by Anni Taylor
“Hi . . . Gray. This is Constance Lundquist. I came by the other day looking for my daughter.”
“Oh, right.” Disappointment strained his voice.
“I was just wondering if—”
“My wife’s not back. I haven’t heard from her. I’ve got to go. I’m here in the hospital with my two-year-old, and she’s about as sick as she can get.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. Really. Sorry for bothering you.”
I expected a rapid beep to follow as he hung up on me. But he didn’t hang up.
“Look . . .” he said a moment later, stopping for a heavy breath. “I can tell you something about your daughter, but you’re not going to want to hear it.”
“What is it?” My voice sounded weak in my ears. He did know something.
“Lady, I’m just going to come out and tell you, then maybe you can quit wondering about where she’s been and what she’s been doing. Just like I’ve been able to quit wondering about my wife.”
Taking in a rigid breath, I managed to say, “Perhaps you’d better explain.”
“She’s a prostitute.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m calling a spade a spade. I found both my wife and your daughter on a website where they do stuff with men for money.”
I didn’t know his wife or what kind of past she’d had. But Kara wouldn’t do this. “You’re mistaken. My daughter doesn’t need money. I send her through more than enough.”
“Well, maybe she wanted more than what you were sending. You can look up the website yourself. You have to register and pay if you want to try sending her a message.”
A band of pressure tightened on my forehead as I emptied my handbag on the bed and grabbed a pen and notebook from the tangle of items. “Okay, yes, give it to me.”
I wrote down a username and the name of a website, but I was shaking my head the whole time. “It must be another girl who looks like Kara.”
“You can judge that for yourself. Anyway, I’ll leave it with you.”
The phone went dead.
Maybe I would have preferred he’d hung up before telling me any of this.
In all the scenarios I’d had in my head, this hadn’t been one of them. I’d set up an automatic payment of $500 per week for food and accommodation—surely that was enough? And she’d had an extra job at the shoe store on weekends. What more did she need?
Of course he was mistaken. He’d barely even looked at Kara’s photo when I’d shown it to him. I wasn’t going to find Kara on this horrible website.
I took my tablet from the nearby desk and typed in the website name. The homepage of the site wasn’t what I expected. It was all very discreet. Just plain black, a logo and the word ENTER.
Giving myself a username based on an expensive car model, I signed up.
I began the search for Lilac Lolita.
So many girls. So many very young girls with variations on the name Lolita. I shivered as I thought of the customers who wanted their very own Lolita.
There she was.
My daughter.
Kara.
Unmistakable.
No, no, no.
She barely looked like herself. She wasn’t the girl I’d said goodbye to at the airport. The face in the photo seemed so . . . deadened. The light gone from her eyes. How had she changed so much in such a short time?
It was incredible that Gray had recognised her from the photo I’d shown him—a picture of her sitting in the shady spot near our swimming pool, sweet in her white sundress. She looked nothing like that on this terrible website. In my mind, Kara was some kind of composite of baby, child and teenager. I wasn’t ready for her to become a woman. I certainly wasn’t ready for this.
Clicking on her photo, I brought up her profile page and quickly scanned the description she’d given. She said she wanted to be spoiled by a daddy figure. I was thankful the page gave no indication of the intimate things she’d be willing to do.
She’d been a member for four months. She shouldn’t be on here. The site said it did background checks. Obviously, they didn’t, else they would have discovered her age.
It was too late to call the police station. I’d have to call tomorrow.
No, I couldn’t wait.
I had to call.
Leaving the page up, I called the detective’s number.
Someone else answered. A Detective Annabelle Yarris.
“Yes, hello, this is Mrs Lundquist. I recently reported that my daughter was missing—Kara. I have some new information.”
“Is it urgent?”
“Well . . . it could be. I just found out my daughter signed up with an escort site. And she’s missing. She’s only seventeen.”
“Okay, let me bring up her file. Kara Lundquist, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ve got it. Can you tell me the name of the website you found her at?”
I gave her the details.
“I’ll have Detective Gilroy look at this in the morning. Was there anything else?”
“No, not so far. But she could be in danger. Who knows who she’s been seeing—?”
“We’ll make sure we follow up in the morning.”
Her voice was firm. Nothing was going to happen tonight.
A wall of exhaustion toppled over me as I ended the call.
I snapped my laptop shut. I didn’t want to see that image of Kara anymore. Crawling up the bed, I collapsed on the pillow, my nerves fried.
Gray had found his wife on that site. What must that have felt like? His own wife. I realised now how Kara and Evie must have met each other. Through prostitution.
Kara, why?
My perfect little girl. What happened to you? Why did you do this?
What clues about Kara had slipped past me over the past few months? I’d thought she’d had everything she could possibly want or need. She’d come from a loving home. She was smart, beautiful and we lived in a lovely town close to the college she attended. James and I had taken her away on skiing vacations in New Zealand during the American summer. Island retreats in the Bahamas during the winter. She had everything money could buy. But love and money—the two elixirs of life—obviously hadn’t delivered the magic they were supposed to. Whatever the formula was, I didn’t know it.
