Splinter (Fiction — Young Adult) Page 22

  I sit.

  Cassidy sits on the other side of me.

  “The year after your mother disappeared was hard on your dad. You know that.”

  I do.

  “He’d always known how to have a good time. Usually had a bottle open, a houseful of friends to celebrate anything on any given day. But when everything happened with Delilah, things changed. He’d already lost his self-respect because . . . well, because of what we were doing behind Delilah’s back. But when the rumors started to fly about where your mother had gone, and people started pointing fingers at your dad, he didn’t have a friend left in the world.”

  “I’m glad you were there for him,” I say. “And for me. And now . . . after everything that’s happened, everything that’s still happening . . .” I can’t bear to finish the thought.

  “Sami, nothing changes between us,” Heather says. “We’re family.”

  Cassidy rests her head on my shoulder.

  “But your dad started hitting the bottle pretty hard after your mom left,” Heather continues. “For the first time, he couldn’t control it. His mother is an alcoholic. His father died an alcoholic. He knew the risk, but he couldn’t stop. Even losing me wasn’t enough of a reason to quit, and I think a lot of women would’ve simply walked away.”

  “But you’d loved him most of your life,” I infer. “You couldn’t.”

  “I probably could’ve,” Heather says. “I’d left him before, you know. I loved him, sure. But I could’ve walked away, could’ve loved someone else, if I’d given myself the chance. But you know who I couldn’t have left? You. I’d fallen in love with Christopher’s smart, inquisitive, and full-of-faith six-year-old. And Cassidy had fallen in love with you, and you’d fallen in love with her, and there was no way we could’ve walked away from you.”

  “I can’t imagine life without you,” I say.

  “It was these drawings that turned your father around,” Heather continues. “I started asking you to draw pictures of you and your daddy, and this is what you drew, month after month: a fall-down drunk.”

  “Those pictures were of Dad?”

  “He paid attention after a while. He got his act together. And after that, there was no more alcohol.”

  Cassidy bursts out, “Then why are you getting divorced? After you went through all that? At first I thought he must’ve relapsed without Sam and me knowing. And then I thought it was—because you suspected him. Of other things.”

  “I did suspect him of other things,” Heather says calmly. “I thought he was cheating on me.”

  “Was he?” Cassidy asks.

  Heather holds up a hand, as if to say one step at a time. “Over this past year, I started noticing changes in him. I started tracking empty blocks on his calendar. He didn’t want to talk about it—big surprise—so I assumed the worst. But the other day, Dad and I had a really honest chat in the station parking lot, and he told me what was really going on. Turns out, he’s actually just been going to AA meetings again. He started wrestling with the urge to drink right around the time Trina Jordan’s family finally reported her missing after all those years. And of course, he didn’t want to talk about that with me because he couldn’t admit that he may have been the last person to see Trina alive. But when you brought me that photograph, Sami, I knew it anyway.”

  “So maybe he’s not cheating on you now,” Cassidy says. “But he was back then? When the picture was taken?”

  Heather chooses her words carefully. “When I saw that picture, the date on the back made me suspect he’d been carrying on with this other woman while he was carrying on with me. I knew what we’d done behind Delilah’s back wasn’t right, but I thought I was an exception to the rule. We’d had something special, something that we continued to revisit throughout our entire lives, and suddenly it was all a big lie. I figured that photograph was proof: this is how Chris Lang is wired. He’s a cheater.”

  She takes a deep breath. “After seeing that picture, Sami, I stopped at your house and checked his email,” she says. “Given she’s been in the news lately, I had to know if he’d been in touch with Trina. But I found no evidence of that. And when we talked in the parking lot, he came clean about a lot of things. And there were two points he was adamant on. First, that he never cheated on me with Trina. And second, that he had nothing to do with anyone’s disappearance.”

  “And you believed him,” Cassidy says.

