Gingerbread Man

lips were compressed tightly as if in pain. His eyes welled with fresh tears. "I won't even ask if you can forgive me for the wrong I have done you and your family. There is no way I can ever make it up to you."
    "Then you admit it?" she asked, rage welling inside.
    He blinked, frowned, glanced at Amanda. Amanda said, "She doesn't know, Reg. Holly and Vince went to find her, but she must have already left her room. She still doesn't know what really happened to Ivy."
    Reginald gasped and turned even paler. "Oh. Oh, God, you poor woman."
    "It's okay. It's okay, Mrs. Newman," Amanda said, rising slowly to her feet. "I know what you must be thinking right now. But we know the truth, finally. Holly knows. So does Vince. Reggie didn't do any of this."
    Doris narrowed her eyes on the girl. "How do you know?"
    Amanda looked at her in an odd way. Her blue eyes seemed to move constantly over Doris's face, as if trying to memorize every line. "Because Ivy escaped from her abductor. He didn't kill her. He never killed her. She got away."
    Doris's knees weakened. The scissors fell from her hands to the floor, and she lifted a hand to her trembling lips. "Are you telling me ... my baby ... is still alive?"
    Amanda nodded. A tear ran slowly down her cheek. "She got away," the girl went on. "And wound up wandering, lost and alone in a storm."
    "And that's where I found her," Reginald D'Voe said softly.
    Doris frowned, her gaze shifting from him to his niece and back again. "You—
you
found her?"
    "She was delirious," Amanda said. "She told Reggie that her father was the one who hurt her. Her abductor was a sick man, who used to make her call him 'Daddy.' She was confused, and she'd been drugged a lot of the time. So her mind was muddled. She didn't remember who she really was."
    "She couldn't even remember her real name," Reginald went on. "I thought I was protecting her from an abusive parent, like the one who tortured me as a boy. I claimed her as my own niece, and I raised her. I swear to God, Mrs. Newman, I didn't know she was your daughter. I didn't know."
    "You saved me, Reggie," the girl said. "You saved me, and you cherished me, and you helped me to heal."
    Doris blinked, her eyes sliding to the young woman, who was moving slowly closer to her. She looked at the blue, blue eyes. The soft, light-brown hair that had once been blonde. The shape of her nose and chin. And she saw ... what she was almost afraid to believe she was seeing. "Ivy?"
    The girl nodded. "Mommy." She moved into Doris's arms, and hugged her as Doris closed her eyes and started weeping, holding her daughter as if she'd never let go, ever again.
    * * *
    VlNCE AND HOLLY opened the door to Reg's room, saw what was going on inside, and withdrew quietly. "Let's give them some time," Holly whispered. "They've lost so much time. They need it. God, I just want to sit down. I'm so tired."
    Vince held Holly to his side, led her to the nearest place he could think of where they could find quiet, which turned out to be Dr. Graycloud's office. He knew the man wouldn't mind. He set her down in a comfortable chair, knelt in front of her, and peeled off her shoes.
    "How many bodies?" she asked. She was drained, emotionally, physically, mentally.
    "I don't know."
    "Come on Vince, someone's counted the mounds by now. You've been on your phone ten times since we got back here. And it'll be in the papers by tomorrow anyway. How many?"
    He sighed, not wanting to tell her. He had hoped for a lighter moment, but maybe it was impossible, given the circumstances. "Fifteen is the best guess so far. Seventeen when you add in the two most recent victims in Syracuse. He'd have probably buried them here as well, but I found them before he moved them. Selkirk said there were four others whose bodies were found before Marty had buried them."
    "That's twenty-one." She closed her eyes. "Twenty-one innocent little girls."
    "Twenty girls. One was a boy. Bobby Prague." Vince shook his head. "He must have got in the way, seen too much, something. Marty never took boys."
    Holly winced. "And how many more victims did dear Uncle Marty leave scarred and damaged, who lived to tell the tale?"
    "No one's even begun to count yet." Vince tugged a blanket off a gurney in the hall, just outside the door, then came back in and draped it over her. "But, he did have a prior conviction."
    She sat up in the chair. "He
what?"
    "Before he married your aunt, he served two years for molesting three seven-year-old