She's Not There (5 page)

“No.” The child pulled her hand out of Caroline's reach, then sank to the floor, her back against the door, her arms crossed in protest.

“Okay, then. Don't move. I'll be right back.” She raced around the corner, almost colliding with the uniformed woman coming out of an adjacent room, her hands full of towels. “
Perdóname, dama
. I'm sorry to bother you but I can't find my keycard. I was wondering if you could let me into my room.”

The woman nodded, dropped the towels onto the cart and followed Caroline around the corner.

Michelle was gone.

“Michelle?” Caroline looked around frantically. “Michelle?”

The door to her suite opened. Hunter stood before her, a large white towel wrapped around his hips, water clinging to his chiseled chest, a bemused look in his eyes. “Relax. She's inside.”

Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. The housekeeper tucked her master keycard back into her pocket and retreated down the hall. “Thank you,” Caroline called after her.

“Mommy said a bad word. And she was late,” Michelle announced as soon as Caroline stepped inside the living room.

“By all of five minutes,” Caroline explained.

“I'm sure Mommy's very sorry.”

“And Mommy has apologized repeatedly,” Caroline said. “Where's the baby?”

“She's not a baby,” Michelle said.

“In her crib, playing with her toys,” Hunter said. “Happy as a clam.”

“We went hunting for clams,” Michelle said as Caroline crossed into the children's bedroom.

“Did you? That sounds like fun.”

“I hate clams,” Michelle said.

Of course you do,
Caroline thought, approaching Samantha's crib. Her younger daughter was already standing up, a huge grin on her sweet face, her arms extended in welcome. Caroline lifted her out of her crib, hugged her tight. “Hi, my sweet thing.”

“She's not a sweet thing.
I'm
your sweet thing.”

“You're
both
my sweet things.”

Samantha leaned her head against Caroline's shoulder, her breath soft against her mother's neck
. At least I got one good one,
Caroline recalled her mother saying to one of her friends, the words still having the power to wound after all these years. Not that her mother had been abusive or neglectful. If anything, she'd been overprotective, hovering over her daughter like a circling wasp, watching her like the proverbial hawk. Unlike Steve, who was granted freedoms Caroline could only dream of. But while she had her mother's attention, it was Steve who had her affection, and both children knew it, ensuring that they would never be close. Caroline had made a silent vow that she would never be anything like her mother. She wouldn't be overprotective. She wouldn't be judgmental. She would never show favoritism.

As if to prove her point, she leaned over to ruffle Michelle's hair. “I love you,” she told her.

“I don't love
you,
” said Michelle, squirming out of her mother's reach and running from the room.

“Well, that's too bad, because I love
you,
” Caroline called after her.

“What's too bad?” Hunter asked from the doorway.

Caroline lowered Samantha to the floor, then walked into his waiting arms. “I'm a terrible mother.”

He laughed and pulled her closer, the dampness of his bare chest permeating her white lace cover-up. “Next time we leave the kids at home.”

At eight o'clock, their sitter still hadn't arrived.

“Where is she?” Caroline asked. “She's been so prompt all week.”

“Relax. She's probably in the elevator as we speak.”

Caroline stepped onto the balcony and stared down at the garden restaurant below. Almost all the tables were occupied. Colored lanterns flickered from overhead wires. Soft music played. A slight breeze stirred. Samantha and Michelle were both asleep. It was shaping up to be a perfect evening for this, their last night in paradise.

Except the sitter was late.

“Are the others there yet?” Hunter asked, coming up behind her, his arms snaking around her waist.

“I don't see them. Oh, wait. There's Rain.”

“What on earth is she wearing?”

“You mean, what
isn't
she wearing?” Caroline corrected. “I think she forgot her top. Did you know her husband is quite the stud?”

“Really? She told you that?”

“I believe
insatiable
was the word she used.”

Hunter made a face. “Hard to picture.”

“Let's not,” Caroline said, as Jerrod suddenly appeared beside his wife, the two of them looking up and waving. Caroline waved back, felt Hunter do the same. “Maybe we should call the front desk, find out what's up.” She stayed on the balcony, watching Steve and Becky join Jerrod and Rain as Hunter went back to the living room to phone. “Well?” she asked upon his return.

