Chapter 7: What Rosie Said
Grace wanted to plan it carefully.
She wanted to send a letter first, or have Sylvia speak to Rosie alone, or find some way to prepare her.
I understood the logic.
I agreed with it in principle.
But Sylvia got a call at 8 p.m.
that evening, while Grace and I were still at the motel, that changed the timeline.
Rosie had seen Danny Crell standing outside her apartment building for the second night in a row.
She had called Sylvia and said she was thinking about leaving Kellerton.
That she'd done it before and she could do it again.
Sylvia called me immediately.
"If she runs, we lose her."
I was in the car before Grace had her jacket on.
Sylvia met us outside the hardware store on Deering Street and led us up the narrow staircase to the second floor.
She knocked twice, then once.
The door opened on a chain.
One eye.
Dark hair.
A small scar near the left eyebrow.
"Sylvia, I said I needed tonight to—" She stopped.
She looked at me.
The chain didn't move for a long time.
Then it did.
The door opened and my daughter stood in the doorway and she was thirty-three years old and she looked like herself and she looked like a stranger and she looked like the girl in the green tank top and I couldn't move.
"Mom," she said.
It came out like something she hadn't said in a long time and wasn't sure still worked.
"Hi, Rosie," I said.
She stepped back from the door.
We went inside.
The apartment was small and very neat.
A cat appeared from behind the couch and regarded us with suspicion.
Rosie stood in the center of the room with her arms crossed over her chest — not angry, I knew that posture, it was the one she'd always used when she was trying not to cry.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
"A woman named Carol Marsh," I said.
"She had your bag."
Rosie went very still.
"The cream-colored one.
With the crooked handle.
She found the photograph in the pocket."
"I put that there years ago," Rosie said quietly.
"I don't know why.
I think I wanted — I don't know what I wanted."
"You wanted someone to find it," Sylvia said from near the door.
Rosie looked at her.
She didn't argue.
I sat down on the edge of the couch because I needed to.
"Rosie.
Sylvia told me about Danny Crell."
Her expression changed.
The careful composure tightened into something harder.
"She shouldn't have."
"She was worried about you."
"I'm handling it."
"He's standing outside your building."
"I know." She turned away, toward the window.
She didn't look out.
"I've handled him before."
"You were seventeen when you handled him before," I said.
"You handled him by disappearing for sixteen years."
She turned back.
Her eyes were bright.
"That's not fair."
"I know it isn't.
I'm sorry." I stood up.
"Rosie, I'm not here to — I'm not here to make you come home or explain yourself or relitigate anything.
I'm here because you are in trouble and I am your mother and I have been looking for you since July 12th, 2008 and I am not going to stand in a motel in Kellerton, Virginia while a man who frightened you out of your own life stands outside your building."
The room was quiet.
"I kept your toothbrush," I said.
"For nine years.
I renewed your library card twice.
I never stopped saying your name."
Her arms dropped from her chest.
"Mom," she said, and this time it broke in the middle.
She crossed the room and I held my daughter for the first time in sixteen years and she was taller than I remembered and her hair smelled different and she was shaking, and so was I, and neither of us said anything for a long time.
When she finally pulled back, her face was wet.
"I was so ashamed," she said.
"I didn't know how to come back."
"I know," I said.
"We'll figure that out later.
Right now I need you to tell me everything about Danny Crell."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
She took a breath.
May you like
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."
