I tell Mrs. Delmont my sister Courtney was murdered. That I grieve for her every day. I don’t tell her that I don’t really have a sister. That Courtney is my mother and she’s not dead. I’m trying to find her.
Dr. Albright asked me: You told her that you had a sister and she was murdered?
I said, I guess.
Why did you use your mother’s name when you spoke about a sister? Dr. Albright asked.
I see where you’re going with this, I told her. I was mad at my mother for the lies, the betrayal, but I didn’t wish her dead. Even though I was on the run, I was trying to find her. To save her.
I remember now how Dr. Albright gave me that non-judgmental look that she is so good at. Letting me decide what I’d had in my mind and in my heart.
You’re safe here, she said. You can say anything you want.
I told her how Monique’s face relaxed and she rested a hand on my knee. Mrs. Delmont said, “Well then, we’re in a sisterhood of unending grief.”
I remember that I didn’t want to be in any such sisterhood. Who would? For my part, then and now, I wanted to be in the sisterhood of vengeance and retribution. All of her fundraisers, all of her talk show appearances, haven’t added up to anything. Not really. As long as a killer breathes the same air as we do, a victim’s family is never free.
Nineteen
I was in her kitchen a very long time ago. It still smells of the almond cookies she served me before she knew the truth about me. I see a plate on the kitchen island with half a dozen store-bought almond cookies on it. I try one. Stale. I eat the rest of it and another. I put a couple in my blazer pocket for later and save the rest for Ronnie.
Monique was old school. People her age grew up sitting around kitchen tables, having meals as a family, talking about school or other interesting things that had happened or will happen, playing board games. After Hayden’s short visit I’d broken down and bought a smart TV and watched an old show a few nights ago. In it the mother wore dresses with short, puffy sleeves, a ribbon tied at the waist, lipstick, eye makeup, stiff but perfect hair with half a can of hairspray on it. She never said anything catty. Never argued with her husband. The kids were as perfect as they could be.
And yet I know that beneath perfection sometimes lurks something very disturbing.
I sit at the kitchen table. Magnets hold a calendar on the refrigerator. Monique had been marking days with a big X. The marks ended three weeks ago. There was nothing else to indicate why she was doing this. I take the calendar and flip through it. The only things she’s marked are hair appointments. No doctors. No birthdays. Nothing. I don’t keep a calendar in my place for this very reason. I don’t want anyone violating my privacy.
Ronnie comes into the kitchen. “There’s nothing in any of the bathrooms. If she has a brush, she took it with her. Same for any kind of medicine. I can tell you that she touched up her own roots but that’s about it. No toothbrush, either. Except for one in the packaging in the drawer. Did you find anything in here?”
I don’t tell her I’ve been lost in the past.
“Nothing yet. You go through the cabinets in here and check again. I’ll go to the bathroom and double-check. Then we’ll check the other rooms. If she left something telling us why she went to Port Townsend, it’s likely to be in the kitchen, bathroom or great room, and I didn’t see anything in there.”
“Me either,” Ronnie says. She begins checking the drawers I haven’t looked in. “Look at this,” she announces, holding a pink sheet of paper. It’s a carbon copy of a car rental agreement.
“I guess I know why we didn’t find a car at the scene now,” I say, and call Mindy’s phone.
Ronnie hands me the rental papers. I put the call on speakerphone so Ronnie can listen.
“Hi, Megan,” Mindy says. “How are you? Oh, you ask how I am. I’m fine. It’s nice to know you still call even when you don’t need something.”
“I called with business if you don’t mind. Then we can have drinks later and you can criticize me for being a