She played her first card, a ten of diamonds.
“Don’t lead with a ten or a face card. I tell you the same thing every time.” He laid a five on top of it and moved his peg two places on the cribbage board. He threw down a four of hearts. “And don’t think you can purposely play badly to distract me. Why do you smile like that in interviews?”
He was old and reclusive, but Megan could never argue that Mr. Steinman was anything but observant.
“I don’t know. ’Cause I don’t like doing them.”
“Then stop.”
“I can’t. Everyone wants me to do them.”
“You go through life doing all the things everyone else wants you to do, and you’ll wake up one day realizing your life’s passed you by and you’ve got a list of stuff you’ve never gotten to.”
Megan threw a nine onto the table.
“Yeah, well, I’m doing what I need to do at the moment to earn myself some freedom. I’ve got other things I’m working on, too.”
Mr. Steinman threw a card. “Like what?”
“Like trying to figure out what happened the night you found me.”
Mr. Steinman paused, lowered his cards. “How are you doing that?”
Megan shrugged.
Mr. Steinman stared at her. “Speak.”
“With my doctor. We’re getting closer to figuring some things out about where I was held.”
Mr. Steinman dropped his cards onto the table. “I was talking about getting on with your life as far as doing things that you want to do. Like going to college. Or taking that trip to Europe you keep talking about.”
Megan shrugged. “Maybe.”
There was a loud crash from another room, and Mr. Steinman was up in a flash. Megan had never seen him move so quickly.
“Wait here,” he said. He scampered through the kitchen. The keys he wore clasped janitor-style to his belt loop jingled as he moved.
Megan heard a door open and his footsteps pound on the stairs. Sitting in the living room by herself, Megan tossed her cards onto the table and took a deep breath. If she wasn’t fooling Mr. Steinman during her book tour, she certainly had everyone else guessing. Missing was climbing the bestseller list and Megan was waiting to hear where it landed. Whether Mr. Steinman approved or not, she’d have to use her fake smile for the foreseeable future.
Mr. Steinman returned a few minutes later, slightly winded and with a glistening layer of perspiration on his forehead.
“Everything okay?” Megan asked.
“Not entirely. I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check on tonight’s game.”
“Oh, of course.” Megan stood up.
“Or . . . I don’t mean to kick you out . . .” he said. “Would you like to finish your soda?”
“No. I’ll take it with me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m terribly embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. I’ll come back and we’ll play again.”
“When?”
“Um, next week?”
Mr. Steinman nodded. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Are you sure you don’t need any help? I promise I don’t mind.”
With an ushering hand on her shoulder, Mr. Steinman led her to the door. “I’ll be fine. Come again next week. Please.”
*
Megan sat in her bedroom and scrolled though her phone. A year and a half ago, she couldn’t pick up her phone without several text messages waiting for her. Now all she managed were a few e-mails from friends who still kept in touch. But e-mails were a distant way to communicate, meant for parents and old acquaintances and readers of her book who stalked her and hoped for a reply to the desperate praise they typed in the too-long messages.
“Honey?” her mother said in a whispered voice as she poked her head into Megan’s bedroom.
The word honey had never crossed her mother’s lips until after the abduction. And the whispered calls into her bedroom were the definition of regression, as though Megan were an infant waking from an afternoon nap.
Oh, there she is! Megan could almost hear her mother squeak in the annoying baby voice of a new parent. Look who’s awake.
“What’s up, Mom?” Megan said, looking up from her empty phone.
“Claudia’s on the line. She has some exciting news.”
Claudia was the literary agent her mother had sought out when she came up with the idea for Megan to collect her thoughts about her abduction and stick them between a hardcover binding, which displayed on its cover the eerie forest from where she had escaped, and Megan’s thin-smiling face on the back flap like a James Patterson novel.
Megan’s mother walked into the room and handed her the phone. She smiled. “You’ll want to hear this.”
Megan took the phone and placed it to her ear. “Hi, Claudia. What’s going on?”
“Dante Campbell is pure gold! We knew there would be a big regional audience, but since the interview your book has taken off. I just got word that you will be eleven on the New York Times Best Seller list for next week.”
Megan looked up to see her mother’s smile, wide and steep across her face.
“That’s . . . awesome,” Megan said in a monotone.
“I’ve set up another interview for you. There are lots of requests coming in. I need to know your schedule so we can book them.”
“I work eight to four.”
“Of course, but would your dad give you a little time off if I set up a phone interview?”
“I guess I could ask.”
“It’s no problem,” Mrs. McDonald said, loud enough for Claudia to hear.
“Okay, Miss New York Times bestselling author!” Claudia said. “I’ll get a few of these set up, and we’ll touch base next week.”
There was silence for a few seconds.
“This is a big deal, Megan.”
“I know,” Megan said, trying for conviction. “I’m psyched.”
“We’ll talk next week.”
Megan handed the phone back to her mother.
“So?” her mother said with wide eyes.
Megan let out a sigh of disbelief. “I don’t know. It’s crazy.”
“So crazy. I’m very proud of you, Megan. You’re helping so many girls who have gone through a similar experience.”
Megan shrugged. She doubted that if every abducted person in the country purchased a copy of her book the number would be large enough to launch it onto any bestseller list. The readers who were buying Missing were not in need of any insight the book might offer on recovering from abduction. The majority of readers lusted after an eerie story of survival and escape, and they were happily eating it up.
“You can tell your father. He’s coming home today.”