Authors: Kristin Hannah
Like geese, the crowd surged into formation and flew at her. The Grimm sisters—Daisy, Marigold, and Violet—led the charge.
As identical as prongs on a fork, the three old ladies matched each other step for step.
Daisy, the eldest, was the first to speak. As always, she clutched an old black urn that held her late husband’s ashes. “We’ve come for word of the child.”
“Who is the poor dear?” Violet demanded, squinting up through scratched glasses.
“Can she truly fly like a bird?” Marigold asked.
“Or jump like a cat?” This came from someone in the back.
Ellie had to remind herself that these people were her constituents. More than that, they were her friends and neighbors. “We don’t have any answers yet. I’ll let you all know when we do. For now, I could use your help.”
“Anything,” Marigold said, pulling a flower-spangled notebook out of her purple vinyl handbag.
Violet offered her sister a tulip pen.
“The child will need clothes and such. Maybe a stuffed animal or two to keep her company,” Ellie said. Before she’d even finished, the Grimm sisters had taken over. The three ex-teachers corralled the group and started delegating tasks.
Ellie and Peanut left the crowd. Together, they walked up the concrete path to the hospital’s glass doors. The sliders whooshed open.
“Hey, Ellie,” said the receptionist at their approach. “Dr. Cerrasin is waiting for you at the old day care center.”
“Thanks,” Ellie said.
She and Peanut didn’t speak as they walked down the hallway and into the elevator. On the second floor, they went past the X-ray room and turned left.
The last room on the right had once been a day care center for employees. It had been designated and designed years ago, when the city coffers were full. In the time since the spotted owl and the dwindling salmon runs and the protection of old growth forests, those accounts had grown too thin to support luxuries like day care. The room had been empty and unmanned for more than two years.
Max stood in the hallway with his arms crossed. Fluorescent lighting tangled in his hair and made his ever-present tan look faded. She hadn’t seen him look this bad since the time he fell forty feet down some mountain. Then, he’d had two black eyes and a split lip.
At their approach, he looked up and waved, but didn’t bother smiling. He moved sideways to make room for them at the window.
The room beyond was small and rectangular, with red and yellow color-blocked walls and cubbyholes full of toys and games and books. A sink and counter took up one corner, used years ago, no doubt, for art projects and daily clean up. Several small tables surrounded by even smaller chairs filled the center of the room. Along the left wall were a single hospital bed and several empty cribs. There were two windows in the room. The one in front of them and a second, smaller one which overlooked the rear parking lot. To their left, a locked metal door was the only entrance.
Ellie sidled close, letting her shoulder touch his arm. “Talk to me, Max.”
“Last night, after we finished the testing, we diapered her and tucked her into the bed. This morning when she woke up, she went crazy. There’s no other word for it: crazy. Screaming, shrieking, throwing herself to the floor. She broke every lamp and smashed the mirror over the sink. When we tried to give her another injection, she bit Carol Rense hard enough to draw blood, then hid under the bed. She’s been there almost an hour. Do you have an ID on her yet?”
Ellie shook her head, then turned to Peanut. “Why don’t you go to the cafeteria? Get kid food for her.”
“Sure, send the fat girl for food.” Peanut sighed dramatically, but couldn’t help smiling. She loved to be a part of things.
When she’d gone, Max said to Ellie, “I don’t know what to tell you, Ellie. I’ve never seen a case like this.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“Well … I think she’s probably about six years old.”
“But she’s so small.”
“Malnourished. Plus, she’s had no dental or medical care, and her body is pretty scarred up.”
“Scarred?”
“Little things mostly, although there’s one that looks more serious. On her left shoulder. Maybe an old knife wound.”
“Jesus.”
“I drew blood and swabbed her mouth for DNA. If it were up to me, she’d still be sedated for hydration, but you wanted a diagnosis.…”
“Has she spoken?”
“No, but her vocal cords look unimpaired. I’d say—and this is just a guess—that she is physically able to speak, but I can’t tell if she knows how.”
