Dr. Winter was suddenly being very nice to her—and this was the third surprise. It was not a good one.
She told her it must have been very hard for me and Emma, and then she said something about how she liked to shop and would miss it very much, but anyone looking at Dr. Winter would see that she was not the sort of person who liked to shop for anything. She had worn the same jeans and the same boots and the same belt for three straight days. And her T-shirts were all the same type, as if she had found the kind she liked and then just bought a lot of them in different colors.
I didn’t like that she was being so nice to Mrs. Martin. It was making her calm, giving credence to her theory that I was crazy. I did not come back to make my mother calm. I came back to make her see what she had done to us, to make everyone see! I came back to find my sister, and time was not on my side.
There was some comfort for me that the forensic agents were all very skilled. Even on the first day, I could feel the importance of every word I said, every answer I provided. Imagine if the things you said resulted in federal agents taking to the streets and analysts scouring their databases—everyone in a large team of highly trained professionals jumping to a new task simply because you said the leaves turned orange in the fall or the air smelled of pine trees. After so many years of being powerless, of having no voice, of having no one hear me, I was overwhelmed.
Agent Strauss said he had been looking into agencies and crisis lines that claimed to help pregnant teenagers or had been investigated for illegal adoptions. And Dr. Winter told us that she had been working around the clock, tracking down her list of people from the past, people who might know something about the Pratts or Emma’s pregnancy. She had already spoken with some teachers and friends of both girls. They had all heard about Cass’s return and the desperate search for Emma, though so far none of them had anything to add that was helpful. They had been shocked to hear the truth about why we left home.
But despite all their skills, the FBI had no promising leads, even after searching up and down the Maine coastal region. There was no record of Bill or Lucy Pratt—not in the Social Security database or in any public documents they could find. They said most towns put things online now, but they were also looking at paper land records for islands, tracing ownership. They had even searched the public health records in Maine for birth certificates with the name Julia, or Pratt—girls born around the date I had given them. All of this was very time consuming and every day mattered. No one seemed to doubt that the Pratts would try to leave, and the worry this made me feel erased the relief from having all these agents working to find them. Worry, but also despair. Imagining this outcome, never finding the Pratts, never finding the baby, never finding Emma—I understood what my father had been through.
I told myself I would not be weak like my father. I would stay focused and help them in any way I could.
They had enlisted many local police to knock on doors in the villages. No one recognized the drawings that I had helped make with the sketch artist. No one could recall anyone fitting the descriptions of the Pratts or the boatman. And they had begun an investigation into the incident in Alaska, hoping to identify the boatman from his time on that fishing boat where the woman was raped.
“Having an age-progressed drawing of Emma could really help,” Agent Strauss said. People would notice an older couple with a young woman and child. More than just an older couple alone. And with my help, they could get close to a real photograph of Emma the way she looked now.
I agreed to help, of course, and went into the living room, where my mother had set out all her fancy photo albums, the ones with the brown leather bindings with the years engraved in gold. Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss followed. Agent Strauss had yellow Post-its and he said we should tell him when we saw a photo of Emma from each year since her birth—pick the best one, he said, or maybe two with one having her profile. Dr. Winter said she would do this with me while Agent Strauss and my mother went through her computer in her study for photos that were stored there. But that was just an excuse for Dr. Winter to be alone with me.
In fact, this entire project felt like an excuse. Three years was not that long. We had been almost grown when we left. How different did they think she could look? But I went along with it.
We looked at photos. We picked the best ones from each year. Dr. Winter asked a lot of questions as she saw changes in my sister. One of them caught her attention—it was the year Emma turned fifteen.
“Why did she cut her hair?” Dr. Winter asked me.
It caught me off guard and I sort of gasped and put my hand over my mouth. I had not expected her to ask me about Emma’s hair.
“Did she tell you anything, Cass? About why she cut her hair?”
Dr. Winter started turning the pages. She saw Emma with long, dark hair in the summer and early fall, and then the short cut just before the leaves were turning. It was above the ear, with severe angles and jagged corners.
“How did we not see these before?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “It wasn’t a secret.”
Dr. Winter’s face became curious. “This was the year those nude photos were taken, wasn’t it? Emma topless? Posted on the Internet?”
I was still silent, but I had forced my hand to drop back into my lap.
“Your brother told me about the photos. So did your father. Three years ago, during the investigation. How everyone thought it was Hunter. How Emma lied and said it was a friend goofing around, but then she couldn’t explain how Hunter got access to them.”
“Yes.” That was all I said.
“Did Emma feel so humiliated by the pictures that she cut her hair to feel better? Sometimes people do that, you know?”
I shook my head.
“Then why? Why did Emma cut her hair?”
“She didn’t,” I said finally.
Dr. Winter looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“Emma did not cut her hair,” I said more clearly.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Winter said. She got up and moved closer to me. She placed a hand over my hand and squeezed it tight.
“No one told you about this? Before?” I asked. I never imagined this secret could be kept. Not with all the FBI agents and their skills and cunning. Somehow, Mrs. Martin had managed to do just that.
“No, they didn’t. Should someone have told us?”
I nodded.
“Can you tell me now?”
“That was the year of the photos. At the end of the summer. They got posted and my parents freaked out. They traced it back to our home computer, so everyone blamed Hunter.”
“Do you remember why they blamed him?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t know that much about it.”