Kara had been drifting away from me a long time before she disappeared. Sometimes, I couldn’t form a picture of her in my mind. I wanted desperately to see her one way, but another, distant side to Kara would push into my mind.
I laid myself back on the bed, the mess from my handbag all around me—and fell into a half sleep, a strange, whirring haze that wouldn’t allow me to shut my mind off.
24. EVIE
I POKED MY HEAD INTO THE sick room. Kara was sleeping in one of the beds, Cormack sitting on a chair next to her.
Last night, when the aquarium challenge was done and the mentors had entered the room, Brother Sage had been the one to resuscitate Kara. She’d stopped breathing, but she’d still had a pulse.
Cormack raised his bleary eyes. I guessed that like me, he hadn’t slept well after returning to the dormitory. He had Kara’s hand in his, lightly thumbing her fingers.
“How’s she doing?” I asked quietly.
“She’s not bad. Could have been worse.”
I nodded, not wanting to think about how close Kara had come to drowning. “Why don’t you go get breakfast? I’ll stay with her for a while.”
“Appreciate it.” Drawing himself to his feet, he wandered out of the room.
Out in the hallway, I heard a group of people passing by. Then shouts and angry voices.
I stuck my head out the door in alarm.
Richard was standing with Poppy, Yolanda and a few others. Cormack was jabbing his finger angrily in Richard’s direction. “You were prepared to let her die, you bastard.”
Richard held his palms up. “Back off, son. I did what I had to do. If you—”
Before he could finish, Cormack took a couple of strides forward
and punched Richard hard in the jaw. Richard staggered back, Poppy catching him.
“Leave him alone,” Poppy cried.
“He almost killed her,” Cormack accused.
“I didn’t wrap her wristband around that chain.” Cupping his jaw, Richard drew himself up to his full height. “I did the one thing that was going to finish the challenge and get the mentors into the room. I did the best thing I knew how to bring help. If you want to get mad at anyone, get mad at them for not rushing in sooner and stopping the challenge. They can all see what’s going on in the room, right?”
Richard shrugged Poppy away and stormed off in the direction of the cloister. The others, except for Poppy, spoke in confused voices among themselves and moved off down the hall.
“You can try to talk yourself up, now, but I’m not buying it,” Cormack called after Richard, but there was now a hint of uncertainty in his voice. He moved off towards the refectory, his shoulders tense and turned inward.
“I don’t know what to think,” I muttered to myself as I entered the sick room.
Poppy followed me in. “Richard was just trying to win, like we all are.”
“A person’s life is more important than winning a challenge.”
She tilted her head as if reconsidering. “Guess you’re right. But Cormack doesn’t have to be so mean.”
Both of us turned to Kara as she murmured in her sleep.
Get away. Get away from . . .
You don’t know . . . you don’t understand . . .
Poppy brushed her hair back from her forehead, the hair still damp from the night before. “Ssh, Kara, you’re having a bad dream.” She raised her eyes to me. “Poor thing.”
“Wish I could help her,” I said. “She’s seemed really troubled the whole time she’s been here.”
Poppy eased herself back onto the seat Cormack had vacated. “We’re all troubled, here. It’s the house of trouble.”
I jerked my head around at the sound of whispers—indistinct male voices. One thing they said was clear:
Kill them.
“Hear that?” I said urgently.
Poppy’s fingers tightened on the armrests as she nodded.
Rushing to the door, I scanned each length of hallway.
No one was there. Everything still and silent. I headed back in and through the door that led to a storeroom—the sick room was a small annex of a larger space that held boxes, crates and medical supplies.
I looked back in at Poppy’s wide, questioning eyes.
“I don’t see anyone,” I told her.
“Someone’s playing a prank on us,” she said. Raising her voice a notch, she added, “And it’s not funny.”
I stood listening for more, but there was only silence. I had a sudden, strange vision of Poppy, Kara and myself from far above the island—the three of us in this tiny room, hemmed in on all sides by hexagonal shapes, surrounded by high walls and the wide, restless ocean.
Threads of panic grew inside me. I felt unanchored, adrift in a strange, hostile world.
Go home now, I told myself. Two challenges means twenty thousand dollars. It’s enough. It’s enough.
No, it’s not enough to pay off my debts. Certainly not enough to rent or buy a better house.
My thoughts must have been wild on my face, because Poppy was staring at me intently, shaking her head. “Don’t weird out on me, Evie. Too many weird people here. Go get one of the mentors and tell them what we heard. I’ll stay here with Kara.”
25. GRAY
A SOFT, CROAKY GROAN CAME FROM deep within Lilly’s chest. She was covered in sweat. Opening her eyes, she looked at me with a frightened gaze.
Grabbing the bedside alert button, I pressed it.
A doctor came rushing into the room to check Lilly.
“How long has she been like this?” She stooped over my daughter, listening to her breathing with a stethoscope, checking her pulse.
“Just now.” I exhaled. “I’m not sure. Could have been a few minutes. I dozed off.” That wasn’t true. I’d been awake but distracted, sending my wife stupid messages. Guilty, I swept Lilly’s dark hair back from her cheeks. “What’s wrong with her?”
