by Sophie Gunn
“Oh, God, Tay, I hope they find her. It’s not like she could get on a plane, right? I mean, she’s a kid. They wouldn’t let a kid get on a plane to Geneva. Right?”
“I have no idea,” Tay said. He thought the plane was the least of their worries. Getting to JFK from Manhattan was no easy feat, especially from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a place where a lost kid was prey for all kinds of predators. Paige had no experience in the city. At least on a plane, she’d be safe. “I wouldn’t think so. But they did let her on the bus. Did anyone call the airlines? See who’s flying to Geneva today and when? Warn them not to let her on the plane?”
“Tommy has Jennie from the department on it,” Annie said. “She’s calling everyone. We’ll know any minute.”
“Guess that’s all we can do for now,” Tay said. He was itching to get into his car and go to JFK. But he knew he should wait for Lizzie.
“It’s my fault,” Annie said in a tiny voice that he almost didn’t hear.
Tay looked up in surprise. She was weeping. A new wave of dread washed through him. “You? How do you figure that?”
“I found money, Tay. A lot of money. Oh, God, I haven’t told anyone this. Not even Tommy.” She executed some sort of complicated maneuver to get Meghan out of her high chair. She carried the baby to the sink, her back to Tay.
“Two hundred thousand dollars in a green duffel,” Tay said. Annie had the money? Had it all along? Why didn’t that make him feel any better? And why was she telling him about the money now?
Annie whipped around, sending Meghan’s feet flying out in front of her. “How do you—?”
“The money was mine. Well, Candy’s.” He tried to focus, but his mind was on Lizzie and Paige. Who cared about the money now?
Annie blinked away her tears. She turned away from him and turned on the water in the sink. “Tay, it’s gone. Paige must have found where I hid it in the basement. She’d never have left if she didn’t have money. How could she have? I feel like I’m underwater. I can’t breathe.” She was scrubbing Meghan’s hands a little too hard and the baby started to squirm and protest.
Tay tried to clear his head. Annie had found the money, and then Paige took it? His mind slowly caught up with his body, which had gone cold with dread. “You hid the money in Lizzie’s basement that day, when you said you were getting the sweater?” he said.
“Yes.”
Tay remembered Paige going down into the basement the day after Christmas, wrapped in her blanket. Was the duffel under the blanket that day when she came back up? Was the kid wandering around New York with all that cash? He tried to stay calm as the bad news piled up.
“It’s my fault,” Annie went on. “You don’t know how awful I feel. I wish I could put the money back on that cliff. Take that day back that I found it.” She was really crying now. Dune was even getting agitated, whining and circling. Annie put Meghan back into her high chair and handed her a complicated rattle.
Tay wondered what it felt like to cry like that. Did it help? From the looks of Annie’s makeup-smeared face, it didn’t help much. But what did help?
He looked to White on the counter, sleeping, oblivious. Stupid cat. What did she care about anything?
But he wasn’t any more help than the cat.
He had to act. Had to do something. Had to figure this out. Now. Here.
Annie stilled to blow her nose.
All at once, words began rushing out of him. “Every single day, I relive the day of the accident, praying the past could be undone. But it can’t. You can’t dwell on what’s already happened. You just have to figure out a way to move on.”
She sniffled. “Have you?”
Tay touched her hand. “Look, Annie, Paige would have gone without the money. Nothing would have stopped that girl. She’s an independent kid. Totally fearless. Like her mother.” He picked Meghan’s rattle contraption off the floor where she had tossed it and Meghan responded as if he’d given her the moon.
Annie stared at him a long moment. “I wish none of this had happened.”
Tay walked to the back door. He stared out over the snow-covered lawn. He could feel every bone in his body as if it were made of lead. Can’t turn back the past. Have to figure out how to move on. Can’t control the world. He was struck by how childish Annie sounded, full of regret and self-pity.
