Her Sister (Search For Love series) (9 page)

Since
when had Amanda thought in those terms?  Not in years.  All that had ended with
Max leaving.  She had no desire to go to the church's social next Thursday, or
the community's single parent get-togethers.  No, she had her business.  At
home, she had hobbies.  She only wished Clare let her into her life more
completely.

And if
Lynnie was found?  What difference would that make to their family?

Lynnie. 
Shara.  It all swirled in Amanda's head.

Max
found her sitting there, thinking about the past as much as the present.

"This
isn't going to be the same," he said in a grim voice, as if he could
fathom exactly what she was thinking.  "Shara's not three.  She has a free
will and a loud enough mouth when she wants it to be.  She took off and somehow
we'll find her, but that doesn't mean she's going to want to come back."

Gazing
up at Max, Amanda felt her heart fill up with sudden anger.  "And why
wouldn't
she want to come back?"

"Clare
has the answer to that.  I don't."

She was
already shaking her head.  "That's not true, Max.  We
all
have the
answer.  You and I split and created a separation that hurt everyone.  Clare
became pregnant because of it.  She had Shara to prove a point.  Even when
Shara's dad skipped town and was never heard from again, Clare took very little
assistance from us because she wants distance between us.  Distance is what
caused this problem.  If we'd been here,
really
been here, to support
her in raising Shara, maybe this never would have happened."  She knew
there was accusation in her tone and recrimination in her eyes, but she
couldn't help it.

"Don't
get side-tracked into the past again, Amanda.  You live in that shop and you
spend too much time there.  Moving forward is the only way to go, and we will
move forward with this.  The detective's doing his part unofficially and we're
going to do ours.  When more time goes by, he'll make this an official
investigation."

Max
went over to Shara's computer and booted it up.  "He's not going to be
interested in this until he gets his preliminary questions asked and interviews
kids at the school.  In the meantime, I'm going to see what I can find
out."

"On
her computer?"

"Kids
live on these things now, along with their phones.  I wish Clare would have let
Shara have one because maybe then we could trace her.  Since she doesn't have
one, I'll see what her computer files can tell us. "

If Max
didn't have something to do, he was lost.  He couldn't sit still.  He couldn't
just be.  That had been a big problem between them—not insurmountable until
Lynnie had been taken.  Then Max was out in his car, driving road after road,
or at the police station, or talking to search parties, or having flyers
printed, or finding money for a reward.

"Clare,"
he called in that determined, authoritarian voice that Amanda knew turned Clare
off.

But
their daughter came running in.  "Did you find something?"

"Not
yet, but I will.  I need your help getting into the computer.  What's Shara's
password?"

"I
don't know."

"What
do you mean you don't know?"

"When
I handed down the desktop to Shara, I let her choose her password."

"Don't
you check what she's doing on here?"

"Once
in a while.  I ask her to log in and then I fish around.  But I didn't want to
invade her privacy."

"Because
of that, she could easily have five thousand dollars at her disposal and flee
anywhere.  You should have been monitoring her closely."

"She's
sixteen, Dad.  If I did that, she wouldn't even go on this computer.  She has
to know I have some degree of trust in her."

"And
where did
that
get you?"

Amanda
raised her hand and waved it between the two of them.  "Stop!  Please. 
The idea is to work on this together."  She looked at Max.  "Don't
make things worse."

"How
can it be any worse?" he asked her.

"We
can lose Clare, too," she said clearly and succinctly, reminding him he
still had a daughter who mattered.  Neither of them had remembered that soon
enough after Lynnie had been taken.

Clare
looked near tears.  Amanda stood, put her own feelings aside, put the tension
with Max aside and hung her arm around Clare's shoulders.  She gave her a
squeeze.  "We'll figure this out.  Can you make a list of Shara's favorite
things, favorite words she uses, anything like that that she might use as a
password."

"Even
if we figure out this password," Clare said, "she has different ones
for different sites.  She used to have a small Rolodex so she wouldn't forget
them.  If we could find that—"  She glanced at her father.  "She
doesn't leave it out on her desk when she's not here because she doesn't want
me snooping, so obviously there's a hiding place."

Decidedly
frustrated, Max ran his hand through his hair.  "All right, then we tear
up the room.  We find that Rolodex."

They
went through the room, inch by inch.  At least they thought they did.  Clare
took the dresser drawers.  Amanda searched through the chest.  Max looked
everywhere else.

"This
room isn't that big," he muttered.  "It has to be somewhere."

"It
wouldn't make sense that she took it with her," Clare said.  "She
left in a hurry and she might not have even remembered it."

After
forty-five minutes of looking in every nook and cranny, they glanced at each
other in frustration.

"Would
she have hidden it somewhere else?" Amanda asked.

"I
doubt it.  Shara's room is her island, the place she goes to get away from me
and everyone else."

"I
should have kept in touch with her more," Amanda murmured.  "If she
wouldn't talk to you, maybe she would have talked with me."

"Mom,
don't pull the guilt trip again.  Please."

Amanda
was startled by her daughter's words.

"Clare,"
Max warned.

But
apparently Clare was tired of keeping her thoughts and feelings bottled up.  "I
mean it.  After Lynnie was gone, you two were so filled with guilt, I couldn't
stand to be in the room with you.  Don't do that now.  If anyone should feel
guilty, it's me.  But I don't have time for self-pity.  We have to find
her."