  “Yes. He told me Trina used to show up without warning, long after their marriage was annulled. She had trouble letting go of your father, and it put a strain on his marriage to Delilah. But he never went back to her.”

  If she was stalking Dad, Dad has motive. He might’ve decided that he couldn’t let Trina sabotage his relationship with Heather the way she’d interfered with his marriage to my mom . . . But I can’t think about that right now. It’s Trina. It’s all Trina.

  “So, what does all this mean?” Cassidy asks. “If you left him because you thought he was cheating and it turned out he wasn’t?”

  I stare at Heather expectantly; Cassidy is looking at her in the same fashion. Could it mean that our family might stay together?

  “Girls.” She squeezes us in a tight hug. “This divorce is about more than infidelity. It’s about trust and secrets. And Dad has issues with the former and a lot of the latter.”

  I think Heather has her own fair share of secrets. Case in point: the postcards that randomly show up in my mailbox. Is it mere coincidence that Eschermann’s evidence techs found one at the crash site? One that hadn’t been mailed but was addressed to me?

  I wish I’d thought to ask Eschermann if the postcard was one of the things we had to keep quiet in the interest of the integrity of the case. I’m biting my tongue to keep from asking her if she’s responsible for Mom’s correspondence. Unless . . .

  I wonder if Trina Jordan would dare to come back to Echo Lake after all these years. Could she have been sending the postcards?

  “Mom?” Cassidy asks. “Would you mind if Sami and I talked for a minute?”

  “I think that’s probably a good idea,” Heather says.

  The truth of the situation is that Cassidy and I don’t have to be friends, let alone sisters. The events of the past few days divided us. From here forward, we can either reunite or fork further down separate paths.

  I meet her gaze.

  What’s it going to be, Cass?

  Once Heather steps out of the room, I sit on the bed and Cassidy starts pacing the floor.

  “This isn’t easy for me.”

  Her circular path—there isn’t much ground to cover in this tiny space—makes me dizzy, but I keep watching her.

  “This hasn’t been easy for any of us,” I say.

  “Okay, I feel like I said some terrible things, all right? I feel like you’re going through enough without me—”

  “We’re all going through it.”

  “Right. But I was so sure Dad had taken my mother somewhere. I was awful to you when you tried to make me realize he wouldn’t have.” She hiccups with the stirring of emotion, fresh tears budding in her eyes. “He’s the only father I’ve ever known.”

  I nod. “I understand.”

  “I shouldn’t have questioned his part in this.”

  “Actually . . .” I reach for a tissue and hand it to Cassidy. “There have been times I’ve questioned it too. Like you said before: it’s not like there’s a rule book for this sort of thing. How are we supposed to know how to act?”

  “But I should’ve known.”

  “She’s your mother,” I say. “Of course you’re going to jump to conclusions. Look. Over the past couple days, I’ve had to realize there’s a possibility Dad knows what happened to my mom. It’s been made pretty clear that I don’t know him like I thought I did.”

  “Talk about not knowing someone. I never thought my mother would be the type of person to have an affair with a married man, and you’ve been trying to make me see that it happened, and I was
accusing you of being blind, but I was the blind one. And Dad . . . what kind of a man does that sort of thing behind his wife’s back? Maybe I didn’t want to believe it because I didn’t want to think they were capable of doing it. And there I was: letting Mom off the hook but accusing Dad.”

  “It’s a lot to swallow.”

  “But, Sami . . .” She pulls a silver necklace from beneath the collar of her sweater. Dangling from the chain is a sunflower locket, identical to the one strung around my ankle. “Eschermann gave it back to Mom tonight. She brought it with her to the house the other night, when she and Dad were trying to figure out where we were and must’ve dropped it on the way.”

  Then Ryan found it and gave it to me.

  Then I gave it to Eschermann.

  He returned it to Heather when she told him she’d dropped it. It isn’t evidence in the case, even though everything seems to be.

