“No, read it out. I know the words by heart, anyway.”
“I have to go away for a while, but please don’t worry about me. I’m with friends and I’ll be safe. I can’t explain more than that, not yet, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to stay here right now. Please don’t worry, and I’m sorry.” She ended by saying she loved them, but he didn’t read that aloud, not wanting to tip Debbie over the edge. “You’ve checked with friends, of course?”
“Everyone we could think of.”
“Which means it’s someone you don’t know about.”
“But you see what I mean? She felt she wasn’t safe here, that she was in danger.”
Finn looked at the note again, struggling to see how Debbie had drawn those conclusions. He also understood why the police saw Hailey as a straightforward runaway.
“Actually, Debbie, she doesn’t say that. She says it isn’t a good idea to stay here right now—that could be because she wasn’t getting on with you, or because there was bad news from school that she didn’t want you to find out about.”
“Our relationship with Hailey is . . . it’s great. I know I’m her mother but she’s a perfect kid, and a first-class student. The school has no idea why she might have run away, and if you knew her better nor would you.” Finn nodded, looking at the note again, and as much as he felt for what they must be going through, he felt worse for their self-delusion, because for whatever reason, their daughter had run away. It looked to him like the act of a selfish kid, not a perfect one. “Finn, I realize you and I don’t know each other too well, but I’m not an hysterical woman, and I want to assure you that if Hailey did run away it’s because she was afraid. I don’t know what of, but something frightened her into this.”
For the first time, he noticed the picture facing him on a side table. It was a close-up of Hailey taken out on the lake: long mousy hair slightly windswept, big eyes, a big American smile. She was an attractive girl.
“How old is Hailey?”
“She turned fifteen last month—but Finn, she’s not a streetwise kid, you know. She’s had a privileged existence.” He nodded, but could feel his interest waning and was already beginning to wish he hadn’t intervened. “There’s something else I want to show you. Please, follow me.”
Finn stood and followed Debbie through the apartment to Hailey’s bedroom. There were stuffed toys on the bed, posters on the wall, books everywhere, a laptop on the desk, an iPod in its dock—maybe the computer was dispensable, but what kind of kid went anywhere today without their iPod?
Debbie opened the doors of the closet and said, “Nothing’s missing. Only what she was wearing, but if she’d planned to run away she would have taken extra clothes and she’s taken nothing. Nothing at all.”
He looked at the rails packed with clothes, and at the racks of shoes on the floor underneath. It was amazing that Debbie could tell nothing was missing, but he believed her. It didn’t stop her opening drawers full of underwear and T-shirts. Adrienne had taken more than Hailey had—he was sure of that.
Debbie was still looking expectantly at him, so he said, “Did she take her passport?”
“No, we keep her passport with ours, it’s in the desk in the—I’ll be back in just a moment.” She walked out of the room.
Finn looked idly through the rails of clothes while he waited, though they were crammed too tight to move them very much. Then he stood back, and noticed a shoebox on the floor of the closet—it was so full that the lid had come off.
He crouched down and removed the lid completely. The box was full of shopping bags, most of them plastic, scrunched up and put inside another bag, but also some folded paper bags. He opened a couple and looked at the receipts and the discarded tags still inside, and he became intrigued again, sensing that the rails full of clothes weren’t the whole story here, that there was more to it.
Realizing Debbie hadn’t come back, he went looking for her and found her sitting at the desk in the study, holding a passport. She was crying quietly, and when she saw him she waved him away, embarrassed, and took a tissue and dried her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She held up the passport—Finn guessed it was Debbie’s, that Ethan had taken his with him to the embassy—and she struggled through a tight throat to say, “She took it. Why would she take her passport?”
It was a question that hardly needed an answer, and he was astonished that they were naive enough not to have checked for her passport before now, so instead he said, “Debbie, there’s something in her room that I want you to take a look at.”