The Lost and the Found (4 page)

M
ichel tells Dad he should go lie down for a bit, and Dad gives me another hug. “I can't believe it's over. I didn't think…” He shakes his head and murmurs something about a miracle before he trudges off to his bedroom.

Michel's going to pick up the takeout. He asks me to go with him, but I say I'd rather be alone for a few minutes.

“It's a lot to take in, isn't it?” His brown eyes are full of warmth and understanding.

I nod. “Are you not…worried?”

“Worried about what?”

“I don't know…That Mom and Dad might get back together?” I'm not saying it to be mean, I'm really not.

Michel smiles. “What are you trying to do? Make me paranoid? I'm not worried at all. Why? You think I should be?”

“I don't know! Dad's acting all weird.”

“Of course he's acting weird! It's been a pretty weird sort of day, don't you think?”

“Did they tell her that they're not together? Does she know about you?” I can't believe I didn't think to ask earlier.

Michel picks up his leather jacket—I think it must be older than I am. “She knows. Your mom wanted to wait for a few days before telling her, but John insisted.”

“And?”

“And…nothing! She was totally fine with it. So you don't need to worry your pretty little head about it!” He moves to ruffle my hair, which he only ever does to annoy me.

I try to put myself in her shoes. Coming back to your family after all that time. You'd want things to be the same as when you left, wouldn't you? But a lot can change in thirteen years. Your mother can wither away to nothingness, and your dad can get together with a lovely Frenchman, and your little sister can stop building sand castles and start building a wall around herself instead.

I go to my room as soon as Michel leaves, closing the door so Dad can't hear. I call Thomas first. He's annoyed that I've hardly been in touch all day, so I tell him immediately.

“Are you serious? This is a joke, isn't it?” He's never really understood my sense of humor. The fact that he thinks there's even the remotest possibility that I would joke about something like this is baffling to me.

I say nothing.

“Oh shit. You
are
serious. Oh my god. What happened? Where has she…? Is she…?”

I tell him everything I know, finding it vaguely reassuring that he asks a lot of the same questions as I did. It makes me feel like less of a freak. And when he asks how I'm feeling about it all, I feel a surge of love for him.

Now I know I did the right thing, having sex with him last night. Because I hadn't been sure about it at all. I was scared. I'd never have admitted that to him or to Martha. Luckily, losing my virginity turned out to be very unscary. It was mostly sweet and awkward and a little bit hilarious (for me, anyway) when Thomas got a cramp in his leg. I don't know why people make such a big deal about it.

Thomas is a good listener. He never interrupts and hardly ever disagrees. He is, to all intents and purposes, a good boyfriend. Even if I will never understand any of his poems. And he writes
a lot
of poems.

I tell Thomas that I might not be able to see him after school for the next few days. I have no idea how things are going to go with Laurel. Is she just going to come home and move into her room right away? Because she
does
have a room in our house—Mom insisted when we moved. At least she didn't insist on decorating it like Laurel's old room—all pink and sparkly. It just looks like a nice guest room, with a few of Laurel's possessions dotted around. Mom felt so guilty about moving. She hated the idea that everything wouldn't be exactly the same when Laurel came home. (It was always “when,” never “if.”) The only reason she eventually agreed to the move was to release more money for the fund to find Laurel.

Thomas tells me to take as much time as I need and says that I should call him any time I need to talk. He tells me he loves me, and I tell him I love him too, and I hang up, feeling sane for the first time in hours.

Martha says, “I can't believe it.” Over and over again. I give her a quick rundown of everything I know, which isn't all that much now that I think about it, and she says “I can't believe it” a few more times. She asks when I'm going to meet Laurel, and it makes me realize that I won't be
meeting
her, because you can only meet a total stranger, can't you? But
meeting
feels like exactly the right word in this case.

I hang up after promising to call Martha tomorrow. She didn't ask how I'm feeling. Why would she? Laurel's abduction has dominated (and ruined) my whole life, and now she's back. Problem solved.

We eat our takeout (sushi) and Dad doesn't stop talking about Laurel. We have coffee and I eat six macarons and Dad doesn't stop talking about Laurel. We try to watch a movie, but Dad keeps mentioning Laurel, so we give up after half an hour. He apologizes, but that doesn't stop him from talking about Laurel. He spends the rest of the night phoning family and friends—presumably the ones Mom hasn't already called—to tell them the good news, and to swear them to secrecy about it. Not one of them asks about me.

I say I'm going to get an early night, and Dad nods enthusiastically. “Good idea, love. Big day tomorrow.” He hugs me and says he can't wait to see “my two girls together, side by side.” Michel hugs me and tells me he loves me. I wonder when he'll get to meet Laurel—there's been no mention of him coming with us tomorrow.

