This verse, this lifeboat, had saved her. But it had not brought her one moment of peace.
As she peeled out of her driveway, the sun’s light piercing her eyes, she turned to the last page of the Bible, the one verse that had been left blank. The one that called out for words. For answers. And she couldn’t stop herself from hoping that now, finally, it would be written.
THREE
Cass
I lay in the bed with my mother’s arms around me. My hair was wet and I could feel water bleed into the pillowcase and turn cold against my cheek. She was crying. Sobbing.
“Oh, Cassandra! My baby! My baby!”
I have already said that I had imagined this moment for three years. And after all the time I had to prepare, I was, still, shockingly unprepared.
Her body felt frail to me, and I tried to remember the last time I’d felt it. She had withdrawn much of her physical affection after the custody fight, but not all of it. There were hugs on special occasions, her birthday and Mother’s Day especially because our father gave us money to buy her gifts. I did not remember it feeling like this. Hard bones.
“My baby! Thank you, God! Thank you!”
What I had not been prepared for, and what I had not imagined even one time during my years of imagining the moment of my return, was the expression on her face when she first saw me again on her front porch less than an hour before.
I had stood there for ninety seconds before ringing the doorbell. I was counting them in my head, which is something I have done for as long as I can remember. I can count seconds perfectly, and from there, minutes and even hours. I had to ring the bell four times before I heard feet bounding down the hard wood stairs from the second floor. It is an above-average-sized house where we live, but where we live, the average house costs over a million dollars. It was built in the 1950s, a traditional white colonial, with three additions, including the porch, and multiple renovations. Mrs. Martin did more work after we were gone. I could see a sunroom and study where there had once been a small garden. We also have nearly five acres of property, a pool house, a tennis court and lots of woods to get lost in. Land is very expensive here. So while the house was small enough that I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, she was coming down stairs of a very costly estate. She would want me to make that clear.
As I heard the lock turn, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet. I had been through the same door thousands of times, behind Emma, looking for Emma, calling for Emma. Every face my sister ever wore, changed by mood and growth and the weathering of time, came before my eyes as though they were warning me while the door slowly opened. I almost said her name. I could feel it in my mouth. Emma. I wanted to fall to my knees, bury my eyes into my hands and hide behind my sister as I had done as a child. I did not feel capable of doing what had to be done without her.
But then I saw the first strand of my mother’s hair from behind that door, and the faces of my sister vanished and I became calm.
Mrs. Martin was wrapped in a silk robe. Her hair was tangled from restless sleep, and a thick line of eye makeup was caked under her lower lashes.
“Can I help you?” She asked the question with a sprinkle of politeness on top of a mountain of annoyance. It was six in the morning on a Sunday.
She was looking at me, studying my face, my eyes, my body. I did not think I had changed much. I wore the same size clothing. The same size pants and shirts, even the same for my bra. My hair was still light brown and long past my shoulders. My face was still angular, my eyebrows thick with big arches. When I looked in the mirror, I still saw me. But I guess that’s the thing—we all change so gradually, a little every day, that we don’t notice it. Like the frog that stays in the water until the water is boiling and the frog is dead.
The moment I had not been prepared for—the one thing I had not ever imagined in all those years—was that my mother would not recognize me.
“It’s me,” I said. “It’s Cass.”
She said nothing, but her head jolted back as though my words had just punched her in the face.
“Cass?”
She looked harder, her eyes now bulging and moving frantically from place to place, head to toe. Her right hand covered her mouth. Her left hand grabbed hold of the doorframe, catching her body as she stumbled toward me.
“Cass!”
I had to force my feet to stand still as she lunged at me, hands, arms, face, all touching me, pawing at me.
A guttural moan left her body. “Uhhhhhh!”
Then she started screaming for Mr. Martin.
I had prepared for this part and I did what I thought I would do, which was to let her feel what she was feeling and just stand there and do nothing. Say nothing. You probably think she was ecstatic, elated, filled with joy. But Mrs. Martin had reinvented herself as the grieving mother with the missing daughters, so adjusting to my return would involve a painful unraveling.
“Jon! Jon!”
The tears started then as more footsteps sounded from the second floor.
Mr. Martin called out. “What the hell is going on?”
My mother didn’t answer him. Instead, she grabbed my face with her hands, pressed her nose right up against mine and said my name with that same guttural sound. “Caaaaaaass!”
Mr. Martin was in his pajamas. He had put on weight since I saw him last and he looked even older than I remembered. I should have expected that. But when you’re young, you see people over a certain age as just old, and there does not seem a need to imagine them any older. He was very tall and very dark—hair, skin, eyes. I had never been able to read him well. He was adept at hiding his feelings. Or maybe he just didn’t have many of them. Few things made him angry. Fewer things made him laugh. On this day, though, I saw something I had not seen before on his face—utter bewilderment.
“Cass? Cassandra? Is that you?”
There were more hugs. Mr. Martin called the police. He called my father next, but there was no answer. I heard him leave a message, saying only that it was important and he should call back right away. I thought that was very considerate of him, not giving my father the details of this shocking news in a voice mail. It made me wonder if he had changed.
They asked me the questions you would expect. Where had I been? What had happened to me? When I didn’t answer them, I heard them whisper to each other. They concluded that I was traumatized. Mr. Martin said they should keep asking questions until I answered. My mother agreed.
“Cass—tell us what happened!”
I did not answer them. “We need the police!” I cried instead. “They have to find Emma! They have to find her!”
Time froze for what seemed like forever, but was only eight seconds. Mr. Martin shot a look at my mother. My mother calmed down and started to stroke my hair as though I were a fragile doll she didn’t want to break—and that she didn’t want to move or speak.