“But you never took me with you!” There were tears in her eyes now, and a flash of memory caught Anne off guard: her three-year-old daughter tucked away in her suitcase, giggling… then crying when Anne told her again that she couldn’t go to college with her.
“I tried,” Anne said, half choking on the words. Shehadtried, years later, to persuade Zoe to move to the mainland and live with her. But by then, it was too little too late. “You didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“I barely knew you. I was just a kid! This isn’tonme! It’s not my fault that I wanted to stay in the only home I’d ever known, and it’snotmy fault that you weren’t here when I needed you.”
Anne swallowed her tears and nodded. She didn’t know what else to say, and Zoe took that dead space in the conversation as her cue to flee.
Anne went inside to find her mother.
Dawn was alone now, scrolling on her phone at the kitchen table and nursing her second cup of coffee. Anne sat across from her and waited for her to look up.
“What happened to Zoe?” she asked her mother.
Dawn’s forehead came together, and she focused her electric-blue eyes on Anne. There was no surprise in her mother’s expression, no confusion. She knew exactly what Anne was talking about.
“Was she–” Anne’s voice caught on the word, and the question died in her throat. She glanced at the kitchen door and tried again. “Did somebody hurt her?”
Dawn swallowed silently, and Anne felt scared that she would just put her off the way Halia had. But her mother’s eyes stayed fixed on hers, and she nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Anne’s voice was ragged, shredded by the lump in her throat.
“I wanted to, but she begged me not to. She begged me not to tell anyone.”
“You told Halia!”
Dawn shook her head. “Halia’s the one who found her.”
Anne squeezed her eyes shut, and hot tears poured down her cheeks. She forced out one word: “Who?”
“Some tourist.” Dawn’s voice was heavy. “They never found him.”
Anne wondered if ‘they’ meant the locals or the police. Maybe both. It didn’t matter – except that the circle of people who had known about this kept growing.
“You should have told me,” she said in a ragged voice.
“What good would that have done?”
“I’m her mother!” Anne opened her eyes. “I should have been there for her!”
“You were on the mainland with a newborn.”
A new fear rose in Anne’s chest.
“Pete?”
Dawn shook her head, and there was a deep compassion in her eyes.
“Claire.”
A muffled curse escaped Anne’s throat. She bent forward, doubled over with the pain of what her mother had just said. The tears she had tried to hold back ripped through her, and she sobbed uncontrollably.
When Claire was a newborn, Zoe was just thirteen years old.
Eventually her sobs subsided, and Dawn patted her shoulder.
Anne sat up and grabbed a napkin, which she used to mop at her face and blow her nose. The deep, tearing pain in her chest was still there, but she was all out of tears. Sitting there in silence, though, the pain felt even worse.
She had failed her daughter over and over again. And then, when the worst had happened, she was nothing but a stranger living her life on the mainland.
