When She Returned

by Berry, Lucinda

  It was one of those days when something significant had happened in the case, and they had needed Dad alone. Dean finally talked me into leaving the police station and getting ice cream, but I refused to go unless he took me. His status meant nothing to me. He loved to tell the story of how I stomped down the sidewalk to get ice cream and ordered him to find my mommy or I was going to tell his mommy that he was a bad detective.

  I gave him a quick hug. “Deal. But I want real ice cream this time. Not that gelato stuff you tried to convince me was good.”

  He laughed, but his laughter ended abruptly at the sound of Mom’s footsteps descending the stairs. Everything stopped. It felt like nobody breathed. Mom kept her head down, avoiding eye contact like she always did. Dad reached out and helped guide her down the final step and into the entryway with everyone else.

  “Kate, this is Dean Thompson.” Dad pointed to Dean, and he stepped forward, reaching out his hand toward Mom. “He has been helping me search for you all these years. He’s probably almost as relieved to have you home as we are.”

  Dean smiled. Mom tentatively shook his hand before tucking her arm back around Shiloh. The woman behind Dean stepped forward. Her dark hair was pulled straight back into a tight ponytail, making her wide forehead look even bigger. She wore a light-blue shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

  “My name is Camille. I don’t believe I’ve met anyone,” she said, shaking Dad’s hand first, followed by Mom’s. She turned to me next. “And you must be Abbi?”

  I nodded.

  She pointed to the men behind her as an afterthought. “That’s John, Carl, and Hernando. They’re part of my team.” They nodded their greetings in return. Camille eyed the house. “Why don’t we move into a more comfortable place where we can sit down and get started?” she asked.

  Meredith stepped forward. “Would you like some egg bake?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine,” Camille dismissed her and walked into the living room. We all followed behind her. “Why don’t you sit there, Kate?” She pointed to the couch on the opposite wall. Camille took a seat in one of the club chairs, perching on the end of it so she was as near to Mom as possible while still giving her enough space to handle Shiloh. John, Carl, and Hernando immediately went to work pulling weird-looking electrical equipment out of their bags and setting up their gear.

  Dean sat in the opposite chair while Dad, Meredith, and I stood behind him awkwardly. Mom jiggled Shiloh against her, trying to keep her asleep. There had been more people in our living room before, but it had never felt so crowded. My chest tightened. Mom kept her eyes glued to the carpet as if she were mesmerized by the design.

  “Are you ready to get started?” Camille asked.

  Mom nodded.

  Camille pulled out a device from her pocket and set it on the coffee table. “Do you mind if I record this interview?”

  TWELVE

  MEREDITH

  NOW

  “You guys were in there for over three hours—what do you mean she didn’t say?” I asked Scott. Camille had wanted all of us there as witnesses when she got Kate’s consent for the videotaped interview, but she’d asked us to leave after that. She’d asked Scott to leave, too, but Kate had grabbed his arm as he walked past her on the couch.

  “Please, can he stay?” she’d begged, and she’d clung to his arm with so much fear that they’d relented.

  Abbi and I went upstairs. I stopped at the landing, waiting for her to catch up as she walked much slower so she could keep her eyes on Kate for as long as possible. Abbi watched her constantly, like she might disappear again if she let her out of her sight.

  “Do you want to come in my room while we wait?” I asked.

  She shook her head. I reached out and cupped her chin with my hands. “It’s going to be okay.” She forced a smile for my benefit before going into her room and shutting the door behind her. I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything. I gave up reading my novel after I realized I’d been rereading the same paragraph for over twenty minutes. I texted Caleb and Thad, but they were both working, so they didn’t text back. Finally, I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. Scott had woken me up ten minutes ago.

