A Daughter's Story (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“W
HAT
’
S
WRONG
?”
Fifty-six-year-old
Rose Sanderson frowned. The expression did nothing to mar her exquisite beauty.
Just as all the years of anguish had never done.

As long as Emma didn’t look in her mother’s eyes. There wasn’t
a lot of beauty there anymore. Only worry. Angst. Sadness. And pain.

“Sit down, Mom.” Emma pulled out one of the metal-rimmed
Naugahyde chairs in her mother’s kitchen—chairs that matched the metal-rimmed
Formica-topped table that had been in that same exact place in the same exact
house for the past twenty-five years.

Emma had been able to convince her mother to update the rest of
the house over the years. But not that table. It was the last place that Rose
had seen her baby girl alive—kneeling on one of those chairs at that table
eating her breakfast like a “big people.”

Rose wouldn’t change that table, and she would never move—no
matter how much the neighborhood changed. Rose couldn’t leave the only place
Claire would know to come back to.

As though she would remember; Claire had been two when she was
abducted.

Rose’s crystalline blue eyes were wide and worried as Emma sat
and folded her hands at the table. “Tell me.”

She had to tell her mother about Detective Miller’s phone
calls. Most particularly the last one.

She’d been deliberating for a couple of days about what she was
going to say.

Tonight, with Rob’s infidelity a fresh and burning sting, she
couldn’t seem to find the usual decorum, the caution, with which she couched
everything she told her mother.

She didn’t recognize herself in the woman who was pushing her
to do something more. To be something different.

To change what Rose wouldn’t have changed.

“I’ve spent my entire life playing it safe.” They weren’t the
words she’d come to say.

Rose’s frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

“I settle,” Emma said. “Or maybe I don’t, I don’t know.” This
was her mother. She could only say so much.

Or stray too far from herself…

She was in no state to tell her mother about Ramsey Miller’s
phone call—about the horrible mistake she and Rose had made, believing all these
years that Frank Whittier, her mother’s fiancé at the time, had abducted
Claire.

“I broke up with Rob today.” And that was not a mistake. No
matter how badly Rose took the news.

Rose’s eyes held a spark of…something…as she watched Emma,
saying nothing. But the woman wasn’t falling apart so Emma continued.

“I came home and found him with another woman in our bed. I
gave him until tomorrow morning to get out.”

Rose nodded.

Her mother’s expression wasn’t crumpling. Or, worse, filling
with fear. She almost had a hint of a smile on her face. And she was
nodding!

Had the whole world gone mad? Or only Emma’s portion of it?

“What? You knew he was seeing someone?”

“Of course not. I’d have told you if I’d known that. I just
knew he wasn’t right for you.”

That almost made her angry. As angry as she could ever get with
the woman who’d suffered so horribly. And tried so hard to love Emma enough.
“You thought Rob was wrong for me?”

“Yes.” Rose squeezed her hand. “But regardless of what I
thought, you loved him and you most definitely didn’t deserve to be cheated on.
I know it hurts and I’m so sorry about that.”

Shaking her head, Emma ignored the compassion in her mother’s
voice. This was no time to open her heart and give in to the weakness there—a
desperate need to be loved, in spite of everything.

She was better off if she kept her walls up.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” She concentrated on the facts
that perplexed more than they caused pain.

“Because I knew you’d figure it out on your own and that you
would be so much stronger for having done so. Acting on my say-so could have
crippled you.”

“I’d have married him, Mom.” If Rob hadn’t kept putting off
choosing a date. A location. Colors. Anything at all to do with them actually
saying “I do,” rather than just “I’m going to.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But if I had? You’d have let me?”

Rose studied her and then said, “I’m not sure. There was always
the chance that I was wrong.”

“You liked him. From the first time we met him at that
fingerprinting clinic, you liked how he took a real interest in our quest.”

“He was a big help. And had good ideas. He was a pleasant
conversationalist, but that doesn’t mean I thought he’d make you happy. I did
like that he kept you here in the area, close by. I liked that he was willing to
spend time with us together. That we could do family things.”

