Chương 7
Inside the motel drawer she found six hundred dollars, an envelope with a bus schedule, and a note.
LEAVE THEM ALONE AND THEY LEAVE YOU ALONE.
No signature.
No threat against her father.
No explanation.
Just enough uncertainty to frighten someone already convinced her father believed she was a criminal.
She took the bus.
“Where?”
“Buffalo.”
“Why Buffalo?”
Anna shrugged.
“Next bus leaving that wasn’t toward New York City.”
It was such an unplanned answer that Charles stared.
“I didn’t have a strategy. I was concussed and scared.”
“What did you do there?”
“Checked into a cheap hotel under my middle name. Slept. Threw up. Slept again. Bought clothes at a drugstore.”
“You didn’t go to a hospital?”
“I was afraid whoever stitched me up would know.”
“Caroline—”
“Anna.”
“Anna. You had a head injury.”
“Yes.”
“You could have died.”
“Yes.”
“You should have called me.”
She stood abruptly.
“I know.”
The force of it silenced him.
“I know what I should have done. I have had twelve years to think of all the things I should have done. I should have gone to a hospital. I should have called police. I should have called you. I should have photographed the note. I should have kept the cash. I should have written down the motel clerk’s name. I should have been calmer and smarter and less scared.”
Charles looked at her.
“But I wasn’t.”
Her voice dropped.
“I was twenty-seven, injured, convinced my father thought I stole from him, and someone had moved my unconscious body across state lines. I wasn’t a detective. I was terrified.”
Charles lowered his head.
Anna sat again.
For a while neither spoke.
Outside, someone dragged a hose across stone.
The sound was irritatingly normal.
“Daniel found you?” Charles asked.
“I called him.”
“Why not me?”
“Because three days before everything happened, you told me Daniel was distracting me from my responsibilities.”
Charles closed his eyes.
“I said that.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
He looked at her.
She smiled without humor.
“See? Annoying.”
Daniel had come to Buffalo.
He had been furious.
Not at Anna.
At everyone.
At Charles, at Eleanor, at police, at himself.
He wanted to take Anna directly to a station.
She refused.
They fought.
She tried to leave the hotel.
Daniel blocked the door and then immediately moved aside when he saw her panic.
That small action had probably saved their relationship.
He did not make her stay.
He did not force her to report.
He sat on the carpet and said, “Okay. Tell me what you can do.”
Anna could leave.
So they left.
For twelve years she told herself that choice had been cowardice.
Daniel never called it that.
They moved first to Ohio, then to Michigan.
She began using Anna, a shortened version of her middle name Marianne that had no connection to Whitmore in ordinary conversation. When she and Daniel married, she became Anna Carter.
The change was not part of an elaborate disappearance.
It was paperwork, distance, and avoidance.
Daniel occasionally checked the news about her family.
Anna told him to stop.
He did not always obey.
“He said you were still searching,” she told Charles.
“Then why—”
“Because he also told me Eleanor was running the search fund.”
Charles’s face changed.
Anna nodded.
“That mattered.”
By nine that evening, the children were asleep upstairs in rooms that had once belonged to guests Anna vaguely remembered.
She had wanted to take them home.
Morales asked her not to leave town until they completed a formal interview the next morning.
Charles offered a hotel.
Anna refused because she did not want paparazzi discovering the situation from a hotel employee if word spread.
Then she realized staying at the mansion was possibly the worst option for avoiding attention.
She laughed alone in the guest bathroom for nearly a minute.
Not because anything was funny.
Because Daniel used to say her talent was choosing between two terrible options and then becoming angry at the option she selected.
When she came out, Charles was sitting in the hallway.
No cane.
Just an old man in a beige suit, shoulders bent forward, holding two mugs.
“I made tea.”
“You have staff.”
“I can make tea.”
She took one mug.
It was terrible.
She drank it anyway.
They sat on opposite sides of the hallway.
After a while Charles said, “Eleanor is staying with her sister tonight.”
“Police let her leave?”
“She hasn’t been charged.”
“Right.”
“They told her not to contact you.”
“That should ruin her evening.”
Charles looked into his tea.
“You always disliked her.”
Anna leaned her head against the wall.
“That sounds childish.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I did dislike her. Then I found reasons.”
“Why didn’t I see them?”
Anna looked at him.
“You liked being admired.”
He flinched.
She regretted the sentence immediately.
Not because it was false.
Because it was cruelly efficient.
Charles stared down the hall.
“Yes.”
Anna waited for him to defend himself.
He didn’t.
He said, “Your mother did not admire me enough.”
Anna smiled.
“Mom thought you were a pain in the ass.”
“She did.”
“She also loved you.”
“Yes.”
Charles rubbed his thumb along the mug handle.
“After Margaret died, I became very good at being important.”
Anna did not answer.
“I think Eleanor understood that.”
“She understood everything useful about people.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“What did she understand about you?”
Anna thought.
“That I wanted you to respect me more than I wanted anything.”
Charles shut his eyes.
There was no melodramatic apology.
He simply nodded once.
That was harder to watch.
The next morning Ethan refused breakfast.
Lily ate pancakes shaped like flowers.
Robert claimed the shape was accidental.
Nobody believed him.
Anna drank coffee and checked her business email.
Nine messages from clients.
Three from vendors.
One cancellation.
May you like
Two people asking whether the Whitmore luncheon would be rescheduled.
Her employee, Kayla, had sent: Please tell me you are not secretly one of THE Whitmores because I cannot emotionally process that before payroll.
