“Mm-hmm. But where did Daddy go?”
I hated lying to my children. Even when Audrey had asked the Christmas before if Santa Claus was real, I had answered with a version of the truth—some people believed, some didn’t. To which Audrey had replied, with surprising indifference, “I knew he was fake. But unicorns are real.” I had been glad she hadn’t pressed on that last part.
“Daddy went to a conference, remember?”
From the back seat, Audrey sighed dramatically, as was her habit. “I know that.” Her voice was suddenly serious. “I meant where did Daddy go last night?”
Struggling for words that contained some honesty, I pulled in front of Zoe’s house and parked. I turned in my seat to face Audrey. “I’m not sure. I thought we could try to figure it out together.”
I kept my tone light, as if I were suggesting a game that promised great fun. “I saw that pumpkin you mentioned,” I prompted. “It was cool.”
“The puking one?” She smiled, but it was soft at its edges. Talking about the night before bothered her. “Do you think it would be hard to make? Daddy’s good at art, so I bet he could do it.”
Her smile disintegrated, and a hand closed around my heart. “I bet he could. Did he see it too?”
Audrey’s small shoulders rose, then fell. “He was talking to the lady.”
The hand holding my heart squeezed. “What lady?”
“The one in the house.”
I thought of the neighbor, Helen. I described her to Audrey and asked, “That lady?”
Audrey shook her head. “The lady in the house with the broken windows.”
I tried to uncoil the tension in my shoulders, forcing my words out slowly to hide my surging anxiety. “Was she on the steps with you guys? Or inside the house?”
“Like I said, in the house.”
“Was the porch light on?” Realizing it was starting to sound like an interrogation, not wanting to upset Audrey, I added, “Just tell me what you remember.”
“I don’t think the light was on. She didn’t have candy. The house before gave out regular candy bars, not the small ones. If we’re getting ice cream, can I still have my Halloween candy when I get home?”
Because we both knew the answer would be no, I ignored the question. “What else do you remember?”
“I don’t know.” Audrey started to fidget. “What time are we going to get ice cream?”
I tried to read whether this was the typical impatience of a six-year-old or something else. But too much rested on her answers to stop asking my questions. “Do you remember what the woman looked like?”
At first, though I could tell Audrey remembered, she didn’t answer. Why?
Then she said, “Her hair was gray.”
Gray? Not what I was expecting.
“Was the woman’s hair short or long?”
“Long. And her face was gray too. Except for the black marks on her forehead. I think it was supposed to look like she was broken.”
So she was in costume. A sudden thought chilled me, If she was even a she.
“Was the woman big?”
Audrey looked confused, and I realized to her, all adults were big. So I rephrased the question, “Was she as tall as Daddy?”
“I don’t think so. Daddy’s tall.”
“Did she go to the haunted house with you and Daddy?”
Audrey squirmed in her seat, turning away from me and toward the window. “I don’t remember. That’s when I saw Savannah.” She looked at me again. “Did I tell you she was a cat too?”
“Yes, you did. She was brown and didn’t have a tiara, I think you said.”
“She was brown.” Audrey began reciting other details about Savannah’s costume—her whiskers were apparently drawn on with her mom’s eyeliner—before expanding her description to other costumes she had seen the night before.
Suddenly, I was certain: my questions were making Audrey uncomfortable. Did she sense what might have happened even as I tried to hide it from her? Or had she seen something she couldn’t quite remember but also couldn’t fully forget?
“Did something happen you don’t want to tell me?”
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t seem okay. You seem sad.”
Of course she was sad.
Audrey’s voice was small when she answered, “I don’t like that Daddy left me.”
My heart broke, and I leaned into the back seat to kiss the top of my daughter’s head. “I don’t like it either.”
My daughter’s face filled with the light of sudden clarity. “I know! Why don’t we just call Daddy and ask him where he was after I saw Savannah?”
I squeezed her hand, and then told her another truth that nevertheless felt like a lie. “I don’t think Daddy’s available right now.”
“Can we call him later then?”
“We can try.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Audrey said. “Daddy will call us. He always does when he goes away.”
I thought, Not this time. But I said, “I bet you’re right. Daddy loves you very much.” The last part, at least, wasn’t a lie.
18
Parked outside the high school, I opened the glove box and pulled out the envelope—large, tan, and unsealed. I propped it on my lap so it rested against the steering wheel.
Every choice I had made since Sam’s disappearance I had immediately doubted.
If I had spent more time questioning those moms, they might have remembered more. They might have offered the phone numbers I’d forgotten to request.
If I had been home instead of confronting Ozzy that first night, I would have been there when Carver took Sam’s car. The police could have arrested him then.
Then there were the other choices I had made before Sam went missing. The late nights. The missed connections.
But this latest choice—whether to open the envelope—seemed straightforward. Of course I should open it. Knowledge was always better than ignorance. Wasn’t it?
I tossed the envelope on the passenger seat, took out my phone, and dialed. My father answered on the first ring.
“Cassie?” The excitement in his voice chipped at my heart a little.
“Hi, Red.” It had been a long time since I had called him Dad.
“How’ve you been, sweetheart?”
How to summarize six years of life in less than thirty seconds? “The clinic’s doing well, and the kids are pretty amazing.”
“They would be.” Neither of us pointed out how long it had been since our last conversation. We both knew how long it had been, and we both remembered how that last call had ended. “Leo must be huge by now. And Audrey—she’s okay?”
“She’s okay,” I confirmed. “Leo just got his permit.”
He chuckled, a familiar rumbling. “Teaching you to drive . . . scariest months of my life.”
My father wasn’t exaggerating. In my teens, I had been a reckless driver. Back then, I had been reckless in most things.
“I got better once I had kids.”
He sighed at that. “I’m sure you’re a great mom.”