"Well, sweetheart, when the moving vans came and loaded up your house, that was certainly a hint. Dori was devastated. I'll be honest—we were very surprised. Certainly as… good friends of your family, we thought we'd receive prior notice. But that was a crazy time for your parents. I understand now, better than ever, their desire to keep you safe."
"What did they tell you?"
Mrs. Petracelli cocked her head, seemed to be dredging up memories from the old days. "Your father came over one afternoon. He said that in light of everything that was happening, he'd decided to take the family away for a few days. I understood, of course, and was concerned for how you were doing. He said you were holding up well, but he thought it might be nice to go on a little vacation to take everyone's mind off things.
"I didn't think of it much for the first week. I was too busy keeping Dori entertained—as your absence had put her in a bit of a sulk. Then the phone rang one night and it was your father again, saying we'd never believe it, but he'd gotten a great job offer and he'd decided to take it. So you wouldn't be returning after all. In fact, he was arranging with a moving company to just pack everything up and ship it to your new address. He thought things would be better that way.
"We were devastated. Walter and I enjoyed seeing your parents very much and, of course, you girls were so close. I'll confess my first thought was simply how to break the news to Dori. Later, I grew a little angry I felt… I wished your parents had returned one last time so you two girls could at least say a proper good-bye. And I wasn't an idiot—your father was very vague on the phone, we didn't even know which city you'd moved to. While I respected that privacy was his prerogative, I felt offended. We were friends, after all. Good friends, I'd thought. I don't know… it was such a strange, strange autumn."
She looked at me, head tilted to the side, and her next question was surprisingly gentle.
"Annabelle, do you remember what was going on before your family moved? Do you remember the police coming to your home?"
"Some of it. I remember finding little gifts on the porch. I remember they made my father furious."
Mrs. Petracelli nodded. "I didn't know what to think at the time. I'm not even sure I completely believed the initial reports of a Peeping Tom. Why would a grown man want to peek in a little girl's bedroom? We were all so unbelievably innocent back then. Only your father seemed to understand the danger. Of course, once we learned a strange man had been hiding in Mrs. Watts's attic, we were horrified. Such things weren't supposed to happen in our neighborhood.
"Mr. Petracelli and I started talking about moving, especially after your family left. That's what we were doing that week. We'd sent Dori to my parents for the weekend so we could go house hunting. We'd just gotten back from talking to a Realtor when our phone rang. It was my mother. She wanted to know if we knew where Dori was. 'What do you mean?' I said. 'Dori is with you.' Then there was this long, long silence. And then I heard my own mother start to cry."
Mrs. Petracelli set down her coffee mug. She gave me a soft, apologetic smile, brushed self-consciously at the corners of her eyes. "It doesn't get any easier. You tell yourself it will, but it doesn't. There are two moments in my life that will always be with me till the day I die: the moment my daughter was born and the moment I received a phone call telling me she was gone. Sometimes I negotiate with God. I'll give Him all the memories of joy, if He'll just take away the ones filled with pain. Of course, it doesn't work like that. I get to live with the whole kit and caboodle, whether I want to or not. Here"—her voice had gone brisk again—"have another piece of banana bread."
I took another piece. Both of us moved by rote, using the rituals of polite society to keep the horror of our conversation at bay
"Were there any leads?" I asked. "To Dori?" I dug a walnut out of the bread with my forefinger and thumb, placed it beside my coffee cup on the table.
"One of the neighbors reported seeing an unmarked white van in the area. Best he could remember, a young man with short dark hair and a white T-shirt was at the wheel. The neighbor thought he might be a contractor working in the area. No one ever came forward, however. And in all the years, none of the tips have panned out."
I forced myself to meet her eye. "Mrs. Petracelli, did my father know that Dori had gone missing?"
"I… Well, I don't know. I certainly never told him. I never spoke to your father again after that last phone call. Which, come to think of it, does seem strange. But with everything that happened that November, we weren't really thinking about you and your family anymore; we were too busy trying to save ours. Dori's disappearance was on the news, however. For the first few days in particular, when the volunteers were pouring in and the police were launching round-the-clock searches. I don't know if your parents saw the story or not. Why do you ask?"
"I don't know."