But the next time Hunter came home for a weekend, he did not bring Joe. Emma tried to hide her disappointment. We went outside to smoke and get away from our mother and Mr. Martin. We were out by the pool house. Hunter told Emma she had made a fool of herself calling and e-mailing Joe when he never responded and obviously had just used her for the weekend. Emma called him anasshole.Hunter called her awhore.Emma told him Nat had said he didn’t know how to kiss. Hunter said Nat was askank.It went on like this for the entire cigarette until finally Hunter told her Joe had a girlfriend. Emma went quiet. Her face quivered but she did not cry—not then, anyway. Hunter was smiling as he put the cigarette out with his shoe. He seemed satisfied, as if he had just won a battle. Emma ran back to the house ahead of us, and as I walked back with Hunter, I could see his satisfaction fade. A war had begun in our home, and it would not end until the night we disappeared. Hunter had not wanted to defeat Emma, because defeat meant the war was over. And Hunter never wanted anything with Emma to be over.
Still—Emma had been defeated in that one battle. That knowing look on her face that night when Joe was on top of her did not mean she was right. In fact, she turned out to be very, very wrong about him and her plan to make him her boyfriend. That was the second rude awakening—the moment when I saw Emma defeated, when I realized that she could be defeated. I did not like knowing this. Not one bit.
***
A light from down the hall pulled me back from the image of Emma on that bed with Joe. My mother had come from her room. She seemed startled to find me still in the hall and not tucked away and sound asleep.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?”
She walked toward me, and I let her. She put her arms around me, and I let her. She smelled of face products and Chanel No. 5, and I will admit to feeling a warm current rush through my body. It was the same current I had felt that morning, only it had grown stronger. Loving our mothers never goes away, and I was surprised to learn this at that moment when I was having this memory of Emma and her defeat.
“Sweetheart, I think you’re confused about that night when you left. No more stories about Emma and that island until we get you checked out, okay? I think you might be having dreams or fantasies, and if you tell them something that’s wrong, then itcould make things worse. Do you understand? You were in your room that night, Cass. After you and Emma had your fight. You were in your room when Emma left the house, not in the back of Emma’s car. Don’t you remember?”
Mrs. Martin was stronger than I had ever imagined, and now she was turning the tables on me, on my story, and I felt desperate because that meant we might never find Emma. The agents were already questioning why she had not escaped with me.
Still, even through my desperation and rage, I was that same victim I’d been as a child, the one who gave in to her extortion, who paid whatever price was set for her love and who let Emma draw fire so I could run for cover. I thought I’d built walls these past three years to protect myself from Mrs. Martin, but if I had built them, they were made of sand and they crumbled in her arms.
“The things you’re saying can’t be true, Cass. I’m so scared that something is wrong with your mind.”
I wanted to hate her for saying these things to me. But I couldn’t. I still needed to love her.
And so when she whispered one last thing in my ear, “I love you,” and when she tried to hug me tighter, I allowed this third rude awakening in, and I let her.
EIGHT
Dr. Winter
It was not easy to leave the house, to leave Cass. Abby was haunted by the fear that she would disappear all over again.
The fear was irrational. The state police had agreed to leave a patrol car at the top of the driveway, day and night, until the Pratts were found. Judy and Jonathan Martin would be there, and her father would be ten minutes down the road. But more than anything else, Cass had no reason to leave and every reason to stay. She was desperate to find her sister.
Still, on the rare occasions when optimistic thoughts had beaten their way into Abby’s consciousness, when she had allowed herself to imagine this moment when the Tanner sisters were found, this was not how it played.
They interviewed Cass for three more hours before Judy finally asked them to leave for the night.
“She’s not well. I know it!” Judy had spoken about Cass as if she had not been right beside her. “I would have known if Emma was pregnant. And if she was, I would have helped her. She knew that. You know how close we were. You did all those interviews. None of this sounds like my daughter!”
She had insisted that Cass have some rest, and she won out over and above the objections of Abby and Leo. Abby agreed to do a formal psychological examination the following day, and Judy agreed to take Cass to the doctor first thing in the morning with one of the forensic agents.
And that was that. The excitement had quieted with the mundane tasks of assignments and logistics. Field agents in New Haven, Maine and Alaska had begun their work. Leo went back to the city to get some sleep. And Abby went home.
She walked into her house the same way she did at the end of every day, dropping her keys in a small ceramic bowl shaped like a hippopotamus that sat on a table next to the sofa. Her niece had made it in kindergarten and sent it in the mail last Christmas, neatly folded into plastic Bubble Wrap. Her dog was soon upon her, his entire body wagging with anticipation of food and attention. She reached down and rubbed his ears.
Her house, the dog, the reminders of her family—they had all been here, waiting for her to return from this miraculous day. But all of it seemed indifferent, unchanged by the momentous event of Cass Tanner’s coming home.
Maybe because there were still so many questions. As much as Abby hated to admit it, Judy Martin was not wrong. Emma was not the kind of girl to let anyone tell her what to do, especially not with something this important, this intimate. Owen would have supported whatever decision she made, and Judy would have matched his generosity with something even grander just to prove she was the better parent. They were far more likely to fight over Emma’s child than make her get rid of it.
Maybe that’s what Emma feared—another fight that would never end.
Leo had pushed hard on every front to get something,anything,that would help them find this one island in the thousands of islands off the coast of Maine. In all the conversations with the Pratts and the boatman, the groceries and packages he delivered, the lobster boats and sailboats and motorboats all off in the distance—was there not one name of a harbor or a yacht club? Cass said she had tried to find out where they were. She’d asked questions; she’d sifted through garbage. The Pratts were very careful. And all she could recount from the boats were names she could see on the larger sails, Hood and Doyle and Hobie Cat. Abby could see her face as she said the words over and over: “I tried! Every minute of every day, I tried!” She said the island felt enormous to her, like everyone saw it and knew it, only they were never close enough to see her, or hear her. It had felt unique to her, this prison, and so she always imagined it would be easily found. She knew the town where she got in the truck. She had counted the minutes to Portland. Abby’s impression was that she was telling the truth.
Cass had also insisted that the story of that first year and her first attempt to escape were important, and so they had let her tell it. She said it explained how she came to understand how difficult it would be to leave, and why it took so long. She said it explained how she came to know that the boatman would eventually help her find her way home, but that it would take time. And planning. But the story would not be finished before Judy made them leave, so Abby arrived home with more questions than answers.
She went to the kitchen and fed the dog. Then she opened the fridge. She took out some leftover pasta and put it in the microwave. She felt sick and was hoping it was from hunger. She hadn’t been able to eat all day.
At a small table in the corner, she set down the plate and a glass of water. Then she pulled out her phone. There were three textsfrom Meg, which she’d answered dismissively throughout the day. She removed her sister from her thoughts and played the recording she’d made of the interview with Cass.
She started it where Cass had left off in the morning.
