No matter what had happened to Francie and Will, Audrey Jorgensen wasn’t to blame. Her illness, perhaps, but not the woman in its grip.
“But Owen’s gone. He ran from me and my heart is breaking. He doesn’t trust me. But I have Francie and Will. I have my babies, and I have to go. So I leave him.”
Audrey broke on the last word. Her shoulders began to shake as quiet tears overtook her.
“Audrey, I want you to take a deep breath and back away. Leave those feelings there where you found them. Just set them down like you would a glass of water in your hand. Can you do that, Audrey?”
But Audrey couldn’t hear her. She was lost in a place the doctor’s soothing couldn’t reach.
“Audrey?”
“I leave him. I have to,” she said. “I have to leave him.”
“It’s all right, Audrey. I’d like you to stop the movie now. Stop and step away, back to my voice.”
“It’s not all right,” Audrey said. “I leave him, I do, but I come back. I come back and that’s when it all slips away from me. I come back and he won’t come. Why won’t he come with me?”
Audrey’s head came up, and Dr. Young’s professional mask slipped. The doctor pulled back ever so slightly at the plea, though she recovered almost immediately.
“It’s all right, Audrey,” Dr. Young said, leaning in to coax her patient into relaxation.
But Audrey shook her head slowly from side to side.
“No,” she said. “Nothing is ever right again.”
48
A hush had come over the room while Audrey’s session was taking place. Even as things were wrapping up, it remained.
Sergeant Allred had motioned Lars aside.
“This wasn’t in the case notes. What’s this about coming back? We thought she was gone.”
Lars didn’t have any answers.
“I’ve never heard anything about it,” he murmured, shaken at the thought.
The men turned to look at Owen.
Dr. Young was standing a few steps behind Audrey while Beverly helped her daughter into the layers of warm clothing she’d helped her out of on her arrival.
Once she’d wrapped a bright-yellow scarf around Audrey’s neck and placed a matching stocking cap upon her head, the effect of Audrey’s aged features and gray hair stood at odds with her childlike demeanor.
She’s a ghost of the woman she used to be. Lars remembered the sparkle in her eyes when she’d tap-danced her way to him. A pale copy.
They’d lost more than the children that day.
Beverly guided Audrey toward the door, but Owen stepped into their path.
Audrey raised her eyes slowly to meet those of her firstborn child. There was no recognition in her face. Nothing, not even a spark. She stared at her son as if he were a tree planted in her path.
Owen was no stranger to this. She’d never shown any indication she recognized him, even in the early days. It had been hard on the boy, Lars knew, though Owen never spoke of it.
He watched him now, his son, grown to a fine man despite it all. Owen opened his arms and pulled his mother, so small and unresisting, close to him, folding her into a hug. Audrey didn’t resist, but the expression on her face didn’t change.
She may have been recalling memories under hypnosis, but Audrey’s mind was still deeply damaged.
Owen held his mother for a moment, then let his arms fall. Beverly wiped tears from her cheeks. She squeezed Owen’s arm, then continued to lead her daughter toward the door.
Once Audrey had drawn past them, Sergeant Allred said, “I need to escort your wife and her doctors back to the hospital, but once Mrs. Jorgensen’s secured, I’m turning around and coming right back here.”
He placed his hat on his head and gave them all a look of warning.
“There are questions that need to be answered,” he said.
When the sergeant shut the door, all eyes fell on Owen, who’d dropped his weight onto the back of the couch.
“I told myself I dreamed it,” he said, staring at the floor. “Just a dream. I think I always knew that wasn’t true.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, son?” Lars had to ask.
Owen shook his head. Lars’s confusion was mirrored on his son’s face.
“I don’t know,” Owen said. “I just don’t know. Once I realized she was gone, I thought she’d come back. She’d always come back before. And then when I knew she wasn’t, I thought . . . I thought it was my fault. If I hadn’t yelled at her, if I’d only listened, done as she asked, it would have been okay.”
All these years, Lars had been so busy dragging his own guilt around. He’d been blind.
“Owen, none of this, none of it was ever your fault. Not ever.”
He took a step toward his son but stopped when Owen shook his head, warding off any efforts to be comforted.
“I know that now, but when you’re ten . . . When you’re ten and you scream at your mother and call her a liar. When you run away from her, and then the whole world caves in? It’s hard not to think one thing caused the other.”
Lars’s heart skipped a beat when Owen looked up at him from such a desolate place. Hannah, nearly forgotten, stepped up and took her father’s hand in her own. Owen pulled his daughter to his side and held her tightly.
“I couldn’t tell you, Dad . . . I just couldn’t. You were all I had left, and I didn’t want you to hate me.” The final few words were delivered in a whisper.
“Oh, Owen,” Beverly said.
“Once enough time had gone by, I was able to tell myself it hadn’t really happened. I’d imagined it, to make myself feel better about my mother leaving me behind. Mom hadn’t found me walking along the road on the way home from Zach’s, kicking at rocks and avoiding her. She hadn’t cried and pleaded and begged for me to come with her. That I hadn’t said I hated her, and run away again.”
