by Wendy Walker
Jonathan Martin had fit the bill. He was a man’s man, arrogant and successful. People noticed him when he walked in a room. Eyes followed him—the men’s because they wanted to sidle up and ride his wave, and the women because they wanted him to notice them, even for a second, so they could go home feeling attractive in their long, weary marriages.
She had managed to keep him by her side, even as she got older. Even after she lost her girls. But now, what would shake loose from the news of his affair? She would begin to doubt not just him. She would begin to doubt herself, too. The splint would break. Her alter ego would go into a state of absolute panic as her true self, the one that was profoundly insecure, came to life again. And it would be unbearable.
There would be a battle inside her now. The two selves would fight for control of her mind. That abandoned, hurt baby would scream out that the world was going to destroy it and no one could help. No one could save that vulnerable, helpless baby. While the perfect alter ego would try to convince it that all was well. That it was under control. That it was so perfect, no one could touch it, let alone cause its demise.
But what proof could it offer to that baby after this most compelling evidence—evidence that her husband lies to her? Her husband cheats on her? Her husband no longer finds her attractive? She cannot be that special if these things have happened.
And then, what else had he lied about these many years? the baby will ask. What else has he told her, whispered in her ear in the darkness, or said to her face in the brightness of day? And her daughter—Cass? What was she lying about? There was no question Judy thought she was, or that she was crazy. But what if she wasn’t? Either way, the baby was screaming again.
Abby closed her eyes, took a breath in and out. Suddenly, a vision of Cass’s bedroom on the island was playing like a movie. The bed. The dresser. The books on the shelf. The window looking out into the courtyard.
And then there was that description Cass had given when she was talking about books she’d read on the island, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
What did she say about it? The reasons Sarah Woodruff had to lie. Because people believe what they want to believe.
Cass had counted everything, it was the coping mechanism she had developed as a child and which she now did almost subconsciously. Except she had not counted how long she waited in Emma’s car. And how long the boat took to get to the dock where the truck was waiting. And Emma’s labor—surely that kind of stress would have caused her to count. It was the counting that gave her comfort in moments exactly like these. And where had she been for two days—the time between Richard Foley’s boat being found near Rockland and when she showed up on her mother’s doorstep?
She saw the room again as she drew a quick breath, her hand to her chest. Oh my God, she thought.
She threw down a twenty and rushed out of the bar, across the lobby to the stairs, then up to the third floor. She was winded when she reached Leo’s door, knocking furiously.
He answered, half asleep. “Abby…?”
She pushed past him and into the room. “Close the door,” she said.
He did as he was told, then walked to where she stood. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“If I tell you I know something, can you just believe me?”
So many parts of her thought she knew the answer. Growing up with a parent who couldn’t love you opened your eyes to the fundamental truth that most people went through life denying. It was exactly what Cass had said. No relationship was safe. No relationship could be trusted. They were all vulnerable to other forces more powerful than friendship or even love. That was the lie people told themselves—that love could make people faithful. And yet she was standing now in front of a man who had been like a father to her, asking for just that. Faithfulness.
Leo sighed and leaned against the dresser. “Oh, kiddo…”
His face grew more serious as he studied hers.
“Of course,” he said. “I will believe you. What is it you need to tell me?”
Abby swallowed hard. She wasn’t that far from being Judy Martin. From being her own mother. She knew what it was like to need protection from herself, from her fears of being betrayed. But she couldn’t do this alone. And it had to be done. Of that, she was certain.
So she just said it.
“I know how to find Emma.”
TWENTY-ONE
Cass—Day Six of My Return
My father was devastated a second time when they found traces of blood on the dock, and on the bow of Richard Foley’s boat.
I would have cleaned all of that up if I could have. But there had not been enough time.
It was that same day they found out who the Pratts were. The company that owned the island was registered to a man named Carl Peterson. From there it was easy. Carl Peterson was Bill Pratt’s real name. His wife was named Lorna Peterson. That was Lucy Pratt’s real name.
They had lived in North Carolina until seven years ago. Carl was a carpenter. Lorna worked from home as a seamstress. But I can’t call them that again. To me, they are Bill and Lucy.
They lived on the Outer Banks. That’s a place on the ocean in North Carolina where a lot of people have boats and know about the tides and currents. It explains why they were comfortable living on an island, apart from the rest of the world.
As I knew from my time with them on the island, they could not have children. They had adopted a little boy, Julian, through an agency. His mother lived not far away from them, and she was very poor. She was a single mother with five children already and she did not have the money to take care of another one. They went through a legal process but this woman, the biological mother, later confessed to receiving money for choosing them as the adoptive parents. That part was not legal. It is okay to pay for medical expenses and things like that, but not cash. Still, it’s done all the time. People who want children and can’t have them—sometimes they don’t care about what the law says. This woman needed money, and they needed a baby.