  Kate still hadn’t told them what happened the day that she went missing. It had been five days, and they still had no idea what had happened to her or where she’d been all this time. “You should see how traumatized she is, Meredith. Even basic questions like ‘What did you eat?’ make her sob uncontrollably. If anyone moves too quickly, she flinches, and every loud sound makes her jump. You’d think we lived in the middle of New York City for as many times as she got freaked out by the noises. We spent most of the time waiting for her to gather her composure between questions.”

  “How awful,” I said. “Did they let you try to talk to her?”

  “Are you kidding?” He snorted. “Camille wouldn’t let me say anything. She wouldn’t even let me comfort her when she was upset. I just had to sit there because she didn’t want me to influence Kate in any way. It was actually pretty torturous.”

  I moved toward him and gave him a hug. I rested my head against his chest. His heart thumped wildly despite the fact that he was standing still. While he held me, I rubbed his back, trying to help him relax.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine how you feel right now.” One of the worst things you could do to someone in the midst of tragedy was to give them a cliché, because the intensity of the loss was too big. I’d heard it all after James died. Sometimes it was better to say nothing.

  He pulled away, sinking into his leather office chair and running his hands through his hair. “If they try to push her at all, then she starts saying ‘You don’t understand’ over and over again or gibberish that makes no sense at all. She repeats things, too, and mumbles under her breath like she’s talking to someone. It’s so hard seeing her this way.” His voice caught in his throat.

  I’d seen her do the mumbling thing earlier this morning in the hallway upstairs, like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do and didn’t want to embarrass her, so I’d turned around and gone back downstairs, pretending I’d forgotten something and hadn’t seen her.

  “I don’t know what to do. How are we supposed to help her if we can’t get her to talk? And it’s not even just about helping her.” He spoke at a frenzied pace. “I need to keep everyone safe. I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t—”

  I interrupted him before he could get any more worked up. “Honey, it’s not your job to keep everyone safe.”

  He pointed downstairs. “You think they’re going to stay forever?”

  I laid my hand on his forearm. “We just got home. They’re not going anywhere soon, and there’s no way they’re going to leave us alone while we’re still in danger.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “What if you got ahold of her old best friend—what was her name? Oh yeah, Christina. What if you arranged for her to come see Kate?” I couldn’t help but think of my best friend, Lois, and all the secrets of mine she carried with her. There were things you told your best friend that you didn’t tell anyone else.

  “She refuses to talk to me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say she’s not exactly on Team Scott.”

  “One of those?”

  He nodded.

  He’d told me about all the friends he’d lost after Kate went missing. Some of his closest friends had doubted his innocence and abandoned him, whereas others whom he’d barely known had stood by his side and become his closest allies.

  “You don’t think she’d make an exception after all these years? Especially if Kate’s back? Besides, if she really does think you had something to do with it, then it’s in her best interest to get Kate to talk so they can bust you.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I can try.”

  “Good.” I pulled him up from the chair. “Let’s go feed these people roaming around our house.” He ga
ve me a weak smile. “Besides, they’re going to be interviewing her all afternoon. Who knows what they’ll get out of her by the end of the day.”

  KATE

  THEN

  I threw my toiletry bag into my duffel bag and zipped it up, doing a final sweep of the small room before I left. It was my fifth retreat and the most powerful one I’d been to yet, even if Ray had managed to insult half the attendees last night.

  I glanced at my roommate’s untouched bed. Melissa hadn’t come home last night after the campfire celebration that ended every retreat. She’d been flirting with one of the new members down by the river when I’d seen her last. I giggled at how self-conscious and embarrassed I’d been at my first campfire, when some of them had stripped naked and danced around the fire. I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off them, but it wasn’t because of their nakedness. It was the complete and utter abandon with which they had done it. I’d never seen anyone so uninhibited and free. I hadn’t taken my clothes off. I wasn’t there yet. I wanted to be, though. Maybe next retreat.