“She doesn’t know
how
to speak? What are you saying?”
“All I know is that her screams are unintelligible. I recorded it. There were no recognizable words. Her brain waves show no anomalies. She could well be deaf or mentally challenged or severely developmentally delayed or autistic. I can’t be sure. I’m not even sure I know what tests to run for her mental state.”
“What should we do?”
“Find out who she is.”
“Gee, thanks. I meant right now.”
He nodded toward Peanut, who was coming toward them with a tray of food. “That’s a good start.”
Ellie looked down at what Pea had chosen: a stack of pancakes, a pair of fried eggs, a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream, and a glass of milk. It made Ellie hungry.
Max said, “I’ll get an orderly to crawl under the bed and get her—”
“Just leave it on the table,” Peanut said. “She might be odd, but she’s a kid. They do things in their own way and their own time. Hell, you can’t make a two-year-old eat and they’re tiny.”
Ellie smiled at her friend. “Any other advice?”
“No more strangers. She knows you, so you should take the food in. Talk to her in a soothing voice, but don’t stay. Maybe she wants to be alone to eat.”
“Thanks.” Taking the tray, Ellie went into the brightly painted room. The metal door clicked shut behind her. “Hey, little one. It’s me again. I hope you don’t hold that whole net thing against me.” She moved cautiously forward and set the tray on one of the tables. At the movement, the keys on her belt jingled; she clamped her hand over them. “I thought you might be hungry.”
Under the bed, the girl made a growling sound. It made the hairs on the back of Ellie’s neck stand up. She tried to think of just the right thing to say, but nothing came to her, so she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked loudly into place.
In the hall again, Ellie stood by Max at the window. “Will she eat it?”
He opened the girl’s chart and got out his pen. “I guess we’ll find out.”
In silence, they stood there, looking through the glass at the room that appeared empty.
Several minutes later a tiny hand came out from underneath the bed.
Peanut gasped. “Lookee there.”
More time passed.
Finally, a dark head appeared. Slowly, the child crawled out from her hiding place on all fours. When she looked up at the glass and saw them standing there, her nostrils flared.
Then she dashed to the table, where she froze again and bent low over the food, sniffing it suspiciously. She threw the whipped cream to the floor, then ate the pancakes and the eggs. She didn’t seem to know what to make of the waffles and syrup. Ignoring both, she grabbed the strawberries and took them back to her hiding place under the bed. The whole incident took less than a minute.
“And I thought my kids had bad table manners,” Peanut said. “She eats like a wild animal.”
“We need a specialist,” Max said quietly.
“I’ve contacted the authorities,” Ellie answered. “The state, the FBI, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They all need an identity or a crime to get in the action. I don’t know how to find out her identity if she won’t talk.”
“Not that kind of specialist. She needs a psychiatrist.”
Peanut drew in a sharp breath. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it. She’d be perfect.”
Max frowned. “Who?”
Ellie looked at Peanut. “She’d never do it. Her clients pay two hundred an hour.”
“That was before
.
She can’t have many patients left.”
“God knows she’s qualified for this,” Ellie said.
“Who in the hell are you two talking about?” Max asked.
Ellie finally looked at him. “My sister is Julia Cates.”
“The shrink who—”
“Yeah. That one.” She turned to Peanut. “Let’s go. I’ll call her from the office.”
In the past twelve hours Julia had begun at least a dozen projects. She’d tried organizing her closet, rearranging her furniture, scrubbing her refrigerator, and deep cleaning her bathrooms. She’d also gone to the nursery to buy autumn plants and to Home Depot for deck stain and paint stripper. It was a good time to do all of the projects she’d been putting off for … ten years.
The problem was her hands.
She was fine when she started a project; more than fine. She was optimistic. Unfortunately, her optimism was as thin as an eggshell. All it took was a thought (it’s time for Joe’s appointment, or—worse yet—Amber’s) and her hands would start to shake; she’d feel herself go cold. No temperature setting was high enough to keep her warm. Late last night, in the deepest hour of darkness, when the traffic behind her condo had dwindled to a drone as faded as a single mosquito’s flight and the mighty Pacific Ocean out front had whooshed steadily toward the golden sand, she’d even tried to write a book.
