All the Missing Girls (12 page)

The same combination on her brother—the dark hair, the brown eyes, the cinnamon skin—somehow had the opposite effect. He faded into a group, shrank from our focus. I wondered whether he and Annaleise had been close. If he knew something more that he'd kept for himself. Maybe why she'd asked about the Corinne Prescott case in the first place.

Mark had been fourteen when I left. The only thing I really remembered about his personality was that he was exceptionally goofy in that immature-boy way in his own home. Outside, he was morose and quiet. And when I ran into him outside of his house, away from his family, he blushed when he saw me, like he was embarrassed that I knew the other version.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

His cheeks tinged red, and I was glad to see I still had that effect. It would make him overcompensate by oversharing. “Got a tip,” he said, staring past me. “From a nurse. About a potential crime. We're required to follow up.”

I nodded, tried to steady my hand, tried to slow my breath.
Could be anyone. How many patients are there? What did that brochure say? Six hundred and twenty? Maybe two hundred and sixty. Still, less than a one percent chance.

“So how've you been? Still living in town?”

“Nah. Just work there. I live a few miles from Bailey. Nice area. You know.”

He was acting like I had a clue about Bailey. I didn't know where she lived or what she did. Didn't want to ask around, to draw attention to the uncomfortable truth: Bailey and I didn't speak. Not after Corinne had disappeared. Hardly ever a day since.

That box in the police station, it does things to people. Makes you tell things about each other. Becomes a permanent record of your betrayal, with your signature below.

“Well,” I said, “it was really good seeing you, Mark.”

I was almost at the door when he called after me. “Hey, Nic,” he said, using some voice I'd never heard from him. His cop voice. “You in town for a while?”

I shrugged. “Just taking care of some loose ends.” I gripped the papers tighter to keep my hands from shaking.

He didn't ask why I was here or who I was visiting.

He already knew.

As soon as the doors shut behind me, I raced to my father's room.

DAD WAS PARTICULARLY DISORIENTED,
or rattled, or both.

He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall, faintly rocking back and forth. I knocked on the open door, but he didn't answer. “Dad?” I called. He turned to look at me, then went back to the wall and the rocking. He was shutting down.

There was no imminent danger. No reason for the director to call Daniel or schedule a meeting or explain her concerns. They were probably quite pleased with themselves.

But for me, this was scarier. He wasn't clawing for sanity, or fighting for understanding, or raging against the unfamiliar. He was letting go.

On the wall across from the bed were pictures of us, of me and Daniel and the nurses and doctors, people he shouldn't be afraid of. People he should remember. He was staring right through them now. I stood beside my picture. My hair was shorter in it, and I was smiling, and Dad had his arm slung over my shoulder. It was from when we brought him here last year, taken in this very room, because we couldn't find any recent photos of the two of us.
With daughter, Nic,
it said underneath in Daniel's handwriting.

Dad kept rocking. He was mumbling something—repeating words to himself, all strung together in nonsense. “Dad,” I tried again, but he still looked right through me.

Then he stopped, paused, focused. “Shana?” he asked.

I closed my eyes, and he went back to rocking.

There was no picture of my mother on the walls. It had been a hard decision, the one Daniel and I wavered over the most—whether to put her up there and fill him with the hope that she still existed. Or whether to pretend she never did. Which was worse? Daniel and I debated it over dinner the night before we moved him in. I was the one who made the decision, because I knew: The losing. The losing of something you thought you had. That was far, far worse.

I stepped into the hallway, the light too bright, the buzzing from the fluorescence drowning out the low hum of voices in the other rooms. “Hey,” I said to the first official-looking person walking down the hall. No scrubs, business casual, hair loose, and a birdlike face. I recognized her from the last time I was here. I grabbed her arm as she tried to walk past with a stiff smile. “What did you do to him?” I asked.

Maybe it was the way I grabbed her arm, or maybe the look in my eye, but she blinked slowly and said, “I'll page the doctor.”

