Page 13 of Last Seen

“All right. The beginning. Yes. Susannah had a daughter named Catriona from her first marriage, yes. Obviously. Which was wonderful for me. I’d always wanted a big family, and Catriona was a shortcut.

A head start. And Susannah and I were happy.

At least, I thought we were happy. Marriage isn’t always as obvious as it seems.”

“No kidding.”

“Catriona was a handful, but she was only nine when we married. Plenty of time to grow out of it. Then you came along, and she pulled away. She was distant with us, distant with your mom. Susannah loved her so much. She made excuses. She protected her. But ... How do I say this? Catriona had a mean streak. She would put the cat in your crib, then yank on its tail so it would scratch you. She’d pull your hair.

Pushed you around. She was physical with you, really rough.

Gave you a black eye once. Said you two were boxing.

“She was very jealous and, turns out, at a really difficult age for a bad divorce and remarriage. Her behavior was getting more and more aggressive, so we took her to doctors. They said she was having issues adjusting because of an impulse disorder and put her on a stimulant medication. And it helped. Tremendously. Until it didn’t.

They call it borderline personality disorder now, and they’re more careful with the medications.

She was diagnosed in 1986, right before the comet. ”

Halley’s Comet was the through line of Halley’s young life.

It is her first memory, the four of them at the planetarium, her dad shivering in excitement.

She was three, and she can remember almost all of that night—the darkened sky, the tail of the comet, her sister holding her hand and saying in awe, “You were named after that. Cool.” Her mother, laughing and kissing her dad as if he was the one to discover it through his telescope in the living room. As if he named it himself.

Three years later, her mother and sister were dead, and her memories become flaky.

“A year before she ... it happened, things went bad again. It was like a light switch. She wouldn’t take the medicine willingly, said it made her feel weird.

She was depressed, then she was manic, then mean, then crying.

They tried all kinds of different treatments.

She finally admitted she was hearing voices.

It was getting worse and worse, and we were afraid for you, and for ourselves.

At that point, she was beyond our abilities as parents. We thought you were in danger.”

He blows out a breath, and Halley feels for him. He is struggling for control. She should tell him they can talk later, but she has to know. This is too big to wait any longer.

“I’m not proud of this, Halley. But the doctors recommended a place in the Blue Ridge, and we agreed.

It was a summer program that, in addition to intensive psychological work and medications, takes kids out into the wilderness, teaches them self-reliance, teamwork, all of it.

She came back worse than ever. We didn’t have a choice then.

I didn’t think camping with other troubled kids was going to help, but your mom .

.. She had such a soft spot for Catriona.

Even they couldn’t handle her. So we arranged for a facility, inpatient treatment, for an extended period. She needed long-term psychiatric care.

“Catriona found out what we were planning. She had a huge fight with your mom. She went after you, tried to take you from the house. And your mom stopped her. Sometime during that fight, Catriona stabbed her. Then it was all over.”

Halley thinks there’s probably about nine million other facets of this story he’s leaving out.

“You were there?”

“No. I was at work. You called me. You told me what happened. You’d been out cold, and when you came to, you speed-dialed the office.”

Halley searches her memory and comes up blank.

“How is it that I don’t remember any of this?”

“You had a bad bump on the head from the tussle. That scar on your temple?”

Halley’s hand goes to the spot.

“You said it was from the accident. From the glass.”

“It was Catriona’s doing. Not sure how, exactly, but you had a good cut and a huge lump. A bad concussion. Enough to knock you out. We think ... Well, she clearly thought you were dead, too.”

“My migraines don’t come from the accident, but from Cat hitting me in the head?”

“Most likely, yes.”

“Is that why I don’t remember?”

“It’s not uncommon, actually. The doctors said you might remember what happened, you might not. Such extreme trauma leaves a mark.”

She touches the streak of white in her hair, running right from the spot where the wound was all those years ago.

She used to try dyeing it, because it was so distinctive, but the dye wouldn’t stay in more than a wash or two.

Once or twice, she took scissors to it and cut the white lock away, but it grew back quickly, faster than the rest of her hair.

