Lizzie Read online

  This is the basis for the defense the best legal team in the state will use to acquit me of a crime so heinous, so vile, my stomach twists into knots at the thought. Blood. So much. I feel it, like a sheen of sweat on my lips, and watch it drip, drip, drip through my dreams. A shiver judders along my spine.

  Swipe. Flames lick the mint-green porcelain of the bathtub, engulfing my dress in fire. Swipe. Swipe. The material curls and shrivels, turns to ash—

  I blink clear the vision. Not my dress, my journal. I burned my diary.

  My lawyer’s gravelly voice tap, tap, taps at the back of my consciousness. “Lizbeth Borden was an abused young woman,” he tells the court. The room is silent. Listening. Waiting. I refuse to look over my shoulder, to see the doubt—shock—on their faces at this revelation.

  Mr. Jennings paces the front of the room. “Throughout her entire childhood, she lived in fear for her very life.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Some of you may think that gives her motive for murder.”

  There is a murmur from the crowd.

  His words etch their way into my bones, giving me a chill. He’s right, I had reason to murder them both. I wrap my arms around my waist to ward off the cold, but it doesn’t stop another shiver from traversing down my spine. It’s so intense my entire body shakes, as though I’m going into a seizure.

  In any other trial, this evidence would be enough to convict me, but somehow my small frame and history of abuse may be enough to cause reasonable doubt. My pulse spikes. Sweat glistens on my forehead.

  I can feel the stares from the back of the courtroom on the back of my neck. My attention drifts to the collective faces of the jury. None of them will look at me for longer than a second. Their eyes skim over me as though I am a monster.

  Am I?

  Tears gather in my eyes and I blink, blink, blink them back. I am afraid that the madness will leak from my tears and spill into the courtroom, drowning the judge, the jury, the people of Fall River in my guilt.

  Not guilty.

  One of the jurors risks a glance. His eyes flit from me to the skulls, and to me again, as though trying to process the evidence of a crime too horrible to understand. My mind is like the flapping wings of a dozen monarch butterflies racing through my intestines. My esophagus vibrates with the need to scream: I didn’t do it.

  I crane my neck and search the crowd for familiar, kind faces. But even Father Buck still won’t look at me. In him, I search for truth, for belief, for an ally in all this. But it’s clear from his body language—the way he shifts ever so slightly to avoid making eye contact, the way his brow is creased, the subtle way he fingers his rosary, as though praying for the Lord to have mercy on my tainted soul—that he believes that God has forsaken me.

  Anger thrums through me. Well, fuck God.

  My throat closes in around the vulgar curse. I want to stand now and shout it at the top of my lungs, proclaim my innocence: I did not kill my fucking father and stepmother! I did not bludgeon them with a hatchet.

  But there is no one to refute the evidence.

  I lean over to my lawyer and whisper, “Has anyone found Bridget?” Her name is a whisper of hope on my breath. “She will testify for me.”

  His eyebrows peak. “Bridget?”

  “Sullivan,” I say, swirling my tongue over my teeth. “She was my . . .” I can’t stomach saying the words that acknowledge the end of our relationship. “The maid.”

  Mr. Jennings looks down at his file. “Isla was the maid,” he says, pointing to her name on a long list of my father’s employees. “No one has been hired for that position in”—he skims more paperwork—“almost a year.”

  “No, that’s not right. . . .”

  I mentally flip through the past few months, remembering all the time spent with Bridget, searching for tangible evidence, something to prove to the court—to myself—that Bridget was real. But I’m drawing blanks.

  My heart presses against my rib cage, swelling with such pain it’s like it has split in half. There’s obviously been a mistake.

  I search for Bridget here, scanning the faces of the curious, the disappointed, and the smug. But there is no wild siren call of her red hair in this crowd. Instead I find a dozen or more potential killers—the handyman my father refused to pay, the former gardener whose affair with Abigail was cut short, the men and women who have lost their homes in the wake of cruel business practices. Any of these people had a motive to kill my father.

  But Bridget is not among them.