“No. I want to speak with Karen Addelson,” I said firmly, trying to summon my best impression of Everett, calling the director by her full name.

“She's in a meeting.”

If Everett were here, he'd have her pulled out of that meeting without it seeming like his idea. He'd let this woman talk herself in circles:
She shouldn't be long; oh, I see the problem here; well, maybe I'll just peek my head in, see if she can spare a moment.
Make it seem like her idea all along.

“I need to talk to her,” I said.

“I'll let her know as soon as she's done.”

“Now,” I said. “I need to talk to her
now.
Has someone been to see my dad? Is that why he's silently rocking back and forth on his bed right now? Is this what you all mean by”—I raised my hands in makeshift quotes—“exceptional patient care?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Fine. You can sit in the waiting room. I'll tell her you're here.”

I followed her determined steps down the hall. “Why were the police here?” I asked.

Her step faltered, but she kept moving. “I don't know. The cops showed up an hour ago—”

“Cops or
cop
?” I asked. “Mark Stewart?”

She paused at the office door, turned to me with a quizzical look. “One cop.” She cleared her throat. “Asian, I think?” She blushed again, like that wasn't the PC way to describe someone.

Just a guy. Just a goofy, sullen kid.
Mark.

“And you let him talk to my dad? I will hold you all personally accountable if this”—I made an arm movement trying to encompass everything my dad was at the moment—“gets worse.”

She gestured toward the couch, then sat at the desk in the outer
office. “I was in here. I have no idea what happened.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button. “I have Patrick Farrell's daughter in the waiting room.”

Karen Addelson was outside her office, escorting a couple and making apologies for the interruption, within a solid minute. The director held out her hands. “Nicolette. Please, come in.” As if she'd been expecting me.

Her office had potted plants and a little Zen garden on a coffee table, a miniature rake with lazy curving lines through the sand. “What did you do to my dad? I saw Officer Stewart in the parking lot, and my dad is practically catatonic in his room. What the hell happened?”

“Sit, please,” she said.

I sat in the straight-back chair in front of her desk, ignoring the couch she was gesturing toward. Tough to feel self-righteous when you're stuffed into an oversize couch in front of a Zen garden.

She took her time walking to the other side of the desk. When she sat, she folded her hands on top of the desk blotter, the blue veins running over her knuckles, making her look about ten years older than I'd originally thought. Sixties. Dad's age. God, he shouldn't be here.

“Ms. Farrell,” she began, “I cannot stop the police from questioning a patient, as much as I wish that weren't the case. It was just a few questions. Apparently, your father might've been a potential witness to a crime.”

I laughed. “Sure. I'm sure they were hoping he'd be a great witness they could use on the stand.”

“Ms. Farrell,” she said, “even if he was deemed unfit legally, our hands are tied. It is not our legal right to ban the police from questioning a patient. That responsibility is yours.”

“Have you seen him? He's a mess. Nothing he says makes any sense.”

“Look. He was talking to a nurse, and the nurse says he called
her Nic, and he kept mentioning a missing girl. That he knew what happened. She had to report it, you see.”

I fought to keep the surprise from my face, but a wave of nausea rolled through, working its way from my stomach to my throat. “No, don't
you
see? If he thought someone else was me, then he already didn't know what he was saying. Don't you see the fallacy in your logic? Nothing he says makes any sense.”

“On the contrary, your father is a very smart man. There's always truth in there somewhere. Maybe you should ask him. Ask him about the missing girl, see what he says.”

“Were you there?” I asked.

She took a moment to compose herself, and I recognized her pause as a tactic Everett would use. Be calm, calm the situation. Keep the emotion low, grasp the upper hand. “No. He insisted it be private. They are the police, after all. My hands are tied.”

I pushed back from the table. When I got angry, I couldn't stop the tears. As if the two emotions were all tangled up in each other. And that made me angrier, since I seemed weak when I wanted to seem confident and demanding, like Everett. The best I could muster was the grand gesture of storming out of the room.