“She's not coming.”

“What do you mean, she's not coming?”

“Apparently we canceled.”

“What? What are you talking about? We did no such thing.”

“I told them that. But that's what their records indicate. They're trying to find us someone else.”

“How long will that take?”

“They said it should only be a few minutes.”

Caroline shook her head in dismay, noting that Peggy and Fletcher had just arrived. As if on cue, everyone at the table turned toward them.

“We'll be down soon,” Hunter called out, although Caroline doubted anyone could hear him over the music and chatter. The phone rang. “There you go. Problem solved.”

Except it wasn't solved. The sitters registered on the hotel's roster were all booked and the concierge was unable to find anyone else on such short notice, unless they were willing to wait until ten o'clock.

“So much for that.” Caroline slumped to the sofa, kicking off the recently purchased high heels that Peggy had christened Caroline's “fuck me” shoes.

“No. We're not going to let this ruin our anniversary dinner.”

“We can't wait till ten o'clock.”

“We don't have to,” Hunter said. “We'll go, have dinner, come right back.”

“What are you talking about? We can't leave the kids alone.”

“We're not leaving them alone. We'll be right downstairs. It's just like at home, when the kids are in bed and we're sitting in the backyard.”

“It's not the same.”

“How is it different?”

“For one thing, this
isn't
our backyard. If the kids were to wake up, if they started crying, we wouldn't be able to hear them.”

“How many times did they wake up all week when the sitter was here?”

“That's beside the point.”

“The sitter said they never woke up once.”

“This is the same sitter who claims we canceled?”

“Nothing's going to happen,” Hunter insisted.

“You go,” Caroline said.

“Without you?”

“Yes. You go. Bring me back something to eat.”

“This is our anniversary dinner, Caroline. I'm not going without you.”

“All right. How's this? We call the restaurant and explain what happened, and tell everyone they can either join us up here for room service or come up later for dessert. I'm sure they'll understand.”

“
I
don't understand. We're not talking about leaving the grounds. We're talking about going downstairs. For a couple of hours. You don't think you're being a little overprotective?”

“Overprotective?” Caroline pictured her mother lurking close by, waiting to pounce.

Hunter shrugged. “Forget it. I shouldn't have said that. It's disappointment talking, that's all. It's just that…well…I had something kind of special planned.”

“It can still be special,” Caroline protested weakly.

Hunter sank to the sofa beside her, took her hand in his. They were silent for several seconds. “Okay, listen. I have an idea.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “We go downstairs…”

“Hunter…”

“We go downstairs,” he repeated, a little louder the second time, “have dinner with our friends, and take turns checking on the girls every half hour. How's that?”

Caroline's head was spinning. She was horrified at his casual comparison to her mother, having spent her entire life determined to be anything
but
like her mother. And she didn't want to disappoint him, especially when he'd gone out of his way to plan something special. The restaurant was literally right under their noses. They wouldn't be gone long. “I don't know…”

“You
do
know. We'll be right downstairs, we'll check on the kids every thirty minutes, they won't even know we're not here.”

“You promise everything will be all right?”

Hunter took her face between his hands and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “I promise,” he said.

“M
om? Mom, are you home?”

Caroline heard the front door open and the words race through the downstairs hall and up the ivory-carpeted stairs toward her bedroom, as if actively searching for her.

“Mom?”

Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it and said nothing. If she didn't answer, maybe Michelle would assume she wasn't home and go away. Although she knew even before she heard the footsteps on the stairs that Michelle was unlikely to give up so easily. Her daughter was as relentless as she'd always been.

“Mom?”

Caroline could feel Michelle standing in the doorway, peering into the darkness of the bedroom, her eyes burning into her back.

“Mom?” Michelle said again, flipping on the overhead light. “What's going on? Didn't you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Caroline said.

“You heard me but decided not to answer?”

“I…,” Caroline began, then stopped when she could think of nothing significant to add.

“What's the matter? Are you sick?” There was something vaguely accusatory in Michelle's tone.

Caroline shook her head. It was a tone she was used to.

“Then what are you doing? Why didn't you answer me? Why were you just sitting here in the dark?”