Bill’s parents had died and left him what they had. It was a small fortune—enough to buy a baby. And enough to disappear after that baby died. And Lucy’s mother had left her the house on the Outer Banks. Her father was estranged from her. She had one older brother who lived in Louisiana and was married with his own children. So Lucy’s mother gave her the house when she died, her and Bill. Maybe it was some kind of consolation prize because she could not have children. Maybe she felt guilty that she had given Lucy a body that couldn’t conceive them. I have wondered a lot about Lucy’s parents because I don’t think Lucy was the way she was by accident. And I don’t think it was only because of what happened to the baby she’d bought from that impoverished woman.
That baby, Julian Peterson, was taken by the ocean and died a tragic death.
He had just turned two. They were out on their boat for a short excursion. He was wearing a life vest. The water was calm.
It’s not exactly clear what happened, except that the bow hit a rock, making the boat stop abruptly. A stern line flew out of the boat and got pulled into the motor. Julian’s leg was tangled in that line and he got pulled over, tangled in the rope and pulled overboard and into the blades. When I heard this about the accident, I wondered where Lucy was on the boat when her precious child was getting tangled up in loose lines.
I looked up the story myself as soon as I heard. I used my mother’s computer. It was in the archives of the Outer Banks Sentinel. There were several articles. The first ones described a horrible freak accident and depicted Bill and Lucy as victims of profound loss. After finally becoming parents, God took their child in the most brutal, horrific manner. There were pictures of them leaving the funeral, crying, dressed in black clothing. The caption read COMMUNITY LENDS SUPPORT AS LOCAL COUPLE GRIEVE FOR CHILD.
But then the facts started to seep from the cracks in the story they had created there, the payment to that woman, the lies on their adoption application. Bill was a convicted felon—fraud a
nd embezzlement while working as a bookkeeper for a small business in Boston. And Lucy had been fired from a job as a nursery school teacher for unspecified “conduct” that, when people were interviewed about it, turned out to involve obsessive attachments to some of the children. No, they were not wholesome, God-fearing people who’d lost their child. They were lying, cheating baby-stealers who had bribed a poor mother to give up her child and then allowed him to die in that boating accident with their negligence.
They were not charged with a crime for the accident. But the DA was looking into the payments made to the biological mother.
It didn’t make national headlines, and the Petersons just up and left one day. They were not under arrest, so they could do what they wanted. They took over $500,000 from their accounts, in cash, and disappeared.
When I heard this story from an agent at the Bureau and then read about it on my own, I immediately pictured Lucy in our house on the island, down in the living room, staring out the window at the ocean. I believe she was looking for her child, the one she watched die. Julian. And then I pictured her the way she was with the baby, the baby she named Julia, so sure of herself as she cooed at her, bounced her on her knee, slung her over her hip while making dinner. I pictured her on that boat, her face filled with satisfaction at being a parent. Feeling vindicated for the wrong done to her by God or her mother or the Universe. Meanwhile, she had not secured the stern line. She had not had a hand on that little boy. She had not been looking at the map for rocks. I could see her. So confident. Feeling so worthy to have this child in her care. Thinking she was doing everything right. Believing she was perfect. All the while being so careless.
I thought about those cards I used to make for my mother. Number One Mother! Greatest Mother in the World!
I think there was a reason Lucy Pratt could not have children.
Just like there are lawyers who should not be entrusted with guarding over children.
I did not have time to consider philosophical implications of this story about God and fate and whether there was any divine justice in the Universe, because my father was devastated by the blood and thinking Emma was dead.
“He killed Emma! I know it! I know she’s dead! He killed her and then they went and escaped with her little girl!”
He went on like this all afternoon, until they ran a test that confirmed that the blood found on the boat and dock was a man’s. But before that test came back—hours, it seemed—his despair was like an opening into his soul, and I was able to look into that opening and see that for my father, hope is just a word. Even after my return and after the search for Emma began, he could not feel joy at seeing me or hope of finding Emma, because there was always too much fear of losing us again, or seeing that we’d been damaged, or the world was coming to an end in a fiery apocalypse. He could not allow himself to ever be happy. I don’t know if this thing about my father was created because my mother had sex with Mr. Martin and left him, or if it was this thing about him that drove her to do it.
Witt saw into the opening as well. We gathered at our father’s house after we heard the news. Witt is very strong and he held our father tight while he cried. We were sitting in the kitchen, and Witt just kneeled down in front of his chair and pulled him in. When my father was done crying, he went to his room to lie down. I’m sure he smoked some pot first or maybe took a pill, because he was very eager to leave and I know from experience that when someone is that upset, they can’t just go and rest without taking some kind of drug. I did not judge him. I had taken Dr. Nichols’s pills.
When he was gone, Witt sat with me at the table. He asked me straight out about the night I escaped from the island and whether I was lying about how it happened.
What I had told him was all true. During the time I was getting power over Rick, I had also been working on the other part of my plan inside the house. Lucy had her pills for sleeping and she kept them in her bathroom. I knew I would need to get to them. So I had been a very good girl. Happy to be with the Pratts. Happy that I had seen the mistake I had made in trying to leave. Eventually, they stopped watching me. They stopped worrying about me. They got distracted.