He knew how hopeless she felt, but her wishes were impotent, silly.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “If something happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Tay took a deep breath. He was starting to see something that he couldn’t see before, as if the snow was finally clearing to reveal what lay ahead. “Yes you will. You’ll have to. That’s the way life is. Forgiving yourself is the most important thing you have to do to make everything right again.”
She blinked up at him. He felt a strange calmness descend. Even Dune quieted and stilled.
He had to think. He walked to the dining room and looked out for Lizzie and Tommy. The street was deserted except for Judy Roth, sweeping invisible snow from her walk in the rapidly falling dusk. Who swept snow in the dark? He waved and she waved back.
He had a feeling that woman knew more than she let on.
“Why’d you hide that money in the gorge?” Annie asked. He hadn’t heard her come into the room.
“I didn’t.” He sat down at the dining room table. “I came to Galton to pay back a debt I owed.” When he talked, she seemed to calm down a bit, so he decided to talk until Lizzie and Tommy came back. Who knows, maybe it would help them both. “I had arranged to meet Candy at the Last Chance.”
Annie watched him with red, swollen eyes. But the tears had slowed. Meghan was still in her arms and she bounced her absentmindedly.
“I had quit my job, sold everything I owned, driven three hundred miles, and I was about to give a nineteen-year-old orphan two hundred thousand dollars in cash so she could stay in school.”
“Because—” Annie couldn’t say the words, so Tay said them for her.
“Because she was the daughter of the woman I killed.” He let the words settle before he could go on. “But she wouldn’t take the money. She hated me. She said she would throw it off a bridge.”
“She did it.” Annie’s eyes went wide. She had completely stopped crying now. She looked behind her, as if Candy might be there. “It’s Candy’s money.”
“I didn’t realize right away that this whole town was a maze of gorges and bridges. I thought it was just a turn of speech, and she’d really take the money, start a new life, get me feeling better for fixing what I couldn’t possibly fix with a sack of cash. As soon as I did realize, I tried to follow her. But it was too late. I had lost her.”
Tay closed his eyes, reliving that morning. Rushing to the diner, but Candy and the money were gone. Driving his truck up and down the steep streets, but all the students looked the same. Finding her on campus, her hands empty, the bag gone, the smile on her face. Fish food.
“I had wished for a miracle, Tay. And then Meghan threw her pacifier, and there was the money. I thought it was some kind of sign.” Annie laughed through her tears. “Oh, God, nothing is going right. I wanted to have stolen the money from some sicko drug dealer, and instead I stole it from a saint who was donating it to a pregnant orphan.”
Tay shook his head. “I’m no saint.”
“Neither am I.” Annie looked past him, as if looking back in time. “I shouldn’t have taken it. But, Tay, I wanted it so badly. I felt entitled to it. I felt as if I never got anything. And I was always so good. But it didn’t matter. Lizzie got the house and everything in it. Lizzie got Tommy—” Annie paused at Tay’s objection. “I know. It’s not true. But it’s what I felt then. I always got second best. The leftovers.”
“No,” Tay said. “I’ve seen the two of you together. Tommy loves you.”
But Annie didn’t seem to hear him. “There was the money and it was mine if I just reached out and grabbed it. It felt righ
t, even though I knew it wasn’t. I spent my whole life being good and Lizzie got everything anyway. I just wanted to be the girl who did whatever she wanted just like Lizzie so that I’d have something, too. I wanted life to be fair.”
Fair. Tay considered the word.
“And now look what happened. It’s all my fault. I should have helped Lizzie, and instead, I was always jealous of her. I wanted things to go wrong for her. I did. I was pretending to be her best friend when really, I was her worst enemy. And now—”
Tay watched Annie fall to pieces across the table from him.
Meghan stared at her mother for a long moment, then also burst into tears. Dune licked the baby’s feet to no avail.
