43

Three weeks earlier…

Maggie glanced down at the address Baxter Kincaid had provided for the third time. She trusted the private detective’s skills, and yet, this couldn’t be the right place. Her father, a deadbeat drunk who had abandoned his family, could never afford a house like this. The yard was professionally manicured, not quite as extravagant as to possess shrubbery formed into the shapes of animals or dotted by fountains of marble, but the bushes were perfectly symmetrical and the flowers blooming and beautiful in perfect aesthetic balance. It was one of those houses where shiny plastic families lived. The two-story brick home wasn’t quite a mansion, but it was definitely upper class. While her father was most definitely lower class.

Something about the house made Maggie’s skin crawl, despite the fact that everything was in perfect order, just as she would have designed it. The little voices that tugged at the back of her mind when things were out of place were quiet now. But still, she felt like this was a place far out of balance. This couldn’t be her father’s true address. Her childhood home had never been like this. Her home had been absolute chaos.

Maggie’s parents’ marriage barely lasted a year after her brother’s abduction. Her mother fell into a dark abyss of despair, retreating inward, while her dad tried to drink himself to death. Whenever one of them climbed from their perspective pits of self destruction, they took their rage out on one another, which left her alone and afraid with nothing to think about except how she had failed to protect her little brother. And how she was to blame for the chaos that had poisoned her family.

The day her father left was forever etched into her memory. She had heard him scream many times, but she’d never witnessed him raise a hand against her mother. Having learned to tune out their arguments, she hadn’t even registered the ferocity of the hate they were spitting at one another until she heard the “thwap” sound of an open-handed slap and her mother shriek.

Maggie had quickly looked up from the kitchen table to see her mother stumble backward, tripping over a chair and falling. She remembered her dad quickly apologizing and pleading with his mother to calm down, but she was beyond reasoning and immediately called the police.

None of that, however, had been all that traumatic for her. She had become numb after the abduction, somewhat immune to the pain of her parents’ vacant stares and the way they had began to ignore her completely. What had haunted her dreams since that day, however, was the look on her father’s face as he glanced from her mother to her and then walked out with nothing but the clothes on his back. The look was one of cold calculation. She had seen him size up whether or not there was anyone left in this place whom he loved and decide within a second that there was no one here worth bringing.

A warrant had been issued for his arrest, and they barely heard anything from or about him for the next couple of years. Everything they did hear was negative. Then they heard nothing at all. A part of her had hoped that he was dead.

One moment of anger. One split second decision. And her father was gone from her life forever. Or at least, he was, until now.

Forcing herself to move, she climbed from the rental and floated dreamily toward the sidewalk. Children shrieked in delight amid the sound of pool splashes and the smells of a backyard barbecue. Maggie trembled as she pressed the little off-white button beside the door and listened for signs of movement inside.

A young girl—maybe eleven or twelve years old—opened the door, and Maggie had more trouble keeping her reaction from showing than if she had come face to face with a mass murderer. The little girl was dressed and coifed in modern styles, but besides that, she was a dead ringer for one of Maggie’s school photos. Bronze skin, blonde hair, blue eyes…just like her father.

The pre-teen had her nose buried in her cell phone and barely looked up as she asked, “May I help you?”

Maggie wondered briefly if this was all a dream. If Marcus had been present, he probably would have geeked out that this situation was similar to a scene from Empire Strikes Back. Or at least, the old Marcus would have. She missed him, almost as much as she missed her brother.

Thankfully, the words came automatically as she cleared her throat and asked, “Hello, are your parents home?”

The girl’s thumbs danced over the screen, seemingly oblivious to the question, but she screamed, “Dad!”

Maggie was grateful for the fact that the young girl had answered the door and provided a few seconds for her to react and process. Now, her expression could be one of cold indifference instead of confusion when her father arrived to greet her.

He looked better than Maggie had ever seen him look. It was obvious he had been sober for some time, and he appeared to be in better physical shape than he had in the pictures from his high school year book, except for a head of hair that was stark white instead of sandy blonde.

“Sorry about my daughter. She’s—”

Maggie had already removed her sunglasses. She wanted him to have a clear view of her when he approached, hoping that he would recognize his other abandoned and forgotten daughter. The way his eyes went wide at the sight of her indicated that she had gotten her wish.

