He’s just curious, Stephen told himself. Get this over with. “Once,’” he admitted. “The police thought she might have been in New York, so my sister Jodie and I actually went into the city and started walking. We thought we could spot her.’” He flushed at the childishness of it. “I thought she’d eat at a soup kitchen, and we could show her photograph around and people would tell us where she lived.’”
“That’s actually a pretty good approach,’” said Mr. Donnelly.
“Will you try again?’” asked Kathleen’s mother.
“If I hunt her down,’” Stephen said slowly, “I’m letting the woman rule my life again. I won’t do that. But if I stumbled on a clue, I’d follow through. I’d want a trial. I’d want her declared guilty. I’d want her in prison.’”
But this was a lie.
To have the past back?
It would destroy him.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Back when Janie had discovered the milk carton, which she flattened and hid and slipped out ten times a day to see if it was still her face on there—and it was—she had pictured the Spring family in New Jersey lurking in the bushes of her life. Waiting to leap out and drag her away.
But no.
It was Hannah leaping out. Hannah with the power to control Janie no matter how many years went by.
Janie and Reeve and Brian didn’t stay for the race parties, even though #64 placed in three races. Reeve came home with Janie and Brian. Nobody talked much until they reached the house and saw that Mrs. Johnson’s car was not in the driveway. There was nobody home.
The boys followed Janie inside. Everybody had something cold to drink.
Janie rinsed her glass in the sink, letting hot tap water soothe her trembling hands. Brian and Reeve were thinking about money and payments and the FBI. She was thinking about Honor thy father and mother.
Did I pick the wrong pair to honor? Should I have stayed in New Jersey and become Jennie Spring again, and let Frank and Miranda Johnson sink into the past?
She had gotten to know her blood parents as you know relatives you see on holidays: comfortably, but not well.
Maybe you never knew anybody well.
Could she trust Brian and Reeve? She almost laughed. It was ridiculous to worry about trust when the contents of the folder proved there was no such thing. “I’m going to go through the file,’” she told them. “You can come if you want.’”
They came.
The little office was hot and musty.
Only a few years earlier, Janie had learned keyboarding on a typewriter. Now the high school had four hundred computers. Janie could type her birth name on one of those computers and read about herself on the Internet. She felt unsafe online, as if some site might burst open and the face of Hannah Javensen would stare out at her, mocking.
Janie touched the handle of the Paid Bills drawer. Hannah had been right here in the house with her, hiding in the back of a dark desk.
They sat on the floor, backs against the wall, Janie in the middle, exactly as they had at the races, and she opened the file and held it so that they could read together.
Except that Janie could not seem to read.
She could see rows of little black print on the pages she was turning, but she could not decipher them. It was almost funny. Here was every piece of information her father had gathered, and she had lost the ability to read.
Do I trust Reeve? On a basic level, I do. He’s not going to steal the silver. But eclipse level? Guide-me-through-the-dark trust?
I don’t even know how to define the word trust. It’s one of those gut words, like faith and honor. If you have it, you know it.
But Reeve can read and he can think, and I can’t do either one. So forget trust, just be practical and ask for help.
When she could speak without sobbing, she said, “So what’s your conclusion about this stuff, Reeve?’”
Reeve was afraid for her. She was as stiff as an angle iron, not so much sitting next to him as welded to the wall and the floor. One by one, she turned over the check stubs and paid bills and miscellaneous paperwork, but her eyes seemed stuck out beyond the words, and he knew she was not reading.
She handed him the file, which surprised him, but he took over, sorting the papers into piles. It was remarkable how old bills could tell a story. And what also surprised him was how simple it was. It was just barely a mystery.
“Frank didn’t hire a private detective to find Hannah,’” said Reeve finally. “He did the same thing your family did, Brian. He kept his old phone number. Probably had a recording for Hannah. Like—Mother and Dad love you. Tell us how to reach you.’”
Reeve had a hideous vision of a father calling in to that machine, month after month, year after year, hoping for the voice of his lost daughter.
Janie’s left hand lay like a cold paperweight on top of the papers they’d already looked at, while her right hand fluttered nervously around her face. Reeve wondered if he could take Janie’s hand and decided he couldn’t.
“The bank Frank uses is in Atlanta. His name is printed on the checks, but no address and no phone, so Hannah can’t locate him through the checks. Frank doesn’t want to see her or hear from her, I guess; he just wants her to have money.’” He nudged Janie. “Look at this, this is important, this is good.’” He stabbed a page with his finger, but Janie did not look down.
“Janie, listen to me! This is good. Frank hasn’t always known where Hannah is. He doesn’t start sending money until three and a half years ago. He finds her, or else she calls in, or something happens.’”
They all knew what had happened three and a half years ago. Nobody said it out loud.
“From then on,’” said Reeve, studying the entries, “he sends money four times a year.’”
The large amount of money in the account was puzzling. Why so much? Cuts down on how often he has to think about it, Reeve decided. He has to write checks, but at least he doesn’t have to make deposits.
Next Reeve picked up the police report. Brian read along avidly, but Janie turned her face away. She wants the old version, thought Reeve, the one that doesn’t work anymore.
