Dad did his best to be patient as he stood next to me. I could’ve stayed in her arms forever, but I stepped aside so they could have their time. He threw his arms around her, and her small frame disappeared inside his. Their shoulders shook with sobs, and they whispered things to each other that none of us could hear. The nurses looked away, not wanting to intrude on the sacred intimacy of the moment. Meredith moved away from the back wall and came to stand next to me. She put her arm around my shoulders and brought me close to her.
“Welcome home, Kate. We’re glad you’re safe,” she said, wiping away tears.
SIX
MEREDITH
NOW
I glanced into the back seat of the car. This time Abbi really was asleep. She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as we’d left the hospital. Poor thing. She’d cried all the way through the hospital and into the parking lot. “I’m not going to go back to the hotel yet,” I said to Scott. “I’m just going to keep driving around so she can sleep. I’m afraid she’ll wake up if we stop and won’t be able to fall back to sleep. She needs to rest.” I used to do the same thing when my boys were babies and I couldn’t get them to sleep. I’d drive around until they finally crashed and then park with the car running until they woke up.
“Good idea,” he said, nodding.
I made a left on Main Street and slowly drove past the mom-and-pop stores lining each side. My heart ached for Scott and Abbi. Our visit had been cut short by the baby. Scott and Kate had been embracing when the nurses had brought the baby back into the room. Scott had leaped off the bed like it was on fire.
“Shiloh.” Kate’s face had lit up at the sight of her baby. The nurse had handed her to Kate. She had squirmed and rooted for Kate’s breast. Kate had moved her off, but she had come right back. It had gotten uncomfortable fast, since it was clear Shiloh wanted to nurse. Scott had rushed us out of the room without Abbi getting a chance to hug Kate or say a proper goodbye.
“I know Marcos warned us about how different she would look, but he should’ve been more specific,” I said. “I mean, he couldn’t have said, ‘Hey, by the way, she’s going to look like an eighty-year-old woman’? I’m pretty sure that would’ve been helpful for everyone.”
“Maybe he wanted us to be shocked.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows. I have no idea why they do anything that they do. You’re about to see what I told you about all those years ago.”
I’d heard everything about Kate’s case. I knew it as well as if she’d been my own wife—exactly how she’d disappeared from the Target parking lot that day, everything that had been on her list to buy, and where she had left her purse on the front seat of their Toyota. I knew every step of the investigation, each lead they’d discovered, then quickly dismissed. All the traditional and nontraditional things he’d done to find her or at least a promising lead—the psychics, the mystics, and all the weirdos who’d reached out to Scott over the years with stories about their own relatives who’d vanished. There was an entire group of people who believed in a mass abduction conspiracy by the government. They had talked about it on one of those forums Abbi was always on.
“The police and investigators never give you all the information they have. They’ve always got cards they’re hiding underneath the table,” he said as we drove, slowing at a stoplight. “But yet they want you to share everything with them. You’re expected to be an open book.”
“At least we have nothing to hide,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. They still treat you like you do.” His voice burned with anger, no doubt remembering the wringer they’d put him through.
Abbi murmured and stirred in the back seat. We hushed until she fell back to sleep.
“She was unrecognizable,” I said. I’d been through all their photo albums and had watched the home videos with them numerous times.
He gazed solemnly out the window. “I don’t know. I see her in there.”
I’d looked in her eyes, too, but that was not what I’d seen. They had looked dead to me.
“What did she say when you were holding her?” I asked.
He blushed, mumbling something underneath his breath that I couldn’t hear.
“What’d you say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Yes, it does. It could be important. Remember Marcos said to remember everything she said, even if it seemed insignificant?”
“She said . . . she kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Scottie.’”
“Scottie?”
He nodded, looking away.
“You told me you hated being called Scottie.”
Red crept up his neck. “I mean, it’s just . . . you know . . . it’s something stupid she used to call me when we were like ten.”
That was the thing with the two of them. They had been best friends before they got together, so they had known everything about each other, because that’s how it is with a best friend. Scott used to say they had known each other so well she was practically in his DNA.
“That’s cute,” I said, forcing a smile. I didn’t doubt he loved me, but I’d never forgotten those years I’d spent listening to him describe how losing Kate had been like losing part of his body and that he was only half a person without her.
KATE
THEN
I fumbled in the bottom of my purse, digging for my grocery list. Instead, all I found was a Ziploc bag full of crushed Goldfish and the red lollipop Abbi had gotten from the birthday party she’d gone to last Saturday. I let out a frustrated sigh. I probably left it at home again. God, I hated grocery shopping on Sunday afternoons. The store was always packed with people, and the shelves were half-empty, but our week had been too hectic to go earlier, and now I had no choice, since we were out of milk.
I jumped out of the car and slammed the door shut before hurrying inside. I only had an hour before I needed to pick up Abbi from preschool. I always told myself I was going to get so much done while she was at school, but the four hours flew by so fast, and now that I was getting more writing assignments from my editor, Leo, my time was even more crunched.
