My Lost Daughter (10 page)

“Did you hear me, Lily?” Chris said. “I've already analyzed my docket and I'm certain I can resolve everything by early afternoon. Then I can go with you.”

“I want you and Shana to have a good relationship,” Lily told him. “She's not herself right now.” She picked up her portable
phone and pushed the auto dial, disconnecting when she reached the voice mail on Shana's cell phone. “I wish I didn't have to wait until tomorrow night. Not being able to reach her is driving me crazy. Should I call the police and ask them to send an officer to the apartment to check on her?”

“You talked to her yesterday,” he rationalized. “I'm sure she's fine. She might get mad if the police turn up on her doorstep. Are you worried she might hurt herself?”

Lily took a deep breath and then exhaled. “Maybe.”

“From what you've told me, it sounded like she was just venting. You probably caught her at a bad time. Her boyfriend left her for another girl. She's also at that age where she thinks she should be married, so that makes this breakup more upsetting.” He paused and took a sip of his wine. “As far as wanting to drop out of school, she's obviously suffering from burnout. Stanford is a tough university. I predict that by the time you get there, though, the picture will have already changed.”

Lily cut her eyes to him. “I don't understand why she won't talk to me.”

“She did talk to you.”

“I mean now, Chris. She knows I'm worried. She could at least answer her phone.”

“She's probably out with her friends.”

“All she has is a cell phone,” Lily explained. “She takes it with her everywhere she goes.”

“Maybe she forgot to charge it.” He paused, thinking. “Has she ever tried to hurt herself?”

“Not to my knowledge.” Just the thought made Lily cringe. She and Shana had gone through so much together. When you'd fought for your life against a violent criminal, the thought of killing yourself seemed almost sacrilegious.

Lily had been amazed at her daughter's resiliency. She had overcome the horror of that night and managed to become strong again, going on to chart a course for her life and sticking to it all these
years. Why was she giving up? She wasn't a quitter. Something was wrong.

“She was so hostile yesterday,” Lily said, trailing her finger around the rim of her wineglass. “We had problems getting along when she was a kid. Her father turned her against me. I think John thought it was a way to keep me from divorcing him. He knew Shana would pick him instead of me because he spoiled her and let her do anything she wanted. He was right, you know. Do you know how terrible I felt knowing my own child didn't want to live with me?”

“Only a weak and insecure man would do something like that, Lily,” Chris told her. “No matter what happens, you never undermine the woman who gave birth to your child. It happens all the time in divorce cases and it turns my stomach. In most instances, it's the women who use the children to humiliate their husbands in custody battles. Think about what that says about Shana's father.”

“After the rapes, we became close, but it didn't last. I wanted to send Shana to Stanford, but she gave it up to go to UCLA and live with her father.”

“Why didn't she like Bryce?”

“There was something about him that Shana just couldn't tolerate,” Lily told him. “They squabbled and picked at each other like kids. Later I decided that she might have been a better judge of character than I was.”

“I doubt that, Lily.”

“Anyway, when she started calling less this past year, I just assumed it was because she was spending all her free time with Brett.”

“She probably was.”

Lily went on as if she hadn't heard him. “I offered to come up there on numerous occasions but Shana always said she was too busy with her studies. Last year was difficult for me, too. Bryce and I divorced and you know all the things that happened in the mess that followed. My God, that horrible woman almost killed me, and you think I'm a good judge of character?”

Chris refilled Lily's wineglass. “Your daughter went through a terrible ordeal. If she handled that without becoming suicidal, it's highly unlikely she is now. She didn't say anything along those lines, did she?”

Lily was too restless to remain seated. She walked over to the railing and stared out over the ocean, watching as a man and woman walked hand in hand along the edge of the water. The fog had rolled in and she couldn't see much beyond the shore, but the sound of the waves had a calming effect on her. Chris got up and joined her, placing his arm around her waist. “She said something about killing herself if she didn't pass the bar.”

