Somebody's Daughter

by David Bell

  Michael tensed. He took an involuntary step back. What if someone up there had done harm to Lynn and Felicity? And he’d put himself in danger’s way by breaking into the house?

  He pressed the nine on his phone, ready to summon the police.

  But someone emerged from the bedroom at the top of the stairs to the right. The bedroom Robyn slept in when they were little. Michael saw a blond head, a child’s body.

  A cry caught in his throat. He tried to process what he was seeing. The girl looked so much like Robyn, except . . .

  She was there. Alive. And wearing a bandage on her forehead. Michael recognized her from the photos.

  “Felicity?” he said.

  The girl nodded, looking shy. Then she waved her hand at him, summoning him up the stairs.

  chapter

  eighty-one

  7:56 A.M.

  Griffin helped Jake Little to his feet and led him over to her car. She opened the back door on the driver’s side, guiding him in and reminding him not to hit his head. She also told him to sit quietly and behave, and he did, looking peaceful and resigned. Whatever fever had been driving him up to that point appeared to have broken. He seemed to have accepted that his part in the drama was over.

  Griffin came back across the lawn in the direction of Angela Frazier, who stood on the grass with her phone to her ear. Griffin knew whom she was calling, and she could tell she wasn’t getting an answer. She looked like she wanted to throw the phone across the yard.

  “Where did he go?” Griffin asked. “He seemed to have an idea.”

  “Lynn keeps a studio downtown,” Angela said. “A music studio. It’s a small space, but she plays there with friends. Or by herself.”

  “Okay,” Griffin said. “But it’s a little obvious. She knows we’d look there.”

  “You’re acting like you think she’s a criminal,” Angela said. “I think this is all a gross overreaction. It’s just a wrecked car. Lynn might be hurt. We still have to find Felicity. When Michael gets back, he’ll—”

  Griffin cut her off. “Where else might she go? Anything you can think of, no matter how ridiculous.”

  “I’m thinking,” Angela said.

  “Mrs. Frazier, the police are on their way here. My colleagues from Trudeau are on their way as well. We need to have answers for them if we can.” She realized she’d been speaking loudly. “Is there anywhere else she might have gone? You’re right, there’s a missing girl involved here, one who might be his child.”

  Griffin noted that Angela Frazier showed no negative reaction to the statement. Either she’d accepted the possibility herself, or she was damn good at hiding her discomfort.

  “Anything you can tell us would be very helpful,” Griffin said. “No matter how far-fetched.”

  Then it looked like a thought had jumped into Angela Frazier’s mind. She opened her eyes wider. “The other house.”

  “Which house? Your mother-in-law’s house?”

  “No, not that. Their old house.”

  Griffin started nodding her head. She remembered talking about it with Angela the previous evening when they’d discussed her husband’s family. “The house where their sister died. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “I bet that’s it,” Angela said. “I bet that’s where Michael went.”

  Griffin took out her phone and called the local police. She identified herself and gave them the address to check for Michael. And then she called Twitchell, letting him know.

  chapter

  eighty-two

  8:14 A.M.

  As Michael reached the top of the stairs, he slowed his pace. His limbs felt stiff, his joints frozen.

  He understood that going into that room was going to take him past some line, some unseen point at which everything would be different. Forever. A fleeting thought crossed his mind, one that told him to turn around and go, to pretend he’d learned and seen nothing in the house. But just as quickly that thought went away.

  He’d seen her. There.

  An entire community waited, desperately hoping to locate the girl, and he thought he had. He couldn’t walk away. He never could, not since the moment Erica rang his doorbell.

  Michael sucked in a deep lungful of air and turned the corner into the room.

  The blinds were half-closed, the light coming through diffused. A handful of sun rays slashed across the floor, but the bed remained in shadow.

  Felicity stood there on the far side of the room, her head turned toward the door, toward Michael. She made the waving gesture again.

  Michael saw someone on the bed. On the bedside table, next to a digital clock, sat some crumpled tissues and a half-empty glass of water. Michael came closer, recognized the figure on the bed, lying on top of the covers. Her leg was propped on a pillow, an ice pack resting precariously on her knee.

  “Lynn?” Michael said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Oh, Michael,” she said. “Thank God you’re here. I thought maybe you were the police breaking in. I was ready to hide, but my knee is killing me.”

  “What are you doing, Lynn?” Michael raised his voice. “Everyone is looking for Felicity. Do you know how much of a mess you’ve stirred up? The police, the media. Everyone.”

  “I know, I know, Michael.” She grimaced, adjusted her position on the bed. She reached down and moved the ice pack into a more stable position. “Michael, I get it.”

  “You were in an accident,” Michael said. “Right? With Felicity in the car? And you left your car at the lake and came here to hide out?”

  She cleared her throat and reached for the glass of water. “My knee is killing me. It swelled during the night. I can feel it. Yes, I banged it in the accident. I took the station wagon. It’s in the garage. We hit a tree in my car. I was rushing, coming to Cottonsville a back way heading for the lake house, and went off the road. I just wanted to hide out there, spend some time with Felicity. We were lucky. . . .”