Why not?
Every pseudofamous person went that route these days. And she wanted to tell her side of the story; maybe she even needed to. She’d slipped out of her comfortable queen-sized bed and dressed in fleece sweats and Ugg boots, then gone out onto her small deck. From her place on the sixth floor, the midnight blue ocean lay before her, always in motion. Moonlight cut the sea in half, tangled in the foamy surf.
Hours she’d sat there, her booted feet propped on the deck rail, her yellow pad in her lap, her pen in her hand. By midnight she was surrounded by balled-up yellow wads of paper. All any of them said were:
I’m sorry.
Somewhere around four o’clock she fell into a fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep.
The phone wakened her.
Julia heard it as if from far away. She blinked her gritty eyes and sat up, realizing that she’d fallen asleep out on her deck. Wiping her face with one hand, she eased out of the chair and stepped over the piles of balled-up paper.
At the phone, she stopped.
The answering machine clicked on and she heard her own voice say cheerily: “You’ve reached Dr. Julia Cates. If this is a medical emergency, hang up and call 911. If not, please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks and good-bye.”
There was a long beep.
Julia tensed. In the last months, most of her calls had come from reporters and victims’ families and straight-out kooks.
“Hey, Jules, it’s me. Your big sis. It’s important.”
Julia picked up the phone. “Hey, El.”
There was an awkward pause, but wasn’t that always the way it was between them? Though they were sisters, they were four years apart in age and light-years apart in personality. Everything about Ellie was larger than life—her voice, her personality, her passions. Julia always felt colorless beside her flamboyant Miss Popular sister. “Are you okay?” Ellie finally asked.
“Fine, thanks.”
“You got released from the lawsuit. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah.”
There was another awkward pause, and then Julia said, “Thanks for calling, but—”
“Look, I need a favor.”
“A favor?”
“There’s a … situation up here. You could really help us out.”
“You don’t have to do it anymore, Ellie. I’m fine.”
“Do what?”
“Try to save me. I’m a big girl now.”
“I never tried to save you.”
“Yeah, right. How about when you got Tod Eldred’s little brother to ask me to the prom? Or when you brought all of your popular friends to my sixteenth birthday party?”
“Oh. That. Mom made me do all that stuff.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? None of your friends even talked to me at the party. And don’t get me wrong: I appreciated it. Then and now. But it’s not necessary. I’ll be fine.”
“I thought you said you
were
fine.”
Julia was surprised by the perceptiveness of her sister’s question. “Don’t worry about me, El. Really.”
“For a shrink, you’re a shitty listener. I’m telling you I need you in Rain Valley. Specifically, I need a child psychiatrist.”
“You’re older than I usually take.”
“Very funny. Will you fly up here? And I mean right now.” There was a pause, a rustling of paper on the other end of the line. “Alaska has a flight in two hours. Another one in three. I can have a ticket waiting for you.”
Julia frowned. This didn’t sound like the ordinary super-sister-saving-loser-sister scenario that had set like concrete in their school years. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“There isn’t time. I want you to catch the ten-fifteen flight. Will you trust me?”
Julia glanced out the huge floor-to-ceiling windows and tried to focus on the blue Pacific Ocean, but all she could really see were the yellow balls of paper that cluttered the deck floor.
“Jules? Please?”
“Why not?” Julia finally said.
She had nothing better to do.
FOUR
Julia hadn’t been back to Rain Valley in years, and now she was returning on the wave of failure. Perhaps she should have stayed in L.A. after all. There, she would have disappeared. Here, she would always be the other Cates girl. (
You know … the weird one …
) When a girl grew up in the shadow of the Homecoming Queen, there were two possible choices: disappear or make your own reputation. Unfortunately, when you were the tall, scarecrow-thin bookworm in a beloved, gregarious, larger-than-life family, there was no way to do either. From early on, she’d been the square peg, the kid who mediated every playground dispute but never joined in any of the games. The last kid picked for every sport; the girl at home, reading, during the senior prom. She was—or had been—that rarest of birds in a small, blue-collar town: a loner.
