No. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to think. Just because someone hacked my email doesn’t mean they know where I am. Probably they thought I’d be an easy target. They don’t realize I’m a good person now, a person with a clean house and a loving husband and a beautiful child.
But I don’t know much about how the internet works or how IP addresses can be traced. One at a time, I shut every open window and every app, then push a button to disconnect the internet. I clear the browser history. Is that enough?
If only I could completely erase the messages from my outbox and Ava’s inbox and the whole internet. The empty wineglasses, rinsed and waiting in the drying rack, give me an idea. I race to the fridge and grab the nearly empty bottle of Pinot Grigio. As I pull out the cork, there’s a moment when I long to down the cold dregs, go back to bed, and trust this has all been an alcohol-fueled nightmare. But I’m not drunk, and I’m certainly not sleepy. This shit is real.
Deliberately I pour the wine over the keyboard, taking the time to saturate each and every key. There is still some wine left. Resisting temptation, I tip the laptop to the side and pour the remainder into every hole and port. The screen flickers and goes dark. I shut the lid and tip the whole thing, heavy and dripping, into the trash.
The clock says three AM. The worst hour of the night, when everything becomes bleak and real. It’s closer to dawn on the East Coast and my parents get up early. In just another hour, I can call them again.
I sit on the sofa. Perhaps I can find more news now. I keep the volume off, turn on closed captioning, and flip to one of those twenty-four-hour news channels. Nothing about Ava comes on, and after watching the news scroll across the bottom of the screen and the subtitles blur on top of it, in spite of everything I know and all I learned, I fall asleep with the remote in my hand.
* * *
As I struggle back to the waking world, first my neck protests, bent at an awkward angle and jounced by an unseen force. Then I hear the high-pitched noise, closer than the television, and it resolves into words. “Lizzie! Lizzie!”
I’m not really a morning person, so it takes a few more minutes to realize that the jolting and noise are coming from Emma bouncing me on the sofa.
“Hello, sleepyhead.” Andrew is in the kitchen. He must have been silent as a housebreaker, because he’s already made coffee.
He smiles at me as he fills a mug and adds a splash of milk, the way I like it. “You were really out. Bad dreams?”
I mean to say Something like that, but it comes out as an unintelligible garble and he laughs, but not unkindly. I love it when Andrew laughs and the tension in his shoulders releases. That’s one of the scars from the loss of his wife, the constant vigilance. He’s never forgotten the burden of being a single parent.
Pushing myself upright, I reach out for the mug Andrew brings me, and at the roasted-earth aroma, my eyes fill with tears. Stupid sentimental things like puppies and warm coffee can make me cry, but huge things—distant parents, a missing sister, or the dawning realization that I will have to tell Andrew everything—leave my eyes dry. Anything I say will cost me this home, this safety, this sweet child snuggling next to me on the sofa. I curl my hands around the mug and wish I could stay here forever.
Emma must feel the same way. “I want to sleep out here too. Tonight, Daddy, can I have a sleepover with Lizzie?”
Andrew meets my eyes with a wink. “I think it’s easier for everyone if you sleep in your own special big-girl bed.”
I can still see CNN playing on mute behind Andrew, and in that moment everything outside the television screen seems to freeze. There is a podium on the screen, and police officers and my parents. With them is a man I haven’t seen for three years. Glenn. He and Ava are married now. I hate myself, but I wish they weren’t. His shoulders look broader, his face more chiseled than I remember.
I have to hear what he is saying.
I grab for the remote control, but Emma tips over, giggling, and my coffee sloshes over my arm. Jerking away, I send the remote skittering across the floor, before I realize the coffee is warm, not scalding. I’m okay, I’m okay, I tell myself, but I feel as wired as if I’d had three pots.
“You really aren’t yourself this morning,” Andrew says. “Why don’t you go back to bed, try to grab a few more hours? I’ll get this monkey dressed and off to school.” He leans over and scoops Emma up effortlessly, dropping a soft kiss on the top of my head.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I sit in the spilled coffee, letting my pajama bottoms soak it up. I don’t deserve Andrew’s love, and Glenn is back to make sure I can’t keep it. I turn the sound on and rewind to the beginning of the news story.
“We’re asking anyone with information about Ava to come forward. In addition, there is some indication that her sister”—Glenn stumbles over the word—“my sister-in-law may be involved.”
My skin puckers with goose bumps that have nothing to do with the rapidly cooling coffee. I thought that even if Glenn didn’t love me, he knew me, understood me. But there my former lover stands in front of a microphone, throwing me to the wolves. I wish I could feel hate for this judgmental stranger, but there’s only pain and rising fear. Someone is setting me up. Is it him?
My parents are just standing there behind him. Walter and Nancy Hallett. The Doctors Hallett. How can they believe I’m involved? All those years they didn’t defend me against Ava, all those times they said I was overreacting. They never really saw me. Whatever parents are supposed to be, my mother and father can’t manage it.
I pause the television and squint hard at Glenn, standing there in his dress shirt with the rolled-up sleeves. He has changed. I used to think he looked dangerous, sexy, but time has made his good looks softer, more conventional. He’s the kind of guy anyone would call handsome and some might call trouble. Not like Andrew. My husband looks like a nice guy, a guy you can trust. He has creases in the corners of his eyes from smiling and a deepening line between his brows from worrying.
Glenn is standing there between my sleek mother and my distinguished father, like part of our family. There wasn’t a press conference when I disappeared. Not even in the months before I made my first phone call. No sign of fear or worry, no missing persons report. That must be why I’m such an easy scapegoat. No one cares where I am. Not like precious Ava.
I push play again, and it catches me by surprise how quickly the screen changes to the news anchor. Behind her, much bigger than her head, is a picture of a girl in her early twenties. Her eyes are wide and startled, what Andrew calls crazy eyes. She is looking up from a cutting board with a knife in her hand. Then the picture zooms in—the eyes even bigger, thin lips parted in surprise, the kitchen counter cropped out. I know the girl is finely dicing onion for a mirepoix.
I know, because the girl is me.
From the hallway there’s a commotion, loud footsteps, and then Emma’s excited voice cries, “Lizzie, you’re on TV!”
Behind her Andrew says, “We talked about this, Emma. I’m not Tom Hanks, and Lizzie—” He stops, and I know he is looking at the screen, where the anchor is completing her story about the strange coincidence wherein I have not been seen for over three years.
“But this isn’t the first time an author’s life has become a real mystery. Over ninety years ago, the ‘Queen of Crime,’ Dame Agatha Christie, staged her own disappearance and inspired an eleven-day manhunt. Now crime aficionados are wondering if Hallett’s disappearance is another elaborate hoax or a case of foul play. Officials ask anyone with information about either of the Hallett sisters to come forward. More news, after this.”