A given. Rose had lost one daughter. And ever since that day,
until Emma had met Rob, it had always been just the two of them.

“I’m not going to leave you, Mom, you know that,” Emma said.
“Not for anything, or anyone.” But for the first time, the words didn’t flow
from her heart as easily as they flowed past her throat.

For the first time, she wished, just for a second, that she
could be as free as other women her age.

And then, ashamed of herself, she gave her mother a hug.

Emma missed Claire like she’d miss an arm or a leg. And she’d
only been four when her little sister had been taken. Rose, a single mother
who’d lost her baby, had suffered so much more.

Emma’s job, as the one left behind, was to be there for Rose.
Period.

She wasn’t herself right then. Who knew, maybe she wouldn’t
ever be exactly herself again. But her role in her mother’s life would not—could
not—change.

“Never say never, Em. You have a life to live,” Rose said,
sadness mingling with the compassion in her tone. “You have to go where it takes
you.”

“My place is here. With you.”

“I hope it is. But if it’s not, you have to go.”

Her mother was talking crazy. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“You don’t mean that. You need me here.”

“Yes.” Rose’s expression was completely sober. “But
my
life doesn’t take precedence over yours. Or it
shouldn’t. And I’ve begun to see that maybe, in spite of all of my intentions to
the contrary, it has.”

Emma didn’t know what to say. Her mother was right about one
thing. She did have a life to live. And she hadn’t been living it.

Any other time her mother’s words would have frightened her.
Tonight, they seemed to make a confusing kind of sense.

* * *

C
HRIS
SKIPPED
THE
CHURCH
meal that
followed the funeral, though he did keep his head low—in deference to his mother
who would be disappointed in his manners if she were still alive—as he made his
way back to the new black Ford truck he’d bought the previous spring.

He wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere. Late-afternoon sunshine
usually signaled waiting his turn to meet with Manny, Comfort Cove’s lobster
dealer, and exchange the day’s catch for the current pitiful rate of three
dollars per pound. And then there were always things to do on board the
Son Catcher
to occupy his time until dusk—like keeping
the aging engine running until the economy recovered enough to shoot lobster
prices back up to a price lobstermen could afford to work for.

Today, for the first time in memory, the dock didn’t call to
him. His first Friday off in months and, while he missed the water, the
exertion, the thrill of the catch, the dock was not a happy place that day.
They’d lost one of their own.

It could happen.

Wayne Ainge had been far too young to die. By all accounts he’d
worshipped the ocean. And she’d been fickle to him.

He might have been driving aimlessly, but Chris’s new truck
already seemed to know Chris. Without any conscious decision making, he ended up
at Citadel’s, an upscale lounge and eatery in the middle of Main Street, the
part of the tourist district the city council had sunk all the city’s money
into.

Fishermen didn’t frequent Main Street.

Chris parked in his usual Friday-night spot—albeit a few hours
earlier than normal—and, pausing to check out the thronging visitors on both
sides of the street he slowly pocketed his keys, went inside and took a seat at
the bar.

He was one of two people there. The other, a woman of
indiscriminate age, eyed him up and down as though analyzing how much he’d bring
per pound.

“Hey, Chris, what’s up?” Cody, the bartender, distracted him
from a mental rundown of random ways to avoid hookers. “I’ve never seen you in
here before dark.”

“Day off work,” Chris said, shrugging, and then remembered his
attire. He looked just as he always did on Friday nights—like a white-collar
business man relaxing after a long week of work. Not like a man from the docks
after a long hard day. “Pour me a double,” he said.

A good bartender, Cody reached for the bottle of high-end
scotch that Chris favored and poured twice the amount of Chris’s preferred drink
without saying another word.

Tipping his glass to the younger man, Chris sipped, in memory
of a twenty-year-old kid he’d barely known. And to men that he’d known all his
life. Fellow lobstermen, fishermen, who risked their lives every day earning a
living in spite of the vagaries of an ocean that was more powerful than all of
them.

