“Abby would know about her unhappiness better than I would. Maybe there were issues brewing back then that came to the forefront when Caitlin disappeared. Sometimes it did feel like we were traveling on parallel tracks.”
“What about Caitlin at that time?” he asked. “Had she shown an interest in boys yet?”
“Not really,” Abby said. “I’m sure she liked some boys at school. Some names came up from time to time.”
“She didn’t have a large number of friends,” I said. “She’s kind of a loner. It’s no surprise really that she’s being so tightlipped now. She could be like that sometimes.”
“But she had friends,” Abby said. “She was a well-liked girl.”
“Had she reached puberty yet?”
Abby nodded. “About six months before,” she said.
Abby had taken Caitlin out to dinner about a year and a half before she disappeared, just the two of them. Abby explained the changes that were going to be coming over her body and the ways women coped with them.
“Were there emotional changes associated with puberty?” he asked. “Mood swings? Anger?”
“She was turning into a teenager,” Abby said. “There was more eye rolling, more snippy answers. Caitlin always played things close to the vest.”
“Did it bother you that she played things ‘close to the vest’?”
“It’s just the way she was.” I caught myself. “Is.”
“Did it force you to be more strict with her?”
“Not at all,” I said. “We didn’t have a lot of rules.”
“Who was the disciplinarian?”
“Abby probably was more than me.”
“Were you around a lot, Tom?”
“I worked.” I look down and picked a piece of lint off my pants. “But my job at the university allowed for a flexible schedule. I was home more than a lot of dads.”
“Were you a factor in Caitlin’s life?”
“A factor?” I asked. “I’m her dad.”
“He was very involved with her life those first twelve years,” Abby said.
“Why do you ask that?” I said.
“Sometimes young women who are in restrictive homes or who aren’t getting significant attention from their male parent seek that attention through other avenues. They engage in reckless drinking or sexual behavior. Drugs even. Or they seek that attention they think they’re being deprived of in other people. Substitute male authority figures.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m speaking in generalities, of course,” Rosenbaum said. “Caitlin hasn’t offered us much, so I’m working through some possibilities that might explain what happened.”
“I don’t think she ran away, if that’s what you’re saying,” I said.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Rosenbaum said. “In fact, I’m glad to hear your certainty about the issue. Abby, do you share that certainty?”
“No, she didn’t run away,” Abby said. “I know my daughter. She wouldn’t have done that.”
“Do you still know her?” Rosenbaum asked.
Abby tapped her chest three times. “In here, I do. In here, always.”
I admired her in that moment, her certainty, her bedrock belief that things made sense. I didn’t have it, and I wasn’t sure Rosenbaum did either.
“Fair enough,” he said. “If you’ll step outside now, I’m going to chat with Caitlin.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Sunday morning, a few days later, and Abby came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her knock. She was just there, wearing her robe, her hair still disheveled and her eyes puffy from sleep.
She sat down on the side of the bed.
“Is something happening?” I asked.
“Shh. It’s fine.”
“What?”
“Caitlin’s fine.”
I sat up, rubbed my eyes. The clock read 8:45, later than I would have thought.
Abby looked distracted. I couldn’t read her mood.
“It’s weird, sleeping in the same room with her,” she said. “It makes me think of when she was little and she’d crawl into bed with us. Or if she was sick and she’d come to our room and watch TV. It’s hard to believe sometimes . . .”
“What?”
“She’s the same girl. She’s so different in so many ways.”
“I understand. I think about the fingerprints and the scar on her knee. Those seem to ground me a little, remind me it’s really her.”
And deep down, I knew. She possessed the same qualities. The stubbornness. The willfulness. The obstinacy that could burn like hate.
The secrecy.
“Will we get her back, Tom? All the way?”
It hurt for me to say it, but I began to formulate an answer to that question. “She’ll never be the same as if she’d spent those four years here. With us.”
Abby nodded. “We won’t be the same either, will we? I think about everything that might have been different. If I’d continued to work. If you’d worked less. If we’d had another baby . . .”
I reached out, placed my hand on her upper arm. I felt her beneath the fluffy robe, our first real contact since the hand-holding in church. “We still could,” I said.
“Tom . . .”
I applied some gentle pressure, drawing her toward me. She gave in, leaned her head down close to mine. I brushed my lips against her cheek, then moved to her mouth.