Page 10 of Last Seen
“Why?” Halley’s voice is a whisper. “Why did you have to protect me?”
“Like I said, honey, this is a very long, complicated story. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It wasn’t smart of me to hide it from you, but I didn’t want to scare you. Catriona is not someone you want in your life.”
“Why did she kill Mom?”
He shifts uncomfortably, and the monitor beeps as he settles back down. A nurse sticks her head in, then rattles inside with a cart. “It’s time to check your vitals, sir. Ma’am, you should wait outside.”
“I’m fine right here.”
“Suit yourself.”
When the nurse starts making some very uncomfortable chitchat with her dad about the state of his bowels and bladder, Halley changes her mind and steps out into the hall. He has a catheter; she hadn’t noticed it earlier. This is going to be a much more difficult recovery than she thought. She hasn’t even started thinking about what happens when he goes home. He’s going to need a lot of care, for weeks to come. Probably more than she can provide ... Of course, she has all the time in the world to play nurse. Maybe even a way to explain to the people in her life why she left her beloved job. Her father needed her.
But on top of all that, this crazy news? There’s no way in hell she’s not going to look up her sister’s record and find out where she is. The initial shock is wearing off, and she’s starting to realize what a huge issue this is. She has to reframe her entire life. Always a cheated destiny, not growing up with a mother, only to learn that it wasn’t simply fate or chance that took her away but another person’s soulless action? A person with whom you share blood? It’s incomprehensible.
You’re being very rational, Hal. Hold it together a little longer.
Is this why she was also so interested in criminology and forensics? Has she somehow subsumed the truth this whole time? Surely she knew about it when it happened, right? Even though she was little, six is old enough for impressions. Even though she barely remembers the two women themselves, has only a few pictures and some old videotapes that are God knows where, had she overheard her father, or a police officer, or something? Was there a crime scene? She needs the whole story.
But when she goes back into her dad’s room, the nurse puts a finger to her lips and points at the morphine drip. “He’s going to be out for a while. I gave him a good strong dose, he was hurting. You really should go home. Visiting hours start at seven.”
Chastised, Halley gives her dad one last glance, then sets off for home. There will be no more answers from him tonight. But there are other places for her to find information about this shocking news.
Her childhood home belongs to a stranger now. Everything is familiar, yet she is newly unmade, and there is no way she can recapture the nostalgic glow she had before.
Ailuros twines around her legs, begging. She picks him up, and the head rush of pain from bending over nearly topples her.
Her head is still pounding, so she adds an Excedrin into the mix. She shouldn’t have had all that wine. Usually it’s white wine that sets her off, not red, but every once in a while ...
She sits with the cat in her lap and breathes and tries not to think until the pain lessens. It’s impossible to shut off the tap.
My mother was murdered. Stabbed to death. By Cat.
My dad betrayed me. He lied to me. Why?
My life is over. Nothing is real.
Why did I believe what he told me? Why did I never look back?
Finally, though the grief is still just as intense, her headache starts to ease. She does some jaw exercises to help it stay away. She got lucky—sometimes she is blinded by the pain and has to lock herself away in a dark room until it passes. She’s gotten better about stopping them before they get started. The medications are better now, too.
Her instinct, as she has been trained to think, always, is to research the situation, get as many angles of the story as she can. Her laptop sits in her bag, but when she opens it, she realizes the battery is empty. She goes to plug it in but can’t find the cord. She searches everywhere until her mind latches on to the plug behind the small built-in desk in the basement kitchen. She put the laptop in her bag and didn’t grab the cord.
Idiot.
Her dad is a total Luddite, preferring his books to a screen if at all possible, but he has an old Apple iMac up in the pseudo-office in the small room next to her bedroom. When she was in school, it was her mini library/office; it has bookshelves and a sofa for reading, and a small desk for the computer. It’s probably going to need a software update to even get started; she hasn’t used it since Christmas.
The last thing she needs is to look at a screen, but she can’t help herself.
She puts on her sunglasses to help with the blue-light glare and boots up the computer, dusting it off as the machine whirs to life. She taps a pencil impatiently against the keyboard. It has bite marks in it—she’s always had a terrible habit of gnawing on her pencils like a squirrel trapped inside a house. There is something comforting about it, though, and before she knows it, the pencil is between her teeth and sheis going down the rabbit hole, kicking herself all the while. She never even thought to question her father’s version of events, never tried to look up the accident. She took his word that she had a black spot in her memory because she had a head injury, and now she feels like a fool.
In her defense, the information is not easily found. News from 1989 is still being digitized. There are a few newspaper articles, and that’s it. She wonders if her father was able to bury this information, but that gives him more power than she’s comfortable imagining. She’s seen the obituaries; they are in the box with the videotapes and some old dried flowers from the funeral. They say “Died in a tragic accident.” Now she realizes they must have been fake.
Shit.
She is going to need to go deeper, so she pulls out the old National Archives login that she has from her college days and gets a little further. There are actual court records in that system, and she turns on the printer and sends everything. Once she has a small stack of paper, as much as she can find, she takes it all downstairs, lights a fire, gets a Diet Coke—the caffeine will help keep the headache at bay—and starts piecing together the truth from twenty-eight years earlier.
The more she reads, the more concerned she becomes. Her father isn’t kidding.
