Chapter 4: The Father Who Disappeared
I sat down.
Not because I chose to.
My legs simply stopped holding me.
Paul stayed standing.
He was looking at the door, not at me, the way he always did when he was trying to find the right words and couldn't.
"Tell me," I said.
"Raymond Chen disappeared fourteen months ago."
The clock on the wall ticked.
Somewhere down the hall, a locker slammed.
"Disappeared," I repeated.
"He stopped answering his phone.
His practice closed.
Lily was placed with a foster family for three months before a distant cousin came forward to take her in.
That's the family listed in her school file.
The Nguyens."
"She's been living with people she barely knows."
"Yes."
I thought about Lily in the chair across from my desk, crying over a blank test.
*Please don't call my parents.
They asked me not to cause any problems.* Not parents.
A family doing her a favor.
A girl trying to take up as little space as possible.
"Does anyone know where Raymond went?"
"The police filed a missing persons report.
It's still open." Paul finally looked at me.
"There was some suggestion that he left voluntarily.
That he had debts.
But nothing was ever confirmed."
"And Lily has no idea."
"She knows her father is gone.
She doesn't know the rest.
She doesn't know about Maggie.
She doesn't know about the test."
I stood up and walked to the door.
I opened it and looked into the hallway.
Lily was sitting on the floor ten feet away, her back against the wall, her knees pulled up, her head bent over her phone.
She looked up when she heard the door.
"You can come back in," I said.
She got up slowly.
She came in and stood near her chair but didn't sit.
"Are you going to tell me what's happening?" she asked.
I looked at Paul.
He gave me nothing.
This was going to be my call.
"Lily," I said, "how much do you know about your father's work?
His medical work, specifically."
She frowned.
"He was a doctor.
Genetics, I think.
He didn't talk about it much."
"Did he ever mention a patient?
Or a family he stayed in contact with after — after a case didn't go well?"
Her frown deepened.
"No.
Why?"
"Did he ever mention the name Maggie?"
Something moved across her face.
Fast, like a shadow.
She looked down at her hands.
"Once," she said.
"When I was little.
He was on the phone and I came into the room and he hung up very quickly.
I asked who he was talking to and he said — he said a name.
He said he was talking to someone about a little girl named Maggie." She paused.
"He looked sad.
I remember because my dad didn't look sad very often.
He was always very calm."
The room was very quiet.
"I asked him who Maggie was," Lily continued, "and he said she was someone he hadn't been able to help.
And then he changed the subject and we never talked about it again."
I looked at Paul.
His eyes were wet.
"Lily," I said carefully, "I need to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly.
Has anyone — the Nguyens, a social worker, anyone — ever suggested that you get a genetic test?
Any kind of medical screening?"
"No." She looked up sharply.
"Should they have?"
I didn't answer that directly.
"Has your health been okay?
No unexplained fevers?
Nothing the doctors couldn't explain?"
She went very still.
"Last winter," she said slowly.
"I had a fever for almost two weeks.
The doctors kept running tests.
They said they couldn't find a cause.
It went away on its own." She looked at me.
"Why are you asking me that?"
I picked up the hospital document from my desk and held it so she couldn't read the names.
"Your father was involved in a case a long time ago.
A case that may have a connection to your own medical history.
I think you deserve to know about it."
"What kind of connection?"
Paul stepped forward.
"Lily, your father contacted me eight years ago because he believed you and a child I lost shared something.
A genetic marker.
Something rare."
Lily stared at him.
"He thought you might be at risk for the same condition," Paul said.
"He wanted someone to know.
In case anything ever happened to him."
The color left her face.
"In case anything happened to him," she repeated.
"He knew something was going to happen to him."
Neither of us answered.
She sat down very slowly.
She pressed her hands flat on her knees — the exact same gesture Paul had made ten minutes earlier — and stared at the floor.
Then she looked up.
May you like
"I want to find my father," she said.
"And I think you two know more than you're telling me."