And halfway through the glass of amber liquid, he drank to her,
too. To the mighty Atlantic. The ocean. The reason he would never have a woman
in his life.

CHAPTER THREE

“I
HAD
A
CALL
,
M
OM
.” Emma was helping her
mother make a chicken Caesar salad she didn’t want. Because it was her and
Rose’s favorite meal. A feel-good meal. Security food.

“From who?”

She had to start living her own life—and she wasn’t even sure
what that meant. To date, her life consisted of responsibilities and “shoulds”
and protecting Rose. She had to be free from some of that—free to take a chance
or two. To be spontaneous in spite of dangers.

Free to want.

Rob had been naked in their bed, her bed—on sheets she’d
purchased and laundered—with another woman.

Because Emma was so lacking? She’d never had an orgasm. Was
that her fault? Or his?

“Emma?”

Rose’s brow was wrinkled as she glanced her way. “What?” Thank
God Rose couldn’t read her thoughts.

“You said you’d had a call. I asked who from.”

Back on track. Not that the coming conversation was going to be
any easier than the silent one she’d been having on and off with herself since
noon that day. “From a detective. Here in Comfort Cove. His name’s Ramsey
Miller.” None of which mattered.
Get to the
point.

Was she not woman enough to hold on to a man? Not adventurous
enough? Not wild enough?

Rose wasn’t moving. Her hands, holding part of a roasted
chicken breast and a knife, were suspended in midair. Midcut. “Tell me.” When
she finally spoke, her tone was biting.

Emma knew she shouldn’t have started this. Not tonight. There
was no reason to put her mother through more days and weeks of anguish while
hope battled with reality. Reality always won. They knew that.

And yet, she really should tell Rose about Miller’s call. At
some point, the detective might need to speak with her mother.

“No one knows anything about Claire,” she said quickly.

At the sink, she turned on the cold water to rinse the
lettuce.

“What, then?” Fear entered Rose’s tone. Emma had known it
would. That happened to a woman when her baby was stolen out of her home in
broad daylight.

She thought about the box of forensic evidence that had gone
missing from the police station. It was the reason for Miller’s initial call
more than a month before. The last time Emma had seen the box containing her and
Cal’s and Claire’s belongings, she’d been four years old.

Miller had no idea who’d taken the evidence or why.

But Rose would draw her own conclusions. And she would
inevitably get her hopes up. Emma knew how it worked. Not just because she’d
lived close to her mother all these years, but because she lived with the same
ups and downs.

If someone had stolen the evidence from her sister’s case,
could it mean that Claire was still alive? Still out there?

Or, conversely, did it mean that her baby sister was dead and
buried and her abductor wanted to make certain she stayed that way?

“Emma, you’re scaring me.” Her mother still held the chicken
and the knife.

Emma had moved on to mixing the oil and spices for the
dressing, putting them together just the way they liked. Soft scents from the
loaf of fresh Italian bread warming in the oven wafted around them.

She wasn’t up to this conversation. As a good daughter, she had
to let her mother know what was going on because she couldn’t guarantee that
Frank wouldn’t call. She didn’t think he would. But he knew where Rose lived. He
could send her a letter.

Emma didn’t want to sit and eat. Didn’t want to do what she
always did. She wanted to go somewhere. Do something.

She wanted to escape. From Rose. Claire’s memory. Frank and Cal
Whittier. Rob.

She was twenty-nine. If she didn’t start living life now, it
could all be over before it even began.

Taking the knife and chicken from her mother’s lifeless hands,
Emma started to cut.

“Cal Whittier wrote a book.”

“What?” Rose’s brows drew together and she sank down into the
chair at the head of the table—ironically, the one that had been Frank’s during
the time he and his son, Cal, had lived with them.

Back when they’d been a real family.

“He published a book?” Rose asked.

“No.” Dropping the knife in the sink, Emma left the salad and
went to sit next to her mother. “He gave it to Detective Miller, who works cold
cases. Miller read it and noticed a piece of information that Cal had put down
that wasn’t in any of the recorded testimony.”