Chris laughed. “I doubt if she meant it as anything other than a figure of speech. I think I said something along the same lines. Everyone does. You're under so much pressure. And the California bar exam is a bitch. Even I failed the first time. Talk about panicked. I'd never failed anything in my life.”

Lily was surprised. “But didn't you graduate at the top of your class?”

“Yeah, but I was just a kid, remember? Besides, I'm not as smart as everyone thinks. I have a great memory, that's all. I memorize everything. If I haven't seen it before or the question is arranged differently, I'm lost.”

“I don't believe you. You're just saying that so I'll feel better about Shana. I might understand you having problems with the exam, though, because you were so young. How many people graduate Harvard Law at eighteen? Good Lord, Chris, you're a genius. You can't play dumb with me because I know better.”

They both fell silent for a while. “They say victims of violent crimes,” he said, “particularly sex offenses, find the events resurfacing later in life. Maybe that's what's happening with Shana.”

Lily turned around and faced him, resting her back against the railing. “I don't believe in repressed memory. Whether you realize it or not, that's what you're talking about. When something terrible happens, even if you're a kid, you don't forget it and then suddenly remember it years later. That's just nonsense the shrinks invented.”

“But there've been dozens of court cases. Men and women have been sentenced to prison on the basis of repressed memory. Some of it has to be legitimate, don't you think?”

Lily was hard-nosed on certain issues. “Maybe one in a thousand is real. If a child was victimized before the age of five, he might not remember, but if he doesn't remember, he simply doesn't remember. What happens in a lot of those cases is a woman gets depressed because her marriage is failing or she can't accept that she's getting older. Her kids might be leaving home, or she believes her husband is having an affair. She goes for counseling and before she knows it, the psychologist has convinced her she was molested as a child and that's the cause of all her problems.” She held up a finger. “Don't forget, a lot of these shrinks use hypnotism. People are highly suggestible when they're under hypnosis. Look what happened in the McMartin preschool case. Those people went through hell and the whole thing was totally fabricated.”

“Interesting.” He placed his hands inside the pockets of his robe. “I never realized you were such a skeptic, Lily. You would have made a good scientist. In the scientific community, if it can't be proven, it doesn't exist.”

Before they had started dating, Lily recalled Chris telling her he planned to remain a judge for a few years and then quit to study theoretical physics. “By the way, when are you going to resign and start studying physics at Cal Tech?”

“Probably never,” he said. “I found something better to play with than numbers.”

“Really? What?”

He smiled seductively. “You.”

She reached over and squeezed his ass. “You're turning into a sex maniac.”

“It's getting cold out here.” He wrapped his arms around his chest. “Let's go inside and snuggle under the covers.”

The wind was blowing hard now and she didn't hear him. When one thing went wrong, Lily expected everything else to collapse
around her. Too many bad things had happened in her lifetime. She'd made too many mistakes, deceived too many people, sinned in the worst way possible. How did she know Chris wouldn't leave her as soon as she told him the truth? Maybe the best thing to do was to end it now. But she couldn't end it. She loved him too much. She loved waking up beside him every morning, feeling the warmth of his body, knowing she would see him at work and go home with him that night. She was a pessimist, though, and he was an optimist. It worked wonderfully for her, but she sometimes worried about him.

As a Catholic, Lily knew exactly where she was going when she died. And she knew Hell existed because she'd been there. All she could hope for was to somehow escape Hell and sneak into purgatory. Then after ten thousand years, she might make her way to Heaven. She certainly wasn't helping herself by enjoining Chris in her nightmare. It was bad enough that she had to look over her shoulder, never knowing if someone would crawl out of the woodwork and turn her life upside down. If she really loved Chris, and she did, how could she put him in such a position? From what she knew, he had lived a pristine life. In addition, he'd already suffered through the loss of his wife and daughter. He might have given thought to killing the truck driver who'd caused the accident, but he hadn't followed through. “Are you sure you want to do the whole marriage thing? We could live together and be mad, passionate lovers.”