“How do you think Frank got hold of that report, Reeve?’” asked Brian. “Do you think he stole it from the police? Do you think when their backs were turned, he snatched it up?’”
“He probably just asked.’” Reeve thought of the poor guy lying and faking in front of New York police. “There are two police reports. The older one is her arrest for—’” He stopped himself. “Is her arrest. Going by the dates on the checks, I’m going to guess that when they released her, she tried her old phone number for the first time. She got Frank’s machine and a few weeks later, Frank begins to support her.’”
“She’s so vicious!’” cried Janie. “So rotten!’” She pressed her fingers together steeple style, so hard Reeve was afraid she would snap them backward and they’d be picking fingers up off the floor.
“All those years,’” whispered Janie, “and Hannah doesn’t bother with her family. Not on their birthdays. Not on their anniversary. Not Christmas. But she gets arrested as a prostitute and calls up her father.’”
Reeve pictured Frank checking for messages and hearing that one. How could that feel? What if Reeve had to find that out about one of his sisters, or his cousins—or Janie?
It would kill you.
The Johnsons lived in Connecticut a couple of hours north of New York City. Had Frank driven in? Picked Hannah up? Taken her to the airport? Bought her that ticket? Told her to change her name from Javensen to Johnson too, so that she could vanish?
Oh, thought Reeve, weak with relief. She can’t be an impostor. Frank met her. He could have gotten the plane ticket with a credit card and wired money, but I bet he didn’t. I bet he had to see her.
Had Frank brought pictures of Janie to show off? Had he said, Do you want to see how your little girl turned out?
No, he wouldn’t dare. Pictures migh
t tempt Hannah to stay. Frank would want Hannah to get on the plane and go.
But what would Hannah have answered, anyway? Would she have frowned in confusion? (What kid? Oh, you mean the one I kidnapped and left with you? I forgot about her.)
Hannah’s form of evil was forgetfulness. She forgot to be kind, she forgot to be thoughtful. She forgot her parents. How terrible, how sad, that she’d remembered her old phone number, and that it had still been connected.
Reeve watched Janie press her palms against the floor on either side of her, and now it was her elbows and wrists that Reeve had to worry about, as she seemed perfectly willing to snap those off.
“I bet she didn’t even say, How are you?’” cried Janie. “I bet she didn’t even say, I’m sorry. I bet she didn’t say, So how’s your life been? I bet she said, Bring money.’”
Janie wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if to squeeze all the blood out of her heart.
Reeve’s eyes met Brian’s. We don’t dare touch her, he thought. Helpless, he went on through the folder.
“Look, Janie,’” he said, deeply relieved. “Right here. Truly good news. Look at the date the phone bills stop. It’s the month Lizzie figures out who you really are and what really happened. Frank thinks Hannah is your mother and you’re his granddaughter right up to the minute when Lizzie walks into the house and tells him about your face on the milk carton. That’s the first minute he knows about the kidnapping, Janie. And what does he do? He cancels the phone. He keeps sending money, he can’t abandon her entirely, but he doesn’t give Hannah a way to reach him again.’”
Truly good news, Reeve had just said. But it was not good news. Not for Frank Johnson.
On that stub was recorded the moment in which a father knew he would never speak to his daughter again. He had been tricked and lied to, but far worse, his belief that he was a great father to Janie had been brutally destroyed.
He was no father.
He was part of a kidnapping.
On her father’s desk were bookends Janie had made in Brownies. The girls had split their own geodes and glued them to L-shaped pieces of wood, which they had cut, notched and polished. When she’d given them to Dad, Janie thought they were the most beautiful bookends in the world. From here, she saw they were not level and not smooth; they were poorly stained, and missing one geode. Why keep them?
But she knew why Frank Johnson had kept those bookends.
There was only one reason in the world to keep bookends or an old telephone number. Only one reason in the world to send money to a lost child. Only one reason to protect Hannah.
Love.
He loved Hannah.
For a dizzying moment, Janie felt herself back at the races, high on the bleachers, while cars flew around an egg-shaped track, drying out the spray from the water truck.
Water evaporated.
Parental love did not.
The child grows up, does wrong things, stupid things, and the father still loves her. And no matter what, the father cannot bear her suffering. And so the father endlessly tries to help.
Love went on.
Oh, Daddy! she thought. I understand love. My New Jersey mother kept loving me when I was missing, and when I was found she loved me enough to let me go. So I know what love is, Daddy. I know you loved Hannah. “But what about me, Daddy? I’m not mad at you anymore, but what am I supposed to do?’”
She hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but out it came, in such pain that both boys hugged her at the same time and everybody’s arms bumped.
Janie wept.
Reeve reached up with his sneaker tip and knocked a box of Kleenex off Mrs. Johnson’s desk and onto the floor. Brian hooked it with his sneaker. They kicked it up into their laps without letting go of each other, and the three of them watched its slow progress. Janie took a handful of tissues.
“Why do you have to do anything?’” asked Brian. “Just pretend you didn’t find the file.’”