When I go to close the blinds in my bedroom I realize that I can see where she's staying. The neon blue
H
of
Hilton
peeks out from behind a high-rise office building. Laurel is in there somewhere, with my mother.
Our
mother.

A
persistent buzzing rouses me from sleep. The intercom to the doorman. By the sound of it, someone really, really wants to come in. I stumble from the bedroom to find Dad taking the receiver off the hook and Michel hovering nearby, looking worried. Before I can ask what's going on, the phone starts ringing. Then Dad's cell phone, which is charging on the kitchen counter.

“Journalists,” Dad says. “Didn't take them long, did it? Not much point having a press conference now.” He looks more resigned than upset.

I look at the clock on the kitchen wall. It's not even eight. Michel yawns as he fills up the coffee machine with water. I hear my phone ringing from the bedroom and go to get it. I'm vaguely aware of Dad trailing behind me, saying, “They wouldn't dare….”

I don't recognize the number. Dad says, “Faith, don't.” But I do.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking to Faith Logan?”

“Who's this?”

“This is Jeanette Hayes. Can I ask how you're feeling this morning?”

Jeanette Hayes. Only
slightly
more popular than Satan in our family. Mom and Dad got along okay with some of the reporters over the years—one or two have even become friends—but Jeanette Hayes is most definitely not one of them. It started a couple of months after Laurel went missing. The campaign to find her was in full swing, and the story was still mentioned in one paper or another almost every day. Jeanette Hayes decided that the amount of attention Laurel's case was getting was unfair. She wrote this big article about all the other children who had gone missing at the time—and there were more than you might expect. The headline was:
THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN
. Hayes had this theory that Laurel's case was getting all the attention because she was pretty and blond and middle class, and that my parents had “connections” to the media. She even went so far as to say that vital police resources were being taken up by the hunt for Laurel when they could have been put to better use elsewhere.

All that would have been bad enough, but she wrote another story a week later saying Laurel was probably dead and it was high time the whole country “got real” about it. Neither of these stories made her very popular. Other journalists were falling over themselves to disagree with her, to call her “unfeeling” and “heartless,” and to say that the reason she didn't understand was that she wasn't a mother herself. She even got death threats. It didn't seem to bother her, though, because she went right ahead and wrote a book all about it. I used to look at it in the library when Mom's attention was elsewhere.

The book was full of photos and stories of other missing children. In some cases, Hayes had interviewed their families, asking how they felt about their child's plight being sidelined to a tiny column on page 12, while Laurel Logan's was still splashed all across the front page. (“What's so special about
her
?” said one father.) The rest of the book was a bit of a hatchet job on my family. She hadn't even tried to talk to Mom or Dad to find out the truth.

There was a black-and-white photo of Jeanette Hayes on the back cover of the book. She was staring at the camera in a challenging sort of way. She looked like a serious journalist, I thought. But that was probably just the glasses perched on the end of her nose. I used to stare at that photo, wondering why she hated us so much. Wondering why she didn't want Laurel to come home to us.

I clear my throat, and Hayes repeats the question. How am I feeling this morning?

“I'm more interested in how
you're
feeling this morning.”

“I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. I'm looking for a quote—something short and snappy but heartfelt; you know the sort of thing.”

“And I'm looking for a quote from
you.
Something about how you were wrong about Laurel and wrong to write all that stuff about my family….You know the sort of thing.”

Dad's gesturing for me to hang up the phone. Reporters have never been allowed to talk to me, or even print a picture with me in it without blurring out my face. The one or two times they tried, they found themselves on the receiving end of a hefty lawsuit. That was another thing Hayes criticized my parents about—their “litigious nature.”

“Okay, I see what you're saying.” She doesn't sound angry. “I was wrong about Laurel. And I'm obviously
delighted
I was wrong….” I smile, triumphant. “But I stand by everything I wrote about the police and your parents.”

Bitch.
I want to say something clever—something that will cut her deeply. I want her to know how much pain she's caused my family—as if the pain of losing Laurel wasn't enough—and I want her to feel bad about it. But Dad saves me the trouble by grabbing the phone from my hand and shouting expletives before hanging up and throwing it on the bed in disgust. “There. See if they'll print
that.
”

I've never heard my father say some of those words. It's kind of cool.

“It was her, wasn't it?” he asks softly.

I nod.

He puts his arm around me. “We're not going to let them ruin today, okay? This is
our
day.”

I nod again. “I'm going to take a shower.”

