Читать книгу Emma in the Night: The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten - Wendy Walker, Wendy Walker - Страница 11

My father squeezed the breath from my body when he first saw me again. He barreled past Dr. Winter, Special Agent Strauss and Mrs. Martin and fell into me, sobbing. I did not have a chance to even look at him, to absorb the deep lines that grief had carved into his forehead and the grayness that now covered his skin. That would come twelve seconds later. In that moment, those first twelve seconds, he needed to take from me all that was lost over those three years, and he was not deterred by the impossibility of this task. I indulged him because I love my father very much and feeling his arms around me again had me crying also and saying his name over and over.

Daddy . . . Daddy . . .

I cried for him many times on the island, even though I knew each time, in my heart, what I knew again on my mother’s bed as he held me that morning. No matter how many times I cried his name, the cries a plea for him to help me somehow even if only to give me the strength to help myself, my father had nothing like this to give me.

I let myself cry and I tried to give him the things he needed. I had expected him to need things from me when I returned home. Still, I was also shocked by the resentment I felt. I wanted to scream at him. I need things, too! I need to tell my story before it explodes right out of my chest! No one seemed to care about my things.

When I said the words, when I told them we left because Emma was pregnant, my father’s eyes grew wide and frantic, like he was lost in a storm. “I don’t understand! Did she have a baby? Is there a child? My God!”

I answered the second question first.

“She had a little girl. But they took her. Bill and Lucy took her from Emma and made her their own. It started out like they were just helping take care of her. They kept her in their room at night. They said it was just for a few days so Emma could rest. Emma didn’t want them to, but they did anyway. Then they just never stopped.”

“And they wouldn’t let you leave? They held you prisoner? I don’t understand, Cass!” My father demanded an answer.

“We asked to leave. And when they kept saying not yet, not now, things like that, we made a plan to leave, only we couldn’t see how to do it when they always had Emma’s baby with them. So we decided that I should leave and then bring back help. And I tried, but failed. I’ve been trying to tell you . . . and when I found another way years later, Emma said she couldn’t leave without her daughter. I tried to make her come with me. You have to believe me, that I tried!”

I felt a surge of panic like the shock you get when your finger brushes a light socket. The thought of baby feet and baby hair and baby smiles, and the pain when they would take her from my arms, and Emma—I suddenly missed her like I would miss my own heart if it were torn from my body—and all of this was just too strong to hold in.

“Find them!” I yelled into the room.

I wanted Emma. I wanted revenge. I wanted that sweet little girl. I wanted justice.

“Find them and make them pay for what they’ve done!”

My father covered his face with his hands. I think it was at this moment he started to understand the kind of place I was trying to tell him about, trying to tell all of them. There was just so much and I didn’t want to forget anything so I kept trying to go back to the beginning. Maybe I should have started with the first time I tried to escape and what they did when I got caught. Or the things I had to do to finally make it home. In so many ways, I still felt like a child, afraid I would be in trouble. Afraid no one would believe me.

My father stood up. “We need more agents! We need to do something! Right now! My daughter and granddaughter are being held prisoner by these people! My God!”

Behind my father, I could see Mrs. Martin looking at me like I was crazy. She’d been doing that all morning and I wanted to scream at her Maybe you’re the one who’s crazy! and then watch her break into pieces.

Agent Strauss tried to reassure him. “We have a team of agents ready to begin the search. We will find this island.”

My father hung his head and held it firmly between his palms. He started to nod then, and I could read his thoughts—Yes, of course. That’s why a girl leaves home. That’s what was so compelling, she would leave everything behind.

He turned to look at my mother for some kind of solidarity. His shoulders lifted slightly, his palms now stretched out and open to the sky and tears streaming down his face.

“We couldn’t have known, Judy. We couldn’t.”

He was trying to be kind, but Mrs. Martin didn’t want his kindness.

My father used to make comments about the relationship between Emma and our mother, about how Mrs. Martin looked at Emma like a younger version of herself. He said she liked it when Emma got attention as a little girl. She would tell him that people did the same thing when she was little—turn their heads and ooh and ahh. She and Emma were cut from the same cloth. They were the same. What my father didn’t understand was that after Emma got older, Mrs. Martin didn’t talk about her likeness to Emma, because of pride. It was her way of stealing back the attention Emma got—attention that used to be hers.