  Cassidy opens the locket. “This is Dad and me. Mom said Dad bought me this locket after you and I met. I don’t remember Mom having it. But this picture . . . I’m a baby. So obviously, Dad’s known me a long time.”

  I’ve already figured that.

  “But I don’t get why he would have bought me the same locket he bought for you and your mom.”

  “Mom bought her locket to match mine. But I imagine Dad bought one for you because your dad was gone and he chose you for a daughter.”

  She meets my gaze. “Mom told me lately she’d started to think everything about our life with Dad had been a lie. She wanted to be clear she didn’t want Dad to be my dad anymore—she’d been hinting at it to me for the past few months—”

  It does seem as if Heather’s become more vocal about my dad’s flaws. That might be why Cassidy slowly stopped defending Dad, why she started believing he was capable of doing things she’d never believed possible before. I know how influential mothers can be. Mine hasn’t been around for ten years, and she still affects me.

  The door cracks open.

  Eschermann sticks his head in. “Time to go home.”

  Cassidy and I look at each other. I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking because it’s the same look we shared when Dad and Heather told us they were splitting up. We wish we were going home to the same house. And it’s not because everything’s fixed—it isn’t—but because you can’t fix things if you don’t spend time together.

  I follow Heather and Cassidy to the waiting room. Eschermann brings up the rear.

  Ryan’s there, still wearing the same coat I muddied when I threw my arms around him in the bunker beneath the wine cellar. His jeans are stiff with dried earth, and the stuff is caked on his work boots.

  He came straight from the barn.

  As if there’s some magnetic tractor beam connecting his soul to mine, he looks up. Smiles. Takes a step toward me.

  “Thanks for coming—”

  I’m silenced by the strobe of camera flashes. Stunned by the crowds of photographers standing on the other side of the windows, zooming in on Heather and Cass. On me.

  “Let’s get you out of here.” Eschermann wraps an arm around my shoulders and steers me away from the cameras.

  I look over my shoulder at Ryan. He’s still smiling. He lifts a hand in a wave. “See you later, Sami.”

  Eschermann leads us through an employees-only exit and to a series of police cars waiting to take us home.

  Heather and Cass get in one cruiser; I stay with Lieutenant Eschermann.

  Home isn’t going to feel like home, knowing the people who defined it for me aren’t going to be with me there tonight.

  Not having Mom there was something I guess I was used to.

  Losing Cass and Heather was different altogether.

  But no Dad?

  I can’t imagine it.

  Maybe Heather will let me keep Kismet for a few days. Just until Dad can come home.

  Something inside me aches, hurts, when I think of Dad alone in a cell. If he’s guilty, which a part of me still refuses to believe, he must be scared to know they’re honing in on him. If he’s innocent, he must be even more scared. Considering the possibility he’ll be incarcerated for something he didn’t do. Worried he’ll be separated from me forever.

  “Sami,” says Eschermann, “my techs unofficially verified for me: the thumbprint on the postcard we obtained at the site of the accident isn’t a match to your father or Heather.”

  “Whose do you think it is?”

  “If I knew that, your father might not be in a cell right now. There’s obviously a third party involved. I just don’t know who.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said. “About a third party. I told Neilla—Officer Cooper. You said I should pay attention to the little details. Well, I remembered something.” For the third time today, I relay my theory:

  Mom released the sitter and was home with me.

  Dad was out with Heather.

  Trina dropped by, although I didn’t know her as Trina at the time.

  There was an altercation in the passageway.

  I followed Mom into the tunnel.

  I ran into Trina on her way out . . . by which time, my mother was dead.

  And at some point, Trina moved my mother’s body from where she lay in the wine cellar and drove my mom’s car, with all of her belongings, away.

  “It would make sense, then, that I was crying when Ryan found me. I’d lost my mother, couldn’t find her. And he played with me until Schmidt found us. In the meantime, Dad and Heather came home and assumed Mom had taken me. All her stuff was gone, and I appeared to be gone too until Schmidt found Ryan and me, and then . . . you know the rest.”

