by Harlan Coben
Where was Paige?
He didn’t get the answer for days, then weeks.
It took, in fact, a month.
* * *
A month after he had been shot, when Simon was finally well enough, he headed to Port Authority and took a bus trip to Buffalo. He stared out the window all seven hours, hoping against hope that something he’d see would spark a thought.
Nothing did.
When he arrived, he walked around the bus terminal for two hours. Simon was sure that if he just circled the block a few times, he’d find a clue.
He didn’t.
With his body aching—the trip was probably too much too fast—Simon climbed back on the bus, squeezed into his seat, and took the seven-hour trip back.
Again he stared out the window.
And again nothing.
It was almost two in the morning when the bus pulled back into Port Authority. Simon took the A train north to the hospital. Ingrid was out of intensive care now and in a private room, though she remained unconscious. There was a cot in the room, so that he could sleep with his wife. Some nights, Simon felt that Sam and Anya needed him home. But most nights, like this one, he made his way up to Washington Heights and kissed his wife on the forehead and slept on the cot next to her.
Tonight though, one month after he was shot, there was someone else in Ingrid’s room when he arrived.
The lights were off, so he could only see her sitting in silhouette next to Ingrid’s bed.
He froze in the doorway. His eyes opened wide. Simon put his hand on his mouth, but his muffled cries were still audible. He felt his knees start to buckle.
That was when Paige turned around and said, “Dad?”
And Simon burst into tears.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Paige helped her father up and into a chair.
“I can’t stay,” Paige said, “but it’s been a month.”
Simon was still putting himself back together. “A month?”
“Clean.”
And she was. He could see it. His heart leapt. His baby looked drawn and pale and harried, but she also looked clear-eyed and sober and…He felt the tears come again, this time for joy, but he bit them back.
“I’m not there yet,” she warned. “I may never be. But I’m better.”
“So this whole time—”
“I didn’t know any of this. We aren’t allowed electronics. No access to family or friends or the outside world at all. That’s the rules. Nothing for a full month. It was my best chance, Dad. My only chance really.”
Simon was just numb.
“I have to go back to the retreat. You need to understand that. I’m not ready for the real world. We agreed on a twenty-four-hour pass, and that’s just because of this emergency. I need to go back. Even being here this short of a time, I can feel the pull stronger—”
“You’ll go back,” Simon said. “I’ll drive you.”
Paige turned toward her mother’s bed. “This is because of me.”
“No,” Simon said. “You can’t think that way.”
Simon moved closer to her. She still looked so fragile, so damn fragile, and now he worried that if Paige blamed herself, if she took on that guilt, maybe that would make her want to slip back into the world of oblivion.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “No one blames you, least of all your mother and me. Okay?”
She nodded a little too hesitantly.
“Paige?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“When I came back to the room and saw Aaron dead…I hid. I thought…I thought the police would think I killed him. It was awful, seeing what was done to him, but part of me, I don’t know, Aaron was gone. Finally gone. Part of me felt free. Do you know what I mean?”
Simon nodded.
“So I came to the retreat.”
“How did you know about the place?” he asked.
She blinked and looked away.
“Paige?”
“I’d been there before,” she said.
“When?”
“Do you remember when you saw me in Central Park?”
“Of course.”
“I had been at the retreat before that.”
“Wait, when?”
“Right before. To get clean. And it’d been working. That’s what I thought. But then Aaron found me. He sneaked into my room one night. Shot me up while I was asleep. I disappeared with him the next day.”
Simon’s head spun. “Hold up, you were in rehab right before I saw you in the park?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. How did you find this retreat?”
Paige looked toward the bed.
Simon couldn’t believe it. “Your mother?”
“She took me.”
Simon looked toward Ingrid too, as if maybe she would wake up right now and explain.
“I came to her,” Paige said. “My one last hope. She knew this place. She’d been there before, years ago. They do things differently, she told me. So I tried it. And it was working. Or maybe it wasn’t. It’s easy to blame someone else, but maybe…”
Simon took the blows from these new revelations, trying to focus on what was important.
His daughter was back. His daughter was back, and she was clean.
He asked the next question as gently as possible. “Why didn’t Mom tell me she was helping you?”
“I told her not to. That was part of the deal.”
“Why didn’t you want me to know?”
Paige turned to him. He looked into his baby’s pained eyes and wondered how long it had been since he looked at her, really looked at her, like this. “Your face,” she said.
“What?”
“When I failed before, when I let you down, your face, the look of disappointment…” She stopped, shook her head as though to clear it. “If I failed again and saw your face, I thought maybe I’d kill myself.”
Simon put his hand back to his mouth. “Oh, honey.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Please? I’m sorry if I ever made you feel that way.”
