That was the sad part of being so young. She wouldn't remember her mother's tears of joy at their reunion. The cry of relief and exultation. The never-ending embrace. She would never know that she had once been gone, and now she was back.
Serena drove slowly. She told herself that the roads were lonely and dark in the middle of the night, and she didn't want to take any risk in the snow. It was too easy to hit a deer. Too easy to skid off the road. The reality was that she didn't want the drive to end. For one hour, Callie was totally within her care, almost as if she were her own, and she realized that Valerie had been right all along. Without kids, Serena couldn't understand the desperation of loss or the depth of responsibility. Now, for a brief moment, she did understand. She would have thrown herself in front of a bullet for Callie.
She wished she could hold this moment in a kind of suspended animation, until she passed the responsibility for the little girl back to Valerie. Tomorrow would be different, when the press surrounded the house, and photographers shot pictures for magazine covers, and champagne flowed in the war room in Grand Rapids. Tomorrow would be filled with noise and elation.
Tomorrow would be her first day to confront the new world. Her own new world. Alone.
Tonight was for her and Callie.
'You can read all about it when you're older,' she told Callie, who slept calmly and didn't hear a word.
She wondered at what age a girl would want to learn more about being kidnapped as a child. Fifteen? Eighteen? Maybe never. Maybe Valerie would try to keep it a secret, but Serena knew there were no secrets about that kind of experience. It would seep into Callie's consciousness as she grew older, something people talked about but that she didn't understand, something that made her different. Someday she'd want to know more.
It wouldn't be easy. It wouldn't be happy. The ending was happy, but everything else about the time in between would have been better kept as secrets. When do you choose to read that the father you lived with was the principal suspect in your disappearance, a man that everyone in the world assumed had murdered you and buried your body? When do you want to read about him wishing you had never been born?
When does your mother tell you that this man was not your father at all? When do you begin to think you're alive not because of love, but because your mother was so lonely she turned to comfort with another man? When do you realize that no one is innocent and understand what betrayal is all about?
Not now. Not for a long time.
'I hope you never blame yourself,' Serena told Callie in the back seat. 'I know it's easy to do. The mind is a funny thing. Something happens and you have no control over it all, and somehow you still think it's your fault.' She smiled as she looked in the mirror and added, 'If you ever feel that way, call me, OK? I'll come back and talk to you. I'll tell you how you rescued your mother long before she ever rescued you.'
She passed the turn-off that led through the dirt roads to the
Sago Cemetery, and she shivered. That was how fate worked. Two children were born on the same night; one lived, one died. It wasn't fair.
'You're almost home, Callie,' she said.
The last miles melted away, disappearing with the hypnotic throb of the engine. The forest thinned, and she drove closer to civilization again. Buildings appeared. Dark houses hugged the highway. It was two in the morning as she wound through the downtown streets, which were as vacant and artificial as a movie set. The silence followed her across the last bridge over the water.
Then, behind her, the noisy whine of a police siren shattered the peace. Red lights swirled and grew large in her mirror, and a Sheriff's vehicle sped past her. The car turned where she was about to turn, on the road that led to Valerie's house.
Serena didn't need to be told. She realized with despair where it was going.
'Oh, no,' she said.
Stride watched Kasey's flashlight swivel in his direction and capture him where he stood amid the rubble and hanging wires of a jagged gap in the wall. He held his gun with both hands. Kasey's head turned, and she saw him, but she didn't lower her gun. She aimed it at Maggie at point-blank range.
'It's over,' he warned her.
Her face was covered with blood and dirt. Her ripped shirt hung open, exposing the swell of her breasts. Her red hair was matted down. The gun quivered in her outstretched arms. He held her stare and didn't like what he saw in her eyes. Behind the exhaustion and panic, she was obsessed. Desperate to escape.
'Put the gun down right now,' he said.
Kasey's lower lip trembled. Her chest heaved as she hyperventilated. The cage she had built began to close in around her.
'Kasey, I'm not alone. Do you understand me? Cops are coming. There is no way out. Are you listening? No way out. Just put the gun down, so no one else gets hurt.'
His eyes flicked to Maggie. She was pale, and her neck was bleeding. She showed no fear with the barrel of a gun inches from her face.
Instead, when she saw him watching her, she mouthed two words back to him.
I'm OK.
But she wasn't. Kasey's finger was still curled round the trigger.
'We know about Callie,' Stride said. 'Listen to me, Kasey, it's over. The police are at your house right now. Callie's going home to her parents. Nothing you do here is going to change that.'
'You're taking Callie?' Kasey murmured. Her voice sounded like a lost little girl.
'I'm sorry.'
'You can't take her away from me.'
'The secret is out, Kasey. Everyone knows the truth. It's time to get help.'
Hopelessness and horror washed across Kasey's face. 'My God, it was all for nothing.'
He watched the gun. He watched her finger. Neither moved. 'I need you to put the gun down now.'
'Nothing,' she repeated. 'It was all for nothing.'
'Kasey, do what he says,' Maggie instructed her sternly. 'Put the gun down.'
Kasey's wide eyes turned toward Maggie again. 'I'm sorry. I can't. I need to get out of here.'
Maggie's voice softened. 'Listen to me, Kasey. I understand. I've had miscarriages, and I blamed myself. I went crazy. I did things I'll always regret. I know how it must have been for you. You loved your boy, and there was nothing you could do for him. That's the worst pain a woman can endure. It's worse than dying yourself. But this isn't the answer. You know that.'
Kasey's elbow sagged downward. The barrel of the gun tilted toward the blasted foam tiles in the ceiling. Her whole body caved in on itself. Stride took a step closer, with both hands still tightly wrapped around the butt of his gun.
'That's good, Kasey, now bend down and lay it on the floor, and put your hands on the top of your head.'
Kasey stared at him with those same wounded eyes, putting him off guard. She knelt to the floor. He began to relax, but then he realized that her hand was still locked fiercely around the gun. Her grip hadn't changed. She hadn't taken her finger off the trigger. He looked into her eyes and realized that her submissiveness was a ruse.
She wasn't giving up.
Maggie saw it too. 'Stride,' she warned him, her voice urgent, but he reacted too slowly.
Kasey's finger moved, not on her gun hand, but on her other hand. She switched off her flashlight, throwing the ruins into blackness again. Stride knew what was coming next. He threw himself sideways as fire flashed from Kasey's gun. Something hot burned through the skin of his neck, and he felt warm blood running on his skin and soaking into his shirt. He hit the ground and spun, rolling through sharp glass and a mountain of fallen stone.