Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(84)

“You have another daughter,” I hear myself say. Is my tone accusing? Surely I don’t intend that.

“You mean Hannah?” Once again Marlene’s expression falters. She glances down at the carpet. “She has brown hair, gray eyes, like you did. First second she was born, my heart nearly stopped in my chest. It’s Vero, I thought. My God, I’ve gotten my daughter back!

“I had to work hard on that, to let Hannah be Hannah. Because there is only one Vero. Lord, child, I’ve missed you so much.”

She bursts off the other bed. I’m not prepared. I can’t get my hands up in time. Her arms go around me, hold me tight.

She is hugging me, I think, nearly bewildered. This is me, being hugged by my mother.

I should open my arms. I should hug her back. I should declare, “Mommy, I’m home.”

But I can’t move. I can’t say a word.

I’m too aware of Vero, who’s back in my head, laughing hysterically.


* * *



“YOU MAKE QUILTS,” I say finally, two, three, ten minutes later. Mine is setting next to me on the bed, one more thing I suddenly don’t know what to do with.

“I started twenty years ago,” Marlene tells me. In contrast to my constantly ping-ponging gaze, her eyes remain locked on my face, as if mesmerized. “I, um . . .” She takes a deep breath. “The years, right after your disappearance. They were a dark, dark time. And Lord, I’d already thought I’d been through some dark times. I’m sorry I took you to the park that day. I’m sorry I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You’d been drinking.” My voice is sterner than I expected. I don’t soften it. “You were drunk.”

“I’m sorry.” She speaks the words automatically, the syllables nearly worn out from thirty years of utterance.

“The moment I realized I couldn’t find you,” she says. “When I’d been all around the park, calling your name over and over, and you still weren’t coming . . . I knew. I knew immediately the worst had happened.”

“Vero just wanted to play with dolls,” I murmur. I’ve switched to third person. I can’t help myself. I don’t know how to tell the story any other way. For too many years, Vero has been a little girl inside my head, one prone to shedding her skin in times of distress. Even knowing she is me, or I am her . . . It feels too surreal. Vero is Vero. I’m just a gatekeeper. I know things because she tells me things. A way of disassociating myself from the horror, I guess, a quirk of coping. But it has worked for so long, I don’t know how to magically undo it now. Even sitting face-to-face with this woman—my mother, I keep telling myself—feels strange. She is Vero’s mom, I think. I’ve always wanted to meet her. But my mom . . .

I’m just not ready for that.

“Vero followed the girl away from the park,” I continue now. “But Madame was waiting for her. A stab of the needle, a quick shove into the car. By the time you missed her, Vero was already gone.”

Marlene’s fingers dig into the edge of the mattress. But she nods. I’m not telling her anything she hasn’t already imagined over the years.

“I tried so hard to find you,” she assures me now. If my use of third person bothers her, she doesn’t show it. “I answered all the police’s questions, went around to the neighbors. I was sure it was only a matter of time. They’d find you wandering down the street. Maybe you’d followed a stray dog or an ice cream truck, who knew? But the police were on it; even all the locals turned out to search. You were mine, but after you were lost, you became everyone’s. Except we still couldn’t bring you home.”

“Madame Sade took Vero to a house,” I tell her. “A beautiful mansion where Vero was given a room fit for a princess. Soft bed, beautiful hand-painted rose mural. Her very own china tea set.”

“The first few days, I didn’t drink a drop,” Marlene murmurs. “I was sober. Stone-cold for the first time in a decade. No sleeping, no drinking, no eating. I waited. I waited, waited, waited, because at any moment, the phone would ring, and it would be the police returning you to me.”

“Madame gave Vero new clothes, then took them away when Vero couldn’t stop crying. Madame left Vero alone in this huge cold room for days and days. No sleeping on the bed. Vero found a closet instead. She curled up naked on the floor and cried for you.”

“Ronnie beat me the first night,” Marlene whispers, her eyes locked on mine. “Called me a stupid whore for losing you. Then he beat me the second night because I wouldn’t stop crying. Then the third and the fourth. The fifth night, the officer who’d come over to update me on your case ended up taking me to the emergency room. They had to screw my jaw back together. That officer, Hank, told me I should never go back to that apartment again. The first step to saving my daughter, he told me, was saving myself.”

“There were classes. Madame Sade came every afternoon. ‘Girls can’t afford to be stupid,’ she said. So Vero learned reading and math and geography and history. Then there was dancing and fashion and makeup and hairstyling. She told Vero she was her mother now. They were family. She would live in this beautiful house forever; she just had to do as she was told. Then Madame Sade would leave again and Vero was alone. Every morning, every evening. Hours and hours and hours, all night long, so very alone.