I’m grateful Stanley and Dorothy aren’t in the house. I’m no murderer. I curse them, though, as I squirt acrid fluid on the dais, across the wood-paneled walls, over the red robes hung on the wall, into the divots of the heavy candleholders, into the closet where Dorothy kept me. I empty one can and then grab another, and then another. The smell is overpowering.

I toss the locket containing the ancestral dirt into the center of the pyre I’m building.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I turn slowly, which is all I can manage. Ronald is wobbling, clutching the doorway for support. I gave him a double dose in his brandy cola knowing he didn’t like dessert. It’s amazing he can even stand. He looks leathery in the dim light, reptilian. I step closer, because it’s important that he hear this.

“I’m burning it all down, Ronald. Destroying your world.”

He screeches, his voice part shrill, part slurry. “After all we did for you? All the Mill Street Lilys?”

I’m numb. I have one final question, and I ask it, even though I know the answer. “Why didn’t you just adopt? Instead of stealing children?”

His swaying is rhythmic and picking up speed. “They wouldn’t have been Lilys.”

Exactly as I thought. I’ve heard more than enough. “I’ll give you a better chance than you gave me, Ronald, a running start. You don’t have to burn with this house.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” He lunges for me and I step aside, the quick motion costing me. We circle each other, both of us weak. I’m now standing at the base of the steps. He’s five feet in front of me, nearer the dais.

I pull out Ursula’s rhinestone-encrusted Zippo. I strike the wheel with my thumb, calling a flame to life. “Your last chance, you heartless asshole.”

He groans and leans heavily against one of the tables, his hand knocking over a candleholder. I move toward him, the training to help so ingrained that it’s automatic. It takes me less than a step before I remember who he really is.

My realization comes too late.

He’s holding the heavy brass candleholder in his hand. He flings it at me, aiming for my head. I grunt as it hits my shoulder, knocking the lighter out of my hand. The flame licks the air on the way down, meets the fumes of the lighter fluid, and roars its joy, crackling across the cursed basement.

The force of the ignition forces me back and up. I land on the third stair from the bottom, my skin tingling from the flames. Ronald lies near the dais, a crumpled, motionless figure. The fire is drawing a second breath, preparing to eat this hateful house from the bottom up.

I don’t wait for it.

I would have chosen a different ending for Ronald, but I’ll be damned if I’ll burn with him.

CHAPTER 68

Blood is trickling down my legs, my shoulder is throbbing where the brass candleholder hit it, and the tips of my hair are singed as I limp down the walkway. Part of me knows I can’t make it out of Lilydale. I’ve lost too much blood, exerted too much energy. But I will drive until I pass out, because what choice do I have?

I almost reach the end of the sidewalk before I smell the cigarette, untangle its elegant, gritty smell from the rage of lighter fluid and flame. I stop, frozen. An orange ember burns in the shadows of an oak tree, a flicker compared to the blaze crackling behind me.

Regina steps out. “So, where’re you headed?”

We stare at each other. I’m shuddering. The heat of the house is cooking the shirt on my back, but I’m freezing.

Have they made her one of them?

I can’t go back.

I won’t.

Regina finally speaks. “It’s a wide world, sister. We don’t have to stay here.”

I moan in relief and drop to the ground.

“Jesus,” she says, running to me. “You had the baby. You shouldn’t be on your feet, you know.”

As if on cue, my sweet child wails from the front seat of the nearby car.

Regina’s eyes widen. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

CHAPTER 69

I’m cocooned in the Chevelle’s back seat, a warm breeze kissing my hair.

I am nursing my baby. Slow Henry is sleeping on my lap.

We pass fire trucks screaming into Lilydale.

Regina is driving us south, toward Siesta Key.

She wanted to leave Lilydale immediately until I explained that Angel was being held at the Schramel house. I wanted to be the one to free him, but I didn’t have the strength. Fortunately, Regina didn’t question me, just ran into the house and came out with a sleeping Angel moments later.

When she leaned over to set him next to me in the back seat, her pearl necklace slipped out of her shirt. I blinked back tears, taking it as a message from my mother, a sign that she was with me now and would keep me safe, just as she had when I was a child.

I caressed Angel’s sleeping head as Regina drove us to his mother’s house. What monster could steal a child from its mother? How could the Mill Street families have possibly convinced themselves of their righteousness? I could live to be a thousand years old, and I’d never understand it.

It took some convincing for Regina to get Mariela to walk out to a strange car in the middle of the night, but once she did, and laid eyes on her son, she wailed in gratitude. She bundled him in her arms, rocked him, kissed him all over.

He woke up. “Momma?”

She wailed again. He clamped his wiry arms around her neck.

“You have to leave,” I said.

Mariela glanced at me, sitting in my own blood, clutching my newborn. She nodded once, her eyes wet and her mouth grim, and strode quickly back to her house.

I knew what her expression meant.

We don’t belong here, her and me.

We never did.

And we are going to escape and never return.

Minnesota Town Shaken by Rape, Kidnapping and Arson Allegations Spanning Decades

By Joan Harken

March 23, 1969

The New York Times

Section A, Page 16

“It’s your average small town,” declared Ernest Oleson, the newly elected mayor of Lilydale, Minn., population 1,464.

Unlike most small towns, however, 11 Lilydale residents, all direct descendants of the town’s founders and all with homes on once-bucolic Mill Street, are under indictment for rape, kidnapping and arson in a scandal that spans generations. The Lilydale police chief is one of those accused. One of the 11 died as a result of arson before charges were filed. The surviving Mill Street denizens deny all charges.

The opening trial, that of Barbara Schmidt, is coming to a close. Mrs. Schmidt, 56, is charged with abetting the 1944 kidnapping of Paulie Anna Aandeg, the recently uncovered 1946 kidnapping of Hector Ramirez, whom she raised as her son along with her recently deceased husband, Ronald Schmidt, and the 1968 kidnapping of Angel Gomez.

Ronald Schmidt, who died in a house fire believed to be started by him to gain insurance money, has been posthumously accused of the rape of Hector Ramirez’s mother, Maria Ramirez, orchestrating all three kidnappings, as well as insurance fraud. The child he helped abduct and raised as his own child, Deck Schmidt (formerly Hector Ramirez), has also been charged with insurance fraud.

District Judge Stephen L. Miller of Stearns County is presiding over the case. Earlier, the prosecutor, M. Elizabeth Klaphake, rested her case. She had called 13 witnesses, including the town physician, the editor and owner of the Lilydale Gazette and Grover Tucker, the now-retired county sheriff who oversaw the search for Paulie Anna Aandeg in 1944. The defense begins its case tomorrow and is expected to conclude within the week.