A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

aggravated kidnapping. I don’t go to the arraignment. Josh goes and
tells me later.
It was Bea’s blood the police found in Josh’s garage.
Bea kept Delilah all those years because she couldn’t bring herself
to kill her. Delilah knew too much. Bea couldn’t let her go home to
snitch. She had only two choices: kill or hide her. She chose the
least bad option.
Nothing will bring Meredith back to life, but perhaps restoring her
reputation is the best that we can do. Leo has spent his life feeling
neglected by her. Now he knows that his mother loved him fiercely.
With Bea’s confession, Shelby Tebow’s husband, Jason, gets
released from prison after erroneously serving eleven years. He
goes home to nothing. His wife is dead, and the child he once
believed they shared now lives with her real father. It’s tragic. The
consequences of what Bea did are overwhelming. She didn’t just
hurt one person. She hurt so many. She ravaged so many lives. It
deeply disturbs me, not only because I feel guilty by association, but
because the woman I loved, the one I thought I knew, the one I
made a life with, has turned out to be selfish and cruel. Bea is a
kidnapper. She is a murderer. She hid Delilah under my nose for
eleven years; she let Josh and Leo search for her in vain; she let an
innocent man rot in jail for over a decade of his life.
I cry myself to sleep every night. I don’t cry for me. I cry for all the
lives Bea shattered.
Only once do I take her call from prison. “What were you planning
to do, keep Delilah there for the rest of her life?” I ask, still finding it
unfeasible that Bea kept a human being in there for eleven years. If
she hadn’t been caught, would Delilah still be there eleven years
from now?
Did Delilah ever try and escape? Did she scream? It wouldn’t have
mattered if she did; the garage is soundproof. I wouldn’t have heard.
“I didn’t have another choice. If I let her go, she would have told,”
she says, and I’m sorry I asked because knowing this makes it feel
worse. Bea takes a deep breath and says, “I didn’t mean for any of it
to happen. I fucked up, Kate. I panicked. It was one colossal mistake
that spiraled out of control. I never set out to hurt anyone.”
“But you did,” I say. “You hurt everyone.”