"We talked about me," she says. "She wanted to know everything from beginning to end. Of course, I don’t remember all the way back to when I was four, but I do have glimpses of things. Mom reading to me at bedtime and me crying for Dani. How she held me until the tears stopped. How you stopped wearing your uniform whenever you visited because seeing you triggered the memory of the day Dani and I got separated."
"How did she react to that?" I ask, wanting to know more.
"She didn’t comment on it," she says, pursing her lips. "I think she’s still a little mad at you."
"A little?" I say, raising an eyebrow. "I think a lot is more like it."
"Yeah," she agrees. "She’s not very happy with you. So we didn't talk about you."
"Of course," I say.
"She’ll come around," she says, trying to make me feel better about it.
"Did you talk about her time in the group home?"
"I tried to ask about it, but she said it was more important to focus on me. That there’d be plenty of time to talk about the sad stuff later, and today should be about the happy things."
"That was smart," I say.
"She asked me what my favorite things were," she says. "It was weird… because she didn’t seem to know."
"What do you mean?"
"She didn’t know my favorite color is purple, or that I love butterflies. She didn’t know I got five dollars from the tooth fairy, or that I got a bike for my fifth birthday. She should've had a picture of me riding it, training wheels and all. It’s like… she didn’t know anything about me. But those are all things I told her. In the letters. There were pictures. The ones Mom and I sent."
I feel the breath leave my lungs. "That’s because she never got them," I murmur.
Beth pulls back, confusion knitting her brow. "What do you mean, she never got them?"
I look at her. Really look at her, and realize how much she’s lost without ever knowing it. And how much of that is on me.
It’s at this moment I decide—I have to speak to Meghan.
I need the truth. And this time, I won’tbe so trusting.
***
After I drop off Beth at home and arrange for Mom to pick up Hannah from school, I drive to Hanover—unwilling to wait for Meghan to have time to see me. Her car isn't in the driveway, but I decide I’ll wait as long as it takes.
Sitting in the car, I begin to wonder how the hell I let myself be taken for a fool by her. So much for my instincts, as a cop, as a man. Why did I allow myself to be manipulated? She was beautiful, intelligent, passionate about her job. She loved the kids she was in charge of.
Or so I thought.
I should’ve seen the warning signs.
"What are you going to do with your life?" she used to ask me. "Are you going to climb the ladder in the police department until you make captain? You could run for mayor someday."
If the red flags had been any more crimson, they would’ve been floating in blood.
But I was captivated—hooked from the start by her beauty, the way she looked at me. Her smile. Those blue eyes. The way she laughed.
At first, I was mesmerized.
And then, I fell in love.
We were happy at first. But the second she realized she couldn’t mold me, couldn’t bend my goals to match her ambitions, it all went downhill from there.
"Mr. Callahan." A husky voice pulls me from my unwelcome memories and self-condemnation. "Are you here to see Ms. Fletcher? She's out of town this week. Attending a conference in Indianapolis."