Tay didn’t know which crying female to address. Annie rearranged Meghan in her arms and left the room with her, consoling her on the way back into the kitchen. “Poor baby, poor, poor baby.” Dune trotted after them.
Tay wasn’t sure if she was talking about Meghan or herself.
He sat in the empty dining room.
Damn, he could clear a room.
But he didn’t have time to think about it. He didn’t have much time before Lizzie and Tommy got back and they had to get to New York.
Listening to Annie’s confession had made him realize exactly what he had to do, and how to do it.
He didn’t have much time.
CHAPTER
52
Tay went up the stairs, steeling himself, and knocked on Candy’s door.
“Not here,” Candy said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
No sound from the other side of the door.
“It’s not a lot, but it’s all I’ve got, Candy. No more money. No more grief. I won’t bother you anymore. The money was a mistake. I just want you to know that I’m sorry. I’ll carry that moment of my life always. I’ll never be the same person. I’m just so so so damn sorry. I had wanted to tell you that from day one, in the diner.”
No sound. Was she even in there? Did it even matter?
He waited, hoping he’d feel the weight lift. But it didn’t. Damn. Maybe he still had it all wrong. Maybe he was the world’s biggest fool. What had he been thinking, that words mattered? That talking, confessing, striving for human connection could make it better?
He turned down the hallway, got to the stairs, then he heard a door click open behind him. He turned back, holding his breath.
“So why didn’t you tell me?” Candy asked.
“Because I was an idiot,” Tay said. He looked her in the eye. He inhaled and exhaled and then did it again and said, “I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.” Candy’s voice was almost silent.
Had she even said it? His heart was pounding. Somehow, he was breathing, and it felt as if he hadn’t breathed in a year. He could feel the air go in and out, smell it. Something had changed inside him.
He couldn’t help himself. “You do? Really? Are you sure?” He was standing rigid, as if watching the last few seconds of a crucial football game, waiting, hoping, hands clenched, all his energy straining toward what could, maybe, just maybe, be a happy ending. If… if… a few more seconds…
She came out of the room and leaned against the wall. Then she sank down, so that she was sitting with her back to the wall. “I forgive you. Accidents happen. I still kind of hate you, but I forgive you anyway.”
It was more than he had ever hoped for. He wanted to leap up and whoop for joy. He wanted to dance around the hallway, take her by the hands, do a jig. But he didn’t, because he could see they weren’t done. He could feel that they weren’t done. This wasn’t quite the finish line. He didn’t know what to say now that he had said he was sorry, but he knew he had to keep talking, keep connecting. He didn’t dare move. “Okay. Well. Thanks then.”
“I want to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone,” she said.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.” She didn’t move, and he felt foolish looming over her, so he sank down to sit across from her, his back to the opposite wall. Tell me, he thought. Just keep talking.
But she didn’t. They sat like that for a while, not looking at each other.
“I hated my mother,” Candy said finally in a tiny voice. “She was awful. We fought all the time. She drank and she manipulated people and when I heard that she had died, I was really, really sad. But I was also a little relieved. It felt awful to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it.”
“Oh.” Tay had no idea what to say. He was new at this talking thing.
“It took a long time for me to forgive myself for feeling that way. What kind of monster doesn’t care about her mother? I started seeing Georgia then. She was the first person to understand what I was going through. She told me that it was okay. That I had to forgive myself for feeling that way, because it was normal. My mother really did do terrible things. Everyone does terrible things. And it’s okay to hate them, and to forgive them, too. We’re all so screwed up, it doesn’t make any sense to hold a grudge and ruin our lives.”
Tay looked at her bare feet, her pink toenails. The big toenails had white flowers. He wanted this to be simple, but at every turn, there was so much emotion, so many twisted feelings. So much to say.