  “Are you sure it was Trina you ran into?”

  “No. I mean, maybe I’m seeing Trina’s face in my mind because she really was there that day. Or maybe I’m imagining it due to power of suggestion. But someone was there.”

  “Do you think you could sit with a sketch artist? Describe what you saw?”

  “Curly hair. Tall. But I was six at the time. Anyone would’ve been tall. I don’t think I’d give the artist much to go on.”

  I pause.

  “I’m also thinking . . . C. J. Lang. The person who rented the mailbox.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could it be that Trina is short for Catrina?”

  “Could be. It’s published everywhere as Trina, but perhaps.” I can tell by the way he’s squinting that he’s probably considering ways to disprove my theory.

  “Because if she’s Catrina Jordan-Lang, she’s C. J. Lang.”

  “And you shared this theory with Neilla?”

  “On the way to the hospital.”

  “Hmm.” A long pause. His eyes get even squintier.

  Finally: “Wonder why she didn’t share it with me.”

  “What?” I’m so confused. Neilla now? Is there something else I don’t know about people I’ve trusted?

  Neilla was my favorite babysitter. She had access to our house. She could’ve known about the passageway. Maybe she was actually my babysitter that day. Would she have lied about it to help cover up something bad that happened on her watch?

  And she’s had access to this case.

  “What was her reaction to all this?” Eschermann is asking.

  “She said it would’ve made sense, except that—except that Trina would’ve needed help moving the body.”

  Eschermann nods slowly. “Why wouldn’t Neilla have told me about this?” he murmurs.

  My head’s spinning. Was Neilla involved? Did Neilla help move my mother’s body?

  Neilla was eighteen back then, a criminology student at NU.

  Could she have learned about covering up crime scenes while in college?

  She said my mother’s case was the reason she became a cop. Do people become cops to help manipulate the investigation? Maybe to steer the investigation away from themselves?

  Have I been missing clues that are right under my nose?

  Or was Cassidy right? Am I grasping
at straws, any straw, to clear my father? Maybe I am, if I’m considering Neilla a suspect. After all, why would she want to help Trina? It makes no sense.

  “It’s been a hectic night,” I say. “Maybe she just hasn’t gotten around to it.”

  Eschermann’s radio alerts. “Ken?” It’s Neilla’s voice. “Over.”

  “Eschermann. Over.”

  “I’ve got something you’re going to want to see. Over.”

  “Hit me. Over.”

  “There’s an alert on Delilah Lang’s passport. We have a boarding attempt in Saint Paul, Minnesota.”

  My heart swells with an old sense of hope, but quickly, a tidal wave of grief washes over me.

  A month ago, I would’ve assumed news of an alert on Mom’s passport would’ve meant they’d found her.

  Now, I know it means I’m only one step closer to knowing for certain that she’s dead. But also to knowing who’s responsible.

  This is it. The point of reckoning.

  I’m sitting in a conference room at the Echo Lake police station, staring at a projector screen showing images of the woman who attempted to use a passport in my mother’s name.

  “Is this your mother?”

  I shake my head, tears in my eyes. The hair is different, but that’s not what’s convincing. It’s the eyes.

  Sure, my mother would look a decade older today than she did the last time I saw her, but the eyes in the picture are more black than blue. Which could be attributed to the monitor and projector. But I’m not looking into my own eyes when I look at this picture, and if it were Mom, I would be.

  “Is this the woman you saw in the passageway?” Eschermann asks.

  “I can’t be sure. It’s been so long.”

  “How about this?”

  With the click of a mouse, a younger version of the woman fills the screen. She’s wearing the pale yellow jacket I found at Heather’s.

  I’m still not sure. “It was dark,” I say. “And I caught only a glimpse of her.”

  “Okay. But you’re sure this isn’t your mother.”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “Do you want to know what your father says?”