Things would be easier next year when Abbi went to kindergarten. I didn’t know who decided to make preschool only a half day, but I was ready to drop Abbi off at eight and pick her up at three. Not that I wouldn’t miss her being with me during the day, but we were both ready for it. Time apart would do us good.
I kept replaying my conversation with Leo this morning. He had been hesitant to assign me a new job because he was afraid I wouldn’t have enough time for anything major, but I’d been telling him for months that I was ready to get my old assignments back. Besides, the person who called about the interview specifically asked for me, so he didn’t have much choice. I’d taken a three-month maternity leave from my job as a writer at the Forum and never returned full-time. My job was the reason we’d moved to Arcata. I won a George Polk Award for a local investigative piece I did on elder abuse in two of the best nursing homes in Royal Heights. It gathered me all kinds of attention after they arrested two of the directors, and job offers came in from all over the country. It had always been my dream to move to Northern California, and it was like it was meant to be when we discovered Scott’s sales company had an office located in the adjoining town.
We decided I would stay home with Abbi and only work part-time until she started school, since the first five years were so important. I was glad I did it, but there were times when the boredom of being at home without a real job nearly drove me mad. It was all worth it, though, to see how happy and well adjusted Abbi was turning out to be. I’d never met a kid who was more delightful. Everyone said it too. It wasn’t just because I was her mom. She was happy and content, no matter where she was or what was going on around her. She was in good spirits if she took a nap and wouldn’t fall apart if she didn’t, like so many other children did. Even my best friend, Christina, who swore she was never going to have kids, joked that she’
d have one if she got one as good as Abbi. I couldn’t take any credit for her easygoing manner. She just came out that way.
Scott had been unsure about me transitioning back to work full-time when I suggested it, but I was bored with the trivial side stories I was assigned. I could only write about the local bake sales and watering-schedule issues so many times before I was ready to pull my hair out. I wanted to work on stories with substance again.
“It’s good for Abbi to see her mother working. I want her to have an image of me that comprises both,” I had said over dinner the other night, nearly gagging at how liberal and progressive I sounded. Really, I was just ready to go back to work. I loved being Abbi’s mom, but I also loved my job.
Scott always agreed with me whenever we talked about parenting and childcare, but we were going to see if he meant it, because Leo made it sound like this next assignment was going to be tough. It was why he was so reluctant to give it to me. Big stories required lots of extra hours, and it’d been a long time since I had been able to do anything beyond the bare minimum, but I was ready to jump back in, especially after I heard it involved a potential cult that had moved into the area and was hanging around on campus.
Pierce College was the heart of Arcata, and people’s lives revolved around it. Students came from all over the world to study in their chemical engineering program and English world literature specialization. But our cute college town came with the same host of problems as every other college campus across America—we battled the opioid epidemic, losing two students to overdoses last year. Recently, a religious group referring to themselves as Love International had been showing up on campus and helping kids get off drugs. They had a facility on the outskirts of town, and members of Love International had taken them into their facilities and helped them detox. They stayed with them around the clock until they were sober. They’d already been successful with over a dozen students. Stories of their miraculous recoveries were spreading like wildfire throughout the community. It wasn’t as if their approach to carefully monitored detox and 24-7 care was all that different from other approaches to sobriety. There were hundreds of programs or sober coaches who provided the exact same services. The thing that set Love International apart was that they did it for free. All of it.
They were welcomed into the community with open arms even though nobody knew why they’d chosen us or where they’d been before. There hadn’t been anything negative said about them until one of the students who’d recently gotten clean dropped out of school afterward to join their movement. He began working with them to help other college students get sober too. It wasn’t long before he was followed by a few of the others they’d worked with. That started the tension. Parents wanted their kids sober, but they also wanted them in school.
In the past month, Love International’s circle of influence had widened, and other students who didn’t even struggle with addiction were dropping out of school and working with them. Parents were up in arms about it, and everyone was demanding to know more about them. The case garnered national media attention after the college newspaper ran a story about them, and it went viral. Their leader was a man named Ray Fischer, and he had refused to speak with any national media or give a formal interview until now. It was an interesting twist, since most of the time organizations like his thrived on publicity and actively sought it out. But he’d declined all offers from the press, even those that carried monetary compensation.
For some reason he was very rooted in the local community and had contacted Leo a few days ago to request an interview. He only wanted to do an interview if it was with someone local, and he asked for me by name, since he’d read one of my other pieces. Leo wasted no time in setting up an official interview, since the college newspaper beat us to the first story, and we needed to get a jump on it before our neighboring competitor, the Sun, got ahold of him.
Leo had wanted to do it with me, since we were the only two people who had any experience covering something this big. He came from a busy urban paper in Detroit, where he’d handled the crime section until working his way up to lead editor of the entire Lifestyle department. But his father was dying from a rare form of lung disease and in his final weeks. Leo was preparing to return home to be with him for it. Even with a dying father, the possibility of a big story was hard to turn down. Things just didn’t happen in Arcata. It could be years before anything like this came across our desk again.