  Michael walked across the room. He bent down in front of Felicity and looked at the bandage on her head. “Are you okay, Felicity?”

  “I hit my head,” she said. “When the car crashed into the tree.”

  “Did you cut yourself bad?” Michael asked. “Do you think you need stitches?”

  “She doesn’t,” Lynn said. “I took care of it.”

  “How do you feel?” Michael asked Felicity.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m hungry. I want to go home.”

  “I know,” Michael said. “We’re going to take you home.” He reached out and squeezed the girl’s shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring, comforting gesture. Then he turned back to his sister. “Why did you take her?” Michael asked. “You still haven’t told me what you were thinking.”

  “You weren’t doing anything about her.”

  “Doing anything? I didn’t know she existed. I think you’re groggy.”

  “Stop talking about her like she’s not in the room.”

  Lynn looked over at Felicity. She made a gesture, asking the girl to come closer, but Felicity remained rooted in place. The girl looked up at Michael.

  “Is my mom here?” she asked.

  “Not yet, but soon. I suspect the police and a lot of people will be here any minute. It’s okay, honey. You’re safe.” Michael leaned past her and turned on the bedside lamp. The walls were painted dark blue, nothing at all like when they were children. And why wouldn’t that be the case? So much time had passed. More than twenty years.

  “Michael, all I wanted to do was get the paternity test. I just wanted to find Felicity in the park—hopefully she’d be alone—and take the swab. And then leave. That’s all I was supposed to do. That’s it.” She winced, but the look quickly passed. “When I got there, I talked myself out of it. I told myself the whole thing was wrong and foolish. I was ready to go home. B
ut then . . . I saw her. Felicity. Alone in the car. It seemed like it was meant to be, you know? It was there for me to do. And it wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “You can’t just do those things without her mom’s permission,” he said. “You can’t just go up to a kid and take a DNA sample.”

  “Erica wouldn’t let us,” Lynn said. “She kept jerking us around. And Mom wanted to know. It was killing her.”

  “Mom knew about this idiotic plan?”

  “No, she didn’t. But I was doing it for her. And for you and me. Michael, she might be the only grandchild Mom ever has.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Why haven’t you and Angela had a baby?” she asked. “With my cancer, I may never. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t have solved the problem this way,” he said.

  Lynn turned her head away from the lamp and toward the window. “I didn’t mean any harm, Michael. But when I was there, with her . . .” She turned her head back to Felicity. “Michael, she looked so sad. And lonely, left there in the car in the park. It felt like fate, like she needed me. And I knew child protective services had been called recently for the same reason. Because Erica left her alone. I knew that. Jake told me.”

  “It’s still not your place to intervene. What did you think was going to happen?”

  “And I saw her blond hair. And her eyes . . . Michael . . .”

  Then Michael saw it. He got it. All the gears clicked into place in his mind.

  “You thought she looked like Robyn,” he said.

  Lynn nodded, her eyes full of tears. “She was Robyn all over again. You don’t know what happened the day Robbie died. You don’t know what I did. Michael, I couldn’t let Felicity go. I just couldn’t.”

  chapter

  eighty-three

  Before Michael could ask a question, he heard a car door close outside. Then another.

  He stepped over to the window, the one that looked out onto the street. Felicity came up beside him, bouncing from one foot to the other as Michael peeked through the blinds. He saw a Cottonsville police cruiser and two uniformed officers climbing out, their badges glistening in the sun. Then another car pulled up behind them. Detective Griffin emerged, her face determined, her stride brisk.

  And then Angela got out of the car as well. . . .

  “Felicity? Do you want to do me a favor? Will you go downstairs and wait for the police officers to come inside?”

  “Are they with my mom?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. But she might be here soon. Can you go downstairs and do that? I’m going to talk to my sister a little longer, and then we’ll be down too. Tell them that if they ask. Tell them we’re okay in here; no one’s seriously hurt. Okay?”

  The girl didn’t say anything else but simply walked out of the room, her hand to her bandage. He heard her soft footsteps on the stairs, and he hoped for more time with Lynn before the weight of everything that had happened fell on them.

  When she was gone, Lynn lifted her head, removing her hands from in front of her face. “I thought I’d killed her, Michael.”

  “Who?”

  “Felicity. When we had the accident and hit the tree, I thought she was dead. I thought I had done it again. I saw the blood.” She buried her head in her hands. “I’m sorry, Michael. It all went sideways so fast.”

  Michael came over and sat on the edge of the bed. He reached out and patted his sister on the arm. “Lynn, what do you mean you thought you’d done it again? Why are you saying that?”

  Her words came out in a tumble, like boulders sliding down a hill. “I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. I didn’t tell the minister or the therapist they sent us to. You made my burden yours, for all these years.”

  “It’s not your burden,” Michael said. “I was supposed to be watching you both. I was older. I should have been there instead of wandering away, lost in my head. Daydreaming. I hate that I did that, that I let my attention waver.”

