Don't Look for Me(77)

Heavy because he needed to be happy and calm and eat his muffin like a good boy.

Light because he was angry. And that meant something had gone wrong with Nicole.

Good Lord, is it terrible? Is it twisted that I feel a laugh rise inside my chest as I picture my strong-willed, tortured daughter sending him away after an unfortunate night? I am filled with joy where there had once been despair that my daughter uses men to fill the hollow spaces she spoke of in therapy.

I thought it would kill her, this behavior. But now I think it might just have saved her.

The door opens again and Mick emerges. How different he seems to me, now that I see his pathetic, broken heart.

Alice rises slowly and walks beside him to the kitchen. I told her not to mention the apples. He could grow angry that she went outside to get them. I told her to say that we made special muffins, with special ingredients.

I hear him getting a mug—the cupboard opening, the ceramic clanking as he pulls one out. I close my eyes and picture him pouring his coffee. The coffee in the coffeemaker. The one with the white filter, which we filled with coffee and turned on for him so he would not have to wait.

I told Alice how to do this as well. I have been a very, very good mommy today.

Moments later, Alice walks quickly back to my room. Sad Face is here and she holds back tears.

“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

“He won’t eat the muffin. He said he’s not hungry. He said he had a very bad night and he just wants to drink his coffee and be left alone to make his phone calls.”

I sit on the floor and Alice sits as well. She is curious now that my face does not grow sad. Or disappointed.

We worked hard on those muffins.

“It’s okay,” I tell her.

Now she is confused. “It is?” she asks.

Then I ask her a question. “Is he drinking the coffee? The coffee that we made?”

She nods. “Yes. In the big cup.”

And I can’t hold back my smile.





44


Day seventeen





Reyes had been at the casino, parked in the back.

Jared Reyes. The boy from the kitchen. The boy who knew Daisy Hollander before he’d even stepped foot in Hastings.

Jared Reyes. The man who’d lied to her—about everything, it seemed.

The house on Abel Hill Lane—he’d known where the lock was, and then chained the gate closed. Edith Moore—he’d given her the answer to the question about Nic’s phone number, then failed to ask her about the small black letters on her mother’s purse and how she’d been able to see them. And he’d claimed not to know Daisy Hollander well, said he didn’t see a resemblance between her and Nic.

It all made sense now, why he’d lured Nic into bed. It was just as he’d said—how people try to replace the ones they loved with replicas.



* * *



His messages had not stopped all day and all night and she’d had a bad feeling—one she was now glad she’d heeded. It had made her stop before she’d pulled into the casino. It had made her look for his car.

She’d backed up, turned the car around, and started to drive. It had been late, but she’d needed to call her father.

“Daddy,” she’d said, her voice trembling. She hadn’t called him that for years. Not since she was a little girl.

“Nicole? My God! What’s wrong?”

“Are you having an affair? Just tell me. I have to know the truth. Why did you lie to me about Mom’s note?”

There’d been a long pause, and then, “Pull over, Nic—I can hear the car. Pull over before you get in an accident.”

Nic had pulled to the curb. Put the car in park. Then she’d let go, sobbing into the phone. Screaming. “Tell me the truth!”

“I will, I promise. Just calm down. Take a breath. Where are you?”

Nic had looked up. She’d been on Route 7, heading north, back toward Hastings.

“I’m still here,” she’d said.

“You said you were coming home! Jesus, Nic—you promised. I’m coming to get you. I can get the next flight out…”

“I don’t need you to come get me. I need you to tell me the truth!”

“No, okay. The answer is no. I’m not having an affair.”

“But the late nights, the way you stopped looking at her … I was so sure. I told her! I told her the morning she left!”

“Oh, Nicole—no, no—this is not about you. It doesn’t matter what you told your mother that morning. She already knew the truth.”

“What truth, Daddy? What did she know?”

Another pause. A breath.

“That I couldn’t find my love for her.”

“But there were charges—at hotels…”

“Please, Nicole. This is so hard for me to say. Sometimes I just couldn’t come home. But there were no hotels. I never made any charges.”

It had sounded crazy, but yet Nic understood completely. She had stayed out all night when she could.

But then—

“Why were you in West Cornwall the day she disappeared. I know about that charge as well.”

His voice had changed suddenly. “What are you talking about? I was at work that night and then I went home. Went right to bed. You can ask anyone at the office … what is this about? What charge did you find?”