Candy went on. “When I found out I was pregnant, I understood that the worst thing in the whole world would be if I was as lousy a mother as she was.” Candy ran her hand through her hair. “I couldn’t be a good mother if I was miserable. That was her problem; she was so miserable. She could never let go of anything. When I was four, I nail-polished flowers on the living room rug. The day before the accident, she was telling me how much that red stain still bothered her every single time she walked past it. I asked her why she didn’t get rid of the rug, and she said that she kept it to remind herself—and to remind me—how our actions ripple on and on, forever.” She paused. “Forever. That was awful to think about.”
Tay nodded. He’d thought a lot about forever.
“Georgia taught me that I didn’t have to live that way. I forgave myself for the rug, I forgave myself for everything. See my toes? I saw you looking at them. I didn’t use nail polish at all for, like, ten years. Now I do. And after I forgave myself, I forgave her as best I could. I knew that she had trouble with depression. She struggled with alcohol. She did her best and it sucked, but it was all she could do. All she was capable of. I couldn’t control it and she couldn’t control it. So I forgave.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Now, I’m going to have a chance to be a better mother than she was. It’s a circle. A gift. It all makes sense. You have to forgive yourself, too, Tay. It’s not about me forgiving you. It’s about you letting it go, and moving on.”
He heard a siren approach. Tommy and Lizzie were on their way back.
She leaned forward and put her hand over his. “So don’t you dare be a coward and leave Lizzie. If you just keep running, you leave behind a string of wrongs. Just say you’re sorry and you love her and make it right.”
“She’s pretty pissed at me,” he said.
“We all are, dummy. So get with it, okay? Now’s your chance to make it right.”
CHAPTER
53
Lizzie exploded into the kitchen, Tommy right behind her. She took one look at her sister and her body went numb. “Oh, God, she’s dead.” Lizzie sank into a kitchen chair.
“She’s fine,” Tommy assured her, taking Meghan from Annie’s arms.
“Then why do you look like that?” Lizzie asked Annie.
Annie opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Tell me! What have you heard?” Lizzie asked. Her heart was pounding and she wanted to shake Annie. “Something happened.”
“Speak,” Tommy commanded Annie.
Tay came into the room. He leaned against the doorframe. Lizzie tried not to notice him. He was still here, but maybe he’d be gone tomorrow. She didn’t have time for that now. She had to find Paige.
Annie took a deep breath. “They called. She’s booked on a flight in
two hours out of JFK, but they won’t let her board. They haven’t found her, but she’ll be there soon. They will.”
Lizzie watched her sister. Her spine tingled with apprehension. “But?”
“But. Lizzie. There’s something I need to tell you. I hid two hundred thousand dollars in your basement. It was Tay’s money. I had found it in the gorge. And it’s gone. I think Paige took it.”
Tommy sank into the chair across from Annie. Candy came into the room, looking worried. Tay and Candy hadn’t been in a room together since Candy had come to stay with them, but Lizzie couldn’t think about that now. She was floating. Paige in New York with her passport and two hundred thousand dollars in cash and a ticket to Geneva?
They all looked at her, waiting for instructions.
Lizzie had read about mothers who found incredible strength to lift cars when their children were trapped underneath. She felt like one of those mothers, the adrenaline surging through her veins.
Except there was no car.
No trapped child.
At least those mothers knew what to do: Lift. Car. It was simple. It made sense.
Okay. So she had to make her situation simple. Get rid of all extraneous information. Her mind narrowed. Emotion drained out of her. The colors around her became dull. The noises muted. She had become a Mommy Machine. A force not to be crossed.
She looked from face to face at all the people in her kitchen as if they were strangers. Her head was clear. She was aware of every molecule of air in her lungs going in and out, in and out. Her voice came out remarkably calm.
To Annie: “You stashed Tay’s money in my basement?”
“And it’s gone.”
Lizzie felt her gaze narrow.
“I didn’t know Paige knew it was there. I swear,” Annie said.
Lizzie’s stare was a laser beam.
“I was going to tell you,” Annie mumbled.
Lizzie had heard enough.
Candy looked shocked to her toes.