Removing a special germ-resistant leather wallet that Marcus had purchased as a gift from the pocket of her suit jacket, she flipped open to her credentials, and trying to maintain the same tone she would have used with any interviewee, she said, “Special Agent Maggie Carlisle. I have a few questions to ask you.”

Her father’s hands shook, and his eyes looked as if they might pop from his skull and roll away. He stepped toward her, crowding her away from the front door as he pulled it closed behind him. With that simple movement, he spoke volumes. He had closed the door between his new life and his eldest, forgotten child.

Rage fueling her, she proclaimed, “You have a beautiful home here, Mr. Carlisle.”

“Mags, I’ve thought a lot about what I would say—”

“Don’t call me that. I’m here because I need information. So let’s be clear, you’re nothing more to me than any other random asshole that might cross my path.”

He nodded and met her gaze. “I deserve that.”

“You deserve a lot worse than that. What do you do for a living, Mr. Carlisle?”

“I run a trucking company. Listen, Maggie, now is not the best time. Maybe we could—”

“Now will do just fine. There have been some new developments in Tommy’s case. You remember him? Your son, Tommy?”

“Let’s get coffee later. There are a lot of things you don’t know. You have a lot of reasons to be angry at me, so you might as well be angry for the right ones.”

Maggie dug the nails of her left hand into her palm to focus her anger and remain in control. “You’re going to answer a few questions, and then I’ll be out of your life, just like you want it.”

“I never wanted that, Mags. Listen, your grandmother threatened me. She—”

Raising both hands, she interrupted, “I don’t care. I only need to ask you a few questions about the day your son, Tommy, was taken.”

“Mags, dammit, that’s why I want to explain. Tommy was your brother, but he wasn’t my son.”

Employing a technique for dealing with rage that Ackerman had taught her, she imagined herself hurting her father in her mind in order to fight the urge to hurt him in real life. She asked, “Are you remarried?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Teresa.”

“Does she know about the wife and kids you abandoned?”

“Dammit, Maggie, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“How many kids?”

He lowered his eyes and ran a hand through his white hair. “Two boys and a girl.”

Maggie closed her eyes and imagined herself pistol-whipping her progenitor. Her father had remarried. She’d been prepared for that, but for some reason, the possibility that he might have more children had never occurred to her. If he didn’t want the kids he already had, why go make more?

Sticking out her lower jaw and breathing hard, she said, “So tell me what I don’t know?”

“I can’t right now, but meet me later, and I’ll—”

“Either you talk to me now, or I haul you into your local police station for questioning. Think that would get your new family’s attention?”

“I’m sorry, Mags. I really am. Is that want you want to hear? I’ve been through a lot too, and I’ve tried to move on and learn from my mistakes.”

“So that’s what we were to you? Mistakes?”

“No, I just meant that I’m trying to be a better husband and father now. But I’m not the only one at fault in all this. Your mother… Well, did you ever notice that Tommy seemed really…dark-complected?”

“The whole family has naturally dark skin! What the hell are you saying?”

With a sigh, her father replied, “I had a DNA test ran. Tommy was your brother, Maggie, but he wasn’t my son. Your mother had been sleeping around. That’s when I started drinking. I was trying to work up the nerve to run a test on you too, but it would have broken my heart if it had turned out that you—”

“Don’t say another word.”

“Your mother blamed me when he was taken, and your grandma threatened to tell the police that I—”

“Shut up!” she screamed.

Her father recoiled and looked toward the windows of his perfect house, not wanting his perfect new family to ask too many questions. Somehow, Maggie had accepted being abandoned, but she wasn’t prepared to discover that she, along with the rest of her father’s first family, had been replaced.

Closing her eyes and breathing deep, Maggie counted to ten and said, “This was a mistake. Looks like you have a nice life here. Sorry to interrupt.”

She turned to leave and had made it halfway to her rental when he called out, “Wait! Why don’t you come inside?”

Maggie dug her fingernails into her palms until she felt her flesh tearing, but she didn’t turn back. Instead, she willed herself forward to the driver’s side of the rental. Sliding behind the wheel, she sped away with an unintentional squealing of tires. Then, driving until she could no longer see through the tears, Maggie Carlisle pulled to the side of the road and wept.