She reached for a tissue at the side of her bed and blew her nose. “I know. It was just this resistance deep down. This fear you’d leave me if I gave you everything.” She blew her nose again. “It was asking me if I wanted children that blew it to a head because that also terrifies me. The idea that I could be a mother.”
“You’d make a wonderful mother.”
“Oh please.”
A crooked smile curved over his lips, and his eyes gleamed as she held his gaze.
“If you still want me,” she whispered. “If you’re really prepared to put up with my shit, I want to give this my best shot, Maddocks. I can see it now, a way forward. Come hell or high water. I know ... I think I really do know in my heart that we can weather anything that comes now. Together. Until death do us part.”
His face crumpled. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, and she tasted the salt of those tears as he whispered in her ear, “You are so stubborn that you had to turn it all around, didn’t you? You had to take the proposal into your own control.”
She smiled and wiped her cheeks. “Hey, you told me not to come back until I was sure.” Her mood turned serious. “This is me being sure, James Maddocks. If you still want this, marry me on April twenty-seventh, a spring Saturday in the city, at the cathedral. I have my dress, and my dad said he’d give me away.” She paused, holding his gaze. “And maybe my mother will sing. With Ginny and her choir.”
“You told them?” he said quietly.
“I told them maybe it would happen.”
He fell silent as he struggled with a surge of emotion. “Yes, Angie Pallorino.” His voice hitched. “Until death do us part.” He regarded her steadily, moisture glistening in his eyes. “Just hold off from trying to hasten the death part, okay? We need a calm run for a while.”
She laughed with relief and love and release, and he kissed her again hard on the mouth, and Angie felt as though she’d come home. She hadn’t known until this point what that truly felt like. Now she did. Home was these people. Home was those you loved. And a family could be built of many disparate parts, irrespective of the past. Or because of it.
CHAPTER 48
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I see the evening star from my tiny window in the container where he keeps me ... It reminds me of long ago nights like this, sitting at a campfire with my dad. He taught me to fly-fish when I was little girl—that was the beginning of a journey that led me to this point, to the river where I thought I was going to die. To this place in this container. Life is like a river, said Rachel. Life is absurd. The only constant is the water of change. She’s right. I’m at a different point in that river now, and all that matters is You. I survived—I continue to survive—only for You. I wasn’t able to get rid of You. I was going to, but something stopped me that day I went with Sophie. I thought I’d think about it further on the fishing trip. I still had a window of time to do this. And I threw everything against You during that trip—drinking, trying to have sex with different men. I was beating myself up with it all because, I think, I was scared. So very scared. Of losing my independence. Of losing my choices. Of being responsible for a life. But when I looked into the cold eyes of death, when I had faced that temptation to give up or hold on, it was You who took over.
I did it for You. And Your birth changed everything. It made me the most blessed person in the world, even while inside this container. I’d given life. I looked into your little eyes and saw they were green as the river thatchanged me, and I named you Claire ... and one day I will sit at a campfire with you, Claire. One day we’re going to get free ...
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER29
Angie found Claire on the Port Ferris Bay dock.
The young woman stood right at the very end that jutted into the gunmetal-gray water. Whitecaps dotted the horizon. Rays of sun streaked down through a gap in the thick wads of cloud. Claire’s long hair blew loose in the wind, and her hands were buried deep in her pockets. She was oblivious, it seemed, to the shriek of gulls that swooped down on the man behind her who was hauling his crab pot up over the side of the dock. The old man was bent over, sorting through his catch, casting the undersize crustaceans back into the water. As Angie approached the man, she thought of forensic scientist Jacob Anders and his seaside lab and the taphonomy studies he was doing in conjunction with Simon Fraser University to see how long bodies took to decompose underwater. And what sea creatures, like crabs, ate at the flesh. He’d helped Angie in her hunt for her sister. She’d come a long way since her sister’s little foot had washed up on a beach in Tsawwassen.
Like Claire, Angie had been devastated by the revelation she was not who she’d been told she was, that she’d been raised on lies. That her entire life was false.
Yet she’d also learned later that those lies had been born out of love. Misguided love, yes. But love was not simple. Nothing about life was simple, or black, or white. Life was like that water in the bay and that sky. Shades upon shades of gray. A continually shifting interplay of light against dark and, every now and then, a few rays of sun.
Angie had been released from hospital this morning. Maddocks and Ginny were waiting to drive her back to the city, where she would catch a plane and go straight to see Holgersen in the hospital in Vancouver. Before she left, however, shehadto see Claire. Especially after reading the words Jasmine had written while being held captive in that container.
From the hospital last night, Angie had called and asked Claire to meet her. Claire had refused. Angie said it was necessary in order to tie up some things for the investigation. Claire had reluctantly agreed. But only if they met out in the open. On neutral turf. Someplace where she could breathe fresh air and escape if she needed to.
Angie understood.
Her collar turned up against the cold sea wind, Angie reached the end of the dock and came up beside Claire.
“Thanks for meeting with me.”
Claire nodded but said nothing and did not look at Angie. Her profile was strong. Angie was struck—now that she knew the truth—by how much Claire resembled her biological mother in looks. The genetic echoes of both Jasmine and Doug Hart were all there in her height, her long, lean limbs, her smooth and even-toned complexion, her flashing green eyes. Angie’s heart crunched with affection for this woman. And with sorrow.
“I wanted to say thank you,” Angie said softly.
Claire inhaled deeply as she watched a boat entering the bay, gulls chasing and wheeling in the wake. The faint sound of the engine reached them, along with a tinge of diesel fuel on the wind.
Claire stole a glance at Angie. The young woman’s eyes were red-rimmed and full of pain and fury and aloneness. Angie’s chest constricted. Guilt whispered.
“Isthatwhy you brought me out here—to say thank you?”
“Partly. You saved my life. I need to thank you for that. You also saved the life of another young woman who was lost and held captive for a year. Her name is Annelise Janssen. You brought her back to her parents, Claire, by calling Darnell Jacobi on your father and by pulling us out of that river.” She paused. “You could have left it. Let us all be buried and gone with the truth. No one would have known about Annelise. Or what really happened to Jasmine.”
