Page 12

12

CALIFORNIA, 2011

“We’ve found her!” cries a voice. “We’ve found her!”

A sudden rush of adrenaline and relief floods my entire body, and it takes all my strength to stop myself from falling to the ground. But Brad rushes to me all the same and holds me up, his crumpled face burying itself into my neck.

“Thank god!” he sobs, as his chest heaves up and down. “I thought we’d lost her.”

I hold in the bloodcurdling fear that we still might have.

He takes hold of my hand and we race toward the Del, a seafront hotel that holds so much significance for the whole Coronado community; the place where marriages are celebrated and children’s baptism parties held. But as I follow the pandemonium down to the beach, I can’t help but wonder if it’s about to take on a more macabre resonance.

“Where is she?” I scream, my lungs burning. “Hannah!”

“Mommy!” comes the tiniest of voices.

The inner strength that’s kept me upright for the past two hours finally deserts me and I collapse onto my knees as she runs into my arms. I breathe her in, nuzzling her hair, never wanting to let her go. She looks the same, she smells the same, but I can’t help but wonder if what she’s been through will have changed something inside.

“Oh baby!” I cry. “My sweet baby.”

“What are all these police officers doing here?” she asks, wide-eyed, their presence seemingly freaking her out more than the fact she’s been somewhere I don’t know about.

“It’s OK, sweetheart,” I say. “We thought you were lost, so Mommy and Daddy asked for help.”

“Hey, Daddy,” she says absently, as if it were just a normal day.

Brad’s jaw spasms and every sinew in his body fights against the inherent need to scoop her up, for fear that making too much of a fuss will unsettle her.

“Hey, Bean,” he says, his face lighting up as her nickname leaves his lips. If he’s had any of the thoughts that I’ve had these past two hours, he’ll no doubt have tortured himself with the possibility that he might never hear himself say it again.

“So, where have you been hiding?” I ask, careful to keep my voice level, even though I’m near to hysteria—with relief, anger, and a desperate need to know everything that’s happened to my daughter since I saw her last.

“I’ve been with my auntie,” she says, the innocence of her voice so at odds with the sinister words. “Did you forget that she was picking me up from school today?”

I bang my forehead with the heel of my hand. “I did!” I say, choosing to go with the story through her eyes, hoping it prompts her to disclose more along the way. “How dumb are we?”

She giggles. “Really dumb.”

“So, did you have a nice time with”—my sing-song voice falters—“with… Auntie?”

She nods. “We went to see the fighter jets and I told her that’s where Daddy works.”

An involuntary shiver runs down my spine as I wonder whether the more information this woman has on my family, the more dangerous she is. But then I remember that, if it’s the same person who appeared on my doorstep today, she already knows enough to put a bomb under our very existence and watch it explode.

“Did you tell her where I work?” I probe, gently.

“She already knew,” says Hannah. “I told her I was going to be a seal doctor when I grow up.”

In any other world, I’d revel in the impact my work has had on her—but not in the dark, dangerous one I’m currently being forced to live in.

I look to Brad, whose furrowed brow is questioning who this woman is and what she wants. I daren’t tell him that I might already know.

“Do you fancy some ice cream?” I say, if only to stop the cold claw of terror wrapping itself around my heart.

“I’ve got a welfare officer on the way,” says Hank. “Just to give Hannah the once-over and check she’s OK.”

I shake my head in an effort to force my stunned brain to understand how a stranger is better placed to know how my daughter is than I am.

“We’ll be fine,” I say, looking to Brad. “I just want to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. She’ll tell us what happened in her own time.” Though how I’m supposed to stop myself from asking a thousand questions until then, I don’t know.

Hannah’s taken hold of my hand and gives it a tug. “Come on,” she says, taking advantage of my unusual offer of a sweet treat before dinner. “Let’s go get that ice cream.”

“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Brad says to Hank. “I want to know exactly who this woman is and why she took our daughter.”

Hank nods gravely. “I’ll do my best to find out.” Hannah swings between us as we walk away from the crowd, their relief as palpable as our own. But for me, the respite is brief as, among their smiling faces, all I can see are the twisted features of a woman who is intent on getting my attention. She’s everywhere I look, throwing her head back as she laughs with thin lips, her eyes burrowing into my soul in desperate pursuit of the truth. And I can’t help but shiver as I question just how far she’s willing to go.

We eat our ice cream with enforced joviality, pretending it’s just like any other day, but as soon as we get home, I’m unable to stop my brain from going into overdrive, desperately needing to know what Hannah knows.