“The day on which the check is written is coming up, Brian. Do I send Hannah money? Or do I not send Hannah money?’”
“That’s easy. You don’t. The woman killed our family. You can’t go and send her money so she can eat out and have cable TV. Let her starve. Let her live in a gutter.’”
“But Brian,’” said Janie, “that’s the point. She might go live in a gutter. Remember why she was arrested. She was a hooker. A person nobody ever wants his own kid to become. What if, without Frank’s money, she’d be back on the street? What do I owe my father? Do I owe it to him to keep supporting his daughter? She’s his real daughter, Brian. I’m just passing through.’”
It was Brian who decided they needed chocolate. He got up off the floor, offering to make everybody a sundae.
“Heat the chocolate sauce,’” said Reeve.
“You go with him,’” Janie said, pushing him gently. “You heat the chocolate sauce.’”
Reeve opened his mouth to protest.
“I need to pull myself together,’” she said.
He almost didn’t go, so she looked away from him, and frowned down into the folder, and he was forced to follow Brian into the kitchen.
She had said it out loud to a brother and an ex-boyfriend, the worst thought of all: I’m not the daughter who counts.
She hoped she could trust them. There was no way to pretend she had not said those words.
Janie put every paper neatly back into the folder. Clumsily getting to her knees, with her right hand she found the alphabetical space for H. J. and with her left shifted the folder to the proper angle for inserting it into the drawer, and there, on the back outside of the heavy paper, was a lightly penciled address.
A post office box, a city and state.
Of course.
The checks had to be mailed.
The kidnapper lived someplace. She was not just out there, adrift in a population of two hundred fifty million.
She isn’t lost, thought Janie, staring in horror and fascination at the address. Frank is lost. But Hannah is there. In Boulder, Colorado. Where Stephen is.
Janie Johnson took a deep breath.
I could go.
I could visit Stephen.
And find Hannah.
CHAPTER
NINE
“I’m home!’” called Janie’s mother.
Janie closed the file drawer.
From the kitchen drifted voices and the rich sweet smell of chocolate.
“Hi, Mrs. Johnson,’” said Reeve. “How’s Mr. Johnson? Any better?’”
“He is. I truly believe he squeezed my hand.’”
“That’s great,’” said Brian. “We should celebrate. We’re all having chocolate sundaes. You want chocolate or cookie dough ice cream with yours, Mrs. J.?’”
Janie slipped through the hall and ran lightly up the stairs to her room. Now that the boys had proved how easily they could read her face, she needed to stand in private until her face got slack and boring. The boys thought they knew everything.
They knew nothing.
In the mirror she saw that her eyes had flared too wide and her cheeks sported hot pink blotches. She opened a bottle of lotion and rubbed it over her face and into her skin. She stretched her arms and shook her wrists, then shook her shoulders, waist, hips, knees and ankles, to the tune of an old elementary school gym song.
Then she emptied her lungs, as if the room were full of birthday candles and she must puff out hundreds.
Find Hannah.
Ask the thousand questions that had stung Janie like wasps since the day she first saw her face on the milk carton. Why? Why me? What made you do it? How did you do it? Did I laugh? Did I mind being stolen from my family? When you thought my name was Janie, not Jennie, did I argue? Did I cry? Did you slap me?
And afterward.
Oh, Hannah, afterward.
When you saw your mother and father for the first time in years, and lied to them, saying, “This is your granddaughter,’” were you laughing at them? Taking
some obscure revenge? Or was it just convenient?
What were you running from? What were you running toward?
Why did you take me with you? Why didn’t you take me the rest of the way? Where did you go next?
Did you think about that family in New Jersey, and what they would go through when their baby vanished? Did you think about them every night? Did you have nightmares?
Or did you forget?
All those years, Hannah!
Where have you been? What have you been doing? Have you ever loved? Or do you still use people, throw them away, and drive on?
She found that she was kneading lotion into her hands like a surgeon scrubbing.
I can find her, Janie thought. It won’t be hard. She gets money four times a year, and that date is coming up. If you get money only every three months, you’re not going to forget about showing up at the post office. You’ll be there on time. So I mail her check to that box, and then I wait at the post office!
She ran a movie of this through her mind and saw herself standing around for hours, or days, hoping to spot a Hannah-like adult.
It wouldn’t work.
Janie paced, circling her bed, rearranging pillows as if they were Hannah’s throat.
I know. Instead of putting the check in the envelope, I’ll put in a note. I’ll tell her to meet me someplace and she’ll get her money after we talk.
Yes!
But how sick. How scary.
Writing a letter to my kidnapper.
Handwriting was so intimate. It was impossible. She would have to do it on the computer and print it out. But even then—write to this person who had mutilated their lives?
But kidnapping, too, possessed a terrible intimacy. Janie had no real memory because she’d been so little. But Hannah Javensen would remember.
I’m doing it, Janie thought fiercely. I’ll get a guidebook and figure out a good spot to meet Hannah.
Her body was a race car. Every physiological count rocketed—pulse, temperature, adrenaline—her thoughts roaring, leaping, slamming into the dark cold night of finding Hannah Javensen.