“What information?” Rose’s tone was suspicious. Did she think
Cal would lie? He’d only been seven when Claire had gone missing.

Although Emma had only been four at the time, she could still
remember the anguish in her almost-brother’s eyes when he realized that, because
of him, the police thought his father had done something to Claire.

“Do you remember that meat delivery truck that used to come
here?” Emma asked. She’d remembered it, as she’d told Detective Miller when he’d
asked her.

“Of course. They stopped three doors down, every Wednesday
morning. Delivered to the Bryants. Why?”

“Cal mentioned the truck in his book. He hid behind it the
morning that…that morning when he left for school. He sneaked from there to hide
behind another car and then made a dash for the backyard so he didn’t have to go
to school.”

“He’d thrown up in gym the day before,” Rose said, her tone
softer. “He was so embarrassed he begged us to let him stay home. We hated to
make him go, but we knew that if we didn’t the problem would only escalate.”

“Like falling off a horse,” Emma said, the words coming to her
from long ago. “I remember Frank telling Cal about falling off a horse and
getting right back on.”

“I remember that.” Emma couldn’t see Rose’s expression. Her
mother’s head was bent.

“Apparently Cal didn’t tell the police that part back then,”
Emma said, choosing her words carefully so her mother wouldn’t get her hopes up.
“When Detective Miller read about the truck, he remembered another unsolved
abduction where there’d been mention of a delivery truck, so he followed up on
it.”

Rose’s head shot up, her gaze stark. “He found something?
Did…is Claire…”

Shaking her head, Emma squeezed her mother’s hand. “No, Mom. I
told you. There’s been no word of Claire.”

“But there might be. That’s what you’re telling me? They have a
lead?”

“No,” Emma said emphatically. “It turned out that the other
abduction Detective Ramsey remembered reading about was unrelated. Since then
he’s found two other abductions in Massachusetts that both took place more than
ten years ago, on delivery routes, but they haven’t turned up any connection to
us. Or her.”

Swallowing against the tightness in her throat, Emma plowed on.
“Detective Miller found the driver of our truck, though. He talked to him,
and—”

“He knew something? What did he say? What does he—”

“Mom, please. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Emma, for God’s sake, she was my daughter. I’m never going to
stop caring, or hurting, and so I react strongly, but that’s no reason not to
tell me.…”

Emma could have reminded her mother about the times Rose had
shut herself away for days, the times her mother had cried for so many hours on
end that Emma’d had to fend for herself, about the times she’d had to beg her
mother to eat so Rose would have the energy to get out of bed.

“The driver saw Claire in the front yard, Mom. He passed Cal
going up the street and he said it looked like Claire was watching him. It
bothered him to see such a young child outside alone so he drove by again after
making his delivery. That’s when he saw Frank come out of the house with his
briefcase, which he put into the empty backseat of the car, and then he got in
the car alone and drove away. That was six minutes
after
he’d seen Claire in the yard alone. And based on the timing,
it would’ve been
after
Cal had seen Claire in
Frank’s car.”

Rose’s eyes looked sunken and her mouth hung open as she stared
at Emma, at Emma’s lips, as though trying to decipher the words that had just
passed through them.

“What are you saying? That Frank didn’t do it?” The words were
a whisper, more movement than sound.

Shaking her head, Emma held on to the woman who’d raised her
well, in spite of her heartbreak. “The driver’s testimony matched Frank’s
testimony from twenty-five years ago word for word. He’s been exonerated.”

Rose’s eyes raised to meet Emma’s gaze. “Frank didn’t do
it.”

“No, Mom.”

“I can’t…we…he was persecuted…”

And when investigators had failed to turn
up enough proof to charge Frank with the crime for which he’d been arrested,
he’d been run out of town like a low-life criminal,
Emma silently
filled in the blank Rose’s words left hanging.