Only her mother had believed in a bright future for Julia. In fact, she’d encouraged her daughter to dream big. Unfortunately, her mother hadn’t lived to see Julia’s med school graduation. That loss had always been a sliver under Julia’s skin, a phantom pain that came and went. The closer she got to Rain Valley, the more it was likely to hurt.
She stared out the plane’s small window. Everything was gray, as if a cloud artist had painted the merest of washes over the green landscape. It made her feel lonely, all that gray; as if she, too, might disappear again in the Washington mist. The four white-capped volcanoes that stretched from northern Oregon to Bellingham looked like the spine of some mythic, sleeping beast. She heard the passenger behind her draw in a sharp breath and murmur, “Look, Fred, at that … is it Rainier?”
Suddenly she was thinking about the Zunigas and those lost children.
Dead wrong.
It didn’t surprise her. In the past year, everything, every thought and deed, led her back to regret.
Don’t think about that.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing until the emotions subsided. By the time the plane landed she was okay again.
She grabbed her bag from the overhead bin and merged into the line of passengers exiting the plane.
She was almost to the exit door when it happened.
One of the flight attendants recognized her. There was no mistaking the signs—the widening of the eyes, the slowly opening mouth. As Julia passed, she heard the woman whisper, “It’s
her.
That doctor. The one who—”
She kept moving. By the end of the jetway she was almost running. She caught a glimpse of Ellie standing amid the crowd, dressed in her blue uniform, looking stunningly beautiful.
Julia knew she should stop, say hello and pretend everything was all right. That was the smart thing to do. The
fine
thing.
She kept moving, running.
She raced across the crowded concourse hallway toward the ladies’ restroom sign. Ducking in, she disappeared into one of the stalls and slammed the door shut, then sat down on the toilet.
Calm down, Jules. Breathe.
“Are you in here, Julia?” Ellie sounded out of breath and irritated.
Julia released a slow, shaking breath. Having a panic attack was bad; having one in front of her sister was almost unbearable. She got slowly to her feet and opened the door. “I’m here.”
Ellie put her hands on her hips and stared at her. It was a cop-assessing-the-situation look. “I haven’t seen an airport sprint like that since the O.J. commercials.”
“I had to go to the bathroom.”
“You should see a urologist.”
“It’s not that. I …” Julia felt like an idiot. “The flight attendant recognized me. She looked at me as if
I
killed those kids.” She felt her cheeks heat up, knowing she should say more. Explain. But her sister couldn’t understand a thing like this. Ellie was like one of those pioneer wives who could give birth in the field and go back to work. Her sister knew little about being fragile.
Ellie’s hard look softened. “Fuck ’em all. You can’t let it get to you.”
Julia wished she could do that, but she’d always needed to be accepted. As a shrink, she knew the hows and whys of her need—how her popular, in-the-spotlight family had somehow made her feel marginalized and unimportant, how her father’s withheld love had made her believe she was unlovable—but knowledge didn’t soften the need. She wasn’t even sure how it had come to matter so much. All she knew was that her profession, her ability to help people, had filled the frightened place inside of her with joy, and now she was scared again. “It’s not that easy for me. You can’t understand.”
Ellie leaned against the pale green tile wall. “Because you think I’m only slightly smarter than an earthworm or because I have nothing in my life worth losing?”
Julia wished suddenly that she had a better memory reservoir. Surely there were times when they’d played together, she and Ellie, when they’d counted secrets instead of slights, when laughter had followed their conversations instead of awkward pauses. But if all that had happened, Julia didn’t recall it. What she remembered was being the “smart” sister, the “weird” one who grew too tall in a petite family and wanted things no one else understood. The mushroom in a family of orchids. She’d always been able to say the right things to strangers, but the wrong thing to her sister. She sighed. “Let’s not do this, El.”
