"Olivia kept it hidden at the bottom of a box in her closet," said Emily. "I know it was wrong of me, but after everything I learned about her daughter, Nora...well, I just couldn"t help myself."
And with that, she handed the bag to Sarah.
Chapter 73
I DROVE. SARAH READ.
"Hey!" I must have called out a half dozen times when Sarah"s voice would trail off. She was so engrossed she didn"t realize she"d stopped reading aloud.
The date of the first entry was August 9, 1990, right as Olivia began her prison sentence for murdering her husband. Only she wasn"t the one who killed him. It was Ned. She took the fall for her seven-year-old son. Or so she claimed.
Would she lie to her own diary?
There was no denying the unsettling, slightly disconcerting nature of what Sarah and I were doing-and, yes, what nurse Emily Barrows had done before us. This was the ultimate invasion of privacy, and the fact that Olivia was dead hardly mitigated that fact.
Still.
If there was one iota of information in this little brown leather-bound book that could help us catch Ned Sinclair before he killed again, then that justified our actions. It didn"t get more Machiavellian than that.
And, oddly, having met Olivia Sinclair, I had the feeling she"d completely understand.
"Jesus Christ," muttered Sarah, interrupting herself midsentence.
I glanced over at her from behind the wheel. She looked disgusted. "What is it?" I asked.
"Nora was molested by her father," she said. "Repeatedly."
The rest was like the last few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It all fit together easily.
Ned had known about the incest, taking matters into his own little hands. The fact that Olivia knew nothing about what her husband had been doing-until it was too late-surely accelerated her decision to take the fall for Ned. It was her last act of motherhood.
Sarah continued to read. In gut-wrenching detail, Olivia described the guilt she felt, the pain of learning that her children would be sent off to an orphanage.
It only got worse. A year later, she learned that Ned and Nora had been separated, sent to two different state-run foster care facilities.
Sarah suddenly closed the book, snapping it shut.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Taking a break. I can"t read any more right now," she said. "What a terrible story."
For someone so intent on bringing down Ned Sinclair, that was saying a lot. Not that I could blame her. Olivia"s diary described a nightmare come to life-for all the Sinclairs.
No matter where you stood on nature versus nurture, it was all but impossible to think that this hadn"t permanently scarred both Ned and Nora.
I glanced over at Sarah, who was holding Olivia"s diary like I hold the refrigerator door when I"m trying to lose a few pounds. Sure enough, she opened it again.
"That was a quick break," I said.
"Can"t help it," she said. "I need to get through this, to read everything. Probably a couple of times."
I understood. She was really intent on bringing down Ned Sinclair. She had total focus on her goal. So much so that everything else seemed inconsequential. For example, where the h.e.l.l were we heading? South, yes, but certainly not to my house. At least not on Sarah"s watch.
I kept driving while she kept reading, both of us unsure of what lay ahead. Then, about ten miles and twenty pages later, everything changed.
"Holy s.h.i.t," muttered Sarah, her head still buried in the diary.
"What is it?" I asked.
As I turned to look, she held up the page she was reading. I saw it immediately.
The key to everything.
Chapter 74
SARAH SHOOK HER head for practically the entire flight out to Los Angeles. After a while, I had to laugh.
"What"s so funny?" she asked.
"You," I said. "You"re like my mother when I was a kid. I"d come home from school boasting that I got ninety-eight percent on my math test, and the first thing she"d say was, "Who got the other two percent?""
Sarah had been savvy enough to do a t.i.tle search for any property that Ned Sinclair might still own. But now she was beating herself up because-the other two percent-it didn"t occur to her to also check for property owned by other members of the Sinclair family. Especially Nora. Just because she"d been dead for years didn"t mean she still couldn"t own a home.
Sure enough.
It was a two-bedroom split-level in Westwood near the UCLA campus, where Ned had been an a.s.sociate professor. Nora had bought it for her brother and, according to the diary, for Olivia as well.
Here"s the key, Mother, for the day when you get released.
That"s what Nora had told her during one of her visits to Pine Woods. The key was a token of optimism, something to keep Olivia"s spirits up. Nora wanted her mother to think that one day she might actually be set free.
Deep down they probably both knew it would never happen.
So it was only Ned who lived in the house. That is, he lived there until he was committed to Eagle Mountain Psychiatric Hospital.
But what had Sarah and me flying across the country was that the place was never sold. It still belonged to Nora"s estate.