“She didn’t grow properly. Never went through puberty.”
“That’s understandable,” I said.
“But then her body, I don’t know, started playing some kind of high-speed catch-up. She grew very fast. Developed large breasts.” Bernadette shrugged one shoulder. “She was uncomfortable with herself.”
“She was irrational.” Jake.
“Really?” Bernadette snapped. “Because she didn’t like to be seen naked? News flash. Most kids don’t.”
“Most kids don’t go batshit if their mother accidentally peeps them in the crapper.”
“She was making progress.” Cold.
“You see what I’m dealing with?” Jake directed this comment to Ryan.
“You knew about Tawny from the day we met.” Bernadette’s tone toward her husband was acid.
“Oh, you’ve got that right. And we haven’t stopped talking about the kid since.”
“She was seeing a therapist.”
“That asshole was part of the problem.”
Bernadette snorted. “My husband, expert on psychology.”
“The quack took her to the cellar where they caged her. In my book, that’s over-the-top fucked up.”
That surprised me. “Tawny and her therapist visited the house on de Sébastopol?”
“Perhaps the treatment was a bit harsh.” Softer, almost pleading. “But Tawny was doing well. She was attending community college. She wanted to help people. To heal the whole world. When she called that one time, she said she was back in school.”
“But she didn’t say where.”
“No.”
I glanced at Ryan. He was studying Jake.
“How did you two get along?” he asked.
“What? Me and Tawny?”
Ryan nodded.
Jake’s voice remained even, but the set of his jaw suggested his annoyance was no longer just with his wife. “We had our spats. The kid wasn’t easy.”
“Spats?” Bernadette snarled. “You two hated each other.”
Jake sighed, impatient with accusations clearly aired more than once. “I did not hate Tawny. I tried to help her. To make her understand that life involves boundaries.”
“Be honest, Jake. She left because of you.”
“She never embraced me as a father, if that’s what you mean.”
“You drove her away.”
The Kezerians exchanged a glance boiling with anger. Then Bernadette turned back to me. “Tawny moved out after a blowup with my husband. Stormed upstairs, packed her things, and left.”
“When was that?”
“August 2006.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Does it matter?” Jake’s voice remained level, but something unreadable flickered in his eyes.
“Where do you think she went?” I asked Bernadette.
“She often spoke of California. And Australia. And Florida, especially the Keys.”
“She could have gone anywhere she wanted, right, Bee?” Jake’s mouth pursed up in a humorless smile.
A flush climbed Bernadette’s throat, splotchy red against the colorless skin. She said nothing.
“As a final adios, Tawny helped herself to the stash my wife kept in her closet.”
“How much did she take?” Not sure why I asked.
“Almost three thousand dollars.” Jake flicked two fingers off his forehead in a goodbye salute. “Adios and fuck you.”
Ryan asked a series of questions. Did Tawny ever mention Anique Pomerleau? Did she make friends during the two years she lived in Montreal? Was there a person at the college in whom she might have confided? Did they have any names or numbers of anyone with whom she worked, attended class, or interacted in any way? Might it be helpful to speak with her sister, Sandra? Was Tawny’s room intact enough to warrant a visit? The answer to each was a definite no.
Ryan concluded by asking them to phone him if Tawny contacted them. If they remembered anything she’d said about her captor or captivity. The usual.
Then, placing our cards on the coffee table, we rose to leave.
Mrs. Kezerian escorted us. Mr. Kezerian did not.
At the door, we assured Bernadette that we were doing everything possible to find her daughter’s abductor.
And Tawny? she asked.
Ryan promised to send out queries.
Not a single question about Pomerleau. About where she was. About how or why she’d surfaced.
And that was it.
I’d never felt more discouraged in my life.
It was four-thirty by the time we wound our way out of Dollard-des-Ormeaux. Lights were on in most of the homes we passed, yellow rectangles warm against the thickening darkness. Here and there, electric icicles or colored bulbs heralded the coming of a season that would bring joy for some, a reminder of loneliness for others.
Traffic on the Metropolitan was heavy and slow. We crept east, taillights ahead, double beams behind, through cones of illumination thrown by halogens arching over the highway.
Like frames on an old movie reel, Ryan’s silhouette flashed into focus, receded into shadow. He offered nothing. The silence in the Jeep grew deeper and deeper.
“Not exactly Happy Days.” When I could take it no longer.
“If I was the kid, I’d have left, too.”
“Do you think Jake could be physically abusive?”
“The guy’s an arrogant bastard.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I think it’s conceivable.”
So did I. And another unpleasant possibility had crossed my mind. “Do you suppose he came on to Tawny?”
“Speculation is pointless.”
“Will you try to find her?”
“Yes. But she’s not my priority.”
“You don’t feel she can help us?”
Ryan glanced my way, then back to the road. “At what cost?” The bitterness in his voice was so tangible, I could feel it on my skin.
Several long moments passed.
“Did you find it odd that the Kezerians showed no interest in Pomerleau?” I asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“They’re too focused on their own soap opera.”
“Yes, but—”
“We weren’t what they expected.”
I leaned into the seat back. Beyond the windshield, the day’s clear sky had lost out to dense cloud cover. Overhead, nothing twinkled. Ahead, brake lights smeared crimson across the top of our hood.
Beside us, a yellow Mini lurched and braked in tandem with our Jeep. The driver steered with one elbow while thumb-tapping a mobile phone. Texting. Emailing. Tweeting about the burger he’d have for dinner. Impressive. A multitasker.
I closed my eyes. Pictured a girl with bitter white skin, haggard eyes, and a braid snaking down vertebrae sharpened by years of deprivation. That image yielded to one of a small dark-haired girl in a trench coat and beret. To a young woman on a boat in a windswept harbor.
Tawny McGee was seventeen when she was finally set free. I imagined her somewhere in the sun, laughing over lunch with women her age. Pushing a stroller. Walking a golden retriever or a Saint Bernard. Free of the rancor we’d just witnessed. The constant bickering.
Was Bernadette correct in her optimism? That her daughter was doing well? Or did Jake have it right in viewing Tawny as permanently broken?
I understood Ryan’s desire to focus on the hunt for which I’d dragged him from Costa Rica. Pomerleau had scripted the nightmare that had robbed Tawny of her childhood. Perhaps her sanity.
Still. I wondered where Tawny was and what she was doing.
Ryan dropped me at my condo. No goodbye. Just a promise to call in the morning.
I phoned Angela’s and ordered a small pizza with everything but onions. Then I walked to the corner dépanneur for coffee and a few breakfast items. No point in provisioning when I’d be returning south soon. Groceries in hand, I picked up the pizza and headed home.
I ate with Wolf in the Situation Room. The pizza was good. The conversation did nothing to brighten my mood.
Then, all of a sudden, I was exhausted. The grueling trip to Costa Rica, followed by draining days in Charlotte. The long hours yesterday, then the late-night flight. Today the disturbing file review, then ping-ponging across the island to visit people not happy to see us.