What do you wear to meet the sister you thought was dead? My closet here only has a few things in it, so my options are limited. I settle for gray jeans, Converse, and a black T-shirt; I want to look like me.

Michel tells me I look great, which can't be true because I've hardly slept. He manages to keep a cheerful sort of chatter going all through breakfast, ignoring Dad's phone buzzing every few minutes. I wish he were coming with us.

In the elevator, Dad tells me to keep my head down in the car. When the car pulls out of the garage, the flashes go off and photographers crowd around, shouting and jostling one another and risking getting run over just to get a picture of us. I stare at the dashboard, where the plastic nodding dog I gave Dad for Christmas a few years ago is nodding away as if he approves of this madness.

Dad manages not to run over anyone's toes—he must be feeling charitable. And then we've left them behind and we're on our way to the hotel. I keep checking in the mirrors in case any photographers are following us on motorcycles, but it looks like we're in the clear.

Dad drums his fingers on the steering wheel until I ask him to stop. He apologizes and I apologize and he asks why I'm apologizing. Then we both laugh nervously.

“Are you okay, love? You look a bit green around the gills.”

I look up at the sky, gray and heavy; I wouldn't be surprised if it started snowing. “I hope she likes me.”

Dad barks out a laugh. “
Like
you? She's going to
love
you! She's your sister!” And weirdly enough, this does make me feel better.

There are no photographers waiting outside the hotel or hanging around the lobby, which is something to be grateful for. A red-haired woman in a too-tight black suit hurries over to us as soon as we enter. Her gold badge identifies her as
GILLIAN CROOK, ASSISTANT MANAGER
. She is very keen for us to know how very, very happy she is for us and how honored she is to have “Little Laurel” staying here. She shakes Dad's hand for far too long, then she hugs me, which is awkward because I make no effort to hug her back. I don't tend to go around hugging random hotel assistant managers.

Gillian Crook starts crying because it's all too much for her, thinking about Little Laurel being reunited with her family here in her hotel (of all places!). She just knows it's a story she'll tell her grandchildren one day (not that she's even married yet!), and I feel sorry for those hypothetical grandchildren. Dad and I nod as politely as we can and try to leave her behind, but she says there's someone we have to talk to before heading upstairs.

Gillian leads us over to the bar, empty except for a woman tapping away on a laptop. She stands when she hears us approach. She's around thirty years old, with shoulder-length, curly brown hair and the type of face you forget as soon as you turn away. Her name is Maggie Dimmock. She's the counselor who flew up from London last night. Maggie is a specialist in “family reunification,” which is a real thing and not something someone made up yesterday because no one has a clue how to deal with a situation like this.

We sit down with her, and Gillian Crook hovers nearby until Maggie gives her an even more pointed look than she did the first three times. Maggie tells us her qualifications as if she's trying to prove something. Apparently she flew over to Switzerland last year to deal with a case “remarkably similar to this one.” Except it wasn't all that similar at all, really, because the Swiss girl had only been gone for two years. You know your perspective is pretty messed up when you think two years is hardly any time at all for a girl to be away from her family.

Maggie Dimmock has already spent a couple of hours with Laurel, which doesn't seem fair when I haven't even seen her yet. Maggie says she's a remarkable young woman, and Dad nods along with everything she says. She'll be having sessions with Laurel every day for the next week or so, as well as with the four of us together. It's all about creating a “smooth transition.” She says that we can't expect everything to be hunky-dory straightaway. She sounds like a kids' TV host, full of enthusiasm and good intentions. I feel sorry for her.

Maggie talks some more, but I've stopped listening. I just want to see my sister. I want to get this over with. The nerves are too much to bear.

Dad and I take the elevator to the top floor. Apparently the hotel insisted that Laurel stay in the presidential suite. No doubt they're hoping for some good publicity out of this.

There's one more obstacle between us and Laurel—Sergeant Dawkins, our family liaison officer, is waiting outside the room. I've known Sergeant Dawkins—Natalie—for years. I like her, but I just want to get inside that room. Still, I let her hug me, because she's been through this whole thing with us from the start. This is a big day for her, too.

“She's so looking forward to seeing you, Faith.” I wish people would stop saying that.

Sergeant Dawkins takes Dad to one side and they whisper. There's always something they don't want me to know or don't think I can handle. I'm so used to it happening that it barely even registers anymore.

And then Dad's knocking on the door, and Mom answers it so fast I'm sure she must have been standing right there all along, and Dad's hand is on my shoulder, almost but not quite pushing me into the room. And I'm standing in front of my sister.

I have a sister again.