Caroline shrugged. She hadn't noticed the darkness. When had that happened? “What time is it?”

“Almost seven o'clock.”

“What are you doing here?” Caroline asked.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? You invited me to dinner, remember?”

“You said you were busy.” Caroline swiveled around on the bed to face her daughter, surprised as she always was by how thin Michelle was, and biting down on her lower lip to keep from voicing this thought out loud.

“I was,” Michelle said. “Then I thought you might…Never mind what I thought. What's going on? Bad day at school?”

“I didn't go to school.”

“Why not?”

“Just didn't feel like it.”

“You didn't feel like it?” Michelle repeated, taking a few tentative steps into the room. “That doesn't make sense. You always feel like it.”

“I didn't feel like it today.”

“Why not?” she asked again.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

Caroline shrugged. Was Michelle going to repeat everything she said? “I don't know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to tell me what's going on. You're acting very weird. Did you have a fight with Dad or something?”

“No.”

“Is this about Mackenzie?”

“Mackenzie?”

“Dad's new baby,” Michelle said with more than a hint of annoyance, as if they'd been over this many times—and perhaps they had.

“No.”

Michelle stood at the foot of the bed, shifting from one foot to the other and looking everywhere but at her mother. “So, what happened? You sounded normal this morning on the phone when you were lecturing me about my responsibilities. And you're dressed for work, so you were obviously intending to go.” Her eyes drifted to the newspapers strewn across the unmade bed. “Was it the article? The pictures? I mean, you can't be too surprised. This happens every year. You've kind of learned to go with the flow…”

“It's not the article or the pictures.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know.”

“You've been sitting here all day and you have no idea why? I don't believe you.”

“Michelle…”

“Mother…”

“Please, Michelle. I don't want to argue with you.”

“I don't want to argue with you either.”

“Then let's just drop it, shall we?” Caroline pushed herself off the bed and took Michelle in her arms, hoping to silence her. Instantly she felt her daughter stiffen. Caroline took a deep breath, forced a smile onto her face. “So, where do you want to go for dinner?”

“How about that new raw place over on Bayshore?”

“Raw? As in not cooked?”

“It's all organic. Very healthy.”

“I'm sure it is. Just doesn't sound all that…”

“Forget it,” Michelle said.

“No. I'll give it a try.”

“Never mind,” Michelle said. “I'm not very hungry anyway.”

The words hung suspended in the air like smoke from a stale cigarette. Caroline wondered if it had always been this way between them. The truth was that Michelle had been needy and difficult from birth, characteristics that Samantha's disappearance had only exacerbated. And the needier she'd become, the more Caroline's resentment grew. The more she'd clung, the more Caroline pulled away. The more Caroline pulled away, the more Michelle's resentment grew. Their relationship had devolved into a vicious cycle of push-pull, one retreating just as the other was reaching out. For every step forward, it seemed they took two back.

My fault,
Caroline thought.
Everything, my fault.

“I had a phone call this morning,” she ventured cautiously. Maybe if she stopped shutting Michelle out, her daughter would welcome her back in.

“From…?” Michelle stuck her thumbs into the side pockets of her tight jeans, dark green eyes narrowing.

“A girl in Calgary.”

“Calgary?”

“It's in Canada.”

“I know where Calgary is, Mother. I'm not an idiot.”

“Of course you're not an idiot. I didn't mean to suggest…”

“Who do you know in Calgary?”

“I don't know anyone.”

“Is she a reporter?”

“No.”

“You're not making any sense.”

“You're not giving me a chance. Maybe if you stopped interrupting me…”

Michelle let out a deep sigh. “Okay. Sorry. Let's start again. You got a call from some girl in Calgary. Does she have a name?”

“Lili.”

“Lili…?”

“I don't know her last name. She wouldn't say.”

“She wouldn't say,” Michelle repeated. “Is this girl the reason you're acting so peculiar?”

“She doesn't think Lili is her real name,” Caroline said, ignoring Michelle's question and looking directly into her daughter's eyes. “She thinks her real name is Samantha.”

Michelle's shoulders slumped. “Shit.”