“So, what did you and”—I stumble on the word—“ Auntie , talk about?” I ask as I bathe her, paying particular attention to anything that looks out of place on her milky-white skin. There’s a small bruise on her upper arm that I can’t remember seeing last night, but that was back in another lifetime, when I wouldn’t have thought to notice.

“I dunno,” she says, shrugging as if it isn’t important.

“Well, did she explain why you hadn’t met her before?” I ask.

Hannah looks thoughtful for a moment. “She said that you all fell out…”

I quell the rising panic that’s souring my mouth. “Did she say why ?”

“I dunno, something to do with her boyfriend,” she says, scooping the bath foam into her hands and blowing the bubbles into the air. She laughs when some land on the tip of my nose. Normally I would too.

“It was probably Daddy being overprotective of her,” I say, inventing a sibling that has never existed. “They’ve always had a love-hate relationship.”

“Well, maybe you should all try harder from now on,” says Hannah, showing a degree of maturity I hadn’t allowed for. “Because she seems really nice.”

My jaw tenses and my throat tightens at the prospect of my daughter actually liking this stranger who has turned our world upside down. Yet I force myself to be grateful that the woman didn’t do anything to make Hannah dislike her. It’s by far the lesser of the two evils.

“What did she do that was so nice?” I ask, hoping my line of questioning will encourage her to open up without realizing she’s being interrogated.

Hannah looks at me, sizing up whether she should say what she’s about to say. “I’m going to the air show with her,” she finally confesses. I suck in a breath, not just because she knows I can’t take her this year, but because of the insinuation that this woman is intending to stick around.

“I told her you were going to be out of town and she promised to take me instead,” she goes on, looking worried she might have upset me, even though I’m doing my utmost to force a smile.

“We’ll have to see,” I say, already mentally canceling my trip to the sea turtle convention in Michigan. I’m not taking any chances.

“Please, Mommy,” she begs. “We had a really good time.”

“You seem to be quite taken with her,” I say, gritting my teeth.

Hannah smiles. “I think she’s pretty.”

“That doesn’t make her a nice person,” I snap, before I have a chance to stop myself. She looks surprised, not used to my uncharacteristic outburst. “Sorry, baby… I’m just tired. Tell me what makes her pretty.” I wait for her to describe the woman who came to my door.

“Well, I like her hair,” she says. “I want to grow mine long like hers.”

I balk. Zoe didn’t have long hair—but it’s an easy mistake to make, I figure. “It’s a nice color too, huh?”

Hannah nods thoughtfully. “Can people change their hair color?”

I nod. “To any color they want.”

“Well, one day, when I’m a grown-up, I’m going to make mine brown like hers.”

A shiver runs through me as I dare to imagine that we’re talking about two different people. But that’s impossible. Hannah must have gotten herself confused.

“Is she OK?” asks Brad, once I eventually stop watching her sleep and come downstairs.

“She thinks it’s all one big adventure,” I say tearfully.

He opens his arms and I gratefully fall into them. “We’ll find out who did this,” he says, with steadfast resolve.

“I just don’t understand…” I cry.

He pulls me in even tighter and kisses the top of my head. “Don’t beat yourself up—you’re not to blame.”

An incensed ball of anger fills my chest as I push away from him, nostrils flaring. “I never thought I was,” I snap.

“I didn’t mean…” he starts.

“Well then, what did you mean?”

He walks over to the drinks cabinet and unscrews the cap from the bottle of bourbon we’d been saving for a special occasion. Now, it looks like we’re about to drink it to numb ourselves. The irony isn’t lost on me.

He pours a double measure and knocks it back in one hit, as if to prove my point.

“I’m just saying that it’s likely to be someone who’s been riled by something you’ve done.”

I fix him with a steely glare, daring him to go on. “Rather than anything you’ve done,” I say, throwing it back at him when he doesn’t.

He makes a strange gargling sound in the back of his throat, as if the suggestion is so absurd that it’s laughable.

“So, you do think this is my fault?” I bark.

“That’s not what I said.” He puts his hands on his hips, looking exasperated. “There are a lot of fucked-up people out there who take great umbrage at the smallest of inconveniences. You’re campaigning for one of the community’s favorite beaches to be closed to the public for eight months of the year. Others don’t think like we do. They believe they have more rights than those of an animal.”

“They’re not going to take my daughter to prove the point.”

“Who knows what they might be capable of if they think they’ve suffered an injustice.”

