I rode the train with my daughter. We rode from Portland to Yonkers. Then we took a commuter train to Rye. We walked to Witt’s house. He did not know we were coming. He did not know I had found him with the help of a stranger’s phone on the train and that I had memorized his address so that I could bring my daughter to him and keep her safe while I tended to my list. While I tended to finding Emma. It was Saturday afternoon. Witt was in his yard pulling weeds and I started to laugh. I can’t describe that feeling. Even after I saw Rick die, even as I was watching the landscape roll by from the train window, my daughter asleep on my lap, and even as I walked down the street, totally free, I did not feel free. Not yet. It was not until I saw my brother in his yard, and until he saw me and wrapped me in his arms and lifted me into the air, tears rolling down his face, that I felt it, my life coming back to me.
He listened to me but did not agree at first. His wife wanted to call the police and have my mother and Mr. Martin arrested. They both said they would find Emma. Somehow, they would find her. Wouldn’t they? It was Witt who finally understood. It was Witt who could see that Emma would never be found and my mother and Mr. Martin would never be punished for what they did to her. Mrs. Martin had never been punished for anything she had ever done. She was a master illusionist. Even people trained to see, even people looking for exactly what was there to be seen, could still not see. Instead, I would be the crazy one, the one with the daughter fathered by her stepbrother. Hunter would try to take my baby and I would lose everything—my sweet child, my freedom, and my sister all over again. So they kept my daughter for me and they lied and pretended and swallowed their guilt.
I went to my mother then. I made her wonder if Mr. Martin had lied to her, if Emma had been alive and if he had conspired with me to hide her. It took time to do this. It took the FBI investigation. It took the small pieces of evidence they found. It took the necklace. It took Lisa Jennings and the affair she had with Mr. Martin. But it also took the gift from Dr. Winter—the lie that Emma had been found—to turn that switch for the last time.
The local district attorney considered bringing charges against me because I had obstructed justice and lied to the authorities. But there was too much sympathy for me in our community and they thought it would fuel Mrs. Martin’s defense of entrapment.
He wasn’t wrong to want to charge me. I had lied to everyone, including my own father, my poor father who will never get over the death of his eldest daughter and the guilt he carries for leaving us in that house where she was killed. I lied to my mother and Hunter and Mr. Martin. I lied to Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss and the other agents—about Emma and the baby and, finally, about not knowing who had killed Richard Foley. And about my daughter. I lied I lied I lied.
But telling the truth is not on my list.
When the case was over, I left my father’s house, where I had been staying since the night we found Emma in her grave. I told my father I wanted to live with Witt and his wife and take some classes in New York. I told him I needed not to be in this town where my sister died. I told him I would see him all the time, anytime he wanted. And someday soon, I will tell him about my daughter. I will have to tell everyone because she cannot live in the shadows. I will tell them she is the daughter of a stranger, some man I met in New York after I ran away. It doesn’t matter. She will not be the child of Hunter Martin.
Witt gave me a huge hug when I walked in the door. He started to cry and he told me we would only look forward from now on. No looking back. I nodded and told him how grateful I was to him for keeping my secret and for taking care of my baby while I was tricking my mother. He laughed and said that his wife now wanted a child after having one all these months and so I owed him “big-time” because he had planned on a few more years of being free.
I heard a different kind of cry come from up the stairs. Then I heard little feet running and then I saw little blond curls flopping on a little round face that was smiling.
I took my daughter in my arms and I squeezed her so tight. I kissed her face and I pressed my cheek against her cheek and felt her skin and smelled her smell and let her fill me again with hope.
I knew I would have to learn to live with it—the hope and the fear always together.
The hope is easy. I believe children do that to us. They make us have it because without it, my God, can you imagine? Looking at your child without hope for the future would be like feeling the sun on your face five billion years from now.
It’s the fear that is hard. It’s hard because I know what’s inside me. The scream my mother put inside me, which got bigger and bigger. The scream her parents put inside her. The scream I fear is inside my daughter after all that she’s been through, that maybe I put inside her.
It has also been explained to me that my mother is a pathological narcissist, which means the scream inside her got so big, she had to become someone else, the prettiest girl in the world, the smartest woman in the world, and the best mother in the world. And she had to make everyone love her that way by using every weapon she had. Sex. Cruelty. Fear. This makes sense to me and I understand it. But it does not give me any comfort.
They say sociopaths are created in early childhood. They say we are all formed by age three. I like to think that I got my daughter away in time. I know what I did to my sister by thirsting for power and escalating the war that led to her death. I know what I did to Rick, the boatman. I know what I did to my mother and Jonathan Martin. And I know what I did to Dr. Winter, making her lie and live with that lie forever, risking her career. I have added to my list making amends with her because she saw me, understood me and knew what to do to find Emma. This is a gift I can never repay.
I know all these things I’ve done and so I know what’s inside me and how it got there. And so when I look at my daughter, this beautiful child, I have hope but also fear.
“Mommy,” she said. And I looked at my brother, surprised. For her entire life, she has only known me as Cass.
“I’ve been showing her your picture,” he said with a big smile. “I’ve been telling her your name, your real name, is Mommy.”
I kissed her again. My face was drenched in tears.
My list is very long now. It is filled with the things I will do and will not do to protect her from what might be inside her and to protect her from what I know is inside me. I will dedicate my life to this list. I will do that for my child and to honor my dead sister.
“And what should I call you?” I asked her. She had been named Julia and I had called her that because it felt cruel not to.
But then she answered, “Emma!”
“I taught her that as well,” Witt said.
“Emma!” I cried back to her. “That’s right. Your name is Emma. And my name is Mommy. We were just playing a game before. But now the game is over. Now we’ve come home.”
My heart was, all at once, full.
“I love you!” I said. And I knew that I mean it in the purest, most perfect way. When I hold her, I feel my sister, my first Emma, when she would come to me in the night, when we felt safe and love felt possible.
I will cling to that now, like the boat that finally brought me home.