Chương 12
No crying.
Just a hand.
Noah looked away.
On the drive home he said, “She looked weird.”
Daniel kept his eyes on the road.
“How?”
“Old.”
“You have mentioned that.”
“She was wearing giant sunglasses.”
“She’s always liked bad sunglasses.”
“I heard that,” Lucy said from the back.
“You weren’t there.”
“I still heard.”
Noah looked out the window.
After a minute he said, “Can she come next time?”
Daniel did not smile.
“Yes.”
Rachel’s contact with the children increased slowly.
At first it happened in a therapist’s office.
Then at a park.
Then over lunch.
The first time Rachel came to the mansion, she stood in the foyer and went pale.
The locket had been repaired by then.
Not perfectly.
The jeweler had warned Daniel that the hinge would always sit slightly crooked because the silver had bent when Elise slammed it.
Lucy wore it under her shirt.
Rachel saw the chain.
Her eyes moved to Daniel.
He looked away.
The therapist had advised them not to turn objects into tests of loyalty.
Daniel had found the phrasing irritating, mostly because he needed the advice.
Rachel walked through the foyer.
“It looks different.”
Daniel glanced around.
“It’s the same.”
“No. You finally got rid of that terrible table.”
“Elise got rid of it.”
Rachel’s mouth tightened.
“Of course.”
Daniel sighed.
“We’re not doing that.”
“What?”
“Making every household improvement evidence of evil.”
“I didn’t.”
“You were about to.”
Rachel sat on the sofa.
“Fine.”
Lucy appeared on the stairs.
“Mom?”
Rachel’s whole posture changed.
“Hey.”
Lucy came down.
Noah followed more slowly.
For two hours they played a card game and argued about rules.
Rachel remembered that Noah cheated.
Noah denied ever cheating.
Lucy cheated openly and claimed it did not count because everyone knew.
Daniel made sandwiches.
At one point he stood alone in the kitchen and heard his former wife laughing with his children in the next room.
The sound hurt.
It also made him angry.
Then, without permission, it made him relieved.
He stood there with mustard on a knife and allowed all three emotions to exist without choosing one.
That was new.
Elise’s absence became its own presence.
Her coffee mug remained in a cabinet for months because nobody wanted to decide what removing it meant.
Her name still appeared on emergency contact forms.
Her handwriting remained on labels inside the pantry.
Lucy found one of Elise’s earrings under the guest-room dresser and put it in an envelope.
“Are we mailing it?”
Daniel asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
So he left the envelope in his desk.
The investigation brought uglier details.
Elise had not taken money from Daniel.
The payment had truly come from her personal account.
That made one part of his initial suspicion wrong.
She had not forged his signature on the payment agreement.
Also true.
She had, however, used the fake email address to impersonate him and had repeatedly represented his views to Rachel as if she were speaking on his behalf.
The missing-person investigation had been prolonged because Elise withheld knowledge of Rachel’s survival.
Whether Rachel herself had committed offenses by staging the vehicle and leaving the note was something her lawyer handled separately.
Daniel discovered another uncomfortable fact.
Rachel had lied to the police during her first interview after reappearing.
She told them Elise had forced her to abandon the car.
The messages showed Rachel chose Harbor Point herself.
When Daniel confronted her, she became defensive.
“You have no idea what my head was like.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is absolutely the point.”
“You lied during a reopened investigation.”
“I corrected it.”
“After your lawyer saw the messages.”
“Yes.”
“That matters.”
“I panicked.”
Daniel laughed without humor.
“Everyone in this story panics with impressive administrative complexity.”
Rachel glared at him.
“You want me to be the good one now because she became the bad one.”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I want one person to stop rearranging the truth after the fact.”
“That includes you.”
He stared at her.
Rachel stood.
“You told the kids I was dead.”
“I believed you were.”
“You had no body.”
“I had a car at a boat ramp and a note.”
“You had doubts.”
“Yes.”
“And you chose the answer that made your life easier.”
His face heated.
“That is not why.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No.”
Rachel’s voice dropped.
“Daniel, I know you.”
“That does not give you permission to rewrite me.”
“You were exhausted.”
“Yes.”
“You hated the uncertainty.”
“Yes.”
“You hated answering Noah’s questions.”
“Yes.”
“You hated watching Lucy wait at the window.”
“Yes.”
“And Elise gave you a clean answer.”
Daniel looked away.
Rachel’s voice softened.
“You wanted it to be true.”
He turned back sharply.
“I wanted you dead?”
“No. You wanted the waiting to stop.”
The anger drained out of him.
That was different.
And true.
He sat down.
Rachel sat opposite him.
Neither spoke for a while.
Finally Daniel said, “I’m sorry.”
She frowned.
“For what?”
“For deciding uncertainty was worse than grief for them.”
Rachel looked toward the backyard where Noah and Lucy were arguing over a sprinkler.
“You were there.”
“What?”
“You were there with them.”
Daniel said nothing.
Rachel watched the children.
“I wasn’t.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was not absolution.
It was simply two people putting one accurate thing on the table and leaving it there.
Elise requested to see the children in October.
Daniel’s first answer was no.
Her attorney sent the request formally, careful to state that Elise was not asserting parental rights.
She was asking whether Daniel would consider one supervised farewell meeting if the children wanted it.
Daniel threw the letter into a drawer.
Three days later Lucy found him making coffee.
“Can I see Elise?”
He nearly spilled the grounds.
“Why?”
“I miss her.”
The simplicity of it frightened him.
“Did someone contact you?”
“No.”
“Did she message you?”
“No.”
“Email?”
“No.”
Lucy looked offended.
“I just miss her.”
Daniel sat down.
May you like
“What do you miss?”
“She brushes hair better than you.”