I blanch. No one knows that strength of feeling better than I do. But while I’ve spent years pushing that wasted emotion down deep into my subconscious, forcing it to a place where it is only a simmering ember, it seems that someone is desperate to reignite it again. And as much as I would rather it just be a disgruntled local resident, I only have to picture the woman’s face at my front door to know it’s so much more dangerous than that.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to rule yourself out of this,” I hiss, my tone accusatory to offload my own guilty conscience.

He looks at me as if I’m crazy. Right now I feel I might be, as my brain descends into a dangerous fight-or-flight mode, battling against what it knows to be true and the lies I have to tell myself in order to keep my past from catching up with me.

“Maybe you pushed someone too hard during Hell Week,” I say, referring to the notoriously grueling SEAL training program. “Maybe they didn’t make it through and now hold you accountable.”

Brad shakes his head. “So, while I’m looking to condemn someone else for their unreasonable reaction to the good you’re doing, your first port of call is to accuse me of not doing my job properly.”

“They could be preparing to take a swipe at you,” I say unkindly, in a misguided attempt to exonerate my selfish panic.

“I’m not even going to validate that with a response,” says Brad, his brow furrowing as he snatches up his car keys and goes to walk out.

“So, that’s how you want to deal with this, is it?” I yell after him. “Bury your head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening.”

The front door slams and I already hate myself for releasing my bitter vitriol on the one person who least deserves it. But that’s what the weight of carrying this secret around makes me do sometimes.

“Mommy?”

My heart aches to see Hannah standing at the bottom of the stairs, bleary-eyed and holding the cuddly seal she calls Felix under her chin.

“It’s OK, sweetheart,” I say, going to her. “Everything’s OK.”

“Where’s Daddy gone?”

I swallow the self-contempt I feel in this moment, hating myself for making my daughter feel even more insecure than she does already. “He had to go run a few errands.”

Hannah looks out at the bright crescent moon whitewashing the front yard. “Why are you and Daddy fighting?” she asks, her voice so tiny.

“It’s OK,” I say again, whisking her up and holding her close to me, desperately needing to feel her heartbeat against my chest.

“But I heard you shouting,” she says sleepily into my ear as I carry her back up the stairs. “And I told the lady you never fight.”

I freeze two steps from the top, my blood turning ice-cold, but force myself not to jump to conclusions. I need her to tell me everything she’s ready to tell me, but I don’t know how to do that without my own fears bleeding out, feeding her own.

“Will I get in trouble for lying to her?” she asks, snapping me out of my stupor.

“Of course not,” I exclaim. “You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

I lay her down in her bed and tuck the duvet up tight under her chin, as if it will create a shield that nothing, or no one, can infiltrate. “Did she ask any other questions about me and Daddy?”

Hannah shakes her head and I allow myself to believe that this woman isn’t intent on tugging on the thread that will unravel my entire life.

“How come she didn’t bring you back home?” I ask.

A sadness clouds her freckled features. “She said she was going to, but then she went to ask the other lady something…”

“What other lady?”

I wait two beats, suspended between the need to know and the need to let her tell me in her own time. When she turns onto her side and snuggles into Felix, I fear the latter is never going to come.

“Were there two ladies with you today?” I press.

Hannah closes her eyes as she shrugs her shoulders, too tired to respond.

I stifle a sob as I gently run my fingers through her copper-red hair, remembering Brad’s shock when I gave birth. “Where in god’s name did that come from?” he’d laughed.

If he’d thought to look at the regularly discarded boxes of hair dye hidden at the bottom of the garbage can, he’d be in no doubt.

When I think of all the lies I’ve told and the secrets I’ve hidden, I’d be a fool to think I could get away with it forever. If I’m honest with myself, it has always felt like the truth was close on my heels, snapping away like an alligator whose prey is just out of reach. But until now, I’ve always managed to stay one step ahead, distancing myself from the person I was back then, in the hope that it would eventually create a gulf so great that even my darkest memories couldn’t traverse its narrowest point.

But in the dead of night, while Brad and Hannah are sleeping, those flashbacks come thick and fast, blighting the happiness I’ve worked so hard to find, convincing me that the only chance I have of defying the thieves of joy is to tell Brad who I really am. Yet by the first morning light this absurd thought has diminished along with the darkness, the reality of what the truth would do to him—to our marriage, our life —too much to bear.

Yet now it feels as if someone is gearing up to tell him their version—and that may well be so much worse than my own.