Run Away(104)

Simon moved his hand closer to hers. The older woman took it. They sat there for a moment, in the dark, the rustle of the hospital distant background music.

“But then I found out that they wanted to murder my boy.” She finally looked down and met his eye. “I spent my whole life bending for my beliefs. But this…you bend too far, you break. Do you understand?”

“Of course.”

“So I had to stop them. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But I had no choice.”

“Thank you,” Simon said.

“I have to go back now.”

“Back where?”

“Truth Haven. It’s still my home.”

Mother Adiona rose and moved toward the door.

“Please.” Simon swallowed. “My daughter. She was dating one of these sons.”

“So I heard.”

“She’s missing.”

“I heard that too.”

“Please help me,” Simon said. “You’re a parent. You understand.”

“I do.” Mother Adiona opened the door. “But I don’t know anything more.”

And then she was gone.

A week later, Simon begged Fagbenle to let him study the files. Fagbenle, perhaps pitying him, acquiesced.

Ingrid seemed to be improving, so there was some glimmer of light there. Despite what you see on television, you don’t just come out of a coma. The process is more two steps up, one step back. Ingrid had regained consciousness and spoken to him twice in short spurts. In both cases, Ingrid had been encouragingly lucid. But the last one was over a week ago. There had been no improvement since then.

From the day he was shot, Simon kept digging because the biggest question remained unanswered.

Where was Paige?

He didn’t get the answer for days, then weeks.

It took, in fact, a month.

*



A month after he had been shot, when Simon was finally well enough, he headed to Port Authority and took a bus trip to Buffalo. He stared out the window all seven hours, hoping against hope that something he’d see would spark a thought.

Nothing did.

When he arrived, he walked around the bus terminal for two hours. Simon was sure that if he just circled the block a few times, he’d find a clue.

He didn’t.

With his body aching—the trip was probably too much too fast—Simon climbed back on the bus, squeezed into his seat, and took the seven-hour trip back.

Again he stared out the window.

And again nothing.

It was almost two in the morning when the bus pulled back into Port Authority. Simon took the A train north to the hospital. Ingrid was out of intensive care now and in a private room, though she remained unconscious. There was a cot in the room, so that he could sleep with his wife. Some nights, Simon felt that Sam and Anya needed him home. But most nights, like this one, he made his way up to Washington Heights and kissed his wife on the forehead and slept on the cot next to her.

Tonight though, one month after he was shot, there was someone else in Ingrid’s room when he arrived.

The lights were off, so he could only see her sitting in silhouette next to Ingrid’s bed.

He froze in the doorway. His eyes opened wide. Simon put his hand on his mouth, but his muffled cries were still audible. He felt his knees start to buckle.

That was when Paige turned around and said, “Dad?”

And Simon burst into tears.





Chapter

Thirty-Nine



Paige helped her father up and into a chair.

“I can’t stay,” Paige said, “but it’s been a month.”

Simon was still putting himself back together. “A month?”

“Clean.”

And she was. He could see it. His heart leapt. His baby looked drawn and pale and harried, but she also looked clear-eyed and sober and…He felt the tears come again, this time for joy, but he bit them back.

“I’m not there yet,” she warned. “I may never be. But I’m better.”

“So this whole time—”

“I didn’t know any of this. We aren’t allowed electronics. No access to family or friends or the outside world at all. That’s the rules. Nothing for a full month. It was my best chance, Dad. My only chance really.”

Simon was just numb.

“I have to go back to the retreat. You need to understand that. I’m not ready for the real world. We agreed on a twenty-four-hour pass, and that’s just because of this emergency. I need to go back. Even being here this short of a time, I can feel the pull stronger—”

“You’ll go back,” Simon said. “I’ll drive you.”

Paige turned toward her mother’s bed. “This is because of me.”

“No,” Simon said. “You can’t think that way.”

Simon moved closer to her. She still looked so fragile, so damn fragile, and now he worried that if Paige blamed herself, if she took on that guilt, maybe that would make her want to slip back into the world of oblivion.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “No one blames you, least of all your mother and me. Okay?”

She nodded a little too hesitantly.

“Paige?”

“Yes, Daddy.”