I knew what my father was thinking as he tried to comfort her. That this ignorance of such an important fact about Emma might be a blow to her pride, to her ego. If she and Emma were so alike, how did she not know Emma was pregnant?

I was never able to sit still when this thing was happening between them—my mother silently brooding and my father prancing around like a circus clown trying to cheer her up. It made me feel rage inside because he couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t see that she still knew how to reach inside him and twist him up even after she broke his heart and stole his house and his children. Even then.

I was not surprised when this was Mrs. Martin’s response after he tried to comfort her on the day I returned.

“Of course I couldn’t have known! You drove a wedge between us so she never talked to me about these things. You did that! And look what happened!”

Dr. Winter did not seem surprised either that my father tried to comfort my mother, or that my mother used his kindness to whack him in the head. That was when I knew she had been involved before, when we disappeared. I imagine she had learned a lot about our family when they were trying to find us. But it was the lack of surprise she had in this moment that made me think she could see our family.

Agent Strauss stepped in. “I think we need to hear what happened—from the beginning. Please . . . let’s get things to the lab and let’s hear the story, Cass. If you’re up to it.”

Dr. Winter smiled at me and nodded. The people from the forensic team left. Everyone sat back down, my father on the end of the bed, my mother back next to me. Dr. Winter sat in a chair with a small notepad flipped open and a pen in her hand. Agent Strauss was standing beside her.

“We should speak to Cass alone,” he said to my parents. They looked at each other, then at me. They didn’t move.

“No . . .” I said. “I need them here. Please . . .”

My breath was choppy from the attack of emotions and I tried hard to steady my voice. I could not tell my story without my mother with me to hear it.

Agent Strauss sighed. “For now,” he said. He glanced at Dr. Winter, who nodded in agreement.

I asked if I should start from the very first night and Agent Strauss said yes. I let out two long breaths, like long sighs, and I started to calm down. Then I went back to that night in our house. The night we disappeared.

“The night we left, Emma and I were fighting. Do you remember that?”

Mrs. Martin answered. “Yes. Over that necklace.”

I had never forgotten the first time I heard her say this in an interview. I remembered everything she said about it, about the necklace. And about that night.

“I loved that necklace, so Emma wore it every day because she knew it upset me to see it on her neck. That day, at school, we were walking home together and Emma was nervous about something. I could tell. She was distracted. We walked in silence the whole way. When we got home, she went to her room and closed her door. She didn’t come down for dinner, remember?”

Mrs. Martin shook her head and stared at me like she was losing her patience. It made me want to ramble on and on.

“I don’t know, Cass. I don’t remember about dinner,” she said.

“I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t let me in her room. I pounded on the door until she opened it. She was afraid you would hear and she didn’t want to draw attention to what she was doing. I walked into her room and saw some clothes laid out on her bed. She had just taken a shower. So I asked her if she was going out, and where and why on a school night. I was trying to make her mad because she had been so weird all day. But she seemed different. Less interested somehow, like this was all beneath her. She started organizing her purse. She put on her clothes. Then she turned toward the bathroom door and just pushed me out of the way. ‘Come back here!’ I screamed at her. . . . Do you remember all of that?”

Dr. Winter answered. “I remember your mother telling us about that. How she heard you fighting and then she saw the car pull out of the driveway.”

My mother had this story down perfectly. And so did I.

“I knew she was leaving because she’d put her car keys in her purse. The necklace was on the bed next to the clothes and I snatched it up before she came back for it. I put it around my neck. ‘I have the necklace!’ I said. ‘You can’t have it back until you tell me where you’re going!’ She came storming out of the bathroom, yelling at me to give it back. She tried to grab it off my neck and I pushed her away. Then she finally got her hand on it and she ripped it off me. It broke the chain. But she didn’t care. She put it on her neck and tied the chain like a rope, in a knot, so it would stay. She looked in the mirror and adjusted the angel. Then she just turned and went back into the bathroom.

“I was so furious! I went out to her car and got in the way back. She keeps blankets in there for when they go to the beach to drink and I hid under them. I thought, ‘I’m gonna go where she goes and get pictures of her doing things she’s not supposed to be doing and then I’m gonna get her in trouble.’ It’s all so stupid, isn’t it?”

Dr. Winter looked at me sympathetically. “No, Cass. You were fifteen. It sounds very normal.”

Mrs. Martin copied her. She was very good at taking cues when she didn’t want anyone to see what was in her mind. Or her heart.