“Jesus, son,” Lars said. He closed the distance between them in two large steps and pulled both Owen and Hannah into an embrace.
Owen allowed it for a time. Then he pulled back and stood, wiping suspiciously at his eyes.
“I have to take Hannah to school,” he said, clearing his throat. “She can’t miss any more time.”
“The sergeant,” Lars said.
“I’ll come back. Once I get her where she needs to be. I’ll come back and try to give him the answers he’s looking for.”
Left alone with the two women, Lars had nowhere to stow his worry. He busied himself making lunch. Jenna stepped into the kitchen to help, and he gave thanks he hadn’t pulled a chatty woman off the ice. Sometimes, small favors were the only ones you were going to get.
Beverly stood at the window, an old hand at keeping her thoughts to herself.
The hell of it was no one had an appetite, so he slid the tray into the refrigerator for later.
At some point, people would need to eat. That was one of the few constants Lars had always been able to count on.
Owen returned before Sergeant Allred, though they didn’t have long to wait on the policeman.
After the facts, as far as Owen could remember them, were laid on the table, the sergeant asked, “So you were on your way home from Zachary Clark’s house when you last saw your mother. Do you remember how long you played that day, before you started back?”
The lines on Owen’s forehead deepened. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Anything you can remember will help,” the policeman prodded. “It was midmorning when you left. Did you have lunch there?”
After a moment, Owen nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I remember because I sort of invited myself. Usually I’d just go home for lunch—we only lived four houses down—but I didn’t want to. I felt bad about what I’d said to Mom, but I was still mad too.”
“Did you stay after lunch?” the sergeant asked.
“I did. I can remember Mrs. Clark being kind of put out over it. I think she had a headache or something. Zach and I promised to go outside and not kick
the ball against the side of the house, and she let me stay for a while longer.”
“A good while?”
Owen shook his head. “It’s been a long time.”
“Over an hour, would you say?”
Owen thought that over.
“Yeah, yeah, probably. I remember we ran down to the dock and fished for a while. Zach caught a northern.” A ghost of a smile flitted across Owen’s face. “Nearly lost his pole over that fish. I remember his dad coming down to help us get the hook out of the fish’s mouth. He had to use the pliers, because it was buried deep.”
Owen leaned back in his chair and looked up toward the ceiling.
“Funny the things that stick with you,” he said. “I think Mrs. Clark came out to take his picture with it. He was damn proud of that fish.”
“Do you remember going back inside?”
“No.” Owen placed his forearms on the table and came back to the matter at hand. “No, I don’t think I did. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Clark sent me home right after that.”
“So you were walking along the road when you saw your mother?”
“Yeah,” he said, full of regret again. “I was walking slow, trying to put it off as long as I could. I was about halfway there, I think. Then she was in front of me. She had that wild look she got sometimes, the look I hated. I can remember how jealous I was. I just wanted to run back to Zach’s house, where everything was so boring and ordinary. I just wanted a boring mom.”
Owen sighed and rose from his chair. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, paced back and forth a bit.
“She wanted me to go with her. She was being crazy about it, acting like the world was going to end if I didn’t. I . . . I said terrible things. And I ran away again, this time toward home.
“I went to my room and threw myself on the bed. I remember pulling out my comics and . . . and trying not to cry. I was too old to cry.”
Owen stopped and leaned his back against the counter, his arms folded in front of him.
“When everything hit the fan after Dad got home, and Mom never came back . . . I lied. I couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone how hurtful I’d been.” He raised his eyes to look straight at his father.
But Sergeant Allred wasn’t interested in regrets. He looked down at the little notepad in front of him, then raised his head.
“Owen, I need you to think back. When your mother found you on the road . . .”
Owen tilted his chin forward, waiting for the rest of the question.
“Do you remember . . . was she in a vehicle? Was she on foot?”
Owen shook his head and there was no hesitation when he said, “No, there was no vehicle. Why would she have been in a vehicle? We were less than a block from home.”
Sergeant Allred made a note.
“Okay, one more thing, and this one’s important. Was your mother alone?”
Owen raised his eyes slowly and looked at the sergeant. Lars did the same.
“She was.”
“She was completely alone?”
Owen nodded. “Yes.”
“So when you came back into the house, did you see your little brother and sister?”
Owen’s face tightened.
“No,” he whispered. “No, I didn’t.”
“Think hard. Did you see them playing in the yard, or down by the lake? Were they in the house when you came in?”
Owen’s eyes were wide. He shook his head.
“No, I’m certain. They weren’t by the lake, because I would have seen them from the Clarks’ dock. And they weren’t in the house. I know they weren’t, because Francie could be a pest, and she’d want to know what was wrong. I remember being glad I had the room to myself for once. We all shared. Bunk beds for me and Francie, and Will’s crib was there too.”
“Okay, this is really important, Owen. Are you absolutely sure you saw no sign of Francie or Will?”
Owen shook his head again, impatient this time.
“No,” he said, with more force. “I’m telling you. Look around. The only place they might have been would be Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and that doesn’t make any sense. We weren’t allowed to play in there. Mom never would have left them in there to go outside and find me, and besides, I would have heard them.”
