We went back to Mrs. Martin’s house right after the doctor. My father was waiting there. So were Dr. Winter, Agent Strauss, and the woman who was supposed to draw the sketches of Bill and Lucy and the boatman.
None of this happened as mundanely as I have described. By morning, the entire world knew I had returned, and media trucks lined our quiet street for half a mile past our driveway. The story was as big as when they found Elizabeth Smart, or those three women who’d been held as sex slaves for ten years in Cleveland. They took pictures of Mr. Martin’s car as he drove us to the doctor, and some of them followed us and got pictures of me walking into the office. Inside Dr. Nichols’s office, everyone hugged me and a few of the nurses cried, even the new ones who had never met me before. Dr. Nichols gave me a big hug. Then he shook his head like he couldn’t believe I was standing in front of him and he said something like It’s a miracle! I didn’t mind any of this. I smiled at everyone, not a big happy smile, but a polite, grateful smile. It was genuine. I was not happy, because I did not have Emma with me and because I did not want to be where I was. But I was grateful. With all the media would come a bright spotlight on the search for Emma. I would have dressed up like Shirley Temple and sung them a song and danced them a dance if it would have kept them interested in our story.
Everyone wanted to spin theories about what went on with Bill and Emma and me and wonder if we had been made his sex slaves and did Lucy watch. I didn’t care and I didn’t blame them. That was the only part of the Elizabeth Smart story I remembered and I don’t consider myself a bad person, and so I did not judge anyone for the things they wanted to think about.
There were also conversations, endless stories about the events in everyone’s lives since I’d been gone. My father spoke mostly of Witt, how he’d gotten married to a nice woman named Amie. He lived in Westchester and had just started working as a lawyer, like his mother. He told me about how much everyone had missed me and Emma, how devastated they all were and how they couldn’t wait to see me when I was ready. Everyone wanted to see me, of course—Witt, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Mrs. Martin said the same thing to me, about the people who wanted to see me, now that the news had spread. She was very chatty about her charity work and gossip about my friends from high school and their mothers and their affairs and divorces and financial troubles. But mostly she talked about Hunter and his girlfriend and how much she hated her, how that girl had kept Hunter from seeing them and how she only cared about the money he was making as an investment banker.
All this information left their mouths electrified by the nervous energy my return had generated. And when it reached me, every single piece, I felt the shock as it entered my brain. I don’t know how else to describe it. I wanted to cover my ears and not let any of it enter. I knew they wanted to zap me into their world, magically transform me into the daughter I would have been if I had never left, the young woman who held their history the way family does, living every mundane moment together. But I could not absorb it the way they needed me to. I felt detached, like a stranger eavesdropping on the train. I did not want to be in the present with them—not without Emma, not without justice. Until I had those things, I would not let them distract me with their stories from their normal lives.
I helped them with the sketches of the Pratts and the boatman. They also wanted to know about the man who drove the truck, so I gave my description of him as well. Agent Strauss told me that the sketches I helped make of them would be all over the news as well. It made me nervous that whatever I told the artist would become images in people’s minds and that they would search for those images as they walked down the street or in line at the grocery store or in the faces of their friends and neighbors. What if I got them wrong?
It was a long morning. First the doctor, then the sketches, then more stories from the island. Dr. Winter spent some time alone with me. That’s what investigators do when they’re trying to build trust with you—and also when they want to see how you behave when you’re around some people but not others.
I told everyone the story of how I was punished for trying to leave that first time, when the rowboat got pulled back into the island and the boatman left me on the rocks. After all of that, there was no time for the psychological examination Dr. Winter wanted me to have and which Mrs. Martin was now asking about incessantly. I was tired and I needed to rest. Hunter was coming to visit that afternoon.
I know what people said about me after my return—that I seemed flat and unemotional. They were fascinated by my demeanor, and when we were alone, Dr. Winter told me this was because very few people have things like this happen to them, and so everyone watches very carefully to see what it does to you. She said it was like meeting a space alien. And when people watch someone carefully and then don’t see what they expect to see or what they want to see, they exaggerate the disparity.
I don’t think I was flat. I had cried, and for long periods of time. I was so upset that Dr. Nichols gave me some pills to calm my nerves. I have never been able to show my feelings like Emma, on the outside. But that does not mean they are not stirring inside me. By the time I finally escaped, I think my feelings eclipsed anything Emma had ever felt. I could feel the scream inside me. I had felt it that morning when I had to cover my mouth with a pillow so no one would hear it. I contained it only out of fear for what it might do if I let it out. I did my best to think calmly and choose calm words.
After I told the story of the first time I tried to escape, I had to leave the room. I lied and told them I needed some water, but really I needed to let the rage finish what it was doing and leave my body. I didn’t want them to see it.
Hunter came to the house in the late afternoon. I was in the bed in the guest room when the car came down the driveway. I was not asleep. I could not sleep. But I was exhausted. It’s one thing to imagine doing something, like a marathon or doing one hundred sit-ups. But when you’re actually in it, trying to do it, it’s then you realize that you had no idea how hard it would be. And that maybe it wasn’t possible at all.
That was how I felt that second afternoon in the guest room as I waited for Hunter and his girlfriend to arrive.
My father had wanted me to see Witt and his wife that same day. But my mother made the arrangements with Hunter and I had agreed. I needed to see him, even though I was dreading it. I needed to see him with my own eyes.