“Of course I want to marry you,” he told her. “When you love someone, that's what you do. I want to take care of you for the rest of your life, grow old with you, die with you, and share everything I have with you. It's a commitment issue, knowing that someone has made a vow before God.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She turned back around so he wouldn't notice. If she could just keep him a little while longer, bask in the love and happiness he gave her. “I'm not sure when I'll be ready,” she told him, a slight tremor in her voice. “Shana needs me right now, Chris. She has to be my first priority. And I want her to be here if we get
married. Since things didn't work out with Bryce, it's important that we come together as a family. Shana needs that, you know, particularly since she lost her father.”

He grabbed her and spun her around. “I don't mind waiting, Lily. I want to help you with Shana any way I can. And we will be a family, I promise. All you have to do is trust me, give things a chance. I'm looking forward to being a stepfather to Shana. I'm certain we'll get along famously.”

She glanced through the open door to the coffee table where Chris had placed pictures of his wife and daughter. It was almost like a shrine, a shrine to another life. Although she didn't want to tell him, it was too soon for him to remarry. She saw him sitting there every evening and staring at the faces of his wife and daughter. When she'd first started seeing him, his daughter's clothes and toys were scattered all over his bedroom as if he were waiting for her to walk back into the room. “I love you, Chris, but do we really need to be legally entangled? Marriage and divorce have become almost synonymous to me. Don't you think you should give it more thought? Why would you want to marry a two-time loser?”

His handsome face spread in a confident smile. “It's not your fault you didn't meet me sooner.” He tugged on her hand. “Let's go to bed. If you don't want to make love, we can just cuddle.”

Her dark mood lifted. How could she be depressed with a wonderful man like this at her side? Lily slipped her hands inside his robe, feeling his muscular chest. “You owe me for that quickie yesterday. I want the full treatment tonight.”

He got behind her and playfully pushed her through the balcony door and down the hall to the bedroom, kicking the door shut with his foot. Lily started to break away to make certain the balcony door was locked, but convinced herself that there was nothing to worry about as long as Chris was with her. Then she realized why Shana might be falling apart. The poor girl was alone with no one to protect her. Lily would have to find a way to change that, and she would have to do it immediately, even if it meant destroying her career.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

As soon as Lily's plane landed in San Francisco at eight o'clock, she called Shana's cell phone and got her voice mail again. “It's me,” she said, excited. “I should be there in about forty-five minutes to an hour. Call me back as soon as you get this. I'll—”

Before she could say anything else, a recorded voice said her message was being deleted. Shana's mailbox must still be full, which made her concern intensify. Shana lived and breathed by her cell phone. Lily didn't even know how to make a cell phone delete messages before a person stopped speaking. Of course, there was one way, and it was hurtful, especially since Lily hadn't done anything to cause her daughter to be angry with her. Shana must be screening her calls and manually deleting her mother's messages the moment she saw her number appear.

Lily decided her daughter was having a flashback all right, but it had nothing to do with her being raped. She was reverting back to the spoiled brat she'd been when her father was alive, believing the world revolved around her and ignoring anyone who wouldn't give her what she wanted.

Was this all just a ploy to get Lily to cough up more money?
Shana had been living beyond her means for almost a year now, and not by a small sum. Last month alone, Lily had given her an extra thousand. She hadn't realized she had given Shana so much until her accountant had prepared her taxes. Like John, Lily had developed a habit of never saying no to her daughter. She couldn't stand it when Shana was upset or unhappy.

Then Lily remembered Shana telling her that a girl in her apartment complex had been raped and the suspect was still outstanding. With Shana's history, something like that could cause her to unravel. She went to the Dollar Rent A Car counter, walking off with the keys to a Dodge Caliber. She'd never heard of it, but it drove fairly well. Shana had a Mustang convertible but she hadn't offered to pick her up.