I will never forget what I saw in that room that night. Yes, Emma was having sex with Joe. She was on the bed and he was on top of her, between her legs, his face buried in the nape of her neck. And, yes, it was the first time I had ever seen people having sex, so it was shocking. But that image faded over the years. What lingered and became indelible was my sister’s face when she turned and looked at me. It was that expression, the one I tried to describe to my father and Mrs. Martin and the agents when I told them about how she looked at me from that window across the courtyard, like she was certain that what she was doing was the best thing anyone could ever do and that she was exactly where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing. That night, as I closed the door and went back to my room, where I waited for my nerves to settle, I was still a believer in Emma’s certainty. I remember thinking that she was always right—she said she would make Joe her boyfriend, and she had done just that.
But the next time Hunter came home for a weekend, he did not bring Joe. Emma tried to hide her disappointment. We went outside to smoke and get away from our mother and Mr. Martin. We were out by the pool house. Hunter told Emma she had made a fool of herself calling and e-mailing Joe when he never responded and obviously had just used her for the weekend. Emma called him an asshole. Hunter called her a whore. Emma told him Nat had said he didn’t know how to kiss. Hunter said Nat was a skank. It went on like this for the entire cigarette until finally Hunter told her Joe had a girlfriend. Emma went quiet. Her face quivered but she did not cry—not then, anyway. Hunter was smiling as he put the cigarette out with his shoe. He seemed sat isfied, as if he had just won a battle. Emma ran back to the house ahead of us, and as I walked back with Hunter, I could see his satisfaction fade. A war had begun in our home, and it would not end until the night we disappeared. Hunter had not wanted to defeat Emma, because defeat meant the war was over. And Hunter never wanted anything with Emma to be over.
Still—Emma had been defeated in that one battle. That knowing look on her face that night when Joe was on top of her did not mean she was right. In fact, she turned out to be very, very wrong about him and her plan to make him her boyfriend. That was the second rude awakening—the moment when I saw Emma defeated, when I realized that she could be defeated. I did not like knowing this. Not one bit.
*
A light from down the hall pulled me back from the image of Emma on that bed with Joe. My mother had come from her room. She seemed startled to find me still in the hall and not tucked away and sound asleep.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?”
She walked toward me, and I let her. She put her arms around me, and I let her. She smelled of face products and Chanel No. 5, and I will admit to feeling a warm current rush through my body. It was the same current I had felt that morning, only it had grown stronger. Loving our mothers never goes away, and I was surprised to learn this at that moment when I was having this memory of Emma and her defeat.
“Sweetheart, I think you’re confused about that night when you left. No more stories about Emma and that island until we get you checked out, okay? I think you might be having dreams or fantasies, and if you tell them something that’s wrong, then it could make things worse. Do you understand? You were in your room that night, Cass. After you and Emma had your fight. You were in your room when Emma left the house, not in the back of Emma’s car. Don’t you remember?”
Mrs. Martin was stronger than I had ever imagined, and now she was turning the tables on me, on my story, and I felt desperate because that meant we might never find Emma. The agents were already questioning why she had not escaped with me.
Still, even through my desperation and rage, I was that same victim I’d been as a child, the one who gave in to her extortion, who paid whatever price was set for her love and who let Emma draw fire so I could run for cover. I thought I’d built walls these past three years to protect myself from Mrs. Martin, but if I had built them, they were made of sand and they crumbled in her arms.
“The things you’re saying can’t be true, Cass. I’m so scared that something is wrong with your mind.”
I wanted to hate her for saying these things to me. But I couldn’t. I still needed to love her.
And so when she whispered one last thing in my ear, “I love you,” and when she tried to hug me tighter, I allowed this third rude awakening in, and I let her.
EIGHT
Dr. Winter
It was not easy to leave the house, to leave Cass. Abby was haunted by the fear that she would disappear all over again.
The fear was irrational. The state police had agreed to leave a patrol car at the top of the driveway, day and night, until the Pratts were found. Judy and Jonathan Martin would be there, and her father would be ten minutes down the road. But more than anything else, Cass had no reason to leave and every reason to stay. She was desperate to find her sister.
Still, on the rare occasions when optimistic thoughts had beaten their way into Abby’s consciousness, when she had allowed herself to imagine this moment when the Tanner sisters were found, this was not how it played.
They interviewed Cass for three more hours before Judy finally asked them to leave for the night.
“She’s not well. I know it!” Judy had spoken about Cass as if she had not been right beside her. “I would have known if Emma was pregnant. And if she was, I would have helped her. She knew that. You know how close we were. You did all those interviews. None of this sounds like my daughter!”
She had insisted that Cass have some rest, and she won out over and above the objections of Abby and Leo. Abby agreed to do a formal psychological examination the following day, and Judy agreed to take Cass to the doctor first thing in the morning with one of the forensic agents.
And that was that. The excitement had quieted with the mundane tasks of assignments and logistics. Field agents in New Haven, Maine and Alaska had begun their work. Leo went back to the city to get some sleep. And Abby went home.
She walked into her house the same way she did at the end of every day, dropping her keys in a small ceramic bowl shaped like a hippopotamus that sat on a table next to the sofa. Her niece had made it in kindergarten and sent it in the mail last Christmas, neatly folded into plastic Bubble Wrap. Her dog was soon upon her, his entire body wagging with anticipation of food and attention. She reached down and rubbed his ears.
Her house, the dog, the reminders of her family—they had all been here, waiting for her to return from this miraculous day. But all of it seemed indifferent, unchanged by the momentous event of Cass Tanner’s coming home.
Maybe because there were still so many questions. As much as Abby hated to admit it, Judy Martin was not wrong. Emma was not the kind of girl to let anyone tell her what to do, especially not with something this important, this intimate. Owen would have supported whatever decision she made, and Judy would have matched his generosity with something even grander just to prove she was the better parent. They were far more likely to fight over Emma’s child than make her get rid of it.