It’s not your fault. If we’d listened to you, we could have caught her sooner. But we still will.”

Aaron is back with his real mum, now, but there are so many weekends to come.

If Mum and Jay find out the truth too soon, she’ll call the police, and he will charge around to the Pearces. I don’t think either scenario would end well.

Jane hid the death of one child and the theft of another for years. She manipulates people, she lies with the perfect smile, and the police won’t be able to search her house or test Logan without evidence.

If we report her now, with a crumpled list of clues and a few absurd sounding stories, we’ll lose.

“Unless…”

Nia waits for me to finish, and, when I don’t, she nudges me and says, “Unless what?”

But I can’t speak because, despite what I thought in the woods, Jane wouldn’t be that stupid, would she?

86

“We need your car,” I say down the phone.

“Just my car?” asks Zak. “Or will you also be requiring a driver?”

Nia laughs, and he says, “Am I on speaker? Because you should always warn people if they are. I could have told you what I really think about your stepsister.”

“We all know you love me,” she says.