I tried calling Annika again. I sent her an email. I left her a voice mail. “I just want to know that you’re okay,” I said for the tenth time. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” I thought of what I had done to Emma and Cole just by existing, and now I wondered if I had done the same to Annika. Annika, who was fearless when it came to talking to boys, and being who she wanted—but who had been scared to go back home.
I was lying on the couch, eyes wide open, listening to the clock on the mantel, unsure what to do because of all the movement happening overhead. My mother was gone, and it didn’t seem to be anyone’s priority. And now the police believed my mother did not get the money where I thought she had. Had she lied about where she got the money? Or had I made it up myself, filling in the story gaps with things that made sense? Much as they were doing right now?
I had to ask Jan. Cole said that Jan knew my mother was lying, that she knew more than she let on. Jan would have the answers.
“I’m fine,” I heard Cole saying. “Seriously, you guys can let go now.” He was coming down the steps, surrounded by both parents.
Jan froze at the entrance of the den. “Hi, Kelsey. When did you get here?”
“Emma let me in,” I said. I looked Cole over. He was in sweats, and he leaned slightly to one side, but he was on his feet and he was here and talking and okay.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He gestured to his side. “Stitches.” Then turned his arm over for me to see. “And an IV. Got someone else’s blood running through my veins at the moment.”
“We’re glad you’re both okay, Kelsey,” Cole’s dad said, then he gave Jan a look. He went into the kitchen to start cooking, while Cole eased himself onto the sofa behind me.
Jan stood before me in the den. She looked like crap. Like she hadn’t slept, or showered. No, like her kid had been shot, and she didn’t know what to do.
“The police think she ran,” I said. “You have to tell them the truth. She couldn’t, Jan. She’s hurt.”
She hesitated. Looked at Cole sitting behind me. “Come on,” she said, gesturing toward her office on the other side of the den.
She had a wooden desk that backed onto a large window, and walls covered in bookshelves, a few document boxes on the floor. Behind her were the double doors of the closet of files, with the metal lock between them. She shut the office door behind us—though I’m sure Cole could hear us just fine regardless.
“The police were asking me questions….”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know, Kelsey. I know.”
“What aren’t you telling me? What happened to my mother?”
“Kelsey, I can’t talk about this. It’s privileged.”
“She’s missing and the police think she ran….You don’t believe that, do you?”
She looked around at the empty walls, as if searching for an answer. Finally, she said, “I think she might have.”
I flinched. “You think she could’ve left?”
She reached for me, but I backed away. “I think your mother is very strong. I think she could do more than she let on. It’s the only reason you were allowed to stay there in the first place. Because I believed that she was capable of more. That she was capable of caring for you.”
“You’re wrong.” I had lived with her. She was contained by walls and limitations, nightmares and memories she could never reach.
She held up her hands. “Okay, Kelsey. Okay. The police are looking for her. They’re talking to the cops in Atlanta. They’re digging through her history right now.”
“You think she remembers,” I said.
She paused. “I think there’s more to the story than what was reported in the papers. I think she doesn’t want to remember.”
“But she’s gone, Jan. People came and she’s gone. You have to tell the police.”
“You know what the police think is more likely? That your mother took something that didn’t belong to her. That whoever she took it from came back for it. You’re safe here now. We’ll talk this weekend, okay? We’ll figure out what to do.”
She brushed by me, but I couldn’t move.
“You really think she left me?”
She stood in the entrance, the door open. “I think I made a really big mistake, Kelsey. I think I did something terrible, that almost got you…and Cole…killed. And I will never forgive myself for it.”
—
Cole was sitting just outside the doors, on the couch I’d be sleeping on, a glass of water in his hands. Jan went to the kitchen, and he tapped the seat beside him.
“You look about how I feel,” he said.
I cut my eyes to him. He was pale, and there was a tremor running through his arm, and he pressed it to his side, to hide it.
“Are you really okay?” I asked.
He shrugged, changed the topic. “So, you and Baker, huh?”
“Yeah, me and Baker.”
He was staring at the blank television, at our distorted reflections, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. “I was scared, Kelsey,” he said. And I thought that was an apology.
“Well, I did get you shot,” I said, which I guess was mine, too.
He nodded, motioned for me to lean closer, so close I could smell the hospital soap, the astringent on his skin. His mouth was next to my ear. “She keeps the key to her files in her purse.”
—
That night, I waited for everyone to go to sleep, rifled through Jan’s purse, and took the key that was hidden within the secondary pocket inside.
Maybe I was mistaken and nobody was out there. Maybe Jan was right. That they had gotten what they came for, and left. But just in case, I checked my phone every few minutes, just to make sure I had a signal. And I picked up the home line, listening to the dial tone. A hum in my ear that promised, You are safe.
I used Jan’s key, unlocked the double closet doors, and stared at the stacks of shelves. They were organized alphabetically by last name, but we had an entire box to ourselves. Eight years’ worth of research into my mother’s life. Eight years of truth, boxed up right here.
Jan had her sessions documented in shorthand inside several journals, everything written out in lists or indecipherable scrawl. Her journals also had timestamps alongside several of the entries, but they didn’t seem to correlate to time of day.
It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the box and found the digital recorder that I realized the timestamps referred to that.
From what I could understand from Jan’s notes, Cole was right—Jan had suspected, long, long ago, that my mother remembered everything. What he didn’t tell me, what I had to find out for myself, was that Jan suspected my mother’s fear went deeper than the men who had taken her. The fear was real, but misdirected.
I lay on the hardwood floor, headphones over my ears, my mother’s voice filling my head. And I listened for hours to her lies. I could pick them out, just as surely as Jan could. Her voice, like warm blankets tucked up to my chin. The lies, like a burst of cold air that turned my stomach to ice.
This was the thing I kept rewinding, and replaying, that Jan had time-marked in her notes:
Jan’s voice. “Let’s go back to the day you were taken. Start over again.”
And my mother’s broken voice. “The house was dark. I was asleep. I heard glass breaking, and I screamed.”
“And what did you see next?”
“I saw a shadow.”
“What did you do? Did you try to run?”
“Yes, I tried to run. We fought. Things broke.”
“But nobody came.”
“Nobody came.”
“Then what?”
“Then he hit me harder, and I fell, and then I don’t remember.”
“Okay, Mandy, okay. You’re okay. Take a deep breath.” A pause. “Ready?”
“Sorry. Ready.”
“Let’s start again. What woke you up?”
“The sound of glass breaking.”
“And then you screamed?”
“Yes, when I saw the shadow.”
I rewound it three times, heard the discrepancy. The first thing Jan must’ve noticed. The first time, she screamed at the sound of glass breaking. The second time, not until she saw the shadow.
Another note in the journal, three question marks, another timestamp.
I found the corresponding section of the recording. Jan’s voice: “Let’s talk about your home life before you were taken.”