“Yes, sweetheart.” Her words were nice but her tone was laced with frustration.

“I waited there for a long time before the driver’s-side door opened and closed and then we started to move. I remember feeling nervous about my plan to get her in trouble. The car stopped at the beach, in a spot in the very back of the lot. I heard Emma sigh really hard and long, like she was nervous, too. But then she got out of the car, left her purse, and the keys, and walked to the shore. I waited a few seconds and then got out, slowly and quietly. I followed her and I know she didn’t see me, because she kept going toward the water without looking back. When she got there, she took off her shoes and waded into the water. I stood behind the changing room, peeking out from the side. I could see her in the moonlight, and I thought maybe she was going to swim with all her clothes on. But she didn’t move. She just stood there looking at the water and splashing it with her toes.

“And then there were headlights coming from behind me. They shined onto her and she seemed startled but then she started walking toward the car, away from the water. I know she was startled because she forgot her shoes. She walked right past the changing rooms where I was hiding and watching. The lights went off. Then the engine. A door opened and a man got out. There was also a woman in the car but she stayed inside.

“Emma started to walk toward the car, toward this man, and I felt this horrible fear that she was leaving forever. I ran toward the car and screamed her name. ‘Emma!’ I started to see him more clearly. He was older. He had brown hair and a kind smile and he folded Emma into his arms in a big hug.

“They both stopped when they heard me call out for her. The man looked at Emma, and his smile went away. Emma stormed over to me. She was so angry. She was desperate. She knew I had just spoiled her plan. She grabbed my arms and told me she was leaving, that she couldn’t take it anymore. I started crying, grabbing at her. I was so upset. I couldn’t imagine life without Emma. She was my sister and I had never been without her.

“She pulled away and walked toward the car. She said to the man, ‘Let’s just go.’ But he shook his head. They spoke in whispers. Then she shook her head and he grabbed her shoulders and looked at her sternly. She came back to me and she said ‘Now you have to come with us.’ I was scared. I didn’t know where they were going. We saw headlights coming down the beach. It was the sand groomer. It always comes at night. There was no time to think. Emma grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the car. I don’t know if I tried to break free. I honestly don’t know. My feet were moving and they walked me to the car. We all got in and we drove away.”

I stopped there and looked around the room. Dr. Winter, Agent Strauss, Mrs. Martin—they were all staring at me now, mesmerized by the story.

It was Agent Strauss who broke the spell. “Do you remember anything else that this man said? Either on the beach or in the car? Did they introduce themselves, explain what was happening?”

I shook my head. “No one said anything. It was creepy. We just drove until we got to the boat.”

“Do you remember how long you drove? What time you left and what time the car finally stopped?”

“I wish I could. I know that would be helpful because we went right from the beach to the boat, and then to the island. I fell asleep for a while. We stopped for food and to use the bathroom. We stopped for gas another time and it was still dark out and much colder than it had been at the beach. It was still dark when we got to a dock. It smelled like pine trees. I’m sorry. I usually keep good track of the time.”

“That’s okay, Cass. Just continue the story. What happened next?” Agent Strauss said.

“I remember thinking that maybe I didn’t know my own sister at all. I mean, I had not known about Bill. I had not known about her plan to leave home. I had not even known she was pregnant. I thought she was going out to meet a guy. I was so stupid! It made me scared and I wanted to leave and run home as fast as I could. But then I thought I would be in so much trouble if I left without knowing where Emma was going, and for leaving in the first place and for hiding in Emma’s car. It’s so clear what I would do now, being older, and knowing what could happen to us. But then, in my mind, and not knowing, I felt like I had to stay with her until I knew where she was going. I made a plan to do that, and then to find my way home. I remember feeling better having this plan and I lay my head down against the window. The woman, Lucy, had given me a blanket and I pulled it over my head, over my whole face and everything.

“I woke up to the sound of music playing and the wind on my forehead. Emma had rolled her window all the way down. Her head was hanging far enough out so the wind could catch her hair and blow it hard away from her face. She was humming and Bill and Lucy were smiling. It was an Adele song. Do you remember how much she loved Adele?”

