There’s news. I stand on the front step, shivering from the cold, waiting for Gabe’s car to pull into our snow-covered drive. It’s after six o’clock and still dark outside. Neighbors’ Christmas décor lights the night sky: decorated trees glittering through bay windows, icicle lights hanging from gutters, candles flickering in every single double-hung window that faces the street. From the chimneys, clouds of smoke swirl into the frosty air.
I pull my robe tight around me and wait. I hear a train in the distance, rumbling through town. No one waits beside its tracks, before dawn on a Sunday morning, Christmas Eve.
“What is it?” I ask when he parks his car and climbs out. He comes right up to me. He doesn’t shut the door.
“Let’s go inside.” He takes my hands and leads me where it’s warm.
We sit on the plush white sofa, pressed close together. We’re hardly aware that our legs touch. It’s dark in the house; only the stove light in the kitchen is turned on. I don’t want to wake James. We whisper.
There’s a look in his eye. Something new.
“She’s dead,” I concede.
“No,” he says, but then he revises his statement and, staring down into his own hands, humbly admits, “I don’t know.
“There’s a doctor in a tiny town in northeastern Minnesota, a Dr. Kayla Lee. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. We received a call a week or so ago—she saw Mia’s picture on the news and recognized her as a patient. It had been weeks, maybe a month since Mia was in. But she’s sure it’s her. Mia was using a pseudonym: Chloe Romain.”
“A doctor?”
“Dr. Lee said that she was with a man. Colin Thatcher. She said that Mia was sick.”
“Sick?”
“Pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia.”
Without treatment, pneumonia can lead to blood poisoning. It can lead to respiratory distress, the inability to breathe. Without treatment, a person can die.
“She was given a prescription and sent home. The doctor asked to see her back in a week; Mia never returned for the appointment.”
Gabe said he had a nagging feeling about this Grand Marais. Something in his gut told him she might be there.
“What made you think of Grand Marais?” I ask, remembering the day he showed up at my home, asking if I’d ever heard of it.
“A postcard I came across at the Thatcher home. Sent by Colin to his mother. For a boy who rarely left home, it caught my eye. A good place to hide.
“There’s more,” he says.
“What?” I beg.
She was given a prescription, but that doesn’t mean it was ever filled. That doesn’t mean the pills were ever taken.
“I’ve been talking to Kathryn Thatcher and doing some research into the Thatcher family. Turns out there’s a cabin up in Grand Marais that’s been in the family for years. Kathryn says she doesn’t know much about it. She’s never been there. But her ex brought Colin there when he was a boy. It’s a summer home, so to speak, inhabited only for a few months of the year. I sent an officer to check on the home and when he did, he found a red truck with Illinois plates parked outside.”
“A red truck,” I repeat. Gabe reminds me that Mrs. Thatcher’s neighbors were sure Colin drove a truck.
“And?” I ask anxiously.
He stands to his feet. “I’m on my way. Driving there. This morning. I was going to take a flight, but there’s no good way, no direct routes and between layovers and connections—”
I rise up to meet him. “I’m coming. Let me pack a—”
I try to step past him. His hands seize me by the shoulders.
“You can’t come,” he says in a gentle voice. He says this is only a hunch. There’s no proof. The home is under surveillance right now. He’s not even certain that Mia is there. Colin Thatcher is a dangerous man, wanted for much more than this.
“I can,” I cry. “She’s my daughter.”
“Eve.”
My voice is uneven. My hands shake. I’ve waited for months for this moment, and now that it has arrived, I’m not certain I’m ready. There’s so much that could go wrong. “She needs me right now. I’m her mother, Gabe. It’s my duty to protect her.”
He embraces me, a burly bear hug. “It’s my duty to protect you,” he says. “Trust me. If she’s there, I will bring her home.”
“I can’t lose her now,” I cry.
My eyes stray to a family photograph we had done years ago: James, Grace, Mia and me. Everyone else looks as if they were forced to be there, with artificial smiles plastered to furrowed brows and rolling eyes. Even me. But Mia simply looks happy. Why? I wonder. We never gave her a reason to be happy.
Gabe lowers his lips to my forehead and holds them there, pressed tightly against the creased skin.
This is how we stand when James comes hobbling down the steps, dressed in a pair of tight-fitting tartan pajamas.
“What the hell is this?” he demands.
I’m the first to pull away. “James,” I say, hurrying to meet him in the foyer. “They found Mia.”
But his eyes brush past me and he evades my greeting. “And this is how you break the news?” he challenges, deriding Gabe. “By putting the moves on my wife?”
“James,” I say again, reaching for his hand so that he’ll understand: our daughter is coming home. “They found Mia.”
But James replies with a patronizing look in Gabe’s direction. He doesn’t look at me. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says, and walks out of the room.