When the case was over, I left my father’s house, where I had been staying since the night we found Emma in her grave. I told my father I wanted to live with Witt and his wife and take some classes in New York. I told him I needed not to be in this town where my sister died. I told him I would see him all the time, anytime he wanted. And someday soon, I will tell him about my daughter. I will have to tell everyone because she cannot live in the shadows. I will tell them she is the daughter of a stranger, some man I met in New York after I ran away. It doesn’t matter. She will not be the child of Hunter Martin.
Witt gave me a huge hug when I walked in the door. Hestarted to cry and he told me we would only look forward from now on. No looking back. I nodded and told him how grateful I was to him for keeping my secret and for taking care of my baby while I was tricking my mother. He laughed and said that his wife now wanted a child after having one all these months and so I owed him “big-time” because he had planned on a few more years of being free.
I heard a different kind of cry come from up the stairs. Then I heard little feet running and then I saw little blond curls flopping on a little round face that was smiling.
I took my daughter in my arms and I squeezed her so tight. I kissed her face and I pressed my cheek against her cheek and felt her skin and smelled her smell and let her fill me again with hope.
I knew I would have to learn to live with it—the hope and the fear always together.
The hope is easy. I believe children do that to us. They make us have it because without it, my God, can you imagine? Looking at your child without hope for the future would be like feeling the sun on your face five billion years from now.
It’s the fear that is hard. It’s hard because I know what’s inside me. The scream my mother put inside me, which got bigger and bigger. The scream her parents put inside her. The scream I fear is inside my daughter after all that she’s been through, that maybe I put inside her.
It has also been explained to me that my mother is a pathological narcissist, which means the scream inside her got so big, she had to become someone else, the prettiest girl in the world, the smartest woman in the world, and the best mother in the world. And she had to make everyone love her that way by using every weapon she had. Sex. Cruelty. Fear. This makes sense to me and I understand it. But it does not give me any comfort.
They say sociopaths are created in early childhood. They say we are all formed by age three. I like to think that I got my daughter away in time. I know what I did to my sister by thirsting for power and escalating the war that led to her death. I know what I did to Rick, the boatman. I know what I did to my mother and Jonathan Martin. And I know what I did to Dr. Winter, making her lie and live with that lie forever, risking her career. I have added to my list making amends with her because she saw me, understood me and knew what to do to find Emma. This is a gift I can never repay.
I know all these things I’ve done and so I know what’s inside me and how it got there. And so when I look at my daughter, this beautiful child, I have hope but also fear.
“Mommy,” she said. And I looked at my brother, surprised. For her entire life, she has only known me as Cass.
“I’ve been showing her your picture,” he said with a big smile. “I’ve been telling her your name, your real name, isMommy.”
I kissed her again. My face was drenched in tears.
My list is very long now. It is filled with the things I will do and will not do to protect her from what might be inside her and to protect her from what I know is inside me. I will dedicate my life to this list. I will do that for my child and to honor my dead sister.
“And what should I call you?” I asked her. She had been named Julia and I had called her that because it felt cruel not to.
But then she answered, “Emma!”
“I taught her that as well,” Witt said.
“Emma!” I cried back to her. “That’s right. Your name is Emma. And my name is Mommy. We were just playing a game before. But now the game is over. Now we’ve come home.”
My heart was, all at once, full.
“I love you!” I said. And I knew that I mean it in the purest, most perfect way. When I hold her, I feel my sister, my first Emma, when she would come to me in the night, when we felt safe and love felt possible.
I will cling to that now, like the boat that finally brought me home.