  I lean over to my lawyer and say, “There is security footage. A camera at the front door.” The hollowness in my chest widens as I remember the exact moment Bridget and I first met—her perfect smile through the peephole, a brilliant ray of sunshine on a dismal and gray Christmas Eve. I can recall every detail of that moment, but my memory is not enough. “The footage will prove Bridget was there.”

  Mr. Jennings smiles thinly. “I believe you, Lizbeth, and we will certainly take a look at the footage if it becomes necessary,” he says, voice low and reassuring. “Let’s see how this plays out.”

  The tips of my fingers start to tingle as the prosecution continues to mount evidence—my dress, soaked in blood, burned after the arrest but before DNA could be collected; the fact that the house was locked—it’s always locked—before, during, and for some time after the murders; that I was alone in the house with my stepmother and father. The fighting. Screaming. Threats and abuse.

  My head is like cotton as I try to sift through memories to assess what is real, even as the horror of the crime continues to roll out on public display.

  Good Lord, how my father would be mortified.

  I can’t help but wonder how many people in this room knew that things were not how they seemed in the Borden household. Bridget knew.

  Where is she?

  My chest is heavy, not only at the loss of my parents—God grant them peace in death—but also because of the niggle of doubt that further conflicts my emotions. I did not—could not—kill my father and Abigail, but in the wake of their death, my long-sought-after freedom is within reach. There is no one to stop me from chasing my dreams. I can go to cooking school, be with Bridget, be . . .

  Me.

  Unless . . .

  Is it possible that none of it—even Bridget—was real?

  My heart squeezes with pain so intense I gasp aloud.

  Mr. Jennings covers my hand with his. “Are you feeling okay, Lizbeth?”

  My mind drifts to the crime scene. Swipe. “I felt good enough to eat a pear.” Swipe. Swipe. The police officer looked at me, eyebrows raised. “A pear, Miss Borden?” My grin is small and ominous. Swipe. Swipe.

  “I’m having trouble,” I say softly, “knowing what’s real anymore.”

  He opens his mouth, perhaps to offer words of wisdom, but is cut off as the prosecution enters into debate. They cross-examine, exchange theories and conspiracies—I acted alone, with an accomplice or maybe an entire team—but nothing they say makes sense. I am numb to them, to all this, to everything.

  The door opens at the back of the courtroom. My heart leaps with hope. But Bridget doesn’t walk through that door. It’s just Uncle John, standing among the gawkers and disbelievers, his expression unreadable. I think back to the two days he spent at the B and B—surely he must have noticed the presence of a maid? But even now, at the height of my desperation, I remember how he spoke of the inn. The spiders, the dust, the musky scent, as though Bridget had not cleaned that room.

  Had never been there at all. Impossible.

  I flatten my fingers against my lips to stop from throwing up.

  All of this is a result of this sick witch hunt, the opportunity to blame a troubled young woman for a hideous crime. Shock has filled me with self-doubt, caused me to question what’s real, what’s not.

  I close my eyes and take a long, steadying breath.

  No matter what happens in this courtroom, I need to find a way to reconcile my memories with tangible facts
. The dismal truth is, I don’t remember those final moments leading up to my parents’ death. I can’t account for my whereabouts, can’t recall anything that happened after Bridget broke up with me.

  A sharp pain jabs at my chest.

  Losing Bridget was the most pain I’ve ever felt. It still hurts, as if someone has reached into my soul and clawed it from my body. That kind of heartache can’t be faked.

  Can it?

  As the prosecution continues to count down the hours prior to the murders, fragments of memory flash through my mind like a black-and-white film reel stuttering through a slide show: Uncle John’s red truck at the end of the street, the hatchet, heavy in my hand, Bridget’s blurred reflection in the dirty windows.

  Except none of that was real. Uncle John’s wife says he was at home with her during the murders. Bridget had left—I can still see her silhouette disappearing around the bend. And the hatchet . . .

  Yes, of course.

  The lack of a credible murder weapon is troublesome for the prosecution. I burned—swipe—the pictures of me killing the pigeons in the barn, but what of the video footage Father spoke of? If I find it, will I also find evidence of Bridget?