“You were upset,” the sergeant pointed out.
Lars could answer that one himself.
“Have you ever been around a four-year-old girl and a toddler, Sergeant?” he said.
The detective looked toward Lars.
“Francie had a screech that could bring bears out of hibernation. I’ve never heard anything like it. And little Will, he wasn’t much quieter. He loved his sister. Thought she was the funniest thing on earth. The two of them together were never quiet.”
Sergeant Allred leaned back in his chair and placed the cap on his pen, which he set on top of the little notebook he’d flipped closed.
“This changes things,” he said, somber and still. “Those two kids. They had to be somewhere while Audrey was trying to coax Owen into coming with her.”
A sense of dread had settled into the pit of Lars’s stomach.
“Somewhere closer than we ever thought.”
49
It was late, but sleep slipped further from her grasp with each passing moment. Jenna was doubtful any of the Jorgensens were resting easy.
Questions flitted around her on silent bat wings.
Audrey’s hypnotherapy sessions were working, but Jenna was more confused than ever.
Where had the children been while Audrey tried so desperately to collect Owen, the first and the last of them? And why, if Audrey had been so set on Owen coming with her, had she given up after her failed attempt on the road?
In Audrey’s position, would Jenna have been willing to give up and leave Cassie behind, saying, What the hell. Better luck next time?
She found the idea not even remotely likely.
Of course, she was looking at it from the perspective of a mother under threat of losing her children. What if even that basic assumption was wrong?
Jenna forced herself to examine the very thing everyone was avoiding. What if, in some rational corner of Audrey’s mind, she’d known that leaving Owen behind would be his salvation?
Wrestling with the unknowable, Jenna couldn’t find an explanation that fit.
Unless the children . . . unless they were already dead. Jenna wrapped her arms tighter around herself, shaken by the possibility.
If the kids were dead at that point, did that mean Audrey was responsible? It was hard to see any eventuality that wouldn’t play out that way, no matter how many directions Jenna twisted and turned the facts.
If Audrey’s younger children were indeed dead, and at her hand, then there could be only one reason she’d come back for Owen.
To kill him too.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Cassie interjected.
“Am I?” Jenna asked. “Am I really?”
“I think part of you wants Audrey to be guilty,” Cassie said.
Jenna shook her head. “No,” she denied. “I know what I said before, but I feel sorry for her. It’s plain she loved her kids, even in the grip of a sickness she couldn’t control.”
“Maybe. But if Audrey’s guilty, that helps you hold on to the black-and-white picture you’ve painted of the world, doesn’t it?”
Jenna frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“If Audrey deserves the blame, regardless of how much pity you might feel, then you’re justified in holding on to your own guilt. Because Audrey’s the other side of your coin, isn’t she?”
“Stop,” Jenna said. “This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?” her daughter asked softly.
Jenna rolled over in the bed and fought back tears. She clung tightly to her grief. She wanted it chained to her, where she could touch and feel it, pick at it again and again so a scab couldn’t form over the top of it.
If she wasn’t vigilant, J
enna knew time would lay a fine dust over her memories. It would build, infinitesimally, layer by layer, until they became faded and their edges began to blur.
Her precious, beautiful children. Her husband, that sweet, giving man she hadn’t appreciated enough but who’d inexplicably chosen her.
They deserved so much more than to fade away into what once had been.
Jenna faced a truth that had traveled all these miles and all these days, buried inside of her, wrapped in her dead daughter’s voice.
She knew, in her heart, she didn’t want to die.
But neither did she want to live, and regardless of what Cassie might have to say about it, that was the only alternative. Black or white. No gray.
The thought of living in a world where her family had been reduced to nothing more than faded memories was too much to bear.
“Not all stories have happy endings, Mom,” Cassie whispered.
“But they should, Cass,” Jenna murmured, her eyes still squeezed tight. “They should. And yours should have had the happiest of all.”
50
“You’re alone in the house now, with only Francie and Will. Owen’s gone to play at his friend’s house. Can you tell me, Audrey, without dipping into the emotions, just tell me with words . . . what happens next?”
“The babies,” Audrey said. “I have to take my babies. I’ll come back for Owen, I will. But I have to take the babies away and keep them safe from what’s coming. I can feel it starting.”
“And can you tell me how you do that, Audrey?”
“Go get your most favorite thing in the world, sweetheart,” Audrey said, in a tone any mother would recognize. Jenna had used it on her own children, as had countless other mothers since time began.
“You’re speaking to Francine?” Dr. Young asked.
“Yes,” Audrey said. “I hold Will in my arms. He’s getting so big now. Not a baby much longer. But he wants his nap, so I pick him up and he lays his head on my shoulder.”
“Are you packing a bag, Audrey?” Dr. Young asked. “Do you have a plan?”
“No, there’s no time. The storm is coming and Lars is going to take them. No bags, I tell Francie, just one thing. Your favorite thing, and she comes back with her Moonbeam and Will’s favorite blanket, and I can feel the tears on my cheeks even though I’m smiling.”
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