But she does anyway. “I was six or seven years old. My mother was in the kitchen, but she left the TV on, the news. I was coloring. She didn’t know I was paying attention. There was a story, a high school band trip from some school, Kansas or Oklahoma, something like that. There was a group of kids in a bus traveling to a competition or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention to that. The bus skidded off the road and went down a ravine. Half a dozen kids were killed, the driver.
“Then this family appears, a mom, a dad and two older boys, maybe eighteen or nineteen. I can still see them—the dad gaunt with a receding hairline, the boys, both of them, tall and lanky like basketball players, with burnt-orange hair. The mother looked like she’d been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. They’re crying, every single one of them, standing before this little white house. That’s what made me pay attention. The crying. They were heartbroken. Destroyed. I watched the father, mostly, but all of them really, the way they openly wept for their dead daughter. Their dead sister. She’d been killed in the accident, plunged down the ravine when the driver fell asleep at the wheel. She was fifteen but I remember her father gushing about his baby girl. He went on and on about how amazing she was, though the things he said—that she was kind and silly and born to play the flute—were not necessarily amazing. But to him they were. He kept saying, ‘my Chloe,’ or ‘my baby Chloe.’ That was her name. Chloe Frost.
“All I could think about was Chloe Frost. I wanted to be her, to have someone long for me the way her family longed for her. I cried for Chloe, for days on end. I spoke to her, when I was alone. I carried on conversations with my dead friend, Chloe. I drew pictures of her. Dozens of them, with her own burnt-orange hair and coffee-colored eyes.” She runs her hands through her hair and looks away, in a sheepish sort of way. Embarrassed.
Then she admits, “I was jealous of her, really. Jealous that she was dead, jealous that somewhere, out there, someone loved her more than they loved me.” She hesitates, then says, “It’s crazy. I know.”
But I shake my head and say, “No,” because I know it’s what she wants to hear. But I think how lonely she must have been growing up. Longing for a dead friend she didn’t even know. Things weren’t so grand for Ma and me, but at least we weren’t alone.
She changes the subject. She doesn’t want to talk about Chloe Frost anymore.
“Who will you be?” she asks.
“John?” I say. I couldn’t be further from a John.
“No,” she says, the answer almost as obvious as Chloe had been. “You’ll be Owen. Because it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? That’s not your real name.”
“Do you want to know?” I ask. I bet she’s thought about it a million times. I bet she’s guessed to herself what my real name might be. I wonder if she ever thought about asking.
“No,” she says, “because this is who you are to me. You’re Owen.” She says that whoever I was before this doesn’t matter.
“And you’ll be Chloe.”
“I’ll be Chloe.”
And in that moment, Mia ceased to exist.
Eve
After
I consult with Dr. Rhodes. She agrees under one condition: that she is allowed to go along, too. I purchase the three airplane tickets with a credit card that James and I share. The police department pays Gabe’s fare.
We will be revisiting the cabin in which Mia was held prisoner all that time. The hope is that being there will help jog her memory and make her remember something about her time in captivity. If the cat alone can trigger memories of Colin Thatcher, then I wonder what that cabin will do.
Mia and I pack one bag. Between us, we don’t have much. I never mention to James where we are going. Mia asks Ayanna to watch Canoe for a few days, and the woman agrees without reservation. Her nine-year-old son, Ronnie, is thrilled to have a cat to keep company. We ask the taxi to drive us to her apartment on the way to O’Hare. It’s with great difficulty that Mia is able to part with Canoe for the second time. I wonder what happened the first time she said goodbye.
The airport is a horrendous place for a person in Mia’s condition. The noise is deafening: thousands of people, loudspeakers, airplanes soaring overhead. Mia is on edge; we all see it, though she’s tucked between Dr. Rhodes and me, and I have her arm looped through mine. Dr. Rhodes suggests a dose of Valium, which she has brought along in her suitcase just in case.
Gabe peers over. “What else have you got in there?” he asks. The four of us are sitting in a row at our terminal.
“Other sedatives,” she replies. “Stronger sedatives.”
He sits back and reaches for a newspaper that someone has left behind.
“Is it safe?” I ask. “For the...”
“For the baby,” Mia finishes impassively. I can’t bring myself to say the word.
“Yes,” I say, humbled that she was able to.
“It’s safe,” the doctor assures us, “this once. I wouldn’t suggest using it frequently during pregnancy.”