Like it had claimed her. She’d finally learned to accept it wasn’t something she could hide, so she told strangers it was a genetic mark of heterochromia.

As an adult, she grew to love it. It was something special, something that set her apart.

She would make sure it was visible, always.

Now? She has to reframe everything down to her bones.

“So she gave me this?”

Her dad nods. “Yes. Whether you blocked it out or the concussion wiped it, I don’t know.

The doctors and I discussed it, and they thought it would be better if you didn’t remember.

That we try to give you a different path to cling to.

So when you woke up in the hospital and asked where Mom was, I told you she’d been in an accident.

You were the one who thought it was a car accident.

I think one of the shows we were watching— Rescue 911 ?

—had a car accident that week. I didn’t say it wasn’t, and suddenly, that was the story.

A car accident. Both your mom and your sister were killed, and you were hurt but survived. ”

Halley stalks from the chair, all patience gone. The window looks out onto a courtyard covered in boxwoods and a huge sandpit with large boulders and rakes.

“That’s one hell of a lie, Dad.”

“Yeah. But the doctors said it was good for you, that a transference of the trauma was how your brain was going to process what it had been through. So we went with that. You cried, you were devastated, but you didn’t remember what really happened, that day or afterwards.

It was a blessing, honey.” He reaches out a hand, and she waits a few beats before grabbing hold with her own.

“A blessing?”

“You healed. You were sad, and you missed your mom like crazy, but you weren’t permanently damaged. Do you remember it at all, even now?”

“I don’t. I remember a car accident, the flash of lights, the crunch of the car, the sirens ... What happened to the car, if it wasn’t in an accident?”

He looks abashed. “I sold it.”

“And you faked an obituary?” She doesn’t bother trying to keep the accusatory tone from her voice.

“Yes. It seemed better to keep you focused on the future.”

“And what happened to Cat?”

“She ...” He breaks off. There are tears in his eyes and thickness in his throat.

She gives him a moment to compose himself, desperately searching her memory for something, anything, that jogs a recollection of this event.

There is nothing but the sense that things are wrong—her mom is gone, and her sister, too.

The car-accident narrative is so permanently imprinted on her mind she’s having a hard time believing this of her father.

That he, of all people, could be capable of such deceit. That she was so easily misled.

Who conflates a car crash on a television show with the stabbing death of their mother? Is that even possible? Is he lying to her even now?

Oh, she is so pissed at him for making her doubt him at all.

Her dad clears his throat. “Cat ran away from the house after your mom ... She had a boyfriend we didn’t like, snotty kid, and she took off with him.

The police found her at the bus station a few days later.

She’d been ... mistreated. He’d hurt her, pretty badly, and left her there.

Left her alone. They arrested her, she pled guilty to stabbing your mom, and they locked her away.

I moved us to Marchburg as soon as I could.

I couldn’t risk her getting out and coming after you, too. ”

“Why would she come after me?”

“Halley. Honey. She tried to kill you, too.”

Halley sits with the words, trying, and failing, to comprehend what her father has said.

“She tried to kill you, too.”

Halley had been there. She’d witnessed all of this. She’d been attacked. She’d survived and was the one who’d called for help. How was this even possible? She has no memories of it at all.

“I can’t believe you lied to me. Kept this from me.”

“I should have told you sooner. I’m so sorry, jellybean. I guess I hoped you’d never figure it out.”

“Did you know that she’s missing? Cat?”

“Missing?” He tries to sit up, and Halley puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. For fifteen years now. I don’t know any more than that. There’s a very vague missing persons report.”

“That’s . . . strange.”

“It is.”

They sit, not speaking, listening to the sounds of the hospital, the beeps and whirs and whooshes and overhead pages. Finally, Halley sighs deeply. “You knew already, didn’t you? That she had a life. That she went missing. If she was so much of a threat, of course you did.”

His silence gives her the answer.

“God, Dad. You know, I’ve had a lot of guilt over the years about that accident. That I made it and they didn’t. I mean, I had to go to therapy. Did everyone know about the murder but me?”

He turns his face away from hers. “Better a little guilt than remembering. God, Halley. What I came home to, no one should ever have to see.”