I’d come up with tasks that needed to be done in our basement, ask you to help me out with them.” He shakes his head, disappointed. “It didn’t work, though. You were always just eager to help. ‘What should we do next, Ted?’ you’d ask, and then I’d invent some other stupid thing for us to do. And you never showed any signs of fear at all. To the point where I almost wondered…”
His eyes slide away, sticking to the wall behind me, and the sentence ends right there.
“Wondered what?” I ask. “If I’d really been kidnapped?”
“Anyway,” he says, ignoring the question, “any police investigation would have interfered with my research.”
“But why? Why couldn’t you do both? Why couldn’t you call the police and”—I press my lips together before letting the rest come out—“study me?”
He snaps his attention back toward my face, incredulous. “Because they’re incompetent! They wouldn’t know how to interview you properly. They’d say things that would compromise the integrity of my research, and if anyone was going to get some real answers out of you, it had to be me. You’re my daughter. It was my right!”
The room reels. I watch it spin for a second, and then I close my eyes, press my temples. I always knew that Ted would do anything for his work, but when I thought of that word—anything—I never truly meant anything. I certainly didn’t mean prioritizing his research over taking the most basic step to help his daughter. What he did—it’s more than I can rationalize. Or even begin to comprehend.
Unless.
Eric’s theory from yesterday morning. That Ted might be holding something back. Protecting someone.
“Did Brennan Llewellyn do this to me?” I demand. “Did you find out somehow, and you… you decided to cover for him—and that’s why you didn’t go to the police?”
Ted laughs so hard it jostles me. “Brennan?” he barks. “You think Brennan would actually—no, no, no. Trust me, whoever it was, it was not Brennan Llewellyn.”
He sounds sincere. I almost believe him. But then again, I believed he had really filed a report.
“Why did you lie to me about the police?” I ask.
His grin withers. He’s contemplating something.
“I had to tell you I filed a report,” he says after a few moments, “because I didn’t want you figuring it out too soon.”
“Figuring out what?”
“Why I called you here. If I told you the truth—that I’d been trying to study you back then—you would have put it all together.”
I stare at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I couldn’t believe my luck,” he says, “when I heard that Astrid Sullivan was missing again. It was so fortuitous, this second disappearance. Of course I needed to get you back here. Needed to watch you for recovered memories. For heightened fear. Then I could pair all that research with the notes I took in 2000.” His eyes gleam. “There could be a book! It could blow Brennan right out of the water!”
I try to shake my head, but my neck is slow to move. “I don’t understand.”
Ted sighs. Regards me like a child he’s tired of tolerating. “I’m not moving to Florida, Fern. I only told you that so you’d agree to come home. So I could study you.”
The words take a moment to sink in. But then I hear what he’s saying, and my head drops into my hands. I taste my tears almost immediately. They rush down my cheeks. Splash onto my lips.
Of all his confessions and revelations, this is the one that breaks me. Because I was so stupid. Because I’m embarrassed. Because I should have already known. (I need you, he said to me on the phone—and how quickly I started packing. How easily I overlooked the fact that Ted is not a Florida man.) But most acutely, most achingly, my tears come hot and quick because a daughter shouldn’t have to doubt her father or wonder what awful trick he has up his sleeve.
“How?” I ask from behind my hands. It’s the only word I can manage.
“It was challenging,” he says. “I couldn’t appear to be watching you, of course. I had to be patient. Wait for you to come to me. And in the meantime, I’ve been crafting hypotheses. Revisiting my old notes. Studying that woman’s mem—”
“No,” I cut him off.
My stomach whirls. That roiling nausea. That reminder that there’s someone growing inside me. I want to feel love toward this baby, but right now, I feel only my weakness. My anguish and fear. The child