All the Missing Girls (16 page)

Karen Addelson was dressed smart, like how I modeled myself in Philadelphia. Pencil skirt, black trendy flats, blouse cut to look both professional and feminine. She dropped her hand as we walked in a straight line against the right side of the hall, making room for wheelchairs and service carts. Smiling tightly, she checked over her shoulder to make sure we were following. Her blouse was sheer with a camisole underneath, and it was so at odds with her makeup-free face and hair pulled into a severe bun that I couldn't get a grasp on her.

We followed her into an outer office with potted plants on either side of bay windows and a desk with a secretary who smiled absently in our direction. “Hold my calls,” Karen said as she strode past into her office. Three cushioned chairs and a couch on one side, her desk on the other. She gestured toward the couch. Daniel sank into the cushions, but I remained standing. Everett would never sit there—
You'll lose the upper hand, Nicolette,
I could imagine him whispering into my ear. Everett was like that: always teaching me how to handle myself in situations, as if he could mold me into his equal. I imagined his father doing the same for him, teaching him that line to walk, and a miniature Everett nodding, learning, copying, becoming.

Karen sat on the chair across from the couch, and I stood beside the couch, close to Daniel.

“I'm concerned,” she said. “Your father had an episode this morning.”

“What does that even mean?” Daniel said. “An episode?”

“He became extremely agitated—”

“It's because there's nothing here to help him remember,” I said. “I'd be agitated if I woke up in a place I didn't know.”

“That may be true, Ms. Farrell, I don't deny his right to those
feelings. But his outburst went beyond disorientation. I'm afraid I'd have to call it paranoia. And it makes me question whether this is the right facility for him. Perhaps he would be better suited to a place that can care for those specific needs.”

“Paranoia?” Daniel asked.

“Yes. He was yelling that someone was after his daughter, and he refused to remain here. He was unmanageable. He became violent, insisting that he had to get out, get to you.
Help
you.” She stared at me, and I looked away, imagining him yelling for his daughter—for me. My spine tingled, paranoia or not.

“It took two men to restrain him so a doctor could sedate him. But all he kept saying was ‘My daughter's not safe.'”

I felt Daniel staring at my face. The chill moved up my spine, hollowing out the room and my stomach and my lungs.

“If this was an event in the past, I could understand,” she continued. “That would be more in line with what we know of his condition. Was it? Were you once in danger, Ms. Farrell?”

I shook my head. “I don't know what's happening to him.” His words echoing over and over, as if I'd heard them myself.

“Well, as I said, the paranoid delusions make me question if he's in the right facility,” she said, driving home the point of our meeting.

“It's my fault,” Daniel said.

“Excuse me?” Karen said. We were both staring at him; his cheeks were burning as if he'd been working in the sun too long.

“Our neighbor went missing. Annaleise Carter? Maybe you've seen it on the news? I told him. I realize in hindsight that was a mistake. It just slipped out. She disappeared in the woods behind our house, where my sister is staying. I wanted him to hear it from me and not the news. I shouldn't have told him. I'm sorry. It's not paranoia, though. It's confusion. It's a mistake.”

Karen tilted her head to the side, assessing my brother's words. She finally nodded. “That's understandable. Upsetting, to say the
least. We will need to continue to monitor him, however. If this becomes a pattern . . .”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll talk to him.”

“Let me,” I said. “I'm the one he was talking about.” I was glad that I was standing, glad for the confidence in my posture.

Karen stood. “I think that's a good idea.”

“Without the restraints,” I said.

DANIEL WENT TO THE
cafeteria to order three lunches to bring back to Dad's room. I was sitting cross-legged on the chair in the corner, drinking a soda from the vending machine, when Dad finally woke. There was an orderly in the room near the door, per Karen's request.

“Hi, Dad,” I said tentatively.

He rubbed absently at his wrists, and I could see the red chafing mark against his wrist bone. I leaned over his bed so he'd see me before he saw the room he didn't own and the man he didn't know.