IT TOOK OVER AN
hour for Dad to recognize me, and I sat in his room the whole time, waiting it out. Then it all seemed to click. He looked at the picture on the wall and me on the guest chair in the corner. “Nic,” he said, fingers drumming against the surface of his dresser. “Nic, your friend. Your friend's brother. Did you know he's a cop? I didn't know—”

“It's okay, Dad. I'll take care of it. Tell me what he asked. Tell me what you said.” I stood and closed the door, and he was watching me from the sides of his eyes.

“About that girl. That girl who disappeared.”

I shivered. “You don't have to answer. It was ten years ago, and Mark probably doesn't even remember—”

“No, not Corinne. I mean, yes, her. But also. The other. The other girl. The . . .”

“Annaleise Carter? You couldn't possibly be a witness. You've been in here for . . .” I cleared my throat. “You were here when she went missing.”

“How long, Nic? How long have I been in here? It's important.”

I paused. “About a year.”

He sucked in a breath. “I'm late.”

“Dad, what did they ask?” I said, trying to keep his focus.

“They wanted to know if I knew her well. And your brother. Always your brother. He never should've done that.” He stared at the side of my face as if he could see the mark Daniel left ten years earlier. As if it happened just a moment ago. I felt the sting rise to the surface like a memory, and I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek, expecting to taste blood. The swing of his arm that had sentenced him to constant suspicion. “And if I thought they were related. Corinne and Annaleise. Yes. That's what he wanted to know. There's too much in that house, Nic.”

“There's nothing in the house, Dad. I promise.”

“There's plenty,” he said. “I need to . . . I keep memories. A record, to help my mind, a—”

The nurse opened the door. “Mrs. Addelson wants him evaluated by the doctor. Come on, Patrick,” she said to him without making eye contact with me.

He stood and leaned down as he passed, his heavy hand resting on my shoulder. “With the skeletons,” he whispered. “Get it. Get it first.”

I SPENT THE RIDE
home calling people who didn't pick up the phone. Daniel was at work, on site somewhere. Tyler was probably
busy at work, too. Everett didn't pick up but sent me a text after saying he was stuck in a meeting and would call later.

When I pulled into the driveway, Laura was waiting on the front porch, leaning back on her elbows, shifting uncomfortably on the wooden steps.

Something was wrong. We didn't have a random-drop-in relationship. We hadn't spoken since the baby shower. And what kind of news couldn't she give over the phone? I held my breath as I walked toward the steps, my heart pounding, before I saw the pots and containers of soil spread out on the porch.

“Hey,” she said, slightly unsure herself. “Dan said you guys could use some stuff for the garden. And I'm in full-on nesting mode, but I've run out of things to nest with. I'd do it myself, but I topple over when I try to garden now. It's embarrassing.”

“Thank you. You didn't have to do this. But thank you.”

“And,” she said. “I wanted to apologize for Saturday. For my friends.”

I shook my head fast. “Don't. It's fine.”

“It's not,” she said. “They sometimes don't think. They're good people, really. But that doesn't excuse it.”

“Okay,” I said, just to get her to stop. I sat down on the step beside her. “I'd invite you in to cool down, but I think it's probably worse in there. Do you want a drink?”

“No, I'm fine,” she said. “Are you busy? Or do you have time for me to walk you through some of this?”

Her voice was so hopeful, I couldn't send her away. Not like this. Not right now. Not when everyone else was unreachable and all I had left were my dad's words for company. With the skeletons, he said. I felt my mind wanting to dive down the rabbit hole after him. “Yes,” I said. “I have time.”

Laura had a scent to her, the fragrance from the garden catching, clinging, taking root in her. Like she herself was blooming or
thriving. Her skin had gone transparent, or her veins had darkened as blood rushed under her skin, and I could see the fine map running through her.
Life,
I thought.

“These are full-shade,” she said, gesturing to a pot, “so I thought they'd be perfect for the side garden.” She paused, frowned. “Some animal really made a mess of it.”