They didn’t ask for my opinion, but I might as well chime in here. “Maybe if you could get her to talk to a therapist or someone—”
“She won’t go,” Ben says. “I should never have agreed to let her live here. I’m shipping her back to her mother.”
Her mother!A little bell goes off in my head. Ben and Hailey’s mother have been divorced for years. Has Metcalf contacted the previous Mrs. Harrison? I doubt it. She’d be a great person to talk to about Ben… if I had any idea how to reach her.
I need to know more, but I’ve got to play it cool. “Hailey might not like switching schools,” I say.
“I don’t care,” Ben says. “School was her reason for wanting to live here with us.”
That’s my first clue. A different school system means the ex-wife does not live nearby.
“She’ll miss her friends,” I say. This will tell me if the ex is within driving distance.
“Who cares?” Ben says. “Let her make new friends.”
“Oh. Where does her mother live?” I ask. I make it sound innocent, like I’m just curious.
“Milford,” he says. Excellent. There’s a Milford in Connecticut, one state away. A simple trip I can take on my day off.
But of course, nothing about this job is simple.
While I wait for Amber to finish nursing Lily, I pull out my cell phone. A quick Google search reveals there’s also a Milford, New Jersey; Milford, Pennsylvania; Milford, New Hampshire; Milford, Massachusetts; Milford, Nebraska; and Milford, Utah. Multiplying all those cities by all the Harrisons who live there without knowing the woman’s first name or if she still goes by the last name Harrison or if she’s remarried… well, I have my work cut out for me.
Only one thing to do.
I’ve got to make friends with Hailey.
CHAPTER 36
I KNEW SHE’D BE ANGRY. I should have realized that in the privacy of her own room, she’d be in tears. I knock on her door.
“Go away,” Hailey says, sniffling. “I hate you.”
“It’s Caroline,” I say.
A pause. Then: “I hate you too.”
“Really?” I ask, standing outside the closed door. “That’s odd. Most people don’t hate me until they get to know me.”
Do I hear a bit of a chuckle? I think so. I wait. Then I hear her clumping toward me in her four-pound Doc Martens. She opens the door.
“What,” she says. It’s more a statement than a question.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
But she’s still standing there. Then she takes a tiny step backward, as if indicating that it’s okay for me to come in—the second-best invitation I got today.
Her room is painted a morose gray, and the walls are hung with posters of rock stars I’ve never heard of. All of them have multiple piercings on their cheeks, ears, lips, eyebrows, navels, and God knows where else. No wonder they call it heavy metal.
I sit down on Hailey’s bed and try to get comfortable. It’s not easy. Pound for pound, my bodysuit has more foam than her mattress. Where to begin? I think back to my interrogation training, where I learned all the different kinds of lies that agents can use to get at the truth. Hailey is clearly a hostile witness. I’ve got to go full FBI on her.
I start with something that’s not quite true but almost.
“My mom and dad got divorced when I was a kid. It came as a total shock. I had no idea.” (Of course I didn’t. I was two years old. That’s known as a lie of omission.)
“I hated them for it,” I add. (Not true. My parents felt so guilty that I got lots of extra toys and attention for years. I was happy. Lie of fabrication.)
