Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(122)

It all sounds so simple. And yet, and yet . . .

My mom appears, hovering uncertainly in the doorway, trapped in her own version of déjà vu.

Her sad, determined face. Her terribly ugly flannel shirt.

The silver fox charm nestled at the hollow of her throat.

So many things I should tell her. So many apologies I should make. I want it to be as simple as Samuel makes it sound. I want the same happily-ever-after Stacey Summers surely deserves.

I want to tell the truth, and hope that it sets me free. I pull my hand from Samuel. I hold it out to my mother.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You don’t have to—”

“I blamed you,” I hear myself say. “I didn’t mean to. But you wanted me to come home so badly. I would watch you on the news, begging for my safe return. So I survived for you. Even when it would’ve been better if I hadn’t. Even when I wanted to let go. I survived because I didn’t want to let you down.”

She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell from her expression that she already knows. She glances at Samuel. This is something they’ve discussed. They realized, even if I didn’t.

“Jacob had a daughter. They forced me to go with them to bars. They forced me to help pick up women to kill. Three times. Three women dead because of me. I can’t change that,” I tell her honestly. “Even now, with Stacey Summers. It still doesn’t balance the scale.”

“It’s not your scale to balance. The crimes are on them.”

“I watched him burn, that crime is on me.”

“Flora . . . I don’t know what you want from me. I’m your mother and I love you. Even now, even after you’re telling me these things. I’m your mother. And I love you.”

“I don’t know who I am,” I say.

“No one does. Everyone spends their lives figuring that out, even people who’ve never been kidnapped.”

“I still miss him. And that’s wrong. That’s twisted. I hate him for being inside my head.”

“Then welcome him. Thank him for helping make you strong. Thank him for dying so you could go home. A man like that, he has no defense against gratitude, Flora. Welcome him, and he’ll leave on his own.”

“That’s new age crap.”

“That’s the basics of turning away from hate. Sooner or later, you gotta give it up if you’re going to live again.”

“Do you hate him?”

“The police thought Jacob would kill you that day, Flora. Their best experts predicted he’d shoot you, then kill himself. I choose to be grateful he didn’t.”

I have to think about it. It takes one kind of courage to face down an armed opponent. A different kind of courage to live again.

I say: “This is Flora. This is all of Flora, finally waking up.”

My mother hugs me. It hurts my bandaged shoulder. It terrifies the rest of me.

But I return her hug. I focus on the feel, the smell, the complete experience. My mother. Her hug. Our embrace. Four hundred and seventy-two days. Five long years.

This is Flora, finally going home, I think, and I squeeze back as hard as I can.