Ryan’s hand landed on my shoulder. I let go of everything-the runaway theories, the unreturned calls, the suspicions. I stood up and wrapped my arms around him.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” I squeezed him tighter, a reversal of our little struggle from a few minutes earlier. He smelled like shaving cream, and I felt his own gentle but awkwardly delivered man-pats against my back.
“It’s okay. We have some things to talk about, Tom. Just sit down. Go ahead there. It’s okay.”
I ended up back in the chair, my vision blurred by tears. I wiped them away with the backs of my hands. Ryan handed me a box of tissues. I don’t know where he found them, but I took one and continued wiping at my eyes.
“Do you want some water?” Ryan asked.
“No, I’m fine. What happened?” I asked. “What the fuck happened?”
Before Ryan could tell me, someone knocked on the conference room door. I looked up.
“Is that her?” I asked.
Ryan went to the door, but it opened before he reached it. Abby stepped into the room, the whites of her eyes prominent, the corners of her mouth turned down. She took short, tentative steps across the carpet and didn’t look up or make eye contact with anyone.
“Who invited
Ryan’s head turned toward me. “I called her, Tom. She’s Caitlin’s mother.”
“She hasn’t acted like it. A mother wouldn’t give up on her child.” I stood up. “You were wrong, Abby. You and Pastor Chris. She’s alive. She’s right here, alive, and you were dead fucking wrong about it.”
Ryan held his hand out toward me. “Please, Tom. Not now.”
Abby didn’t look toward me. She sat in a chair across the room. She dropped her hands into her lap and twisted them around and over the top of each other.
“Are you okay, Abby?” Ryan asked.
She finally spoke in a low church whisper. “It took me a while to get here. I was so. . surprised when you called.”
Ryan grabbed one of the rolling chairs and moved it out into the center of the room so he was between us. He sat down, feet splayed, his knees far apart.
“I’d like to tell both of you what’s going on and how we got to this point,” he said.
“Yes, please.
“Abby,” he said, “do you want to hear this?”
For a moment, it looked like she wasn’t listening. Then she nodded.
“This morning, at approximately three-thirty, officers on a routine patrol saw a young woman walking along the side of Williamstown Road, out near the mall. She looked too young to be out at that time of night, so the officers questioned her. She appeared to be in good health. A little dirty, but with no obvious signs of injury. She didn’t appear to be drunk or under the influence of drugs. She didn’t have any identification, and the officers on the scene were going to take her to juvenile detention for processing-that’s routine when a kid turns up like that with no ID-when one of them, a female officer, thought she recognized the girl from somewhere. She remembered the coverage of Caitlin’s burial and the sketch of the suspect. She asked the girl, pointedly, who she was.
“The girl got nervous and agitated. She told the officers, ‘I know you think I’m that Caitlin Stuart girl, but I’m not.’ That seemed to confirm things for the officers, so they brought her here for further inquiry, and they decided to call me.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Was she brainwashed? What was wrong with her?”
Ryan held up his finger, indicating there was more to tell.
“When I arrived at the station, I questioned her about her identity and where she lived. She wouldn’t tell me anything else except to repeat that line. ‘I know you think I’m that Caitlin Stuart girl.’ When I asked her why she was out walking so late at night, who her parents were, where she went to school, she just stared at me like she was deaf or didn’t understand English. I offered her something to eat, and she asked for a cup of coffee.”
“Caitlin doesn’t drink coffee,” Abby said, her voice just above a whisper.
“Did she ask about us?” I asked.
Ryan shook his head. “She kept asking us to let her go.”
“Are you sure it’s her?” Abby asked. “It might not be her.”
Ryan nodded. “It’s her. She looks smaller and younger perhaps than the average sixteen-year-old. Maybe she hasn’t been eating as well. I don’t know. But that means she looks more like the pictures taken before Caitlin disappeared than we would have suspected. Then I told her we were going to fingerprint her, which she went along with. It’s going to take a few hours to find out if they match, but-I told Tom already-this girl has the same scar on her leg from a bike accident.”
“She was eight,” Abby said. “She needed stitches.” Abby finally looked up and faced Ryan. “But that’s not proof. Lots of people have scars. Until you have DNA or the fingerprints or an X-ray. .”
“Jesus, Abby,” I said. “You really don’t want her back, do you?”
She looked at me. “I don’t want to get crushed,” she said. “I don’t want that for either of us.”
“I understand that. I do, Abby,” Ryan said. “And, ordinarily, I would try to wait for something more conclusive. I don’t want to wind you both up for nothing. But in a town this size, people are going to know that girl’s here, and before things get too far away from us, I want you to be able to see her. I wouldn’t have brought you both here if I weren’t certain. My gut tells me this is it.”
“Let’s go see her then,” I said.
Ryan held up his finger again. “We have some things to take care of once you’ve seen her. We have to get her to the hospital to be examined by a doctor. You won’t get a lot of time, and the time you spend with her here, today, might be the last quiet moments you have for a while. This is going to be a hell of an adjustment for you two, and since we don’t know where she’s been or who she was with, we all need to be prepared for anything.”
“We know who she was with,” I said. “That man in the sketch. Did you ask her about him?”
Ryan shook his head. “It’s best in a case like this not to press too hard at the outset. Not to ask too many questions too soon, even if we want to.”
“A case like this?” Abby asked. “Are there other cases like this?”
“I just mean when a child has been kidnapped or run away.”
“No, no, no, no. Not a runaway,” I said. “That man, the sketch-that proves it. She didn’t run away. Someone took her-they took her from us.”
Ryan nodded along, placating me. But then he said, “I know this has been a long road for the two of you, but I can promise you what we already know and see is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s much more to the story here, and we’re going to have to get to it.”
“What are they going to do at the hospital?” Abby asked.
I knew.
Ryan confirmed it.
“They’ll do a complete exam. Gynecological included. They’ll be looking for evidence of sexual assault and pregnancy.”
Abby made a small noise in the back of her throat.
“Someone who needs to be checked for those things didn’t run away,” I said.
Ryan stood up. “Wait here, and I’ll go see if things are ready. I thought I’d give the two of you a moment together before we bring you back. I think maybe you have some things to get straight before you see Caitlin.”
“Ryan?” I asked. “Is this going to be all right?”
He offered me a small smile. “Your daughter’s back. Doesn’t that mean this is a good day?”
When he was gone, I turned to Abby.
She didn’t look at me.
“Abby?”
She remained rigid as a block of wood.
“Abby? Are you okay?”
