Don't Look for Me(90)

I smile. “That’s wonderful news.”

We are all so happy for this little girl who is doing so well.

This little girl who made me drink milk but then set me free.

This little girl who watched her mother shoot the man who raised her, then felt her press that same gun into her head.

This little girl who has now lied for her.

That little girl.

We eat French fries and drink soda. The social worker leads us in a productive discussion about life and moving forward. She told me when I agreed to come that it was important for Alice to see that I was all right. That I was living a normal life now. That I needed to be a role model since we shared a similar experience in that house, even if I was only there for two weeks.

“I started working again,” I say. This is true. I have started tutoring students in science and I hope I can eventually go back to teaching.

“And my son is almost done with his junior year. I can’t believe how fast time flies!”

It has killed us to keep him at that school. It is that school that links us to this town. It was Evan’s choice to stay.

But when we go, we take the long way. And each time I see him, I remind him that nothing he could ever do would make me leave him. Not ever. Because he is enough. He is more than enough. He is everything. He and Nicole.

I will never speak of that moment in the storm, when my legs carried me away from them. When I walked away.

I am here now. We are here now.

We. That is a word I have been using more lately. John and I drive together when we bring Evan to school. He’s been taking days off from work to come with me. He doesn’t want to lose me again. How strange that it took this horrific experience for him to know this, and for me to believe it.

I feel it more every day since I was saved—my love for John tiptoeing across that invisible line. It has not been a watershed. But it is no longer impossible. I feel it. He feels it.

He doesn’t close his eyes until I am lying next to him in our bed. And, sometimes, I will curl up close beside him.

And Nicole—the changes in her have been more pronounced. She will start college next fall. She has been coming with me to my grief support sessions. Yes, she mocks everyone the second we leave, the things they say and even the way they say them, always in a neutral tone. She calls them emotional robots. She says it makes her want to scream out into the room that they are all full of shit. Maybe she’s right. But she still comes. And sometimes we have dinner after.

Sometimes we talk about the woods in Hastings. Sometimes we talk about what she should study next year, or what classes I might teach. Sometimes we even laugh, though tears often follow.

I don’t mind her tears. I don’t mind my own.

Do I owe this to Jared Reyes? To the horrible things he did to our family? He took me, yes. But he took me to care for a child who was not even his own. He took me to care for her when her own mother left without a second thought. A mother who put a gun to her head. I see them sometimes before I can catch them—images of Reyes and Alice. The way he carried her through the rain. The way he made her laugh. The way she looked at him like any child looks at a parent who loves her.

And then I feel his body pinning me to the kitchen floor. His strong hands dragging me to the dark room. His hot breath in my face when he tells me about Nicole. He was going to kill me and take her.

And now, here is my family, healing. And here is Alice, surviving.

There are so many shades of gray that sometimes I feel life is one long, beautiful, cloudy day.

The conversation lingers and now begins to die. The social worker turns to Alice and says, “Do you want to give her the present now?”

Alice nods. Coy Face is here and it sends a shiver down my spine.

Shades of gray.

She is just a child.

She reaches down into her lap and sets on the table two plastic dolls.

I feel my stomach turn. I feel a violent urge to vomit.

She takes the doll that she calls Suzannah, and she hands it to me.

“I want you to have this so you will never forget me.”

Now come her tears. Real tears. And I feel my own start to well.

I force my hand across the table and take the doll. I swear to God it burns my skin, but I take it anyway.

I take it and I straighten its hair.





Acknowledgments


If anyone could find a way to escape from a caged room to save her child, it would be my mother, Terrilynne Kempf Boling. The lessons she taught us about never, ever, accepting defeat were in my head in each of Molly Clarke’s chapters, and behind every courageous thing I have ever done. I am grateful for the tenacity of mind and spirit she often employed to get us out of scrapes when we were growing up, and which now reside within us all. Thanks, Mom.

There are never enough words to express my deep appreciation for my agent, Wendy Sherman. Thank you for the unwavering, never-ending, 24/7 and 365 dedication to fostering my career and providing both sound counsel and brilliant guidance. And to Michelle Weiner and Olivia Blaustein at CAA and Jenny Meyer, thank you for always finding new homes for my work.

To the team at St. Martin’s Press, thank you for championing this book from the very start. Specifically, to my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, for encouraging me to lean in to the emotional and psychological aspects of this story while safeguarding the twists and turns. To Lisa Senz, Katie Bassel, Brant Janeway, Erica Martirano, Jordan Hanley, Naureen Nashid, and Sallie Lotz for your creative and tireless efforts in sales, public relations, and marketing. And to Olga Grlic, for nailing the cover!