Emma in the Night

by Wendy Walker

  She agreed to work with an agent in New Haven. To turn over her phone records. To take a polygraph to prove she had nothing to do with the girls’ disappearance—that it was an affair with their stepfather and nothing more. Soon, she would hire an attorney and probably do none of those things without immunity. But she would do them.

  It felt like a lead. Jonathan Martin had told her things, confided in her about his wife and the girls and his son. Things could fall from her memory that seemed inconsequential but perhaps could lead them to the Pratts, or identify the father of Emma’s baby.

  Leo would focus on that, on the connection between Lisa Jennings, Jonathan Martin and a possible link to finding the Pratts’ identity.

  But Abby was curious about one other thing, and that was why Cass had given them the bread crumbs that led to this door. Cass had lied about Emma’s relationship with Lisa Jennings. That much they believed, which meant Cass had to have known about the affair—and wanted it exposed. Why else would she make up a lie to send them back there? She wanted them to question Jonathan Martin, and then question her mother so she would finally know. But to what end? Revenge for her terrible childhood? Or something else? Abby had no doubt that Cass knew exactly what they would find when they tracked down Lisa Jennings.

  Leo was quiet for a long moment. Then he asked a question that they had not planned on. “Did you ever refer to Emma Tanner as Lolita?”

  Jonathan Martin’s back straightened abruptly. He looked disgusted by the question, but it was overplayed. “That’s enough,” he said, getting up from the chair.

  Lisa Jennings told them how Jonathan Martin talked about survival of the fittest, about how history had proved that the tribe was always the strongest force. That only when a tribe was infiltrated by outsiders was it conquered. He had numerous examples from history and he held extreme political views about how to keep this from happening. Lisa Jennings had asked him how this applied to his blended family, and he had spoken about the girls. Cass, he’d said, was no threat. She was weak. She was a follower. But Emma, she was trouble. She wanted power and didn’t know her place the way her mother did. He’d suggested that she was aware of her appeal with men and had started to use it. She said Jonathan had used that expression—Lolita.

  Leo and Abby stood as well, Leo blocking Jonathan’s path back to the door.

  “I find this all disgusting,” he said. “My daughter is missing and you’re wasting all of our time on this nonsense. I think you should leave now before you upset my wife.”

  Leo stepped aside and let him pass. Abby waited until he was gone before letting out the breath she’d been holding.

  She looked at Leo and smiled.

  “What? You look surprised.”

  She was surprised. He was asking questions about the family.

  “What are you thinking, Leo? Lolita was a young schoolgirl who seduced an older man—”

  “He didn’t go to Paris that summer, if that’s where you’re headed. Neither did the stepbrother, Hunter.”

  “You ran that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Leo motioned for them to walk farther from the house, down the porch steps to the driveway.

  “Don’t go making too much of this. I look at that guy and I don’t think he cares one way or another about those girls. He came into their lives when they were both almost teenagers. Eleven and thirteen. Their half brother hated his son, and the girls adored Witt. Hunter was obsessed with Emma, which I’m sure made him blame her for being a temptation to a healthy young man with hormones—you know how that argument goes. But, believe me—when Cass said Emma was pregnant and wouldn’t say who the father was, I thought about it. I thought about Jonathan Martin and I thought about his son. That would be reason to leave, to be afraid of what would happen if she stayed and one of them was the father.”

  “Except she’d been in France during the time she got pregnant, right? Cass said she had the baby in March. That puts conception in June, July at the latest. Emma didn’t come home until mid-August.”

  “Right. So I made sure they weren’t in Paris, that’s all. Just closing the loop.”

  “So what now?”

  Leo shrugged. “We go at Judy Martin in an hour. It’s perfect—he denied it, so now we have cause to question her. Give him a narrow window to tell her himself.”

  “Agreed.”

  They walked farther up the driveway to Abby’s car. She pulled out her keys.

  “I read your paper, you know,” Leo said.

  Abby turned from the car to look at him. “When?”

  “Last year. And again last night. I was lying in bed. Susan was dead asleep. She keeps a picture of the kids when they were little on her nightstand. I must look at that picture ten times a day because it’s right there, you know? And I was thinking about a mother cutting her child’s hair like that. Viciously. Vindictively. And to punish the other one.”

  Leo paused. He was shaking his head and staring at his boots.

  “The sibling stuff you wrote about. How the narcissist parent chooses one sibling as the favorite, and then does everything and anything to keep that child in line. Reinforcing the alter ego…”

  “Emma,” Abby said. “That’s what she did to Emma.”

  “And Cass, the other child, who looks to the favored one as a parent. A child raising a child when the parents are right there. It makes me sick.”

  “Yes,” Abby agreed. She had no idea where this was headed, but having Leo understand, having him see the things she saw in this family—it meant everything in that moment.

  “It makes me sick for them. And it makes me sick for you.”

  Abby didn’t know how to respond. Cass’s words were there now—how she had described the conflict—the need to love and be loved but then knowing that “everyone you could ever trust could betray you.” Most people lived in blissful ignorance. But Abby’s mother had taken that from her. Judy Martin had taken that from Cass. And you can never get it back, this ignorance. Was that something to be sorry about? Or did it keep them safe?

