“It might not have happened at all,” Caroline said, “if you’d been where you were supposed to be. Samantha might still be with us.”
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I’ve been living with that guilt for fifteen years?” Hunter buried his face in his hands. “You don’t think I hold myself responsible for what happened? That I don’t regret my choices, my actions, everything I did, everything I didn’t do, every minute of every day? I shouldn’t have insisted we go out that night. I shouldn’t have been carrying on with Rain. I shouldn’t have lied to you or the police. And I’m so sorry, Caroline. Sorrier than you’ll ever know.”
Caroline fought the impulse to feel sympathy for him. His feelings of guilt, his apologies, however heartfelt, were immaterial and irrelevant. All that mattered were the facts. “I checked the kids at nine o’clock,” she stated without inflection. “You told the police you checked them again at nine-thirty. We got back to the room a little after ten, so the police, all of us, we naturally assumed that whoever took Samantha had taken her during that thirty-to-forty-minute time frame, but in fact it could have happened earlier. Whoever took her had since nine o’clock, not nine-thirty, to grab her and get away.”
“Even so…”
“It changes the entire time frame. Thirty minutes, Hunter. Thirty minutes the police didn’t bother looking into, thirty minutes of not checking into the whereabouts of hotel employees and guests, thirty minutes that were ignored by officials at the Mexican border, thirty extra minutes for whoever took her to get away without a trace.”
“We don’t know that for a fact.”
“No,” Caroline conceded, pushing herself to her feet. “And thanks to you, we never will. Too much time has passed. It’s too damn late.” She walked out of the living room into the large circular foyer.
Diana was standing at the foot of the stairs, her baby in her arms, her two-year-old son clinging to her side.
“Daddy,” the boy squealed, running toward his father and crashing against the side of his legs.
Hunter reached down and scooped his son into his arms. The boy stared shyly at Caroline, and she watched Samantha materialize behind the smile that slowly spread across his face.
“Oh, God,” she cried.
“I’m so sorry,” Hunter said.
“You have a beautiful family,” Caroline whispered, throwing open the door and fleeing the house.
“You never told me your last name,” Arthur Wainwright remarked over coffee at Starbucks.
“It’s Tillman,” Caroline said, her maiden name slipping off the tip of her tongue before she even realized it was there. She thought of correcting herself, then decided against it. He obviously didn’t know who she was, and she’d likely never see him again. So why spoil a pleasant encounter by revealing her true identity? “Caroline Tillman.”
“Caroline’s a nice name,” he said. “Unlike Arthur. God only knows what my mother was thinking.”
“You don’t like Arthur?”
“It’s okay. Just so old-fashioned.”
“You definitely don’t run into many Arthurs these days,” Caroline agreed, wondering what she was doing here with this man, this Arthur Wainwright. “But it’s a strong name. It must have meant something to her.”
“The only thing that meant anything to my mother was where her next drink was coming from.”
“She was an alcoholic?”
“A mean-spirited one at that.”
Caroline almost laughed. “Mine is a mean-spirited narcissist.”
“To mothers,” Arthur said, clicking his paper cup against hers.
Caroline realized she was having a good time. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed the company of a man, a long time since she’d allowed herself that kind of indulgence. “What do you do?” she asked.
“Banking consultant.”
Caroline nodded. It was the kind of job that Caroline had never fully understood.
“What about you?” he asked before she could think of a follow-up. “What occupies your time when you’re not squeezing melons?”
“High school teacher. Mathematics.”
“Mathematics? Really? I find that fascinating.”
“You do? Why?”
“Because there aren’t that many women who teach math. At least not in my experience. Women teach languages and history, not algebra and geometry.”
Caroline thought back to her own math teachers in high school. He was right. None of them had been women. “My father was a math teacher. Maybe that’s part of it.”
“Maybe. But I suspect there’s more.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. You strike me as someone with very deep thoughts, so maybe it has something to do with a desire to make sense of the world.”
“You think I have deep thoughts?” Caroline couldn’t help feeling flattered.
“Don’t you?”