She's Not There by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page B

not the article or the pictures.”
    “Then what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’ve been sitting here all day and you have no idea why? I don’t believe you.”
    “Michelle…”
    “Mother…”
    “Please, Michelle. I don’t want to argue with you.”
    “I don’t want to argue with you either.”
    “Then let’s just drop it, shall we?” Caroline pushed herself off the bed and took Michelle in her arms, hoping to silence her. Instantly she felt her daughter stiffen. Caroline took a deep breath, forced a smile onto her face. “So, where do you want to go for dinner?”
    “How about that new raw place over on Bayshore?”
    “Raw? As in not cooked?”
    “It’s all organic. Very healthy.”
    “I’m sure it is. Just doesn’t sound all that…”
    “Forget it,” Michelle said.
    “No. I’ll give it a try.”
    “Never mind,” Michelle said. “I’m not very hungry anyway.”
    The words hung suspended in the air like smoke from a stale cigarette. Caroline wondered if it had always been this way between them. The truth was that Michelle had been needy and difficult from birth, characteristics that Samantha’s disappearance had only exacerbated. And the needier she’d become, the more Caroline’s resentment grew. The more she’d clung, the more Caroline pulled away. The more Caroline pulled away, the more Michelle’s resentment grew. Their relationship had devolved into a vicious cycle of push-pull, one retreating just as the other was reaching out. For every step forward, it seemed they took two back.
    My fault,
Caroline thought.
Everything, my fault.
    “I had a phone call this morning,” she ventured cautiously. Maybe if she stopped shutting Michelle out, her daughter would welcome her back in.
    “From…?” Michelle stuck her thumbs into the side pockets of her tight jeans, dark green eyes narrowing.
    “A girl in Calgary.”
    “Calgary?”
    “It’s in Canada.”
    “I know where Calgary is, Mother. I’m not an idiot.”
    “Of course you’re not an idiot. I didn’t mean to suggest…”
    “Who do you know in Calgary?”
    “I don’t know anyone.”
    “Is she a reporter?”
    “No.”
    “You’re not making any sense.”
    “You’re not giving me a chance. Maybe if you stopped interrupting me…”
    Michelle let out a deep sigh. “Okay. Sorry. Let’s start again. You got a call from some girl in Calgary. Does she have a name?”
    “Lili.”
    “Lili…?”
    “I don’t know her last name. She wouldn’t say.”
    “She wouldn’t say,” Michelle repeated. “Is this girl the reason you’re acting so peculiar?”
    “She doesn’t think Lili is her real name,” Caroline said, ignoring Michelle’s question and looking directly into her daughter’s eyes. “She thinks her real name is Samantha.”
    Michelle’s shoulders slumped. “Shit.”
    “She thinks she’s your sister.”
    “Oh, please. Don’t tell me this.” Michelle’s eyes widened in anger. She began pacing back and forth in front of the bed, her arms shooting out in all directions, like an explosion of fireworks. “Don’t tell me you believe this crap.”
    “I believe
she
believes it.”
    “Mother, for God’s sake. This sort of thing happens every time they update those stupid sketches. People calling to say they’ve seen Samantha in line at the grocery store, psychics claiming they know where to find her, crazies boasting that they’re holding her prisoner in some underground bunker. You’ve been dealing with these nutcases for years. And now some girl calls you from Calgary and says she thinks she’s Samantha and you flip out? You know better than this. You know she’s full of shit. Even if
she’s
crazy enough to believe it…”
    “This is different.”
    “
How
is it different?”
    “She offered to take a DNA test.”
    “What?”
    “She thinks we should go for a DNA test, to find out one way or the other.”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Michelle said, stopping dead in her tracks. “What are you