Run Away(105)

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“When I came back to the room and saw Aaron dead…I hid. I thought…I thought the police would think I killed him. It was awful, seeing what was done to him, but part of me, I don’t know, Aaron was gone. Finally gone. Part of me felt free. Do you know what I mean?”

Simon nodded.

“So I came to the retreat.”

“How did you know about the place?” he asked.

She blinked and looked away.

“Paige?”

“I’d been there before,” she said.

“When?”

“Do you remember when you saw me in Central Park?”

“Of course.”

“I had been at the retreat before that.”

“Wait, when?”

“Right before. To get clean. And it’d been working. That’s what I thought. But then Aaron found me. He sneaked into my room one night. Shot me up while I was asleep. I disappeared with him the next day.”

Simon’s head spun. “Hold up, you were in rehab right before I saw you in the park?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. How did you find this retreat?”

Paige looked toward the bed.

Simon couldn’t believe it. “Your mother?”

“She took me.”

Simon looked toward Ingrid too, as if maybe she would wake up right now and explain.

“I came to her,” Paige said. “My one last hope. She knew this place. She’d been there before, years ago. They do things differently, she told me. So I tried it. And it was working. Or maybe it wasn’t. It’s easy to blame someone else, but maybe…”

Simon took the blows from these new revelations, trying to focus on what was important.

His daughter was back. His daughter was back, and she was clean.

He asked the next question as gently as possible. “Why didn’t Mom tell me she was helping you?”

“I told her not to. That was part of the deal.”

“Why didn’t you want me to know?”

Paige turned to him. He looked into his baby’s pained eyes and wondered how long it had been since he looked at her, really looked at her, like this. “Your face,” she said.

“What?”

“When I failed before, when I let you down, your face, the look of disappointment…” She stopped, shook her head as though to clear it. “If I failed again and saw your face, I thought maybe I’d kill myself.”

Simon put his hand back to his mouth. “Oh, honey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Please? I’m sorry if I ever made you feel that way.”

Paige started nervously scratching at her arms. Simon could see the needle marks, though they seemed to be fading.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I need to get back now.”

“I’ll drive you.”

*



They stopped by the apartment on the way. Paige woke up her two siblings. Simon used his iPhone and filmed the ecstatic tears as his three children briefly but intensely reunited. He’d play the video for Ingrid. It didn’t matter whether she heard it through the coma or not. He would play it for her and himself over and over.

The drive back up north was a long one. He didn’t mind. For the first hours, Paige slept.

That left Simon alone with his own thoughts.

So many emotions ricocheted through him. He felt joy and relief at seeing Paige—clean Paige!—again. That was the overriding emotion. He rode that wave and tried to ignore the others—the worry about what would come next, the sorrow that he’d made Paige feel such dread about his reaction, the confusion about why Ingrid kept this huge secret from him.

How could she?

How could Ingrid have not told him about taking Paige to rehab? How could she have not said anything about it after he’d seen her in the park and had that confrontation with Aaron? It was one thing to keep your promise to your child. He got that. But that wasn’t how they operated as a couple.

They told each other everything.

Or so he thought.

Simon was just remembering what Rocco said, about how Luther shot Ingrid, when Paige woke up and reached for the water bottle.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Okay. This is such a long ride, Dad. I could have just taken the bus back.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.”

Simon shot her a weary smile. She didn’t return it.

“You can’t visit me at the retreat,” Paige said. “Not for another month. No visitors.”

“Okay.”

“They let me come down because I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Thank you.”

He drove some more.

“So how did it work?” he asked her.

“How did what work?”

“When your first month was up, this retreat let you contact us?”

“Yes.”

“You read about what happened?”

Paige nodded. “My counselor at the clinic had seen a news report. She told me about it.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“So your counselor knew and kept it from you?”