“I did,” he said. “Though he’s a hard man to track down.”
There was a time when all I had to do was conjure him to mind—just the wisp of a thought—and there he’d be in the flesh, as if I had summoned him. But now I had to agree. Tyler was starting to feel like a ghost, like if I blinked for too long, he might slip away for good.
Detective Charles tapped his pad. “He says he called Annaleise at one A.M. and that, let me see, he decided to break it off. Because, quote, ‘She wanted more than I was willing to give her.’ What do you suppose that means?”
“I’m assuming exactly what he said. He doesn’t like to be tied down.”
He smiled and it was unsettling—the shark ready to play his winning card. “That’s quite the opposite of what I’ve been hearing. Looks like he’s tied down really good here.”
I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “Look, up until last week, I hadn’t talked to Tyler in over a year. I have no insight into the inner workings of their relationship.” The detective caught the inflection in my voice, I was sure, and I fought to keep it steady as Daniel put a hand on my back. Calm down.
“Ms. Farrell, I’m not trying to get him into trouble or anything. I just want to get a feel for Annaleise’s state of mind that night.”
Lie.
“When were you and Tyler Ellison last . . . together?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his notepad.
“If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, that’s kind of a personal question.”
“This is a missing persons investigation. Of course it’s personal. Think of the girl, Ms. Farrell.”
Think of the girl. “Last year,” I said.
“Not last week? Not when you returned home?”
“No,” I said.
“You return home, and Tyler allegedly breaks up with Annaleise the same night, and then she’s reported missing the following morning. You can see how this looks.”
I could see what stories they had concocted, and the one they wanted me to feed back to them. But I’d been through this before. We all had. This kid, he didn’t have a fucking clue. “I understand that when the police have no leads, they become desperate, trying to find meaning where there’s nothing. Trying to connect unrelated dots into a picture they can understand. Whether it’s true or not.”
Daniel’s phone rang and he answered it right then without excusing himself. “Hello?” he said. “What?” He continued listening, and I kept my eyes on his face so I wouldn’t have to look at Detective Charles, whose gaze I could feel burning a hole into the side of my skull. “I’ll be right there,” he said. Then, to the detective, “Our dad isn’t well. We have to go. Good luck with the case.” He turned to face me. “They need us to come in. Right now.”
“Oh, God,” I said, running into the house, locking the doors, grabbing my shoes and purse. Daniel already had the car running by the time I was outside, on the phone with the insurance company he was working with as a field adjuster, explaining that he couldn’t make it to the site.
Daniel assessed damages for a living. Worked out of his home, going wherever one of several companies sent him in the region. Everything was a checklist—there was a formula to disaster, misfortune, and tragedy. Everything had a value and a cost. I suppose he got accustomed to digging through facts, assigning blame, detecting fraud. Or he found out he was good at it. After he’d lived through Corinne’s case, maybe it was a comfort to him—finding the logic in the chaos. Finding the truth.
“No,” he said, “I won’t make it out today at all. I’ll double up tomorrow. Yeah, call it a sick day.”
He was calling Laura as we drove down the road. The detective was sitting in his car, making notes to himself, pretending not to watch us as we drove away.
* * *
DAD WAS IN RESTRAINTS, flat on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The room was full of people, all of whom worked there in one capacity or another. When Daniel and I barged in, the doctor made a show of placing his fingers on the inside of Dad’s wrist, which was limp and restrained by a thick ivory strap.
“What the hell are you doing to him?” I asked, pushing past the doctor and working on a restraint that had been buckled around Dad’s other wrist.
“Ms. Farrell.” There was a hand on my shoulder but the voice sounded farther away. “Ms. Farrell.” A woman’s voice, more forceful now, and then the hand moved to my wrist, restraining my own movement. “It’s for his safety. And ours.”
I looked at the hand on my wrist, at the long fingers and cracked knuckles leading to the knobby wrist and the slender arm. Daniel.
It was then that I got a good look at everyone in the room. A nurse looked shaken, half her hair pulled free from a bun. There were two men in the room who didn’t appear to be doctors or nurses, and were watching Dad carefully. And the woman who’d spoken my name, dressed in business attire and standing near the doorway.
“He’s sedated now,” the woman said. “But we don’t know what shape he’ll be in when he wakes up.”
The air was stale and cold and seemed so impersonal. No scents of home. Medicine, cleansers, bleach. It couldn’t be good for his memory. He needed to smell the wood floors and the forest behind our house. He needed the exhaust from his crappy car and the grease from Kelly’s Pub. “Well, when he wakes up to find himself physically restrained, I can tell you right now it won’t be good,” I said.
She pressed her lips together and stuck her hand out in my direction, not giving me any choice but to take it. “I’m Karen Addelson, the director here. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you yet, Ms. Farrell. Come, please, to my office, both of you.” She didn’t let go of my hand, instead taking hold of my elbow with her other hand. “He’ll be fine. Someone will stay with him.” Her hand on my elbow moved to my lower back, and she led me out of the room, Daniel at my side.
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.”