“Typical teenager.”
“Typical teenager—not typical Hattie. I’d always gotten the feeling that Hattie told people what they wanted to hear. I couldn’t ever prove it before, but a mother knows when her child is putting on a show. I can see their hearts, Greg and Hattie, whether they want me to or not. Hattie was a people pleaser, although I could never quite figure out if she did it because she didn’t want to disappoint anyone or if she just didn’t know what she wanted for herself.
“Anyway, she yanked the computer out of my hands and said it was her property; she’d paid for it fair and square and I didn’t have any right to touch it. Then she stormed off to her room and slammed the door. I followed her in there and told her it was my door, that her father and I had paid for it fair and square, and she didn’t have any right to shut it in my face. Then I asked her about that spreadsheet. I said, what are you trying to do with that? People aren’t characters in one of your plays. She claimed it was just an exercise. Something to help her be a better actress like her camcorder was.”
Mona shook her head, remembering. “I said something like, who do you think you’re fooling? And then she started crying. I went over to the bed and held her for a while, stroking her hair just like when she was little.”
Mona teared up and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “It’d been a long time since she’d let me that close. She was her daddy’s girl. Always kept me at a distance. I never knew why . . . why she did that.
“But that day she needed me. She let me in a little. She cried and I held her and she said that the only person she’d been fooling was herself. I told her to stop thinking about what she could be for everyone else, stop putting on shows and people would respect her for it in the long run.
“She said it was hard to think about the long run, so I told her just what you said to me right now. Take it one day at a time. She had to figure out what she wanted and concentrate on that. I kept talking for a while, just rocking her back and forth and trying to get through to her. It felt like I had my baby girl back for a moment.
“She never told me where she’d been that day and I didn’t push her on it. I didn’t want to break that fragile bond, to have her shut me out again. Now, though . . . now I wonder if she was mixed up in something that got her killed. If I had just made her tell me, or grounded her . . .”
She broke off again and wiped her eyes with the tissue.
“You can’t think like that, Mona. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t blame myself. I blame the murdering bastard who did it. But maybe I could’ve prevented it. Maybe if I’d been more strict with her—”
“She’d have run just as hard in the opposite direction,” I interrupted. “That’s what kids do. It’s how they’re wired at that age.”
She wiped her eyes some more, nodding. “I know that, Del. It’s just these thoughts. These thoughts keep finding me. They won’t let me go.”
“And we don’t know she was mixed up in anything yet. Kids go out to that lake and have sex all the time.”
“But there was the envelope.”
“What envelope?” I sat up straighter.
“It came that night—a white envelope in the mailbox. No stamp, no return address, just Hattie’s name on it. She took it from Bud and disappeared up to her room.”
“Did you find out what was in it?”
“No.”
“Have you seen it since then?” I wouldn’t have noticed something that mundane when I’d searched her room.
“No.”
“And the next day she disappeared again.” I pieced the timing of it together.
Mona looked surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Portia.”
She nodded. “Portia dropped her off because her truck had broken down off the highway north of Rochester.”
“What was she doing up there?”
“She said she went shopping.”
“Shopping for what?”
“I don’t know, but again—I didn’t push her on it because she seemed happier. I figured she’d sorted out whatever it was that needed sorting. When Bud grumbled about the truck breaking down over supper that night, she cracked jokes and teased him. Told him it was a sign that Bud should buy her a new car, a convertible so she could drive with the top down all the way to New York. Then he told her that her allowance was now a nickel a week and she could save up for it herself. They went back and forth all the time like that, ribbing each other. She seemed fine, happy, like I said, not like she’d been crying on my shoulder the day before. Maybe it was just teenage mood swings. One day they’re on the top of the world, the next day their life is over.”