Paige started nervously scratching at her arms. Simon could see the needle marks, though they seemed to be fading.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I need to get back now.”
“I’ll drive you.”
* * *
They stopped by the apartment on the way. Paige woke up her two siblings. Simon used his iPhone and filmed the ecstatic tears as his three children briefly but intensely reunited. He’d play the video for Ingrid. It didn’t matter whether she heard it through the coma or not. He would play it for her and himself over and over.
The drive back up north was a long one. He didn’t mind. For the first hours, Paige slept.
That left Simon alone with his own thoughts.
So many emotions ricocheted through him. He felt joy and relief at seeing Paige—clean Paige!—again. That was the overriding emotion. He rode that wave and tried to ignore the others—the worry about what would come next, the sorrow that he’d made Paige feel such dread about his reaction, the confusion about why Ingrid kept this huge secret from him.
How could she?
How could Ingrid have not told him about taking Paige to rehab? How could she have not said anything about it after he’d seen her in the park and had that confrontation with Aaron? It was one thing to keep your promise to your child. He got that. But that wasn’t how they operated as a couple.
They told each other everything.
Or so he thought.
Simon was just remembering what Rocco said, about how Luther shot Ingrid, when Paige woke up and reached for the water bottle.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her.
“Okay. This is such a long ride, Dad. I could have just taken the bus back.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.”
Simon
shot her a weary smile. She didn’t return it.
“You can’t visit me at the retreat,” Paige said. “Not for another month. No visitors.”
“Okay.”
“They let me come down because I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Thank you.”
He drove some more.
“So how did it work?” he asked her.
“How did what work?”
“When your first month was up, this retreat let you contact us?”
“Yes.”
“You read about what happened?”
Paige nodded. “My counselor at the clinic had seen a news report. She told me about it.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“So your counselor knew and kept it from you?”
“Yes. It was my only chance, Dad. Total isolation. Please understand.”
“I do.” Simon changed lanes. “You know we became friends with your old landlord Cornelius.”
Paige turned toward him.
“He saved your mother’s life.”
“How?”
He filled her in on their visit to the Bronx—the whole story of how they’d gone to her apartment and met Cornelius and gone to Rocco’s place in that basement.
“Cornelius was really nice to me,” Paige said when he finished.
“He also told us you ran out with blood on your face two days before Aaron was killed.”
Paige turned away from him and looked out her side window.
“Did Aaron beat you?”
“Just that once.”
“Badly?”
“Yes.”
“So you ran away. And then, according to the police, that hit man killed him.”
Paige’s tone was off when she said, “I guess.”
And he could hear the lie in his daughter’s voice.
Simon knew there was something wrong with the police’s theory on Aaron Corval’s murder. On the one hand, it made perfect sense, it was simple, it fit. Sort of. The cult was killing the boys who were illegally adopted. Aaron Corval was one of those babies, ergo he’d been one of their targets. Ash and Dee Dee had returned to the scene because they needed to kill Simon.
But how could they have known Simon would be there?
Simon had scoured through all the information. He’d seen the E-ZPass records and noted that Ash and Dee’s car had never gone near the hospital. So they couldn’t have followed him.
Then something else caught Simon’s eye.
A witness, Cornelius’s tenant Enrique Boaz, claimed to have seen Dee Dee on the third floor right before the shooting on the second floor in Cornelius’s apartment.
Why? Why would she be on the third floor?
To the police this had been a small anomaly, no big deal: Every case has inconsistencies like this. But it niggled at the back of Simon’s brain. So Simon went back. With Cornelius by his side, he questioned Enrique and uncovered a possible clue:
Dee Dee had been standing right in front of Aaron and Paige’s room.
Again: Why? If you already killed Aaron, why would you go back to his room? Why would you, as Cornelius had noticed after the cops left, kick down the door to get in?
It didn’t add up.
Unless you hadn’t been there before.
“Paige?”
“Yes?”
“What did you do after Aaron beat you?”
“I ran.”
“Where?”
“I…I went to get a fix.”
Then he just asked it. “You didn’t call Mom?”
Silence.
“Paige?”
“Please let this go.”
“Did you call Mom?”
“Yes.”
“And what did she say?”
“I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I told her what I did. I told her I had to run away.”
“What else did you say, Paige?”
“Dad. Please. Please let this go.”
“Not until we both tell the truth. And Paige? The truth never leaves this car. Never. Aaron was scum. His death wasn’t murder—it was self-defense. He was killing you every day. Poisoning you. And when you tried to break free, he went back and poisoned you again. Do you understand?”
His daughter nodded.
“So what happened?”
“Aaron beat me that day, Dad. With his fists.”
