“I don’t know,” she said. “They weren’t at the top of the box anymore. Maybe … a couple years? I didn’t really … like to look at them anymore.”
“What did the postcards say?” the detective asked.
“They said she missed us,” Annabelle said. “That she’d see us soon. That the weather was nice. The last one said that she was going to get a house with lots of bedrooms, so there’d be room for us.” She looked at Harlan. “What else?”
“They were from different places,” Harlan said. “Like they were moving around. But the last one, the one about the house, was from Phoenix.”
“They were moving around?” the detective asked. “Who’s ‘they?’”
Jennifer thought, Wait. The postcards had been here for years, and now they were gone? When only Annabelle and her father were living in the house? She was betting Johnson hadn’t missed that.
“A guy who worked at the bookstore,” Harlan said. “Austin Grant. He was sort of a hippie. Very laid-back guy. Older, maybe fifties, because he had some gray. And a ponytail. I remember that, because it was unusual at the time. She used to go in and buy books after work and talk to him, I think. She worked as a school nurse, but I guess you know that. He was the one she left with, Dad said.” He stopped. “I guess he wasn’t. I guess he just left at the same time … she did. I hired a private detective a while back to look for her. He managed to find him, but Grant said he hadn’t left with her at all. His story was that he’d just moved on. He thought he’d told her he was going, he said, but he couldn’t remember. He was surprised she was gone. Said he had no idea. The detective thought he might be lying, and I was sure he was, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The detective couldn’t find her at all, not in Phoenix or anywhere else. I guess we know why now.” He told Annabelle, “Sorry, Bug. I was going to wait to tell you until I saw you. Didn’t want to say it on the phone.”
She said, “That’s OK.” She was looking down, and Jennifer could feel Harlan thinking, I need to do something about this. About her. And his frustration that he couldn’t think what, and he couldn’t do it now anyway.
He looked at the Johnson again and asked, “Have you talked to her parents? Our grandparents, in Florida?”
“We have,” the detective said. “When we found her. They provided the DNA samples that we used to identify your mother’s remains.”
Remains. The word sat there like a boulder. Impossible to ignore. Impossible not to think about exactly what they’d found when they’d opened that car door, twelve years later. Jennifer could see Harlan thinking it, and she could see him hoping that Annabelle wasn’t.
After a minute, Johnson asked, “Did you know that your grandparents contacted the police here after your mom disappeared?”
Harlan got still. And then he took Annabelle’s hand, gripped it, and said, “No. But I wasn’t here.” The words came out tight. He was thinking, Jennifer was pretty sure, Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I ask? He went on, though, “Did you know, Bug? Did they come here?”
She said, “I don’t remember. I was too little. I remember them coming sometime, maybe when I was in first grade? Second grade? But Grandpa had a fight with Dad, and they left. Sorry,” she told the detective. “That’s all I know.”
“My other sisters will know more,” Harlan said. “Mom wasn’t real close with her parents, though, I don’t think. We didn’t see them much. Looking back, I’m pretty sure they didn’t like Dad.”
“I’ll be asking your sisters these questions, too,” the detective said. “But please don’t discuss this with them ahead of time. I’d like to get their unfiltered recollections.”
“If her parents reported it,” Harlan said, “what happened? Was there an investigation?”
Johnson said, “We did question your dad about it at the time. Informally, because there was no evidence of a crime, but your mother was gone, and her parents were positive she wouldn’t have left her kids. Of course, parents don’t always like to believe the worst of their kids, but … we asked. Your dad showed the detective a postcard from your mom, postmarked Austin, Texas. He told him what clothes she’d taken, and that her suitcase and car were gone. There were none of her clothes in the closet, though. None of her stuff in the bedroom drawers, or in her bathroom. Kinda strange, the detective thought, to toss all her things after only a couple months. Angry, was the impression. More than angry. But that would be natural, if his wife had left him and the kids. Also, he mentioned the guy from the bookstore.”
“Did anybody check into that?” Harlan asked.
“Yes. They located him. He was working in Montana by then, and he claimed he hadn’t been more than friendly with your mom. A casual friendship, he called it, and he’d had no idea she was leaving her family. Very nervous, but he had a record.”
“For what?”
“Dodged the draft. Vietnam, end of the war. Moved to Canada for twenty years, and then came back.”
“Oh,” Harlan said. “Why didn’t they do more than that to check him out?”
“There was no evidence he did leave with her,” Johnson said. “The bookstore owner saw him drive away, because he came by to say goodbye. Had his trailer hitched to the back of his old pickup. That was where he lived, it seemed. Owner said he seemed normal, and nobody had seen the two of them together outside the bookstore, though that didn’t mean much, not if he lived in that trailer, someplace out of the way. The detective at the time—retired now, but a good man—figured that maybe he’d encouraged her to leave. Unhappy marriage, from what Grant said, though he didn’t say much. Maybe they even started out on the road together, but then they split up. It happens. And a guy with a record, being questioned by the cops because she’d disappeared … he’d be nervous.”
“Dad told us,” Harlan said, “that he tried to find her, to get her to pay child support, but the authorities couldn’t trace her. That she’d skipped. He said she’d probably moved to England or something. That she’d always wanted to live in England. She loved reading English books. Literature, murder mysteries, didn’t matter. Dad said she got to go follow her dreams, and he was stuck with us. Did he do that? Ask the … whoever it would be, to trace her, to get her to pay?”
“No,” the detective said, and Jennifer saw Harlan absorbing the syllable, and what it meant. “What was his attitude toward her, after she left?”
“He hated her,” Harlan said.
“He told me,” Annabelle said, her lips white and trembling, “that I was lucky he didn’t take off, too. That I was lucky I still had one parent who gave a damn about me. Why would he say that, if he … if he …”
“That was cruel,” Jennifer said. She’d been silent through all of this, but she couldn’t be silent anymore. “That was the other crime. Not letting you grieve your mother. Making you hate her.”
Annabelle nodded and sobbed once, then put her hand to her face, hiding her eyes, and Harlan had his arm around her. “Hey, Bug,” he said. “Hey, now. It’s OK. It’s hard to know, but it’s better.” Rocking her a little, the same way he’d done with Jennifer.