  I’d fasted for the first twenty-four hours, and it’d been pretty awful, but I’d pushed myself past the point where I wanted to quit, and it’d been amazing, just like my mentor, Margo, had said it would be. I’d fasted before, but only cleansing diets that asked me to give up food or replace it with a weird powder. Love International didn’t consider that fasting. A true fast meant giving up everything, even water. I’d omitted telling Scott I had planned on doing it this weekend. He hadn’t liked when I’d drunk nothing but raw juice on a thirty-day cleanse once, so he definitely would’ve freaked out about this.

  I plopped back down on the bed I’d just made. I wasn’t in any hurry to get home to him. It was getting harder and harder each time, and last night had been especially powerful, which only made it more difficult to leave. Ray had given one of his best talks yet. He had spoken at the end of each day. We’d gathered around him on the grass, sprawled out on blankets.

  “Let me ask you this.” His booming voice carried throughout the crowd. “Would you die for what you believed in?” His eyes scanned the crowd. Nobody moved. “Would you?” His voice grew angrier, more intense.

  Still nobody spoke. The silence grew. I welcomed it, invited it into my space. I focused on my breath as it left my body and the air that returned to fill it.

  “Would you die for what you believed in?” People shifted uncomfortably. All my senses were alert, tuned in. I could feel the vibrations from the people on each side. We all hung there waiting for whatever came next, where all this had been leading. “This isn’t a rhetorical question. Are there any of you out there who have that kind of faith?”

  “Yes!” a man finally shouted from the back. I turned around. It was the guy who was going through a rough and bitter divorce. He’d shared his story at the opening gathering, eager to have people shoulder his pain as he walked through it. That’d been his goal for the retreat.

  Ray searched through the crowd before spotting him. “You?” He pointed at him. The man nodded, and Ray motioned for him to come forward. The group parted, creating a pathway for him to the front. Ray put his arm around his shoulder when he reached him. The man’s strawberry-blond hair was parted down the middle and tucked behind his ears with perfectly trimmed sideburns.

  “What is your name, young man?” Ray asked, even though the man was obviously older than him.

  “Kevin,” he said. He puffed his chest out proudly as he stood next to Ray.

  “Hi, Kevin, nice to meet you.” He patted him on the back. “And what beliefs would you die for?”

  He made a swooping motion across the crowd. “This.”

  “Tell me, how many retreats have you been on with Love International?”

  “This is my first one.” He beamed.

  “Your first retreat? Really? So you’ve been with us for about thirty-six hours, and you are willing to die for our cause?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s just it—I feel like I’ve always been with you. Like this is my home and all my life I’ve been searching for it without knowing I was looking for it. Nothing has ever felt like it did the day I stepped on your campus.” His gaze shifted from Ray and out into the group. “Most of you don’t know me, but my life fell apart last year after my wife left me. She destroyed me and took everything I had. I couldn’t stomach the idea of rebuilding it when all of it could come crumbling down again at any minute. That’s where my happiness had been, and I refused to put it there. Not again.” He was crying by the time he finished.

  “I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around how you could be so committed in such a short time,” Ray said, unwilling to let it go. It was like that when he got fixated on something.

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I was open to the message, and it filled me.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty incredible.” He rubbed his chin. “Do you think you could wait here for a minute?” Kevin nodded, and Ray hurried off to his cabin. A few of the others jumped up and surrounded Kevin, asking him more questions about his situation and how he’d found Love International while we waited for Ray to return. It wasn’t long before he did.

  “Please sit,” Ray said. He grabbed Kevin’s arm as he moved to sit back down with the others. “Not you. We’re not done.”

  “Oh, okay,” Kevin said. He couldn’t hide his excitement at getting to stay and keep working with Ray.

  “Our entire philosophy is based on putting our beliefs into motion. We have to do more than say we believe in something. Our actions must support our words. We ask ourselves to prove our commitment to our beliefs in the same way that God asks us to prove ourselves.” He threw his arm around Kevin’s waist, bringing him closer to him. “And that’s what I’m going to ask you to do tonight.” He pulled out a bottle of pills from his pocket and waved them in the air for everyone to see. “You said you would die for Love International. These pills will shut down your internal organs.” Ray unscrewed the bottle. “Open your hand.” Kevin did as he was told. Ray dropped the pills into Kevin’s palm. “Prove it.”