And worse, they’d kept tabs on him, contacted school officials
who might hire the ex-principal and coach, preventing Frank from getting a job
in the field he loved so he wouldn’t harm another child. Rose and Emma had
spoken openly at conference after conference, educating the public about
child-safety issues, raising money for the search for missing children and
talking about the man who still walked free.…

They hadn’t named Frank. That would have been illegal. But
they’d introduced themselves. They’d talked about Claire by name. And anyone
who’d wanted to know more could have found out anything they wanted. Including
Frank’s name.

Frank and Cal had been kicked out of town—but first, they’d
been kicked out of the family.

Rose processed the news silently. Emma’s heart cried for both
of them.

She breathed a sigh of relief when her mother finally spoke.
“Have you heard from him?”

“No. I really don’t think they’d contact us, Mom. Not
after…”

Beside herself with grief the day Claire had disappeared, Rose
had latched on to any hope at all of finding Claire—even if that meant she
believed her fiancé was the one who could lead them to Claire. She’d latched on
and lashed out. With a vengeance.

“I… Oh, my God…”

“Detective Miller told me they’re living in Tyler, Tennessee,”
Emma said slowly. “They know your address. I’d be shocked if we heard from
them…but we might. So…”

“They? They…who?”

“Cal and Frank.”

Rose didn’t ask the question Emma read in her mother’s eyes.
“Neither of them ever married. They still share a home. Cal’s an English
professor at Tyler University, Mom.”

“A professor?” Rose’s lips tilted slightly upward.

Emma smiled. “Yeah.” She’d missed him so much over the years.
They’d only lived together a year, but there’d been no doubt in Emma’s mind that
Cal was her big brother.

That he’d always be there to look out for her. Protect her.

Minutes passed. “And Frank?”

“He worked as a janitor until just recently.”

“A janitor?”

“In a nursing home.”

“I have to call Cal, Mom.” Emma finally got to the real point
of the conversation. “I can’t not call him.” And she couldn’t contact Rose’s
ex-fiancé’s son without letting her mother know.

“I accused an innocent man....” Rose’s words trailed off and
hung there.

“You were a mother who had to do whatever she could to find her
missing child.”

“I threw him out. Threw them out…”

“You were agonized.”

“I sent letters, contacted schools.…”

“You did what you felt you had to do to protect other
children.” The crusade to stop Frank Whittier had probably saved Rose’s life. It
had certainly given Emma her mother back, as it had provided Rose with an outlet
for her anguish.

“You did what any mother would have done, given the evidence.”
From his backyard hideout, Cal had seen Claire in his father’s car. When the
police had searched the car, they’d found Claire’s favorite teddy bear, the one
she’d slept with the night before and brought to breakfast the morning of her
disappearance, under the front seat of Frank Whittier’s car.

“Cal was hiding under those bushes that used to be in the
backyard. When he first got there, he peeked around the corner to make sure
Frank’s car was still there. That’s when he saw Claire. He didn’t look again,
but he heard the car drive off. There’s no way he or any of us could’ve known
she’d gotten out of the car during those six or so minutes.”

Rose’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked over at Emma.
“I loved him. I should at least have given him the benefit of the doubt.”

“At the risk of losing Claire forever?” If Frank had been
guilty, and Rose had protected him, stood by him, it could have been too
late.

“We did lose her,” Rose said. “And we lost Frank and Cal,
too.”

And Emma and Rose owed the Whittiers the respect of an apology,
at the very least.

“I have to call him, Mom.” She’d handle this one.

Her mother had forbidden Emma to write to Cal over the years,
but she’d wanted to. So badly.

Would her life have been different if she had? Would she have
avoided coming home to find another woman in her man’s arms if she’d ever, even
once, dared to take a chance? To demand for herself as much as she gave to Rose
and Claire?

Looking sick to her stomach, Rose nodded, and retreated to the
balcony that looked over the Atlantic Ocean, in the distance.

Putting their untouched dinner in the refrigerator, Emma
cleaned up and let herself out.

Life wasn’t easy. Not for Rose. Not for any of them.

Rose couldn’t make things right for her daughters.

Claire was gone.

And Emma just felt dead.