Page 18 of Last Seen
“You were there?”
“No. I was at work. You called me. You told me what happened. You’d been out cold, and when you came to, you speed-dialed the office.”
Halley searches her memory and comes up blank.
“How is it that I don’t remember any of this?”
“You had a bad bump on the head from the tussle. That scar on your temple?”
Halley’s hand goes to the spot.
“You said it was from the accident. From the glass.”
“It was Catriona’s doing. Not sure how, exactly, but you had a good cut and a huge lump. A bad concussion. Enough to knock you out. We think ... Well, she clearly thought you were dead, too.”
“My migraines don’t come from the accident, but from Cat hitting me in the head?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“Is that why I don’t remember?”
“It’s not uncommon, actually. The doctors said you might remember what happened, you might not. Such extreme trauma leaves a mark.”
She touches the streak of white in her hair, running right from the spot where the wound was all those years ago. She used to try dyeing it, because it was so distinctive, but the dye wouldn’t stay in more than a wash or two. Once or twice, she took scissors to it and cut the white lock away, but it grew back quickly, faster than the rest of her hair. Likeit had claimed her. She’d finally learned to accept it wasn’t something she could hide, so she told strangers it was a genetic mark of heterochromia. As an adult, she grew to love it. It was something special, something that set her apart. She would make sure it was visible, always.
Now? She has to reframe everything down to her bones.
“So she gave me this?”
Her dad nods. “Yes. Whether you blocked it out or the concussion wiped it, I don’t know. The doctors and I discussed it, and they thought it would be better if you didn’t remember. That we try to give you a different path to cling to. So when you woke up in the hospital and asked where Mom was, I told you she’d been in an accident.Youwere the one who thought it was a car accident. I think one of the shows we were watching—Rescue 911?—had a car accident that week. I didn’t say it wasn’t, and suddenly, that was the story. A car accident. Both your mom and your sister were killed, and you were hurt but survived.”
Halley stalks from the chair, all patience gone. The window looks out onto a courtyard covered in boxwoods and a huge sandpit with large boulders and rakes.
“That’s one hell of a lie, Dad.”
“Yeah. But the doctors said it was good for you, that a transference of the trauma was how your brain was going to process what it had been through. So we went with that. You cried, you were devastated, but you didn’t remember what really happened, that day or afterwards. It was a blessing, honey.” He reaches out a hand, and she waits a few beats before grabbing hold with her own.
“A blessing?”
“You healed. You were sad, and you missed your mom like crazy, but you weren’t permanently damaged. Do you remember it at all, even now?”
“I don’t. I remember a car accident, the flash of lights, the crunch of the car, the sirens ... What happened to the car, if it wasn’t in an accident?”
He looks abashed. “I sold it.”
“And you faked an obituary?” She doesn’t bother trying to keep the accusatory tone from her voice.
“Yes. It seemed better to keep you focused on the future.”
“And what happened to Cat?”
“She ...” He breaks off. There are tears in his eyes and thickness in his throat. She gives him a moment to compose himself, desperately searching her memory for something, anything, that jogs a recollection of this event. There is nothing but the sense that things are wrong—her mom is gone, and her sister, too. The car-accident narrative is so permanently imprinted on her mind she’s having a hard time believing this of her father. That he, of all people, could be capable of such deceit. That she was so easily misled.
Who conflates a car crash on a television show with the stabbing death of their mother? Is that even possible? Is he lying to her even now?
Oh, she is so pissed at him for making her doubt him at all.
Her dad clears his throat. “Cat ran away from the house after your mom ... She had a boyfriend we didn’t like, snotty kid, and she took off with him. The police found her at the bus station a few days later. She’d been ... mistreated. He’d hurt her, pretty badly, and left her there. Left her alone. They arrested her, she pled guilty to stabbing your mom, and they locked her away. I moved us to Marchburg as soon as I could. I couldn’t risk her getting out and coming after you, too.”