  Red flushed Kevin’s face. He laughed nervously and searched the crowd, his eyes wide, hoping someone knew what to do. I had no idea what he was supposed to do. Ray’s teaching methods were never conventional.

  Ray snorted and rolled his eyes. “There you go, folks. This one lied. He’s full of it.”

  “But Ray, I mean”—he closed his hand on the pills—“obviously I’m not going to kill myself in front of you all.”

  “Oh, it’s our privacy that you’re worried about? You are one with a full heart.” I thought I’d seen all sides of Ray, but I’d never seen this one. I didn’t like him. Not even a little.

  “You can’t be serious.” His voice wavered with nerves.

  “You were the one who was serious, my friend. The only person in the crowd tonight who raised his hand and assured us that he would die for our beliefs. You all heard him, didn’t you?” Ray turned his attention to us, like he often did when he was working with someone. He depended on us to serve as his mirror, but this was uncharted territory. “There you go. So now what are you going to do? Did you mean it, or were you just blowing smoke up our ass to impress us?”

  Kevin’s face crumpled. I’d seen Ray reduce men to tears numerous times, but something about this one was especially crushing. Maybe it was because of the pure childlike hurt that filled Kevin’s being at having displeased Ray.

  Kevin stood rooted to his spot, his eyes downcast. “You’re not going to do it, are you? You really aren’t willing to die for your beliefs.” Ray pushed him gently forward. “Go sit down.”

  Kevin hung his head as he walked back to his seat. We moved aside like we’d done before, but our words of encouragement were gone, and silence filled the space.

  “Most of you have never felt that strongly about something, even if you say you have. Perhaps you may have felt it about your child or a loved one, but a belief?” He shook his head. “Not a chan
ce. Guess what, though? Others are willing to die for their cause. They wear suicide vests and pull the trigger to blow themselves up. We look at them like they’re crazy, just like everyone else in our society does, but, really, they believe so strongly in their God’s purpose that they’re willing to die for it.” The world thrummed around him. Vibrant colors danced off him. “Have you ever been that committed to something? Had that much faith? Imagine how that would change your life if you did. That’s the kind of faith that moves mountains, parts the Red Sea.”

  I’d never met anyone who had that kind of faith. Definitely not me.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have that kind of faith. I’d like to be so convinced of it that I was willing to blow myself up on account of it.” There was movement in the masses. People stood up, trying to get out. “I see you leaving.” He called out to them. “Every one of you. And you.” He pointed to the man who had pledged to donate the inheritance he’d received to a charity organization working with children with rare endocrine cancers. Next he pointed to the group of yoga instructors holding on to each other as they tried not to step on anyone as they left. “And you. Lastly, you.” His finger stopped on one of the only families to attend this retreat. Most children had stayed home. “This message is not for everyone. If there’s anyone else who can’t handle it, then please”—he made a rising motion with both hands—“get up. Don’t stay. Follow them out.” He waved. “Go. Please go. You are not the ones the Lord is searching for.”

  I sat in stunned silence. He’d never told people to leave before. They had to know he wasn’t actually condoning terrorism. He was simply making a point—and a good one. I forced myself to keep my eyes forward even though I was dying to know who else was leaving. Where would they go? The buses weren’t coming until tomorrow. That was part of the deal. Once you were here, there wasn’t any way to leave. You had agreed to it when you signed the nondisclosure agreement and all the other waivers for the retreat. They had to have an emergency procedure, though, but how uncomfortable would that be for everyone? The moment seemed to last forever as more people shuffled out. Finally, Ray shifted his attention and focus back to those of us who remained.