Emma didn’t like to drive me places. But sometimes, when something bad enough had happened in our house, she’d get very drunk and then she would take me in her car and she would make me drive, even though I was not old enough. We would go down North Ave because it was straight and we could go very fast. She would roll down the window, stick her head out just enough for the wind to catch her hair. And she would sing so loud and so hard, she would start to cry. Sometimes she would smoke a cigarette. But mostly she would sing until she cried and I would just drive and watch her from the corner of my eye and be frozen by the sight of her. It was like watching a tornado. Beautiful. Terrifying. Sometimes I wished I could be like that, and feel things like that. But Emma felt enough for two people, and I was mostly grateful that she had her role and I had mine.

I think there are two types of people. Ones who have a scream inside them and ones who don’t. People who have a scream are too angry or too sad or laugh too hard, swear too much, use drugs or never sit still. Sometimes they sing at the top of their lungs with the windows rolled down. I don’t think people are born with it. I think other people put it inside you with the things they do to you, and say to you, or the things you see them do or say to other people. And I don’t think you can get rid of it. If you don’t have a scream, you can’t understand.

As I watched Dr. Winter that first day, I got the sense that she had a scream. She was not a normal person. It takes one to know one, I guess, and I could just tell. She was beautiful—blond hair, very fit, big pouty lips and high cheekbones. Her eyes were pale blue but suspended in a perpetual state of anxiety, and she walked and talked and moved with strength, more like a man than a woman. Her eyes, and the way she moved, stood in such stark contrast to her otherwise feminine traits that it made her intriguing. Mysterious. I imagine men found her irresistible. And yet she did not wear a wedding ring. People like Dr. Winter, intriguing, mysterious people, always have a scream inside them.

I didn’t know I had one until the night I finally escaped from the island.

No one answered my question about Emma liking that music, so I continued my story. “I can still remember exactly how I felt when we got to the dock and Bill opened the car door and the cool air came in with that smell, the Christmas tree smell, and also the smell of the water. It was nothing like the water here, or even when we went to Nantucket that summer when I was ten I think, or maybe nine. There was no fish smell, or seaweed, or you know that rotting smell that comes when it’s really hot and there are all those open shells? There was none of that. Just water and Christmas, cool against my face while my body was warm under the blanket. And then, also, there was a sense of adventure and something else that I’ve thought about all the time since that night because it was part of what made me get out of the car and get on Rick’s boat instead of running away into the woods.”

Agent Strauss interrupted me to ask about the woods. “What kind of woods? Were there streets and houses, like a neighborhood or just trees and the shoreline? And what about the boat?”

I told him what I remembered—that when I woke up, I felt that cool air and then saw water on one side, with the dock and a small motorboat. And the boatman. Behind us and all around was a forest of pine trees and brush. The road was not paved. There was no parking lot or building. Just a small wooden dock and one boat and the boatman.

“So this boatman, Rick, he must have taken the boat to the dock from somewhere else? Sounds like he didn’t keep the boat there, or you would have seen his car. . . .”

It went on like this for several minutes. I had already described the boatman to them, and not just his accent but that he seemed as old as Dr. Winter, and he was always tan and had a scruffy layer of light facial hair all the time—never cleanly shaven and never a full beard. He was not much taller than I was, maybe five nine with a thick, muscular build. His neck seemed larger than it needed to be, or maybe his head was small by comparison. And he had very short hair, dark brown. His eyes were brown as well. He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t someone Emma would have even looked at twice. He was the kind of guy who passes in a hallway without being noticed.

I knew that the Pratts paid him to come back and forth to the island and that I thought he relied on them a lot for money because he was very loyal to them. I did not know how loyal until much later. Until the first time I tried to escape.

Dr. Winter was not a patient person. I could tell by the way she shifted her body in the chair, crossing and recrossing her legs. Fidgeting with her pen. But she let Agent Strauss go on until he was done even though she didn’t seem to care much about the woods and trees and cars, or even about the boatman. When she asked me the next question, I started to believe that we would actually find my sister.

“Cass, go back to that night. Go back to that feeling you had—the one that made you get on that boat.”

I took a long, deep breath and closed my eyes. This part was important and I wanted to make sure everyone knew it.

“I told you that I had a plan to go home in the morning, but that I wanted to find out what was going on and where we were and why Emma knew this man and why she had run away. When I knew all of that and I knew she was safe, I would go home. And because I had this plan that would make it impossible for anyone to blame me for anything, and then the smell of the trees and water—it just felt so clean. I felt so clean. And because I was clean, I could let myself enjoy this one night when everything was being turned upside down, when everyone would have to stop and open their eyes to see that things were not perfect for Emma because she had left this way and taken me with her. I felt alive. I felt hopeful. It’s hard to describe. Something had lifted off me. Something heavy.”

