Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(29)

Perhaps her father had done his job a little too well.

Bella returned, panting hard, looking satisfied. Annabelle was a touch slower coming up the stairs. She wiggled through the doorway with a box roughly the size of her desk. Bobby tried to assist, but she waved him off, dropping the box on the kitchen floor.

"Fabric," she volunteered, kicking the large box ruefully "Occupational hazard, I'm afraid."

"For a client or 'just because'?"

"Both," she admitted. "It always starts as an order for a client, then next thing I know, I've added two bolts of 'just because.' Frankly, it's a good thing I don't live in a bigger space, or Lord only knows."

He nodded, watching as she crossed to the sink and poured her own glass of water. She seemed composed again. Fetching the delivery had allowed her a chance to regroup her defenses. Now or never, he decided.

"Summer of '82," he declared. "You're seven years old, your best friend is Dori Petracelli, and you're living with your mother and father in Arlington. What comes to mind?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. Everything. I was a kid. I remember kid stuff. Going to swim at the Y. Playing hopscotch on the driveway. I don't know. It was summer. Mostly, I remember having fun."

"The gifts?"

"SuperBall. I found it on the front porch, in a little box wrapped in the Sunday comics. The ball was yellow and bounced very high. I loved it."

"Did your father say anything? Take it away?"

"Nope. I lost it under the front porch."

"Other gifts?"

"Marble. Blue. Found a similar way, met a similar fate."

"But the locket…"

"The locket made my father angry," she conceded. "I do remember that. But in my mind, I never knew why I thought my father was being difficult, not protective."

"According to reports, after the second incident, your parents moved you into their bedroom to sleep at night. Does that ring any bells?"

She frowned, looking genuinely perplexed. "There was something wrong with my room," she said shortly, rubbing her forehead. "We needed to paint it? My father was going to fix… something? I don't really remember now. Just, something was wrong, needed to be done. So I slept on the floor in their bedroom for a bit. Family camping trip, my father said. He even painted stars on the ceiling. I thought it was really cool."

"Did you ever feel threatened, Annabelle? Like someone was watching you? Or did a stranger come up to you? Offer you gum or candy? Ask you to take a ride in his car? Or maybe the father of one of your school friends made you uncomfortable? A teacher who stood too close…"

"No," she said immediately, voice certain. "And I think I would remember that. Of course, that was before my father's version of safety boot camp, so if someone had approached me… I don't know. Maybe I would've taken the candy. Maybe I would've gotten in the car. Eighty-two was the good year, you know." She briskly rubbed her forearms, then added more flatly, "The days before it all went to hell."

Bobby watched her for a bit, waited to see if she would say more. She seemed done, though, memories mined out. He couldn't decide if he believed her or not. Kids were surprisingly perceptive. And yet she'd lived in the middle of a major neighborhood drama, uniformed officers called to her house three times in two months, and she never suspected a thing? Again, kudos to her father, who'd gone out of his way to protect his little girl? Or indication of something worse?

[page]He waited until she finally looked up. The next question was the most important. He wanted her full attention.

"Annabelle," he asked shortly "Why did you leave Florida?"

"I don't know"

"And St. Louis and Nashville and Kansas City?"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know" She threw up her hands, once again frustrated. "You think I haven't asked these questions? You think I haven't wondered? Every time we moved, I spent countless nights trying to figure out where I went wrong. What I did that was so bad. Or what threat I didn't see. I never got it. I never got it. By the time I was sixteen, in my best judgment, my father was simply paranoid. Some fathers watch too much football. Mine had a penchant for cash transactions and fake IDs."

"You think your father was crazy?"

"You think sane people uproot their families every year and give them new identities?"

He could see her point. He just wasn't sure where that left them. "You're positive you don't have any pictures from your childhood lying around? Photo album, pictures of your old house, neighbors, schoolmates? That would help."

"We left it all in the house. I don't know what happened to it after that."

Bobby frowned, had a thought, made a note. "What about relatives? Grandparents, aunts or uncles? Someone who would have their own copies of your family photos, be happy to hear you're back?"

She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes. "No relatives; that's one of the reasons it was so easy to move away. My father was an orphan, a product of the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. Credited their program, actually, for giving him his academic start. And as for my mother, her parents died shortly after I was born. Car accident, something like that. My mother didn't talk about them much. I think she still missed them.