I wanted the doctor to give Lilly something to make her stop grimacing and sweating and crying out in pain. But instead, she called for backup. Whatever was wrong with Lilly, more doctors were needed to fix the problem.
For the second time today, Lilly was taken away from me. They mentioned spinal taps and other things that I didn’t catch.
A day passed before the doctors were prepared to give me any answers.
They wanted to talk to me alone, without Willow being there. A nurse was arranged to sit with Willow.
I didn’t like the look on the doctors’ faces as I walked into the hospital office.
Grim. Serious. Expressions that set the mood before they spoke so that you’d be primed for their awful news.
And when the news came, it was awful.
The head doctor threaded her fingers together on her lap. “Mr Harlow, we’ve been conducting a series of tests, as you know, to try to better understand what’s happening with Lilly. We have some results, and while we’re not completely certain, things are pointing to a certain condition.”
“What’s she got?” My words tumbled out.
“At the moment, some things are pointing us towards a condition called cystic fibrosis.”
“I’ve heard of that. It’s people with bad lungs, right?”
“Yes, you could say that. It’s a genetic disease. It affects the systems of the body that produce saliva, sweat and mucus. Even tears. People with CF develop excessive amounts of mucus, which leads to frequent infections—including lung and sinus infections.”
My mind spun. “If Lilly’s got this thing, why wasn’t it picked up before? Evie—my wife—always had her down at the doctor’s. She’s had lots of tests.”
“There is a newborn screening test for cystic fibrosis, but it does miss picking up on a small percentage of babies that do have the disease.”
“What makes you think she’s got it?”
“We conducted a sweat test, which showed abnormal levels of sodium and chloride. A positive sweat test is a key indicator. But we’ll repeat the test tomorrow. Her chest X-ray showed a lot of mucus in her lungs. What you’ve told us about her history of illnesses also adds to the picture. Lilly’s symptoms are similar to many childhood conditions, and, as I said, we’ll need further testing to be certain.”
“So, if she does have it, what happens now?”
She explained and I listened, but I couldn’t grab onto any of it. All I wanted to know was, when will she get better? What bag of medical tricks do you lot have up your sleeves?
But they kept shaking their heads as they spoke, as though they’d lost their bag of tricks. Lots of words. Lots of head shaking.
Stopping, she eyed me squarely. “Do you understand what we’re saying?”
I exhaled. “I can’t . . . I’ve been up all night. I’m trying, but you’re going to have to put it in a simpler way. Can you do something for her now, or will she outgrow it?”
“Gray,” she said. “If she has CF, she’ll always have it. But with good medical treatment and care, she has every chance of living a full life.”
“So, she’ll be okay? I mean, if we do everything we can to keep her from getting sick, she’ll be like any other kid?”
“We’ll cover all of that when we complete the tests.”
“I want to know now. If it is this disease, is she going to grow up and have kids and live until she’s a hundred?” Wanting to know the exact details of something was how my mind worked. I was a programmer. I needed to know if Lilly’s system was going to work as expected, or was this bug in her code—cystic fibrosis—going to infiltrate everything and bring the system down?
“I can’t tell you how Lilly’s life will go,” she told me. “Everyone is different.”
“Then tell me about the illness. Don’t le
ave anything out.”
She nodded. “I’ll keep it brief. The average lifespan of someone in Australia with CF currently sits at around age thirty-eight. Over half live past the age of eighteen, which is a much better outlook than it used to be. Women with CF can have children and do all the normal things, but there is a risk of passing on the disease to their children. Look, I don’t think we should go any further at this point. We just wanted you to know what we’ve been doing and what testing we’re undertaking on Lilly.”
Stunned, I just stared back at her, panic coiling in my stomach.
What if Lilly was in the half that didn’t live past eighteen? What if Willow lost her sister? How was Lilly going to plan her life while facing a life expectancy of less than forty?
Then came the next hammer. Medical costs. The government system would cover most of it, including hospital stays, but not all of the medication and specialists. And there was going to be a lot of those things.
How the hell was I going to get back to work and pay for all this and look after Lilly at the same time?
The doctors wanted to know about Lilly’s mother. Where was she and could I get her to come here to the hospital? they asked. As though I should be able to pull Evie out of a hat. They had no bag of tricks, but somehow I was supposed to have one.
Well, I couldn’t pull Evie out of a hat. She was as gone as a person could get.
They suddenly asked if I wanted to call anyone.
There was just one person I could call. Verity. Evie’s mother. The last person I wanted to speak to.
I stepped from the doctor’s office on unsteady legs.
Willow looked so small sitting on the plastic hospital chair. I’d gotten used to seeing her as my big girl, not the little four-year-old she was. I remembered bringing her to this hospital just after her baby sister was born. She was two then, and when I was cradling the tiny Lilly, Willow had suddenly looked like a giant in comparison.
The nurse who’d been sitting beside Willow gave me a quick, warm smile and headed away.
“When can we take Lilly home?” Willow stared up at me.
I exhaled a breath so tight I felt like I was breathing through a straw as I reached to hold Willow’s hand.