Simon felt that rage engulf him again.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. But I knew I could pull out of it—I could be free—if he was just…”
“Gone,” Simon said, finishing the thought for her.
“Remember what you saw in the park? The way I looked?”
He nodded.
“I had to break his hold on me.”
Simon waited. Paige stared straight out the windshield in front of them.
“So yeah, Dad, I killed him. I killed him and made it all bloody. Then I ran away.”
Simon just kept on driving. He gripped the wheel so tightly he feared he might rip it right out of the dashboard.
“Dad?”
“You’re my daughter. I’ll always protect you. Always. And I’m proud of you. You’re trying to do the right thing.”
She moved in next to him. Simon put his arm around her, kept the other hand on the wheel.
“But you didn’t kill Aaron.”
He could feel her stiffen under his arm.
“The beating was two days before he was murdered.”
“Dad, please let it go.”
How Simon wished that he could. “You called your mother. Just like you said. You asked for help.”
Paige huddled closer. He could feel her quivering. It worried him, pushing her like this, but they had to get there.
“Did Mom tell you to stay away that night?”
Her voice was weak. “Dad, please.”
“Because I know your mom, and I would have seen the situation the same way. We’d pick you up again and take you to this great rehab place—but as long as Aaron was alive, whatever twisted bond you two shared, well, he’d find you again. You two were entangled in some way I’ll never understand. Aaron was like a parasite who had to be killed.”
“So that’s what I did,” Paige said. She tried to say it with bravado and confidence, but it just fell flat.
“No, sweetheart, you didn’t. That was why Luther shot Mom. He saw her that night. That was what he was going to tell me before he got killed. Luther saw her leave your apartment or maybe he saw the actual killing, I don’t know. So then a few days later, when he sees your mother near Rocco, he figures maybe she’s going to kill him too. Aaron worked for Rocco, right? That’s why Luther pulled out his gun. That’s why he shot Mom first, not me. That’s why he kept insisting it was self-defense.”
Fagbenle had been right from the beginning.
“Occam’s razor. You know it?”
“I’m not in the mood, Detective.”
“It states—”
“I know what it states—”
“—that the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”
“And what’s the simplest explanation, Detective?”
“You killed Aaron Corval. Or your wife did. I wouldn’t blame either of you. The man was a monster. He was slowly poisoning your daughter, killing her right in front of your eyes.”
Fagbenle had even noted that Ingrid could have sneaked over to the Bronx during a work break. They had her on CCTV leaving. Ingrid knew the timing. She made sure that Aaron was alone.
“Paige?”
“I didn’t know Mom was going to kill him.”
She pulled away from him now and sat all the way up.
“I came back to the apartment early and saw…Mom wore hospital scrubs. They were covered in blood. I guess she dumped them later. But when I saw her, I freaked out. I ran.”
“Where?”
“Another basement. Like Rocco’s. I got two fixes. Laid down there for hours, I didn’t even know how long. And when I woke up
, I finally saw the truth.”
“What truth?”
“My mom had killed someone. Think about that for a second. They say you need to hit bottom before you can get better. When you realize that you made your mother kill a man, that’s rock bottom.”
They were silent for a while.
Then Simon asked, “How come Mom didn’t call the retreat and see if that’s where you’d gone?”
“Maybe she did. But I wasn’t there yet. It took me days to make my way up.”
And by then she was in a coma.
“Dad?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“Can we please let this go now?”
Simon thought about it. “I think so.”
“And it never leaves this car?”
“Never.”
“That means Mom too.”
“What?”
“Don’t tell her you know. Okay? Just let it go.”
Chapter
Forty
In the weeks that passed, as Ingrid started to recover and life got better, Simon wondered about his daughter’s request.
Should what they said never leave the car? Was it really best not to tell his wife he knew that she had killed a man?
Was it best to live with that secret?
On the surface, the answer seemed to be yes.
Simon watched his wife come back to him and his family.
Eventually Ingrid regained enough strength to come home.
Weeks turned into months.
Good months.
Paige continued to improve too. Eventually the retreat let her come home.
Sam headed back to Amherst with the start of a new semester. Anya was doing well in school. Simon was back at work. Soon too, Ingrid returned to her patients.
Life was more than returning to normal.
Life was good. Really good. And when life is good, maybe it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.
There was laughter and joy in their lives. There were gorgeous walks through Central Park. There were dinners with friends and nights at the theater. There was love and light and family.
Ingrid and Simon both embraced Paige’s return. They gave her all the support they could, while worrying that whatever demon Aaron had placed in her body may be weak or dormant, but it was still there, still waiting to pounce.
Because demons never die.
But neither do secrets.
That was the problem. All of those good things were in the room. But so too was that secret.