“You're okay,” I said. “I'm okay.”

He pushed himself up and winced. “Nic?” he said, his eyes focusing, narrowing, roaming.

“You're at Grand Pines, and you're fine, and I'm here, and I'm fine.”

He reached his hand, placed it on the side of my face. “Nic, thank God. Nic. It's not safe for you.”

“Shh, Dad,” I said, looking at the man beside the door. “I'm fine.” Daniel walked in with our lunches at that moment, three stacked Styrofoam boxes. “And Daniel's here, see? We're fine.”

Dad sat up like a child in bed after a nightmare, both relieved and terrified. He looked at Daniel, at me, at the man beside the door. “You'll take care of her?” he said to Daniel.

Daniel opened the boxes, looked inside each, and passed them out. “Yes, Dad,” he said, and I felt a lump rise in my throat. “You can't let yourself get worked up, okay?”

Dad rubbed at his wrists again, like he couldn't remember if something was supposed to be there.

“Dad,” Daniel said, “it's important.”

I leaned forward, spreading a napkin on Dad's lap. “Dad, everything's fine.”

He stared at Daniel. “Promise me,” he said. “Promise me you'll take care of her.”

Daniel already had food in his mouth. Nothing could kill his appetite. He kept his eyes on Dad. “You know I will,” he said as he chewed.

Karen Addelson came in with the doctor. “How's everything going in here? Patrick? Are you feeling better?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes.” He grabbed his sandwich like he was playing a part. “This is my daughter. Have you met? Nic, meet the Lady in Charge. Lady in Charge, meet my daughter.”

“Nice to meet you,” both Karen and I said. “Now, Patrick,” Karen went on, “how about we sleep this off? Have your lunch, and the doctor will give you something. We'll discuss this tomorrow. Okay?”

I nodded encouragingly. Daniel nodded. Dad looked between the two of us and nodded until she left the room. He gripped my wrist. “Promise me, Nic.”

“I promise,” I said. I had no clue what he was asking or what I was agreeing to. I had a feeling it was better for us that way.

KAREN MET US BACK
at the front desk. “We'll assess him tomorrow. Determine the best course of action. Let's plan on meeting again next week.” She handed me her card. “We'll be in touch.”

Daniel and I remained silent, one foot in front of the other, goodbye to the receptionist, thank you to the man holding the door, until we were back in the overheated car, driving with the windows rolled down until the air conditioner kicked in.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked.

“Hell if I know,” he said, both hands circling the steering wheel, the afternoon sun reflecting off the pavement like water.

“Did you really tell him about Annaleise? Or was that just the first thing you could think of?”

“No,” he said. “I really did.”

“That wasn't smart.”

“No. It really wasn't.” He sighed, his hard-to-read expression even more impenetrable.

“You were wrong to do that,” I said.

The pink was creeping up his neck as his knuckles blanched white, like the blood was seeping from one spot to the other. “I am fully aware of that, Nic. Fully. I'll come back tomorrow to check on him.”

“Okay,” I said. “What time?”

He cut his eyes to me, then back to the road. “Don't worry about it. Get some work done around the house. I'll bring him the listing papers.”

“The house isn't ready.”

His jaw tensed. “That's why you should stay home.”

So much for my momentary swell of emotion for him. This was how we always communicated. In the things we didn't say. We had developed a habit after our mother got sick, fighting in the space between words about anything other than what we meant.

He was with me the day I scratched Tyler's truck with the swing of my passenger-side door, the day we met for real. “You never pay attention!” Daniel had screamed, slamming the driver's-side door. “You parked too close!” I'd yelled back as Tyler looked on.

Nothing about the list of things that needed to be voiced: our dad's growing distance, the fact that Daniel was dropping out of school, about what would happen to us after Mom died. No, we argued about how close we parked to other cars, about scraped metal and whether I was running late or he was early.

This was how we got through. This was the story of me and Daniel.

“I already called out of work for the day,” he said. “I'll lend you a hand. Make some progress.”