“You’re right. Come on.”
Before Julia could answer, Ellie headed out of the bathroom. Julia had no choice but to follow.
At the car—an ugly white Suburban with wood-grain door panels—Ellie stopped at the back door just long enough to toss her purse in, then she strode around to the driver’s side.
Julia struggled with her suitcase. It took her two tries to stow it. She slammed the back door shut, then went to the passenger side and climbed into the front seat.
Ellie backed the car out of the stall and headed for the exit. The minute the engine roared to life, the stereo came on. Some guy with a twangy voice was singing about the pocket of a clown.
Neither one of them said anything. As the landscape changed, going from city gray to country green, Julia began to feel like an idiot for sparring with her sister. How was it that, even after all these distant and separate years, they immediately fell into their childhood roles? One look at each other and they were adolescents again.
They were
family,
as specious as that connection sometimes felt, and they ought to be able to get along. Besides, she was a psychiatrist, for God’s sake, a specialist in interpersonal dynamics, and here she was acting like the younger sister who wasn’t invited to play with the big kids.
“Why don’t you tell me why I’m here,” she finally said.
“I’ll tell you at the house. I have a lot of photographs to show you. I’m afraid you won’t believe me otherwise.”
Julia glanced at her. “So it
is
a rescue mission. There’s no real reason I’m here.”
“Oh, there’s a reason. We have a little girl who needs help. But it’s … complicated.”
Julia didn’t know if she believed that, but she knew that Ellie did things in her own way and in her own time. There was no point in asking further questions. The better course of action was a neutral topic. Small talk. “How’s your friend Penelope?”
“She’s good. Raising teenagers is killing her, though.” Ellie immediately winced, as if realizing she shouldn’t have paired teenager and killing in the same sentence. “Sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it, El. Teenagers are difficult. How old are they?”
“A fourteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Tough ages.”
Ellie smiled. “The girl—Tara—keeps wanting to pierce body parts and get tattoos. It’s making Pea’s husband insane.”
“And Penelope? How’s she handling it?”
“Great. Well … unless you consider her weight gain. In the past year, she’s gone on every diet known to man. Last week she started smoking. She says it’s how the stars do it.”
“That and throwing up,” Julia said.
Ellie nodded. “How’s Philip?”
Julia was surprised by the swift pain that came with his name. If only she could say:
He stopped loving me.
Maybe Ellie could get her to laugh about her broken heart. As a shrink, she knew it would be a good move, that kind of honesty. It might open a door that had been closed for most of their lives. Instead, she said, “We broke up last year. I’m too busy—I mean, I
was
too busy—for love.”
Ellie laughed at that. “Too busy for love. Are you crazy?”
For the next two hours they alternated between meaningless conversation and meaningful silences. Julia worked hard to find questions that brought them together and stayed away from answers that caused separation. They barely mentioned their father, and stayed away from memories of Mom.
They came to the Rain Valley exit and turned off the highway. On the long, winding forest road that led to childhood, Julia found herself tensing up. Here, amidst the towering trees, she started to feel small again. Insignificant.
“I was going to sell the place, move closer to town, but every time I get close to listing it, I find another repair that needs to be done,” Ellie said on the way out of town. “I don’t need a shrink to tell me I’m afraid to leave it.”
“It’s just a house, El.”
“I guess that’s how we’re different, Jules. To you, it’s three bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen-dining-living room. To me, it’s the best childhood ever. It’s where I caught dragonflies in a glass jar and let my little sister braid my hair with flowers.” Her voice dropped a little. She gave Julia a meaningful look, then turned onto their driveway. “It’s where my parents loved each other for almost three decades.”
Julia wouldn’t let herself disagree with that, although they both knew it was a lie. A fable. “So, quit threatening to sell it. Admit that it’s where you want to be. Hand the memories down to your own kids.”
