It was Matt. At the sound of his voice Mrs. Riley moved quickly, hiding behind a bin.
“Where are you?” Matt called. I heard him walking below us, then hurrying up the steps. “Megan? Answer me!”
His words brought back the memory with sudden force.
“Answer me! Answer me, Avril!”
Thomas’s hands gripped my shoulders. He shook me so hard my head snapped back. He started dragging me down the mill steps. My chest hurt. It felt like straps of steel had tightened around it. Every breath was agony.
I pushed away from Thomas, gasping, desperate for air.
He held me tighter. I tried to speak, but the darkness was closing in on me. I needed air!
I staggered to my feet, grasping the barrels to steady myself. Matt spun around. I was in the present again. I was Megan. But Matt’s eyes were identical to Thomas’s.
He started toward me.
“Run, child!” Mrs. Riley cried. “Run before he hurts you.
We both turned toward her. The surprise on Matt’s face quickly changed to anger.
“Shut up, old woman,” he said. “You’ve done enough.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she replied, her eyes bright, challenging the fire in his. “Are you remembering now, Thomas?” she asked. “Are you remembering all of it now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why you came to me three years ago, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Riley continued. “You were seeing her face. She had come back to haunt you.”
Matt glanced at me, then back at Mrs. Riley.
“But you didn’t think you’d see her in flesh and blood again, did you?” she prodded.
“Your mind is twisted,” he said. “It’s been twisted for years. You’ve preyed on my grandmother’s fears. You knew she wanted to make Avril sick that night so she couldn’t meet Thomas. You gave her the redcreep and told her how much to put in the tea, but she cut that amount in half, and Avril was well enough to go. It was another dose, a later dose, that killed her. Still, you convinced Grandmother that she had given her sister too much, that she was responsible for her death. Grandmother had always been jealous, hurt by the attention Avril received, wishing that Avril would get out of her life. It was easy to change those feelings into guilt.
You enjoyed torturing her with false guilt.”
“I did enjoy it,” Mrs. Riley admitted. “She was so selfrighteous. But I believed it, too. I realized a second dose had been given”-her voice softened-“but I was so in love with you when you were Thomas.”
Matt took a step back from her.
“I was so naive,” she continued. “I couldn’t believe you had done it. It had to be Helen, I thought. I couldn’t accept that my Thomas was a cold-blooded murderer.”
He was the murderer? Waves of fear and nausea washed over me. Matt, not Grandmother, was the one who should fear me. Did he know it? I remembered the strange way he had looked at me the day we met. He had known from the beginning.
“I should have realized that it was Helen you wanted all along,” Mrs. Riley continued.
Matt’s dark eyes burned in his pale face.
“Avril was too unpredictable, too much of a flirt. But the fortune was hers. So you played up to her and killed her, then you and Helen got everything.”
His fists clenched.
“Nothing has changed since then,” Mrs. Riley added. “You still depend on Helen’s money. You will be loyal to her till the end.”
“You’re wrong,” Matt argued, “dead wrong.”
“Even when the other boys would come here to swim,” she said, “you couldn’t bear to be in this place. You told me so yourself.”
“I was an idiot to trust you.”
“Karma,” Mrs. Riley said softly. “Justice at last. Sixty years ago you wanted nothing to do with me, Thomas, not when you realized you could have the Scarborough girls.”
Matt turned his back on her. “She’s crazy, Megan. Let’s get out of here.”
“No.” My tongue felt thick in my mouth, and I struggled to speak clearly. “Stay away.”
“She’s a liar, a troublemaker,” Matt said. “I told you that before. You can’t believe her.”
“I do.”
He took two steps toward me. One more and he’d trap me behind the barrels. I moved my hand slowly, then shoved a barrel at him and ran past his grasp.
He whirled around. I faced him, my back to the wall, inching sideways, feeling my way along the rough wood, trying to get to the steps that led down to the basement.
“Listen to me. You’re not yourself,” he said.
“I know who I am.” The words came out slurred. “And who I was. So do you.”
He looked at Mrs. Riley. “What have you done to her?”
“I told her about karma,” the woman replied. “She knows what you know.”
“Megan, come here.” He held out his hand. “Come here!”
I shook my head and continued inching sideways.
“You must trust me.”
“I trusted you before.” My mouth moved slowly, my thoughts and words getting jumbled. “I trusted you when you were Thomas.”
Matt’s eyes darted around the room. His hands flexed, then he sprang at me. I lurched sideways and scrambled free. But he caught my shirt, yanking me back. Then something hissed and snapped between us. Matt let go, quickly pulling back his hand, burned by the rope Mrs. Riley had brought down like a whip.
I rushed blindly ahead, crashing into a plank of wood, part of the open stairs rising to the next floor. I clung to it. I had to get up. Had to get away from him.