But I never stole any ring.

Those detectives, they found fingerprints on the knife, on the bedroom doorknob there in that Omaha home, fingerprints that were not mine. Didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say; they knew the truth.

I wondered if Matthew knew about fingerprints. I wondered if he left them there on purpose so I couldn’t take the blame.

And the Zeegers, well, they refused to press charges about the kidnapping, though I wanted them to. I wanted someone to take the blame for what had happened. But they didn’t. They decided, what with Momma dying, and me getting stuck with Joseph for all those years, I’d been through enough. But they said I wasn’t allowed to see Calla, not then, not ever again, only through that living room window when they brought Lily to see me. I got to see Lily twice a year, just two out of every 365 days, and only ever supervised visits, which was why Big Lily was always there, in the room with Lily and me, and sometimes Ms. Adler and sometimes Nan and Joe—in case I tried to grab Lily and run. Seeing that lady, Kathy, that was supposed to be my penance, too, but as it was, I liked talking to Kathy a lot. It wasn’t punishment at all.

One day, out of the clear blue, Ms. Flores had shown up in that jail and told me I was free to go. But not free to go anywhere I chose. No, she said, I was still a minor. And being a minor meant I was still a ward of the state. And she smiled with those big horse-like teeth of hers, a smug look like the very fact that I was still a prisoner made her as happy as pie.

It was then that Ms. Amber Adler picked me up in her junker car with the too-big Nike bag and drove me to the group home, and there, helped me settle into a big blue bedroom that I would share with three girls. She said, “If only you would have told me, Claire,” and just like Big Lily, her voice drifted off and her eyes got sad. But then she told me she was sorry for what happened, like it was her fault or something, what Joseph was doing to me. She said she should’ve made unannounced visits, or talked to my school teachers herself. Then she would’ve known, she told me, she would’ve known I wasn’t going to school. “But Joseph...” she said, letting her sad voice wander off for a minute or two. “I thought...” and she didn’t have to finish that sentence ’cause I knew what she was gonna say anyway. Joseph, she thought, was kind.

“A perfect fit,” she’d said that day I went to live with Joseph and Miriam. Blessed and fortuitous.

Cursed and damned.

But they never found Matthew. They had the fingerprints from the knife, the door handle, but nothing to compare them with. They asked me questions, lots of questions. About Matthew. About Matthew and me.

But I didn’t know where he had gone. Not that I would have told them anyway if I did.

I saw that Paul and Lily loved my Lily very much. And Lily, she loved Calla, too. They were a real family. My Lily, she barely knew me anymore. The times they came to call, there in that home between Omaha and Lincoln, she hugged me because Mrs. Zeeger told her to hug me, but otherwise she held back, eyeing me like the stranger I was. I could tell by her eyes that she had some vague recollection of me, a hazy memory from a dream, all but obliterated in the morning light. The last time she saw me I was eight years old. The last time she saw me, I was happy, carefree, smiling.

It was Louise Flores who told me what happened to the Wood family. About how things weren’t quite right in Mrs. Wood’s head. “The funny thing about delusions,” she said more to herself than to me, as she packed up her files and paperwork, considering her job done, just like Ms. Adler and her list of things to do, “is that a person can act relatively normal while they’re having them. Their delusions aren’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.” She tried to explain it to me, a post-traumatic something or other kind of thing, about how Mrs. Wood was probably never okay after her father died, she said, and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she got sick with cancer and had to abort her baby.

She couldn’t have any more kids. And Mrs. Wood, well, she wanted kids. And that thought made me feel sad ’cause Mrs. Wood was the nicest anyone had been to me in a long time, and never for a minute did I think she was a bad person. I thought she was just a little bit confused.

From time to time I received a note in the mail there in that group home with no name, no return address. Just random facts scribbled on scraps of paper.

Did you know you can’t sneeze with your eyes open?

Did you know camels have three eyelids?

Did you know a snail has 25,000 teeth?

Did you know sea otters hold hands when sleeping so they never, ever drift apart?

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from THE GOOD GIRL by Mary Kubica

EVE

BEFORE

I’m sitting at the breakfast nook sipping from a mug of cocoa when the phone rings. I’m lost in thought, staring out the back window at the lawn that now, in the throes of an early fall, abounds with leaves. They’re dead mostly, some still clinging lifelessly to the trees. It’s late afternoon. The sky is overcast, the temperatures doing a nosedive into the forties and fifties. I’m not ready for this, I think, wondering where in the world the time has gone. Seems like just yesterday we were welcoming spring and then, moments later, summer.

The phone startles me and I’m certain it’s a telemarketer, so I don’t initially bother to rise from my perch. I relish the last few hours of silence I have before James comes thundering through the front doors and intrudes upon my world, and the last thing I want to do is waste precious minutes on some telemarketer’s sales pitch that I’m certain to refuse.

The irritating noise of the phone stops and then starts again. I answer it for no other reason than to make it stop.

“Hello?” I ask in a vexed tone, standing now in the center of the kitchen, one hip pressed against the island.

“Mrs. Dennett?” the woman asks. I consider for a moment telling her that she’s got the wrong number, or ending her pitch right there with a simple not interested.

“This is she.”

“Mrs. Dennett, this is Ayanna Jackson.” I’ve heard the name before. I’ve never met her, but she’s been a constant in Mia’s life for over a year now. How many times have I heard Mia say her name: Ayanna and I did this... Ayanna and I did that... She is explaining how she knows Mia, how the two of them teach together at the alternative high school in the city. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she says.

I catch my breath. “Oh, no, Ayanna, I just walked in the door,” I lie.

Mia will be twenty-five in just a month: October 31st. She was born on Halloween and so I assume Ayanna has called about this. She wants to plan a party—a surprise party?—for my daughter.

“Mrs. Dennett, Mia didn’t show up for work today,” she says.

This isn’t what I expect to hear. It takes a moment to regroup. “Well, she must be sick,” I respond. My first thought is to cover for my daughter; she must have a viable explanation why she didn’t go to work or call in her absence. My daughter is a free spirit, yes, but also reliable.

“You haven’t heard from her?”

“No,” I say, but this isn’t unusual. We go days, sometimes weeks, without speaking. Since the invention of email, our best form of communication has become passing along trivial forwards.

“I tried calling her at home but there’s no answer.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“Several.”

“And she hasn’t called back?”

“No.”

I’m listening only halfheartedly to the woman on the other end of the line. I stare out the window, watching the neighbors’ children shake a flimsy tree so that the remaining leaves fall down upon them. The children are my clock; when they appear in the backyard I know that it’s late afternoon, school is through. When they disappear inside again it’s time to start dinner.