  A thought rushed in then. Abby grabbed Leo by both arms.

  “What is it, kiddo?”

  “Everyone can betray you,” she said.

  Leo was confused. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what Cass wants her mother to know. That’s why she led us back to Lisa Jennings—to find out about the affair, to make her mother think, or know, that her husband betrayed her!”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “And why didn’t she just tell us? Why did she make us think it had something to do with Emma?”

  “Because she has to be the one her mother can trust … and don’t ask me why, because I don’t know that yet either. I just know that she needs her mother to start trusting her, to believe her, and to stop believing in Jonathan Martin.”

  “Abby, I don’t know what any of this has to do with finding Emma—”

  Leo’s thought was interrupted by his cell phone buzzing in his jacket. He pulled it out to answer.

  “Yeah…” he said; then he listened. His eyes grew wider.

  Abby waited, watching his face change expression—surprise to excitement. He hung up and smiled, his words freezing time, impossible to believe.

  “They found the island.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Cass

  Everything changed when they discovered the affair between Mr. Martin and our school counselor, Lisa Jennings. Because Mr. Martin denied it, they had to ask my mother. And when they asked her if she knew, they were really telling her.

  For all Mrs. Martin’s cleverness, her escape from being a secretary, her seduction of my father and Mr. Martin, her control over all of us with her manipulation and hair-cutting and court maneuvers to keep us from leaving, she had not once considered that her husband was having sex with a younger, prettier woman. I think this upset her more than the fact that her husband was cheating. Not knowing, not seeing, being deceived—it
makes you question everything you have come to trust. It makes you doubt your own judgment, and the truths you have come to believe in, which sometimes are so deeply embedded, you don’t even know they’re there, shaping your thoughts.

  * * *

  Mr. Martin could not deny his behavior. It was right there, in black-and-white, his cell phone number over and over and over and Lisa Jennings’s tearful confession. I’m sure he regretted not being more careful, using a prepaid phone or a landline at the club.

  No, he could not deny it. But that’s exactly what he did.

  Mrs. Martin tried to make him tell her everything. I was not able to hear the entire conversation from the hallway, but I caught enough.

  “You don’t find me attractive…”

  “That’s not true! You have always been very attractive. Very sexy…”

  “Not enough, though. Not enough!”

  “I did not have sex with that woman! Why can’t you believe me?”

  “I think you like young women!”

  “No…”

  “I think you like girls…”

  “That’s enough! I had nothing to do with what happened to the girls…”

  “Young girls…”

  “Stop it!”

  “I saw how you looked at Emma … my God, am I going crazy? Am I out of my mind? Oh my God! You know him, this man. Bill! Emma is there! Emma is there! And you knew this whole time, didn’t you? You did this somehow, got rid of my girls to this monster!”

  “That’s enough! I won’t listen to this. I had nothing to do with that crazy fucking island and that is the last time I’m going to defend myself…”

  “Nothing is real. Nothing you say is real!”

  “That’s it. I’m going to the city. You are losing your mind. You’re losing your fucking mind!”

  Mr. Martin went to New York to stay at his sports club for the night. And while he was gone that night, two things happened. The first was that Mrs. Martin went into her winter mood.

  I stood outside her bedroom door. I could hear her sobbing into her pillow the way she had done when I was younger, and it took every ounce of strength not to run away, down the hall, into Emma’s room. I screamed silently at myself. Emma’s not here! And I reminded myself. You came here for a reason.

  I went into the room and stood still for a moment to see if she would react and how she would react when she saw me. She had been able to love me again because I was crazy and no one believed me. But now it was all falling apart. Now her own husband had cheated on her and lied to her. Another woman was better, which meant she was not the greatest anything.

  “Cass!” she sobbed from her bed, her body splayed out like someone had poured her onto the mattress from a cup. “Come here, Cass!”

  I went to her then. I got onto the bed and I let her wrap her arms around my waist and bury her face into my lap.

  “Nothing is real, Cass! Tell me what’s real. Tell me you weren’t in Emma’s car that night. Tell me you were in your room with the door closed.…”

  I wish I could say that I was calm then. That I smiled with satisfaction as I watched her unravel. But I am not that strong.

  Instead, I fought to contain myself. I felt the blood rush from my head as my heart pounded like thunder against my ribs. It pounded so hard, it hurt. I waited for the blood to return and then I whispered to my mother.

  “Shhhhh.”

  “Cass! Tell me!” she sobbed.

  “Shhhh, Mrs. Martin. It’s all right now.”

  I stroked her silky hair as I spoke.

  Her body was writhing with agony.

  Memories rushed in. Me in the corner. Emma in this bed, holding our mother.

  “Shhhh, Mrs. Martin,” I whispered. And then I said what Emma would always say. “You’re the most wonderful mother. There’s no better mother in the entire world.”

  I stayed with her until she calmed down. I got her a drink from downstairs and she took a white pill and drank her drink and fell asleep in my arms.

