Saving Meghan(89)

I imagined my freedom. Please, God, I prayed. Please protect me. I asked God to tell me when it was safe to go. I waited for a feeling—a kind of knowing, the sort I’d get on the soccer field when I’d send a ball into open space, believing in my heart of hearts that a teammate would be there to receive the pass. Almost always, I was right.

I let maybe five minutes go by. By that point, my joints were on fire, but I could block out the pain. I pushed open the cabinet door just a crack. Light flooded the compartment. I peered outside but saw nobody. I pushed the door open some more. I could see now that I was in an industrial kitchen. The floor was lined with square red tiles. The walls were made of beige brick. The room held some stainless steel tables for food prep along with several industrial-size refrigerators. There were tall rolling carts holding trays of cooking supplies. Other carts carried stainless steel mixing bowls. The lights were bright, and the food smells overpowered each other to create an odor that could hardly be called appetizing.

I crawled out of the cabinet onto my hands and knees. Scurrying like a cockroach, I took shelter behind one of those tall, rolling cabinets. I poked my head out just a little to see Loretta and a group of kitchen staff all huddled together, not more than fifteen feet away from me. They were talking animatedly in a foreign language—Portuguese, I think—and from the angry look on Loretta’s face, I was pretty sure the conversation was focused on my mom.

Loretta was doing a great job of keeping everyone distracted. I noticed a lit EXIT sign on the wall farthest away from the kitchen staff. I slipped out from behind one rolling cart and crawled to another, praying I hadn’t made a sound. Nobody looked in my direction. I followed the EXIT sign to a set of swinging doors. Keeping to the ground, I pushed a door open wide enough to slip outside.

At last, I could stand. I looked for the nearest stairwell. I was dressed normally enough, in sweatpants and a zipped-up sweatshirt, so I wouldn’t attract attention on the upper levels, but I clearly didn’t belong down here. I took the stairs to the main level. There were people now, lots of them, going about their business. For a second, I thought they were all looking at me. I worried they’d recognize me from the news reports, start pointing, calling for the police, but I was invisible to them. I was nothing. They had their own concerns.

Eventually, I found a bathroom, went into a stall, and moments later emerged a brunette with short hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a long navy coat. I followed the lit EXIT signs like each was my north star. My legs were still stiff. My heart pounded so hard, I worried I might need to be resuscitated. That would be ironic—having a medical emergency while I was escaping the hospital. I followed the hallway to a revolving door that opened onto a busy street with lots of cabs. The urge to run was overpowering, but I managed to keep my cool and remain inconspicuous.

I entered the revolving door and began to push. I was like a skin diver on her way to the surface, my lungs quaking with their hunger for air. Before I knew it, I was standing outside, and I took that big beautiful first breath. The air was cool on my skin—familiar and yet strangely new. Clouds covered a slate-gray sky, blocking out the sun, but I knew the smells of a spring afternoon, a fragrant vibrancy that made me feel reborn.

I stuck out my arm, and a cab pulled curbside. I got in, closed the door, and gave the driver an address in Cambridge. Just like that, we were off, snaking through clogged traffic on unfamiliar streets. I kept my eyes open for the police—every siren was like a needle stabbing me.

Something happened on that drive to Cambridge, to the Airbnb Mom had rented under a false name, something that brought the doubts I’d been repressing to the surface. For the first time in ages, I was on my own. I wasn’t under the watchful eye of my mother, father, or any of the doctors who were supposedly looking after me. And, finally, I didn’t feel so terrible. No fatigue. No headache. No switches going off. No intense cramping. No sick feeling. In fact, I’d never felt so alive. My body hummed with renewed energy. I felt a hundred times better than before—make that a million. Maybe I wasn’t sick. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe someone had put the idea in my head.

There were only two people in the whole world who could have done that—my mom … or my dad.





CHAPTER 42





BECKY


Even with light traffic, the cab ride from the hospital to the rental in Cambridge felt interminable. On her way out of White, Becky had kept on the lookout for clusters of security, or a disturbance of any sort that might be a preamble to her capture, but there was only typical hospital commotion, business as usual.

As the cab drove on, the next steps of Becky’s plan continued to weigh on her. How would they get new IDs? Would they need more disguises? When could they leave Boston? What about her mother? How would she know if Cora had died or not?

Without a cell phone and no access to email, there was no easy way to contact her sister to find out. Becky thought she could safely make a call from the landline at the Airbnb, but perhaps the police, who’d soon be working an active Amber Alert, would coordinate resources even across the country. They’d certainly be able to figure out who Becky’s sister was and where she lived. Putting a wiretap on Sabrina’s phone seemed a logical thing to do. Becky had learned quickly that crime was easy to commit but harder to get away with.

She decided to play it safe and not try to contact anyone. The worst thing that could happen was that Cora passed and Becky would not know. If that was a must, so be it. She could still grant forgiveness to her mother’s spirit, same as she could ask forgiveness for herself.