  My attention turns to my lawyer, who stands, hands clasped, before the jury. “Lizbeth Borden had motive to kill her father, that much is true,” he says. His tone is solemn. Controlled. “But there are other factors to consider.”

  I am instructed to look at each of them now, to demonstrate remorse, sorrow, but never guilt. A picture of innocence, the image of an abused child, now without parents, accused of a horrible crime. We have practiced this until the movements are mechanical. But if I am innocent, shouldn’t this come naturally?

  My lawyer continues his defense. “She was drugged, taking medications for symptoms that didn’t correlate with her true mental state.”

  My memories flip back and forth to the fragments of time when I was off the pills, and then forced back on them. I glance over my shoulder at Mr. Bentz. Will he tell them about the poison? Will he lie about the citrus peeler he claims I stole?

  A shiver runs along my shoulders. What if my father is right? What if the kitchen gadget wasn’t a birthday gift from Bridget at all?

  “Lizzie Borden was not depressed, as her diagnosis suggests,” my lawyer continues. “And this misdiagnosis led to medications that worsened her condition, rather than provided the respite she so desperately required.”

  He lifts his finger. “But even so, she did not swing that ax.”

  Hatchet.

  I picture it now in the cellar. In the barn. Soiled with pigeon blood.

  Abigail’s blood?

  Even the judge keeps mixing them up, but there is a difference. Hatchets are smaller, so if you find yourself in a cramped space, you can execute a backswing. The bedroom where Abigail was murdered was open. My father’s head was propped up against the couch, a wide, uncramped shot. Technically, you could use a hatchet to chop down a tree—or chop into a skull, skulls?—but it would require more strength, my lawyer argues.

  The kind of arm and core muscle I don’t have.

  I stare down at my biceps, thinned from lack of sleep, food, movement. I have lived in a perpetual state of numbness and depression, alternating between incarceration and the psychiatric ward. Poked and prodded. Questioned and accused.

  And not once has Bridget been to see me.

  Why not? If our love was true, if Bridget was real, wouldn’t she have at least visited? Checked to see that I was okay? Or didn’t I mean enough?

  My gaze returns to Uncle John, who lowers his chin in a slight bow. Is he sending me a message? What is he trying to say? When all this is over, will he stand at my side or forever walk away?

  Everyone leaves.

  I swipe at a tear. Is my mother watching over this trial from somewhere above? She would not have approved of this—

  She loved my father.

  This town.

  Me.

  She would be horrified by what I have done . . . not guilty . . . by what I have been accused of doing. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

  Guilt slithers down my throat. Lord, I don’t even know what I’m confessing to anymore. The halo that once hovered over my head is tarnished, but not bloody. It can’t be.

  But what if it is? I’m no longer able to trust myself to separate reality from fantasy. I’ve already begun to forget what it feels like to be loved and touched and kissed by Bridget. Is it possible that she was all in my head?

  No. I won’t—can’t—believe that.

  I shake my head back and forth, squeezing my eyes shut. Images of Bridget flit through my vision, but they’re so faint I can hardly make out the details. How is it possible that I’ve already begun to forget what she looks like? Unless . . .

  Unless she never existed at all.

  The judge taps his gavel on the lectern, drawing silence from the crowd. Distracted, I don’t notice that someone else has entered the back of the courtroom, and the murmurs of the audience continue to grow animated even as the judge commands order. I follow the direction of the crowd’s collective gaze and my heart stutters. Almost comes to a full stop.

  Emma.

  Our eyes meet, and in hers I find unconditional love and support. I work to contain my emotions. My fingers curl into the chair, grasping hold of this reality. After everything, and nothing, Emma is here. She is real and I know that her presence will calm and soothe me, help me get through this trial.

  My lawyer places his hand on the bench in front of me and stares at the jury. I know these men—former Sunday school students, the clerk at the candy store, the man who runs the camera shop. They know me, too.

  How can any of them believe I would do this?