  Lynn remained silent. She stared at Michael and then turned away, her eyes trailing over the walls and up to the ceiling.

  “What’s the matter, Lynn?” he asked. “Why are you not saying anything?”

  “It’s not your fault, Michael. Robyn . . . It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill her.”

  “I know that. She fell. It was an accident. But I could have, should have, prevented it. I should have been there to try.”

  She still kept her head turned away.

  “Lynn? Talk to me.”

  She said something under her breath. Michael didn’t understand, so he leaned closer.

  “What are you saying, Lynn?”

  “It’s not your fault, Michael.” She turned to face him. “It’s me, Michael. It’s me. I killed Robyn. I killed her that day.”

  chapter

  eighty-four

  8:22 A.M.

  Griffin watched the two uniformed cops approach the house. She stayed back by the car with Angela Frazier, letting the local authorities do their job unless they needed her help. She’d stepped on enough toes, rocked enough boats. She told herself to avoid more trouble.

  But you were right, she reminded herself. You were right.

  And when the Cottonsville cops and crime scene technicians had showed up at the lake cottage to process the car and secure Jake Little, she was more than happy to leave, heading for the house where she hoped they’d find Felicity.

  And she hoped the girl would be alive. . . .

  When the cops stepped up onto the porch, their movements cautious, their hands placed near their weapons, the door suddenly swung open.

  For a moment, everyone froze. The thought dashed across Griffin’s brain that the cops were going to draw their guns, spring into action, or fire at whoever emerged.

  But they remained rooted in place. And when they saw the tiny figure emerging from the front door, their postures relaxed ever so slightly.

  “It’s her,” Griffin said.

  “It is,” Angela said next to her.

  Griffin hadn’t realized she’d said the words out loud.

  She moved forward, asking everyone for calm, her hands out. “Hold it, hold it. Easy, guys. Easy.”

  But they were taking it easy. One of the cops bent down and offered the girl his hand. And then Felicity came farther onto the porch, blinking against the bright sun. Griffin reached the bottom of the steps, and the cop, a burly guy with fingers like sausages, eased the girl along, placing her tiny hand into Griffin’s.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Griffin said. It felt weird to have the child’s hand in hers. The touch, the feel of Felicity’s soft skin against hers, summoned a raft of emotions, but foremost among them was relief. The kid was alive. She wore a bandage on her head and her clothes looked a little dirty, but she was alive. And with Griffin. “Why don’t you come over here with me to the car?”

  “Is my mom here?” the girl asked.

  “She’s on her way.”

  They came up to Angela Frazier who stood with a smile on her face, greeting the child. Her stepchild, perhaps. “We’ve got some water bottles and crackers in the car. Are you hungry or thirsty?”

  Felicity nodded, so Griffin led her over to the car. As Angela opened the door and rummaged around for the snacks, another vehicle came down the street and stopped behind Griffin’s. She recognized it and the driver right away.

  Twitchell stepped out on the driver’s side, and the passenger-side door swung open at the same time. Erica Frazier jumped out, her face a mask of worry and anxiety. It took just a moment for her to see her daughter, standing at Griffin’s side.

  “Mom!”

  “Oh, baby!”

  Felicity tore out of Griffin’s grip and ran to her mother, jumping into her arms like they’d been separated for fifty years instead of one night. But Griffin remembered
being that age, knew that one night of fear and terror away from her parents would have felt like fifty. She closed her eyes, pressed against the lids with her thumb and index finger.

  Someone came up beside her. She assumed it was Angela Frazier, offering support.

  But a familiar male voice said, “I always knew you were a softie.”

  She opened her eyes and saw Twitchell, his pale bald head shining in the sun. He reached out, offering her a tissue.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you.” He reached out again and gave her upper arm a soft squeeze. “You did good, kid. You did really, really good. I’m glad you called me to bring her down. It’s nice to see a happy ending for a change.”

  They all, including Angela Frazier, stood and watched Erica clutch her daughter to her chest, apparently intending to never let go.

  chapter

  eighty-five

  8:25 A.M.

  What are you talking about, Lynn? Robyn fell. She was up too high, she lost her balance. That’s what you said back then. That’s what you told Mom and Dad and the police. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

  Lynn shook her head, looking away again.

  Michael had seen Robyn on top of the swing set before, arms out like a gymnast on a balance beam. She would be silhouetted by the sun, looking almost like an angel or some otherworldly being, high above them, bright as the day, possessed of an incredible ability to walk and balance in the air.

  “What did she say to you that day?” Michael asked. “I heard you both yelling. I know you were fighting, but I don’t know what it was about.”

  Lynn sniffled. She reached to the side of the bed and picked up a tissue. She rubbed her nose vigorously and then locked eyes with Michael. She seemed to be looking through him and down the tunnel of years back to the day she could also see so clearly.

  “She always taunted me because she could do things physically I couldn’t,” Lynn said. “The gymnastics, the climbing. Even though she was younger, she was stronger and braver than I was.”