Self-pity. 
Is that what she and Max had indulged in?  Was that the biggest obstacle that
had shut Clare out?  Maybe it wasn't the search, the phone calls, the police
intervention.  Maybe it had been their own attitudes toward their daughter. 
Why couldn't parents and kids figure this out?  Why was communication so tough
when they had so many words at their disposal?  Communication with her husband
hadn't been any easier than communication with her daughter.  She just couldn't
let the same barriers they had erected before become barriers again.

Amanda
sat on the bed and patted the place next to her.  "Come here a minute,
Clare."

Clare
eyed her warily.  "Why?"

"Let's
just breathe for a couple of minutes and talk."

Max
made a move to leave the room.

"You,
too," she suggested.  "We all need to think about our teen-age years,
what was important to us, who we told things to and where we hid things."

Although
she seemed unsure, Clare crossed the room and sat beside her mother.  The mere
six inches between them seemed like the world, but Amanda forged ahead anyway. 
Her focus switched to her husband.  "When you were a teen-ager, where did
you put anything you didn't want your dad to find?"

"He
never looked in my room.  He didn't care what I had hidden unless it was a
bottle of whiskey."

Clare's
head snapped up.  "Whiskey?"

At
first Max looked as if he wanted to close down.  Amanda knew that was her
husband's way of dealing with his emotions.  But as he studied his daughter,
the curiosity and sadness in her eyes, he pulled out Shara's desk chair and
lowered himself into it.

"You
were too young to remember," Max said, as if that were explanation enough.

"Remember
what?  That Grandpa drank?"

"We
didn't visit him when you were a baby because he was rarely sober.  I spent my
life trying to escape everything he represented."

The problem
was, after hope for finding Lynnie had died, Max had fallen on his father's
habits.

His
gaze met Amanda's, held for a few moments, then glanced away.  "Your mom
and I divorced in part because I started drinking."

"Dad!" 
Clare's voice was a breathy wisp.

"I
hid it well, most of the time, especially when you were around.  But your mom,
she knew what my dad had been and she didn't want me turning into him."

"You
could never…" Amanda began.

He put
up a hand to stop her.  "You don't know that."  He explained to
Clare.  "My dad was a mean drunk."

"He
abused you?" Clare asked, horrified.

"Not
after I got big enough to defend myself.  I got very good at defending
myself.   When he learned I wouldn't back down,
he
did.  He was
essentially a bully and bullies really don't like facing strength."

"Grandpa
died suddenly," Clare remembered.

"It
might have seemed sudden to you, but it wasn't.  He died of cirrhosis, mainly
because he wouldn't let anybody help him."

"Did
you let someone help
you
?  You're not drinking now, are you?"  She
sounded horrified that he might be.

"No,
I'm not drinking now.  A friend helped me.  When I was at my lowest, about a
year after your mom and I divorced, he dragged me to an AA meeting."

"You
go to AA?"

"I
do.  I've been sober for twenty-four years, but I still need meetings now and
then."

What
hurt Amanda most was that Max hadn't let
her
help him.  He hadn't let
her intervene.  But then maybe he just hadn't been ready...or maybe it had just
hurt too much to look her in the eyes and remember what had happened to Lynnie.

"Why
didn't you tell me any of this before?" Clare asked, looking hurt.

Max
shrugged.  "What would that have helped?"

"I
would have understood you better.  I might have understood the divorce
better."

"The
divorce had nothing to do with you," he maintained.

"No
child believes that," Clare said.  "I blamed myself for Lynnie's
abduction and I blamed myself for your divorce."

"Oh,
Clare."  Amanda hung her arm around Clare's shoulders, but Clare shrugged
it off. 

"I
don't know why you're so surprised, Mom.  You hardly paid any attention to me. 
You were so sad all the time."

Yes,
she had been, and some of that sadness still remained.  She doubted if it would
ever go away.  She wanted to say,
Think about Shara.  What if you never saw
her again?  What kind of black hole would that create in your heart? 
But
she couldn't do that to Clare.  She and Max had done enough.

Yet
Clare must have realized what she'd been thinking because a terrified look came
into her eyes.  "What if I never see her again?"

"That's
not going to happen," Max maintained again.  "We're going to figure
this out."  He stared at Amanda.  "Where did you keep anything you
didn't want your parents to find?"

Amanda
thought about it.  "Our farmhouse had a huge attic.  We stored everything
up there—some furniture, old clothes, the Christmas decorations.  There was
this old trunk there that belonged to my grandmother.  Basically it was filled
with blankets and scarves, crocheted doilies.  That type of thing.  I buried my
diary in one of the corners under all of it.  That felt safe."

Clare
was looking at her mom as if she'd never seen her before.  "You kept a
diary?"

"Doesn't
every young girl?  Maybe now you call them journals and you do them on-line,
but it's pretty much the same thing.  So now, tell me, where did you hide
things from me and your dad?"

"Under
a loose floorboard in my closet."

"You
had loose floorboards?" Max asked.

"With
a little prying.  You know, they didn't quite meet the wall.  It wasn't
hard."

Max
glanced at the floor and the carpeting there, then he looked toward the
closet.  " Let's give her closet another go.  I'll check the corners to
see if the carpet comes up."

The
three of them emptied Shara's closet.  Clare hoisted the hangers with clothes
over her shoulder and carried them to the bed.  Max piled shoe boxes on top of
each other and pushed them outside the closet while Amanda reached to clear the
top shelf that ran along the length of the closet above the clothes bar.  But
after Clare sneezed from the dust they'd raised, after Max had studied each
corner and found the carpet still attached to the stripping around the edges
while Amanda held her breath and hoped, they found nothing.