  “Members of the jury,” my lawyer says, forcing me to focus. “I ask that you consider the evidence carefully. That you take into account the years of Lizbeth Borden’s abuse—physically at the hands of her father, emotionally at the will of Abigail. And the years of medication for a misdiagnosis.”

  “Objection. The victims are not on trial here,” the prosecution says.

  My lawyer dips his head in acknowledgment, but the seed has been planted. “In any case, I must insist that there is not enough evidence to convict this young woman. Please. Do not send her to her death for crimes she did not commit.”

  Not guilty.

  The room is so silent, a pin drop would echo like a shotgun blast.

  My chest heaves in anticipation as both sides debate their closing arguments. The evidence is reiterated, Uncle John is talked about, the words between lawyers go back and forth, back and forth, until I am almost dizzy with confusion.

  I search once more for Bridget, but I know she won’t be here.

  Was maybe never here at all.

  And if Bridget wasn’t real, if I made her up, is it possible that I could have also committed this heinous crime?

  The idea leaves me breathless.

  The judge dismisses the jury for deliberation, and as they exit stage left, I watch the way they walk. Study their subtle glances at the crowd, at the lawyers, at me. I keep an eye on their expressions—try to assess on which side of the vote they stand.

  But it’s impossible to tell.

  My lawyer rests his hand on my shoulder. “I’ve done what I can,” he says. I look up to see the defeat in his eyes, and fear spikes in my heart. His voice is solemn. “The jury will weigh the evidence—we’ll know the verdict soon enough.”

  NOT GUILTY

  The idea of going into Bridget’s room fills me with cold, electric fear, a deep dread that feels as though it’s sewing my heart shut stitch by stich. White spots form on the yellow walls, making my eyes blurry. I blink, blink, blink. The spots don’t change, don’t disappear.

  Instead they become camouflaged in the halo of dust that circles in air that carries the musky scent of neglect. The suite feels not only empty but somehow hollow. A cavernous black hole.

  A sharp pain is pulled from m
y belly button with an intensity that brings me to my knees. Swipe. I crawl on all fours toward the wall and scrape at the paint, carving my fingernails into the rough and gritty texture of the grime-covered drywall.

  Scratch. Scratchy, scratch.

  Scraaape.

  The underside of my nailbed is yellow, tinged with dirt.

  I draw a line of white, the paint peeling as though skinned from a ripe pear, and watch as flecks fall to the stained carpet. I rub at them, grinding them farther into the carpet, anything to make them fade. Go away. Disappear.

  Swipe.

  I roll onto my back and stare at the closet. Empty hangers dangle from thin wooden rods. I close my eyes, imagining myself buried in Bridget’s clothes, my nose pressed against the material to smell her cotton-candy scent. But there is nothing but the stale stench of emptiness.

  There is no essence of Bridget. Not even a drop.

  My grandmother’s quilt is folded on the top shelf of the closet, the plastic packaging still crisply taped shut.

  Dirt is everywhere—not just here, but throughout the entire B and B. In the wall crevices and the corners of the baseboards. Spiderwebs dangle from ceiling tiles, the bookshelves are layered in dust. It’s as though no one has cleaned this place in more than a year.

  I curl into the fetal position and stare at the shelf on the bedside end table. The gold leaf lettering of Father Buck’s travel scrapbook glints under the overhead light. I crawl to it, breath held, and flip to the first page. The Duomo cathedral glares at me, ominous in its perfection. I imagine the angle Bridget would need to stand at to take this shot—but it’s Father Buck’s writing on the description.

  The words go blurry, fading into the dialogue Bridget and I shared about this very image—the number of steps, the people she met, the view from the top. Swipe. Father Buck turns the page, carefully noting the details of another cathedral, this one in Milan. Swipe. Swipe.

  And last, a picture of Bridget’s “parents”—though the inscription beneath the image marks them as Father Buck’s niece and her boyfriend. I stare at their picture, searching for some kind of likeness to Bridget, but even her explanation about them no longer rings true. How can I blame Bridget for lying when it’s clear I’ve been lying to myself?