  And while she slept, I prayed that this had been enough. I prayed that Mr. Martin would not use his charm and undo the work I had done. This was all I had—the affair with Lisa Jennings that I had discovered before I disappeared. Mr. Martin was very careless and he left his phone unattended almost every night. I used to fantasize about telling her. I used to lie in my bed, sometimes when Emma was there with me, and I would think about how and when I would give this gift to my sister—this weapon that would surely destroy our nemesis. But then we were gone.

  The second thing that happened that night after Mr. Martin left was that they found the location of the boatman, Richard Foley. And when they found the boatman’s location, they found the island.

  They went there that same night. Eight FBI agents, including Agent Strauss and Dr. Winter. They stayed overnight in a small hotel and did surveillance. They got satellite imagery and land records and building permits and everything else they needed to put together a plan of attack for the morning.

  I didn’t sleep that night. We were not told anything about the surveillance or the satellite pictures or the details of the plan. But I knew that everything was going to happen very fast. And I knew that it was going to be dangerous because they asked me questions about guns and weapons and things the Pratts might use to make weapons. And then I became consumed with thoughts of people I loved dying.

  So I lay awake that whole night wondering about death. No one who has died can tell us what it feels like. I don’t think there is any kind of death that is painless, even if it is just a split second. Even if someone just cut off your head or shot you in the heart. Life feels too strong to go away without some kind of agony.

  Our father was very paranoid about life leaving us, me and Emma and Witt. He got so angry when we didn’t do the things he’d told us to do to stay alive. Bike helmets and seat belts were the worst. I don’t know what it was like for Witt and Emma, inside their heads, when they didn’t wear a helmet or put on a seat belt. Maybe they did it on purpose, because they wanted to be free of those restraints. But for me, it was just about forgetting. Our father would lecture us when it happened, about how kids feel invincible, how they don’t understand that they can die. That they will actually die one day. That they are destructible. Emma would giggle and I could see that his words went through her like a ghost. She didn’t care that this feeling would leave her one day. It was like being beautiful. She was going to enjoy it while she could—otherwise, what’s the point?

  I want to go out in a big, enormous ball of flames the minute I feel the way Daddy does. I would rather live half as long feeling alive than twice as long feeling dead already.

  Emma whispered this in my ear one night as she lay in my bed. She was sixteen, and by then she didn’t ride a bike and she always wore her seat belt because she was driving and she didn’t want to get a ticket from the police. Still, there were so many other things like those things, rules and restraints. When she said these words to me, I could tell that she felt very grown-up. That she felt as though she had come up with something no one had thought of before. But now I know that she was just finding a way to understand what was going on inside her.

  When a scream wants to come out, nothing can stop it. Not rules. Not restraints. Not even the common sense to want to stay alive.

  I was more like my father. From as early as I have memories of my own thoughts and feelings, I know that I feared death and that I felt that death was going to come for me as a punishment. Every time I smoked a cigarette, I told myself I would be punished with cancer. Every time I drank alcohol, I imagined lying in the hospital with yellow skin because my liver was failing. And when I drove Emma in her car without a license or even a permit, I would resign myself to a bloody death on the side of the road.

  What I have come to know about death is that it is not like that. It is not fair. It does not add up your cigarettes and drinks and irresponsible behavior and come for you when you’ve reached your quota. People die all the t
ime who were very good, very responsible. And people stay alive to the bitter end of their natural lives who were very bad and who did very bad things. Mrs. Martin will probably live to be one hundred. Mr. Martin will be right beside her.

  When I was young, I was undeserving of death. Even after I started drinking and smoking and thinking bad thoughts and doing bad things, I had never done anything so bad that I deserved to die. Still, I feared death as though I deserved it just because I was me, and I think I will never stop feeling that way until it finally does come.

  When I chased death from my thoughts, they turned instantly to the island and what would happen in the morning when they went there. I did not sleep. Not for one minute.

  How I missed Emma that night as I lay in bed—wondering what they would find on the island. And knowing what they wouldn’t.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dr. Winter—Day Five of Cass Tanner’s Return

  Five miles off the coast of South Bristol, Maine, was the island of Freya. It was renamed by the current owner, a corporation named Freya Investments, LLC. The name was Scandinavian, meaning the Nordic goddess of love and fertility.

  Freya Investments, LLC, was registered in the State of Delaware and owned by a man named Carl Peterson.

  They found the island of Freya five days after Cass Tanner returned home. It started with a boat found drifting miles away, near Rockland. The boat belonged to the owner of a dock and small marina in South Bristol. The owner had leased the boat to Richard Conroy, who was, in fact, Richard Foley. The owner’s wife eventually recognized Foley from a news broadcast showing his picture, and they alerted the authorities.

  Abby, Leo and a Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG, were moved to the closest mainland point on Christmas Cove, which adjoined South Bristol by means of a swing bridge. Satellite imagery of every island that sat at the mouth of the bay was analyzed. Cass had described three structures and one dock. The main house was on the easternmost point, facing the Atlantic. The dock stood to the south, facing a larger island. And the two smaller structures, a greenhouse and a generator shed, were to the north of the house. On the western side were the treacherous rocks.