His brain quickly discounted the second question. He was reassembling all his memories of the Portmans now, as well as all the things Adrienne had told him, engaging with the everyday details of his life in a way he probably hadn’t for six years. Ethan and Debbie Portman were smart, decent people, and if they thought something had happened to their daughter, it probably had.
Finn closed his laptop and walked through to the living room again. He stood looking over the lake, reluctantly giving way to his curiosity, to his innate desire to solve any puzzle put before him. She’d been a pleasant kid, polite, wry. Then he felt a slight nauseous lurch as he realized he was thinking about her in the past tense.
He couldn’t admit his background to them—that was beyond question. Besides, even if he did, how could he explain why he had no contacts, why that world was as closed to him as if he’d never been a part of it?
He’d offer his help as it was, without credentials, because he supposed that’s what people did for their neighbors, for their friends. And a critical internal voice questioned why he even needed to think about it, questioned what had happened to him over these last years. When had doing the right thing stopped being the automatic option and become something that had to be worked at instead? He hadn’t always been this person, but he was no longer even sure of when the transformation had taken place.
Chapter Two
He stood at the door and went through a mental checklist. Hailey was about fourteen, her parents around forty. They were from Connecticut. No, they’d met at Yale. Ethan was from Chicago, Debbie from Philadelphia. He worked in finance. And that was it. How could Finn have met them so many times, spent a reasonable amount of the last two years in their company, and yet learned so little about them?
They undoubtedly knew a great deal about his books, and that had been an intentional ploy on his part, to hide his past behind an obsession with history and his own literary reputation, but it was as if he’d actually become his own cover story.
He pressed the buzzer and waited, wondering as he stood there not about why Adrienne had left him, but what she had ever seen in him to begin with. Debbie was quick to open the door and his thoughts crashed into each other at the sight of her desperate, hopeful face—the expectation dying as she saw him.
“May I come in?”
She stepped aside and closed the door behind him. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be able to help. You’ll try anything, I guess.”
“Of course.” He became distracted by the silence of the apartment and said, “Where’s Ethan?”
“He’s gone to the embassy in Bern. I don’t think it’ll help but we’re trying everything we can. Sorry, come on through.”
He followed her through to the living room and said, “Does Adrienne know?”
Debbie shook her head, and looked worried as she said, “Should I have told her? She and Hailey get along so well together—she’d want to know.”
Were Adrienne and Hailey that close? Most of the time, Adrienne went to the Portmans’ apartment for coffee and glasses of wine and chats—so as not to disturb him while he was working—so he guessed it was possible.
“Probably best not to tell her for now, unless she’d be a comfort to you. From an entirely selfish point of view, I don’t want her coming back to me for the wrong—What I mean is, she clearly needs time away from me.”
Even in the midst of her distress, he thought Debbie might offer him some reassuring words, but she looked uncomfortable instead, as if not wanting to reveal bitter truths that he still hadn’t imagined—probably that it was too late, that Adrienne wouldn’t be coming back at all.
“Okay, look, we’re not here to discuss what a lousy boyfriend I am. You said the police were no good, that you doubted the embassy would help. Why? Why aren’t the police taking it seriously?”
“They’re taking it seriously, it’s just . . . they’re treating her as a runaway.”
“But you’re convinced she hasn’t run away.” He couldn’t understand why the police would so readily dismiss the disappearance of a child. And then the pieces fell into place—the obvious reason for the police treating the case in this way. “Debbie, did she leave a note?”
“Yes. Yes, she left a note, but it doesn’t mean anything.” She spoke rapidly, eager to get her reasoning out in the open, and put her hand on his arm, too, desperate for him not to walk out. “The note doesn’t make sense, not for someone just running away, and she wasn’t unhappy. She left of her own accord, Finn, but something’s wrong. You have to believe a mother’s instinct. I just know.”
“Do you have the note?”
She left the room and came back a moment later with a sheet of paper.
“It’s a copy. Ethan took the original with him.”
He nodded, took the sheet, and sat down—then started reading aloud. “Dear Mom and Dad . . .” Debbie seemed to grow weak and lowered herself into a nearby armchair. “I’m sorry, would you rather I read it to myself?”