Pretend She's Here(40)

“Do I have to continue to remind you?” Mrs. Porter asked. “I need you to be my daughter. I’ve told you. My heart is broken. Don’t break it again, please. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened. Well, yes—I am quite sure of what I’d do. And you know, too, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“There’s something else,” she said. “It’s very important. I don’t care if I get caught. It matters nothing to me—if I wind up in jail it will be worth it. That’s how serious I am. That is how determined I am to make this work. If you tell anyone, if I learn about your betrayal—and I will because I’m never far from you, even when you can’t see me … If you talk about this, I will go to Black Hall. Remember how we switched vans, the day you came with us?”

Came with us. As if it had been voluntary.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m resourceful. I won’t drive my own car. Look in the mirror—you know I’m good at crafting disguises. No one’s going to recognize me. You saw the shoe. This time I will get to Black Hall in a way you’ll never guess. Even if the police are looking for me, I will find your mother. It will be easy. She’s drinking again now.”

“She’s not,” I whispered.

“Don’t fool yourself. She doesn’t have the strength to stay sober after all this, I can guarantee you.”

“You don’t know her,” I said.

“No, you don’t know her,” she said. “She’s weak. And it will be easy to get her alone. Going into your house that night? Easiest thing I ever did. They slept right through it. Me? If my daughter were missing? I would never close my eyes again. Never.”

I thought of the way she haunted the house, came into my room. Maybe she never slept. Maybe that was true.

“Your mother won’t have the strength to fight back, and in spite of my disguise, I’ll make sure she knows it’s me. I’ll tell her you came to live with us because you couldn’t stand being in that house. If the police learn it’s me, no matter. I would rather be in prison than lose you.”

I believed her. Sheer terror burned through me, singeing my veins. I felt as if my skin had been turned inside out, as if the air and her words were raking every one of my nerve endings.

“Say it out loud,” she said. “Call me by the right name.”

The word choked my throat. “Mom,” I said.

“That’s my girl. That’s my Lizzie.” She hugged me, handed me a gingerbread cookie. “Enjoy your snack,” she said. “Then we’ll start right in on your European tour. We’ll have fun with it. It will be like a mother-daughter travelogue!”

I couldn’t take a bite of the cookie. I just stared at it, watching my tears plop down and melt the crystalized sugar on top.

*

Mrs. Porter inserted the SIM card and battery into Lizzie’s phone long enough for me to text Carole at the number she’d written down for me. My thumbs were so happy to be texting for the first time in forever.

Hey, it’s Lizzie. This is my number.



*

Thirty seconds later Carole wrote back.

Carole: Yay! I was starting to think u didn’t want to be friends.

Me: Haha of course I did I just have the world’s worst cell reception here.

Carole: Because Maine.

Me: Maine?

Carole: Boonies.

Me: Got it.

Carole: U know it.



“That’s enough,” Mrs. Porter said. “She has your number; that was the point. Now get off.”

“We’re having a conversation; she’ll think it’s rude if I stop now,” I said, aching with how much I loved texting, how much I’d missed it, even if Mrs. Porter was standing right over my shoulder reading every word.

“Tell her your mother is calling you,” she said.

I hated writing that, using that word mother about Mrs. Porter. So I didn’t.

Me: Sorry, got to go.

Carole: Psssssshhhh whaaaattttt? Noooooo!

Me: Lol talk later?

Carole: Pce lve ltr



Mrs. Porter held out her hand. She removed the SIM card and battery and handed the empty phone back to me.





By early December the ground was covered with snow. Mrs. Porter had pulled Lizzie’s winter clothes from the attic, and every day I went to school wearing her long black cashmere coat and knee-high black leather boots. They weren’t warm enough for Maine, and there wasn’t enough room in them for thick socks. My toes were always frozen.

On the two-month anniversary of the day since I’d been taken, I was sitting at the breakfast table, preparing for a history quiz and tuning out the TV droning with its cheerful morning shows.

“Oh my God,” Mr. Porter said. “Ginnie …”

We all looked up, and there I was on the screen. The show was doing a recap of how Emily Lonergan had gone missing eight weeks ago, how after that first email to her family there had been no more communication. Mr. Porter grabbed the remote and changed the channel. But another show was doing a feature on how a parent’s addiction could turn a child into a runaway, how alcoholism could tear families apart. Other stations questioned whether Emily’s email had been genuine. Could it have been coerced or even fake?