Dr. Winter looked at me with narrow eyes, like she was concentrating very hard. “What wasn’t perfect, Cass? What did you want people to see when you left?”

The room got quiet and I realized I had said too much. Agent Strauss didn’t let me answer, and I was relieved.

“It sounds like you felt powerful,” he said.

“Yes! Like by going on that boat, I was going to change everything.”

“So you got on the boat. Emma got on the boat. Then Bill . . .” Agent Strauss said, moving the story forward even more. Dr. Winter let him do it, but I could sense that she wanted to go back to her question, the one Agent Strauss had not made me answer.

“And then Rick untied the lines and pushed us off. I thought for a second that he was going to stay on the dock because we started to move away and he was still pushing. But then he grabbed hold of the rail and got on with us. I remembered the boats in Nantucket and how we were told not to try to do that, try to get on a boat that was moving away from the dock, because if we fell in and the water pushed the boat back toward the dock, it could crush us. Is that right, Dad? Did that happen in Nantucket?”

My father was staring at me but he didn’t answer. I think he was in a state of shock, or maybe swept away by the storm inside his head. Mrs. Martin said his name sternly. She said it twice, like this. “Owen Tanner! Owen!”

I realized then that he had been listening and that he had heard my question because he answered it. “Yes. I did say that. That did happen in Nantucket.”

But my father did not want to hear about the boat and the dock and how I felt powerful the night I went to the island.

“Cass,” he said, “was this Bill person the father? Did this man get your sister pregnant?”

I tried to explain the best I could.

“I couldn’t talk to Emma that night. We were never alone, not for a minute. We were given separate rooms. Bill and Lucy brought us into their house and got us settled. I couldn’t see much. It was very dark and because the house runs on a generator, they use flashlights and candles at night after dark. Lucy gave me a sandwich and a toothbrush and she did her best to pretend she wasn’t bothered by me being there, but I knew she was. I heard her speaking harshly to Bill when she thought I was brushing my teeth. But I wasn’t brushing my teeth. I was standing near the bathroom door, listening. Emma was taken down another hallway. She looked back at me and smiled like she was really excited and I should be excited, too.

“So I just tried to go to sleep. The room was small. It had a twin bed and a dresser and a mirror. That was it. But it did have a window. I turned out the light and got under the covers. I was tired but my mind was racing. I don’t know how long I lay there awake before I heard Emma’s voice.

“I went to the window and saw that Emma was in a room across a small courtyard. I didn’t know anything about the house that night, but of course I came to know it well. Every inch of it. There was a courtyard in the back and the house formed a U shape around it. So across the courtyard, I could see the bedrooms on the other side, and that night I could see Emma, Bill and Lucy in Emma’s room. They were talking and then they both hugged Emma. As soon as they left, I opened my window and called out. I tried to do it in a whisper, but she couldn’t hear me so I raised my voice until she did. She came to her window and leaned out the way I was. ‘Where are we?’ I asked. But she didn’t answer. She just looked back with this knowing smile, like she knew exactly what she was doing and like she was certain that what she was doing was the best thing anyone could ever do. She rubbed the silver angel on the necklace.

“I kept thinking that night that we were in a safe place. Once Rick left, there was only a large wooden rowboat at the dock and no cars anywhere. I knew we were on an island because the boat approached from the back and docked on the side, and from the front, where the house faced, you could see it was just water forever and ever. I was excited about this new place, but I barely slept because I was so worried about how I would get a ride home or find a phone to call you to come and get me. I went over the things I would say to Emma and Bill or maybe Lucy. I was already feeling bad because we had traveled far and getting home would be difficult. I knew Emma would be furious with me. I didn’t know then that she was pregnant.

“The next day was when she told me. I asked her who the father was and she said she couldn’t tell me that. She said Bill and Lucy were going to help her have the baby and start a new life. You have to believe me. I did plan to come home. But all of that changed in the morning when Emma pleaded with me. She said if I went home, you would make me tell you where she was and that she wouldn’t be able to have her baby, so I promised her I would stay. I’m so sorry! I know I caused a lot of problems. But I had to choose my sister.”

I looked at my mother then, and said it one more time so there would be no doubt.

“I had to choose Emma.”