It’s hard to even remember how crazy I felt the night I managed to get to Lucy’s pills. Endless days of fear. Endless days of dreaming. Endless days of pretending and hating myself for any real feelings I had for anyone or anything in that wretched place, of looking out at the land so close but impossible to reach. And endless days having sex with a man I pretended to love but then had to shower off me.
The thought of being free overwhelmed me with happiness. The thought of getting caught overwhelmed me with fear. Waves of elation and dread rolled through my body like the ocean, each one crashing against a wall and giving way to the next.
Heart exploding, sweat dripping down my face from the fear and heat of that summer night, I sat on the couch with Bill, watching a movie. Lucy had gone to bed and we hadn’t seen or heard from her for half an hour. She had taken her pill. I brought Bill his glass of wine. I had dissolved the pill inside it. After a while, Bill said he didn’t feel so good. You aren’t supposed to mix the pills with alcohol. I told him maybe it was the heat. I told him I would get him some water and I went to the bathroom.
I waited a few minutes there. I waited until it was quiet. And as I opened the door, my mind was racing with horrible thoughts of Bill standing on the other side, his hands reaching for my bare throat to kill me because he’d tasted the pill and realized what I was doing. I almost cried out when I pulled that handle and could see behind the door, Bill on the couch, unconscious.
I let out a gasp, but then forced myself to move. Bill kept a cheap old cell phone in his pants pocket. He used it to message Rick when he needed the boat. I reached into his pocket and grabbed the phone. I sent the message and I knew Rick would come. Rick always came, day or night. So I took all the cash I could find from his wallet and the bedroom drawers where they kept it, and I went to the dock and waited until I could see the lights from inside the harbor.
TWENTY-TWO
Dr. Winter—Day Seven of Cass Tanner’s Return
They found the body of Richard Foley the next morning. It was lodged in the rocks on the westernmost point of the island of Freya. The cause of death appeared to be drowning because there was salt water in his lungs, but he also had contusions on his upper torso and a large gash on the back of his head. Wood splinters were found embedded in his skin.
They had not determined the exact time of death, but the extent of the decomposition was consistent with the time period between finding the boat and finding the body.
Abby and Leo did not change their plan to return to Connecticut. They took calls from the field office as they drove.
Theories were being spun about Cass and whether she had killed Richard Foley to escape: “It would explain why she lied about the timing … the two-day gap.… She killed him and then had to figure out what to do, how to get home.… She was never on a truck.…”
But others were willing to pin the death on the Pratts, who had now been identified as the Petersons: “They panicked, confronted him. Maybe he threatened to turn them in. A heated argument turned violent.”
Abby wanted to believe this as well, but Cass’s stories were impossible to ignore.
“What was it she said, Abby? About that first night when she got on the boat?”
Abby was thinking the same thing. “She said she knew it was dangerous to fall in the water between the boat and the dock. She said her father had told her years before how the boat can get pushed back and crush you against the dock.”
Leo hung his head. “Jesus.”
“Are you still okay with this?” Abby asked as they pulled into the Martins’ driveway.
Abby had a plan, a way to find Emma. But they would have to lie, both of them, and very well.
Leo didn’t hesitate. “Let’s do it.”
Cass
Day seven was the last day I kept track of my days b
ack home. It was the day Dr. Winter told us that Emma had been found.
She told us as soon as she and Agent Strauss returned from Maine and the island of Freya, where they found my sister’s necklace but no sign of Emma or the Pratts.
I have such a clear picture of Dr. Winter from that afternoon. She was wearing jeans and a light blue T-shirt that matched the color of her eyes. The sun was shining through the window of the living room and through her blond hair, making it glow. But it also made her face appear dark and full of shadows from her nose and her cheekbones, and I had to remind myself that it was the backlighting from the sun that was causing this. Not me. Not the trust in me that was driving her disclosure of this news about Emma. I felt responsible for those things, and the weight of them nearly crushed me.
Dr. Winter said that they’d found the brother of Lucy Pratt, or Lorna Peterson, and he had been very cooperative. He told them his family had owned another piece of property, a small cabin farther north, near Acadia. They confirmed it with the will of their mother and tracked the conveyance deed. They had an address, and surveillance teams had made a positive ID. Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss told us that Emma and her daughter were inside that house. The Pratts as well.
I nearly burst open. I don’t even know what it was—joy, relief, nerves. They were surging together in a toxic potion, through my veins, through my body.
Agent Strauss was with Dr. Winter when she told us these things, and he said that we could not tell anyone, not even my father, because they did not want to spook the Pratts. They were going to do more surveillance to assess the situation, maybe for a day or two. They wanted to make sure there were no weapons in the house and observe where Emma and her daughter were sleeping at night. They had time. There didn’t appear to be any immediate danger, and the worst thing would be to rush in and have someone get hurt. They were telling me because they needed my help—they wanted me to interpret the things they were seeing, the behaviors and schedules, especially of her daughter. When did she nap? When did she bathe? They told Mr. and Mrs. Martin because that’s where I was staying and they wanted me to have emotional support. They told us we could not tell anyone else.