“She thinks she's your sister.”

“Oh, please. Don't tell me this.” Michelle's eyes widened in anger. She began pacing back and forth in front of the bed, her arms shooting out in all directions, like an explosion of fireworks. “Don't tell me you believe this crap.”

“I believe
she
believes it.”

“Mother, for God's sake. This sort of thing happens every time they update those stupid sketches. People calling to say they've seen Samantha in line at the grocery store, psychics claiming they know where to find her, crazies boasting that they're holding her prisoner in some underground bunker. You've been dealing with these nutcases for years. And now some girl calls you from Calgary and says she thinks she's Samantha and you flip out? You know better than this. You know she's full of shit. Even if
she's
crazy enough to believe it…”

“This is different.”

“
How
is it different?”

“She offered to take a DNA test.”

“What?”

“She thinks we should go for a DNA test, to find out one way or the other.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Michelle said, stopping dead in her tracks. “What are you saying? That she's coming to San Diego?”

“No.” Caroline replayed the conversation with Lili in her mind and then relayed it in its entirety to Michelle.

“Tell me you're not seriously considering going to Calgary.”

“I've been thinking about it.”

“No, you haven't.”

“You asked what I've been doing all day. That's what I've been doing—thinking about it.”

“You're not going to Calgary, Mother.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?
Why not?
”

“What would be so terrible?”

“I don't believe this. I just don't believe it.”

“Think about it for a minute, Michelle. What harm could it do? I go to Calgary, I meet this girl, we do the test, we find out one way or the other.”

“
You
think about it. You go to Calgary, you meet this girl, who's probably a raving lunatic with her own agenda, maybe even a butcher knife—you ever think about
that
?—and you take the test and it turns out negative, which it will, you know it will, and then you come home all upset…for what? Why would you do that to yourself? To us?
Again,
” she added for emphasis.

“Because that way we'd know for sure.”

“I
already
know for sure.”

“That's because you didn't talk to her. You didn't hear her. There was something about her voice…”

“Samantha was barely two years old when she disappeared. She could say ‘mama' and ‘dada' and maybe a few dozen other words, most of which nobody could understand—”

“I understood,” Caroline interrupted, the threat of tears causing her voice to wobble.

“My point is,” Michelle continued, “that there's no way you could recognize Samantha's voice if you heard it today. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. The odds against her being Samantha are astronomical. This girl, whoever she is, be it con artist, psychopath, or just poor deluded soul, is definitely not my sister. And you're not going anywhere near her.”

“Sweetheart, I understand your concern and I love you for it, but…”

“But nothing.” Michelle pushed her long brown hair away from her forehead and stared at her mother. “You've already made up your mind, haven't you?”

“It just makes sense to me, the more I think about it.”

Michelle moved toward the phone. “That's it. I'm calling Dad.”

“What? No! I don't want you to call him.”

“Why not? You don't think he has the right to know?”

“We don't know anything yet.”

“We know you're going to Calgary. Maybe he'll want to go with you.”

“He won't.”

“Of course he won't. And do you want to know why? Because he's not a crazy person, that's why.” She lifted the phone into her shaking hand.

“Please don't call your father.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm asking you not to. Please, Michelle…Micki…”

Michelle lowered the phone. “What did you just say?”

“I…”

“You called me Micki. You never call me Micki.”

“I know.”

“You hate that name.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“What—you think that if you call me Micki, I'm suddenly going to come around, that I'm that easy to manipulate?”

“No, of course I don't think that.”

“You don't think, period. Shit.” Michelle tossed the phone onto the bed. She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head again. “All right. Fine. I won't call him.”

“Thank you.”

“When are you thinking of going?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Michelle repeated.

“Apparently there's a flight in the morning that gets into Calgary around noon.”

“I see. Have you already booked your ticket?”

“No.”

“But you're going to.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a passport?”

“A passport?”

“It's Canada, Mother. You need a passport.”

“I have one.”

“And winter boots?”

“Boots?”

“It's Canada in November. You need boots.”

“I'll be all right.”

“How long are you planning to stay?”

“Probably a couple of days. I don't know for sure.”

“You
do
know this Thursday is Thanksgiving.”