Page 45 of Last Seen

Chapter Thirty-One

Touching, isn’t it? She cares so much about the person she should despise the most. She has no idea the impact that little investigation will have.

What people don’t like to think about is what happens when someone goes missing and no one takes it seriously. Perhaps the person was lost to their family already. Perhaps they never had anyone to start with. Perhaps they were poisoned inside and people were happy to have them gone.

Catriona Handon was able to disappear off the face of the earth from a swank spot in the middle of nowhere.

And what, two people give a shit? Three?

Of the how many people she came across in her life?

How come no one came here looking before now?

It’s been fifteen years—fifteen years, one month, and eighteen days, to be exact.

Why does it take a feisty little sister who—let’s not delude ourselves for a moment here—is out for revenge upon the person she now believes ruined her life to start asking all the right questions?

Granted, Cat was a very bad girl, and naughty girls don’t engender loyalty.

Girls who kill their mommies aren’t lauded by society.

Did you know that when Harvard found out about her past, they rescinded their invitation to join the class of 1996?

She flew up to Boston and insisted on making her case in person, making them look her in the eyes and deny her the privilege they’d extended when they didn’t know of the mistakes she’d made, refuting the claims that they weren’t aware of the rehabilitation she’d gone through.

Turns out they were just covering their asses.

She had disclosed her circumstances in her essay, and they’d been happy to invite her to matriculate because recidivism is so much lower among the educated and they thought it was fiction and other nonsense they spewed to justify letting her in.

Turns out, the parents of someone else in the entering class did some background checking on their sweet daughter’s suitemate-to-be and forced the school to back out of their offer.

When faced with a discrimination lawsuit by a legal eagle tied to the juvenile psychiatric facility in Nashville, though, the school happily backed away.

The problem student’s parents sent her to Yale instead, and Catriona Handon got her second chance at the ivy-and-brick paragon of elite intellectualism, where she excelled.

There’s an article about it. You should read it. Quite the little social experiment.

Cat was a smart girl. Always had been. Sometimes too smart for her own good, and certainly leaps and bounds above her parents and her teachers.

She was gifted, gifted with intelligence, yes, but also with a preternatural self-awareness that every little thing she did caused trouble somewhere along the line.

Maybe it was the voices; maybe it wasn’t organic at all, and simply her personality. She was mercurial. Unpredictable.

How could a man not fall in love with that kind of chaos?

But for a woman like that to go missing, for fifteen years, and no one came looking?

No one came to Brockville until now? Until sweet, delectable little sister, whom I just want to touch, to skim my hands along her strong shoulders, to count those freckles I bet she hates?

Smell her breath and the nape of her neck, discover that silent place every woman has and is different on them all.

Little sister is young enough to be impetuous and think she’s impervious to harm, but old enough to understand the ways of the world. My heart cannot take much more.

She is perfection.

She must not go.

She must stay.