Page 78 of Nobody's Fool

I dive straight into the deep end of the pool. “You weren’t home on that New Year’s Eve.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you tell me where you were?”

“I was in Chicago. My father had just gone into hospice, and I wanted to spend some time with him.”

“Your husband didn’t travel with you?”

“No, he stayed home.”

“Did he go to any parties?”

“He stayed in.”

“It was the end of the millennium. Nineteen ninety-nine and all that. I’m sure there were a lot of party invitations. Before your father went into hospice, had you been planning on attending one?”

“Why does that matter?” Before I can explain that I’m wondering whether anyone would think that the house might be empty, she holds a hand up to stop me. “Archie and I, we aren’t New Year’s Eve people. We never go out on New Year’s Eve. We sort of take pride in that. Most years, we are asleep by midnight. But that year in particular? Archie was a little worried about Y2K. You remember all that?”

I nod. “That when the computers went from 1999 to 2000, no one was sure what would happen.”

“Right. That computer systems wouldn’t be able to distinguish between 1900 and 2000 and there would be chaos and power outages, stuff like that. We didn’t stockpile like some people did, but Archie stayed home, just in case, so if something went wrong, he would be near the kids. Once we knew everything was okay with Y2K, Archie took our plane and flew up to meet me.”

“Do you remember what time he arrived?”

“No, sorry. Very late. Probably three or four in the morning? I know I woke up next to him.”

“Where were you staying?”

“At the Four Seasons, I think,” she says, but I’m annoying her now. “Is this really important?”

It wasn’t. “You stayed a few more days?”

“Yes. But my father stabilized, so we came back home.”

I know already that her father died three weeks later. No reason to bring that up.

“Could I just quickly answer the rest of this part for you?” she asks. “No, I didn’t think anything was wrong. I was focused on my father. Not hearing from Victoria wasn’t that unusual. I also didn’t hear from Thomas. This was twenty-five years ago. I didn’t have a mobile phone. I was one of the final holdouts. I didn’t like them then, and I like them less now. As Archie probably told you, he did get a few texts from Victoria’s phone. One said ‘Happy New Year.’ He showed that one to me. Thomas got one from her too.”

“When did you start to worry?”

“That’s the thing.”

“What is?”

“I called her mobile on January third. No answer, but again, it was a different era. None of us carried our phones all the time with us. So I didn’t think that much about it. I was worried about my dad. Mypoint is, you expect something like this to hit you all of a sudden. But my worrying about her, it wasn’t like that. It was like a slow descent. I started to feel a nagging, then a worry, then finally, a bit of a panic. Even when we went to the police, I was hesitant. Victoria could be impetuous, rebellious even. I figured she had met a guy and run off for a few days. Or she was with a friend we didn’t think about. You think a mother would know better, right? Like I should have had some kind of sixth sense. But I was oblivious. Or distracted. Or maybe there was some kind of self-defense mechanism thing going on and I subconsciously knew the truth and didn’t want to face it.”

The guilt was coming off her in waves. There is no reason to harp on this. It seems obvious now that Victoria’s kidnapper had sent those texts or had coerced her into sending them. Then at some point, the kidnapper realized that the phone’s location could be triangulated so they stopped and probably got rid of the phone. Still, those texts were clever. They kept the parental worry at bay and helped make the trail go cold.

“What?” she says.

“Would it sound weird if I just say, let’s skip ahead eleven years to the day she came home?”

She smiles. “A little.”

“Before I do, is there anything you can tell me about those eleven years that might help?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Most of the days, I was just numb. It was weird. You’d wake up every day and you couldn’t believe this was your life. That you’d have to get out of bed and brush your teeth and then after, I don’t know, a year, maybe two, you actually have your appetite back and there are days you almost feel okay, like you’re living again, and then you remember that she’s still gone and now on top of your everyday pain you feel the self-hatred because for a moment you forgot about her, and that for a moment, youmaybe enjoyed something or smiled and that just feels like the worst outrage.”