“Time to process and to heal, I’m sure,” Dante Campbell added.
Of course, Megan thought. Because, after all, it had been a whole year, and certainly such a time frame was sufficient to heal. Surely, a full year would make her complete again. Because, if Megan didn’t come across as healed and happy and recovered, Dante Campbell—queen of morning television—would look wicked while drilling her for details. Please, Megan thought, tell your audience again how mended and restored I am.
“That too, yes,” Megan said.
“I’m sure something like this takes a long time to get over, and in some ways documenting the events in your book was therapeutic.”
Megan stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She had many adjectives to describe the process that created her book. Therapeutic was not one of them.
“It was.” Megan smiled with her lips pressed together. It was her new smile, the best she could do and so different from the beaming pictures she saw the other day when she paged through her senior yearbook. Back then, her smile was wide, with straight, bright teeth filling the space between her curved lips. She tried at first, but it was too hard to fake that big smile so she came up with this new one. Lips together, edges turned up. Happy. People were buying it.
“What can people expect from reading your book?”
Megan wasn’t completely sure, since she hadn’t written much of it—that distinction went to her shrink, who snagged a byline on the cover.
“It, uh, you know, covers the night it happened.”
“The night you were abducted,” Dante clarified.
“Yes. And the two weeks I spent in captivity. A lot of it is stuff in my head that I thought about while being held. About where I was kept, and all my failed attempts to get away. And then about the night I, you know, ran out of the forest.”
“The night you escaped.”
Megan hesitated. “Yes. The book documents my escape.” The thin smile again. “And a whole chapter about Mr. Steinman.”
Dante Campbell also smiled. Her voice was soft. “The man who found you on Highway Fifty-Seven.”
“Yes. He’s my hero. My dad’s hero, too.”
“I bet. We had Mr. Steinman on the show, not long after your ordeal.”
“I saw, and I was happy that he got the recognition he deserves. He saved my life that night.”
“Indeed.” Dante looked down at her notes before smiling again. “It’s no secret the country has fallen in love with you. So many people want to know how you’re doing and what’s next for you. Will they get any of that from the book? About your plans for the future?”
Megan pulled her hand from under her thigh and rotated it in the air to help her think. “There’s a lot about what’s happened since that night, yes.”
“With you and your family?”
“Yes.”
“And with the ongoing investigation?”
“As much as we know about it, yes.”
“How difficult is it for you to know your abductor is still out there?”
“It’s hard, but I know the police are doing everything they can to find him.” Megan made a mental note to thank her dad for that answer. He fed it to her the night before.
“Before this all happened, you were on your way to Duke University. We’re all curious to know if that is still an option for you.”
Megan rubbed her tongue around the inside of her sandpaper lips. “Um, I took a year off after this happened. I was trying for this fall but that didn’t work out. I just . . . couldn’t get things organized in time.”
“It has to be hard, of course, to get back to normal. But I understand the university has extended an open invitation for whenever you’re ready?”
Megan had long since stopped questioning people’s fascinations with her abduction, and the public’s unquenchable thirst for the morbid details of her captivity. And now, their lust for her to proceed as though nothing happened. She stopped questioning all of these things when she finally understood the reasoning behind them. She knew attending Duke University and carrying on a normal life would allow all those who feasted on the morose details of her ordeal to feel good about themselves. Her normalness was their escape from sin. Otherwise, how could they or Dante Campbell yearn so badly to hear the disturbing details of Megan’s abduction if she were still reeling from that event? If she were a broken girl whose life was a wreck and would never be the same, their vigor for her story would simply be unacceptable. They couldn’t allow themselves to be so attracted to her narrative if it ended any way but beautifully. If she were healed, however, if she were moving on with her new, therapeutic book and taking a shiny seat in the freshman class at Duke University, and if she were a success . . . well, then they all could burrow like maggots into the meaty flesh of her disturbing story and fly away clean and pearly as though no metamorphosis had occurred.
Megan McDonald needed to be a success story. It was as simple as that.
“Yes,” Megan finally said. “Duke has given me many options for next semester or even next year.”
Dante Campbell smiled again, her eyes soft. “Well, I know you’ve been through a lot, and you are an inspiration to survivors of abduction everywhere. And we know this book will certainly be a beacon of hope for them. Would you come back and talk to us again sometime? Give us an update?”
“Of course.” Thin smile.
“Megan McDonald. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you.”
After repeating where Missing could be purchased, Ms. Campbell sent things off to commercial break and the studio was again loud with voices from the dark area behind the cameras.
“You did really well,” Dante Campbell said.
“You never asked about Nicole.”
“It was just a timing thing, hon. We were running late. But we’ll put a link about Nicole up on the website.”
And with that, Dante Campbell was up and past her, offering a gentle pat on Megan’s shoulder. Megan nodded, alone in the studio chair. This, too, she understood. Today’s interview could only include the pretty details. The inspiring parts. The heroic escape and the bright future and the girls who were sure to be helped by the book. This morning’s interview was a conclusion to the Megan McDonald drama and it had to end with success. It could include none of the ugly elements that still lingered about that summer. Especially about Nicole.
Nicole Cutty was gone. Nicole Cutty was not a success story.
PART I
“A life might end, but sometimes their case lives forever.”
—Gerald Colt, MD
CHAPTER 1
September 2017
Twelve Months Since Megan’s Escape
Why forensic pathology?