My Heroine, My Shame

Once a celebrated journalist, Aubrey Hayes fell into disgrace, branded a thrill-seeker who starred in adult films and sank into drugs. Her ex-husband, Dr. Julian Vance, chief forensic scientist, threw her out of their home, accusing her of selling herself. Then she vanished.

Five years later, Julian is summoned to a police station to collect an abandoned child. Lily, grimy and clutching a blood-spotted rag doll, says her mother was carried away in a red suitcase. The officers laugh; to them Aubrey is just another junkie who ran off. Julian takes Lily home to his villa, where Sophia Reynolds, Aubrey's mother's adopted daughter, now lives. Lily's bruises and needle marks convince Julian that Aubrey injected her own child, and Sophia's quiet cruelty confirms his contempt.

Only Aubrey, a ghost no one can hear, knows the truth: Lily's marks came from medical treatment, and the doll holds bad people's secrets. She watches, powerless, as her daughter begs for the mother who cannot return.