My interview with Ray was scheduled for tomorrow. I had researched him all morning but hadn’t been able to find much before he started Love International, and even that material was scant. All I found was his birth record. He was born in Westin, New Jersey, in 1960, which meant he was forty-seven years old, but besides that—nothing. My luck wasn’t much better with Love International. They didn’t have a website and weren’t listed in any business or nonprofit directory. Not any that I could find, anyway. Their only mention was in the comments sections of various religious books on Amazon and a few blog posts written by members. Like most blogs, the first few entries were enthusiastic and gung ho but slowly dwindled over the next few weeks until they expired. None of the blogs had been active for years.
“Doesn’t that make you worried that you know nothing about these people?” Scott asked. He was my first call after I had hung up with Leo. I wasted no time filling him in on the opportunity.
I laughed. “Absolutely not. It only makes it more exciting.”
I didn’t want to admit it to Scott, but it’d been a long time since I’d been this worked up about something. I loved my family. I did, but most of my life was centered on caring for other people’s needs. Becoming a mom felt like I had forfeited all my rights in favor of others. It was my own idealistic view of perfect motherhood that got in my way, but still it felt like I never stopped cleaning or picking up after someone. I longed to do something besides the mundane tasks that made up my to-do list. I never really settled in to the stay-at-home-mom gig, even though I’d never admit it. The pangs of jealousy I’d felt the first day Scott went back to work after Abbi had been born had never left me.
I hurriedly grabbed the sauce I needed for the chicken kiev I was making for dinner and rushed out of the store to go pick up Abbi, but there was a huge smile on my face. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow.
SEVEN
ABBI
NOW
I picked at my orange chicken. It was covered in the perfect amount of sauce, just like I liked it, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I still wasn’t hungry. Dad’s hunger had returned with a vengeance, though. He’d wolfed down all his beef and broccoli and was working his way through Meredith’s leftovers.
“Honey, you have to eat something,” Meredith said. Her eyes filled with concern, and a frown tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just not hungry. I don’t have an appetite.”
It was hard to eat when there was an armed police officer standing outside your hotel room. Someone from the hospital had leaked Mom’s story, and the media was already swarming the hospital. Marcos had told Dad our security was only an extra precaution, but nobody believed him. Definitely not me. People didn’t carry guns unless there was a reason.
All the excitement I’d felt earlier was gone. Things were even more confusing than before. I burst out crying. Meredith and Dad jumped up from their chairs and surrounded me, sandwiching me between them in a huge hug. The flood of emotions I’d been feeling all day rushed through me.
“It’s okay. Let it out.” They spoke on top of each other. “We love you. We’re here.”
I clung to Dad’s shirt, burying my face in it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried so hard. It felt like it wasn’t going to end, and then suddenly it did—from out of nowhere the sobs just stopped. I disentangled myself, awkward and embarrassed by my outburst. For the second time today, Meredith handed me a tissue. Nobody had told me it would feel like this.
“What’s going to happen?�
� I asked in a small voice.
Meredith opened her mouth to speak, then shut it quickly, allowing Dad to go first.
“I don’t know, Pumpkin, but I wish I did.” He wrestled with his emotions before continuing. “We’re going to take things one step at a time, just like we did before. You probably don’t remember this, but that’s all I used to say back in the early days—‘Scott, do what’s in front of you.’ I must’ve said it hundreds of times. Sometimes that’s all you can do, and this is one of those times.” He pointed to the food in front of me. “So right now, at this moment, you’re going to do your best to get some food inside you so that your body has nutrients, and then all of us are going to try to sleep, because our minds need it.” He patted me on the back. “That’s it. We’re not doing any more than that tonight. Got it?”
I nodded, picking up my fork. They went back to their seats, and for a moment we all ate in silence.
“I spoke with one of her doctors again tonight while you were in the shower,” Dad said. He’d promised to fill me in on any new information he got about Mom, since he’d be the one everyone was talking to, and I wouldn’t always be there when he did. “Your mother is pretty sick. All her tests and blood work are starting to come back from the lab, and none of them are normal. They’re taking a bunch more and sending them out again.”
“But it’s just because she was dehydrated, right? There’s nothing seriously wrong with her?” I asked.
His eyes flooded with concern. “Technically, yes, but it’s complicated. Severe dehydration and malnutrition can really screw up your body’s systems and organs over time. We have to wait and see what the follow-up test results show before we know anything more.”
“How come the baby is so healthy?” I asked. I heard Meredith’s sharp intake of breath behind me at the mention of the baby. Dad hadn’t said anything about the baby, and I hadn’t wanted to ask, but not because I didn’t want to know. Everyone wanted to know about her.
When She Returned Page 3