The meaning underneath: that I had not made any on my own.

I SAW IT FIRST.
That things were not how I'd left them. I stood in the entrance, unmoving, as Daniel brushed by me. “He came in,” I said.

Daniel spun around. “What? Who?”

I slammed the door and leaned against it, my breath coming too fast. “That cop. He came in the fucking house.” I pointed to the dining room table, scattered with chaos, but
my
chaos. I'd been sorting things into boxes not by item but by time period: things from my childhood, newer things that I'd never seen, and things I could tie to the memory of eighteen—to when Corinne disappeared. And the items I wasn't sure, scattered across the top of the table.

But those items weren't grouped how I'd left them. Things had been rifled through and moved. The home renovation book that I'd found in the kitchen drawer, dog-eared, and left on the table, now open to the marked page when I'd left it shut. Receipts with the dates worn off, reshuffled into the wrong piles.

“How can you tell? This place is a mess.”

“He was here, Daniel. Things have been moved. I swear it.”

His eyes met mine, and we stared at each other, into each other, until he said, “Check the house.”

I nodded and took the steps two at a time to my room. If the cop was looking for signs about Tyler, shouldn't he have checked here? But the room was just as I'd left it. Even the top drawer that I hadn't closed in my rush to speak to the cop. Dad's room was mostly bare, and the closet was sparse—slippers on the floor, empty metal hangers, a few work clothes.

But Daniel's room—the one with Dad's old things—had been searched. Boxes moved and stacked, papers left out, without any attempt to hide it.

I heard Daniel's footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, and then I could hear his heavy breathing over my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.

“Here. Someone's been through here,” I said.

Daniel looked at the mess. His old room. Our father's mess. “Not someone looking into Tyler, then,” he said.

“No,” I said.

Daniel placed his hand against the doorjamb too gently. Since the fair, he never slammed his fists into walls, or kicked at the ground or his car. Lest somebody see him do it. See a pattern. But he was trying too hard, spilling outside his skin, holding himself too still. He spun silently and went back downstairs.

I followed, watching him check the windows, pushing until he was sure the lock was in place.

“Did you lock up?” He turned on me. “Because there's no sign of forced entry, Nic.”

“I did,” I said slowly. “But the back door lock is broken.”

His eyes widened, and he mumbled under his breath, striding through the kitchen, checking for himself. He pulled on the handle and it gave, just like I'd said it would.

“I told you,” I said, hands on my hips.

His hand was on the knob, twisting, twisting, in case there might be a different outcome. “It was broken before? Before you got here?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Yes, I'm sure, Daniel. God!”

His face had turned so red with the anger he was holding in that it started to go the other way, blotchy spots of white breaking up the
rage. “Why the hell didn't you say anything? Why didn't you get it fixed? What the hell are you even doing here?”

“What difference would it make? Come on, Daniel, is a stronger lock going to stop someone determined to get in?”
Be rational. Be calm.
Everett's words, but they were useless in my family. This was how we worked.

“No, Nic, but it would be proof. A broken window, fingerprints on the glass . . .”

“Oh, give me a break. Nobody's going to waste resources on a home break-in for a house we're not living in where nothing went missing. They'll blame it on kids. Nobody. Cares.”

“Oh,
somebody
cares,” he said.

I swallowed. Took a deep breath. Tried to focus, searching for a reasonable explanation. “Maybe it was Tyler,” I said. “He still has a key from years ago—”

Daniel made a deep sound in his throat, though I didn't know if it was for me or for Tyler.

“Maybe he was going to fix the air-conditioning. And maybe—”

Daniel threw his hands up, took a step closer. “What? He got distracted by piles of junk and wasted his day going through Dad's things in my old room?”

“Asshole,” I mumbled. I flipped the switch in the foyer to check the air-conditioning, because God if I didn't want it to be true. The other possibilities nauseated me. Made me feel like someone had poked that box in the police station too hard, and it had sprung a leak, and the names were circling, caught up in a whirlwind, vicious and desperate.