“As you may have noticed, I don’t have kids. But thanks for pointing it out.” Ellie drove into the yard and stopped hard. “We’re here.”
Julia realized she had said the wrong thing again. “You don’t need a husband, you know. Especially not the kind
you
pick,” she said. “You can have a baby on your own.”
Ellie turned to look at her. “That might be how it is in the big city, but not here, and not for me. I want it all—the husband, the baby, the golden retriever.” She smiled. “Actually, I’ve got the dogs. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my husbands again.”
Julia nodded. Time to change the subject. “So, how are Jake and Elwood? Still go straight for a girl’s crotch?”
“They’re males, aren’t they?” Ellie smiled and Julia was struck by how beautiful her sister still was. Though Ellie was thirty-nine years old, there wasn’t a line around her eyes or a pleating of skin around her mouth. Those startling green eyes shone against the milky purity of her skin. She had strong cheekbones and full, sensuous lips. Even her small-town, poorly layered haircut couldn’t dim her beauty. She was petite and surprisingly curvy, with a smile like a halogen spotlight. No wonder everyone loved her.
“Come on.” Ellie got out of the Suburban and slammed the door shut behind her.
Julia meant to move. Instead she sat there, looking through the dirty windshield at the house in which she’d grown up. The late afternoon sunlight made everything appear golden and impossibly softened except for the fringe of dark green trees.
This was only the second time she’d been back since her mother’s funeral; then, she’d stayed only as long as she absolutely had to. Medical school had provided an excellent excuse. She’d said
I have to get back for tests,
and no one questioned her. In retrospect, she should have stayed. That time might have built a bridge between her and her sister, given them a common ground. As it was, however, the opposite had occurred. They had moved through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd separately. No one in Rain Valley had known what to say to Julia in good times; in bad, they were even more confused. All they’d said over and over again was how proud her mother had been of Julia’s education. By the third mention of it, Julia couldn’t stop crying. It hadn’t helped to see how much comfort Ellie got from her friends, while she had stood alone all night, waiting for her father’s attention to turn her way. Of course, she’d been disappointed. He’d been the star that night, the widower laid low by grief. Everyone held him, kissed his cheek, and promised that Brenda was in a better place. Only Julia seemed to see the lie in all of it, the act. When at last her father broke down and wept, everyone except Julia rushed to comfort him. She had seen even as a child what no one else, especially Ellie, ever had: that her father’s selfishness had crushed his wife’s spirit, just as he’d crushed his younger daughter’s. Only Ellie had flourished in the white-hot light of her father’s self-absorption.
Julia reached for the door handle and wrenched it hard, then stepped down. Everything was exactly as it should be in October. Maple trees were dropping their leaves, creating that autumn song that was as familiar to her as the rushing whisper of the nearby river. She heard her mother’s voice in that sound, in the falling leaves and crackling twigs and whispering wind. Softly, she whispered, “Hey, Mom.” Part of her even waited for a reply. But there was only the chattering of the river and the breeze through the leaves.
She followed Ellie across the marshy lawn toward the house.
In the glorious light, the old house appeared to be made of hammered strips of silver. The grayed clapboards shone with a hundred secret colors. White trim, peeled in places to reveal patches of wood, outlined the windows and doors. Rhododendrons the size of house trailers dotted the yard.
Ellie opened the door and led the way inside.
Everything looked as it always had. The same slip-covered furniture—pale beige with pink cabbage roses and faded green leaves—graced the living room. Pine antiques were everywhere—an armoire that was probably still filled with Grandma Whittaker’s doilies and table linens, a dining table scarred by three generations of Cateses and Whittakers, a credenza that was decorated with dusty silk flowers in ceramic vases. French doors flanked a river-rock fireplace; through the silvery glass panes, a ghostly ribbon of river shone in the sunlight. Ellie hadn’t changed a thing. It wasn’t surprising. In Rain Valley things and people either belonged or they didn’t. If they belonged, they were loved and kept forever.