Page 24 of Find Me

“No. He lovesyou. And he knows I love you too. It was on your birthday, when we were handling cleanup in the kitchen after dinner. He told me that for fifteen years, he had watched you treat that woman like you can’t even breathe without her. He thought maybe it had something to do with losing your mom at such a young age.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“Come on, Lindsay, you have to admit there’s something weird about your friendship. She literally doesn’t have anyone in her life except you.”

“Of course she does. Miriam. Rebecca. The Becketts.”

“Her boss. Her therapist. Her landlords. In fifteen years, she couldn’t make another friend? Or date someone for more than a few months? And I’ve got to be honest, I think you like it that way. She needs you so much that you can be a hundred percent confident that she will never leave you.”

“Like my mom did? Is that what you’re saying, Sigmund Freud?”

“Yeah, I guess I am. Sometimes I think I never should have told you about how I screwed up my marriage. I’m just a little too messy foryou, but not Hope. You never have to wonder if she’ll betray you. You don’t have the tiniest sliver of doubt? Even before she went silent, you said she wasn’t texting or calling you as much as normal. You can’t open your mind to the slightest possibility that she wanted to go on with her life without you in it?”

“Because she wouldn’t.”

“Look, we’re both exhausted, okay? I’m on your side here.”

“There are nosides, Scott. I’m telling you that I’m right about this. Something is seriously wrong.”

He nodded. “Okay. You know your friend.”

“Yes. I do.”

“But... that cop was totally flirting with you.”

She found herself smiling. “Well, whether he was or not, I have no interest in that man.”

“Yes, I think you made that pretty clear.” That grin. It melted her every time. “So what do you want to do? About his offer with the flyers.” Apparently they were moving on.

“I’ll send him the file. But that guy gets under my skin.”

“I also think you’re hangry,” he said, hitting the unlock button on the key fob. “Let’s get some food in you.”

“Ah, I like the look of a satisfied customer.” Rowdy Hall was packed, but they got lucky and scored two seats at the bar. The bartender was a large, bald man with thick black glasses. The gray soul patch beneath his lower lip somehow suited his friendly face.

The margarita she ordered was perfect. She’d had at least a drink a day since Hope went missing, but it helped calm her nerves.

“The designated driver is officially jealous,” Scott said, using his finger to taste the salted rim.

She didn’t realize how hungry she was until she opened the menu. Scott ordered the burger, while she went with the Croque Madame, described as a grilled ham and cheese with a fried egg on top and a salad on the side.

The bartender was telling her she was going to be very happy with her selection when her phone buzzed with a new message. Carter Decker.Got the flyers.She held it up for Scott to see before dropping it into her purse. “He probably wants me to thank him. Again. For offering to do the laziest version of his actual job.” At Scott’s urging, she had sent him a polite email with the file, moderating her tone and expressing her “sincere gratitude” for his help.

“Look, I know I only met the guy for half a second, and you’ve had more of a chance to form an impression than I have...”

“But?”

“I can at least understand why he’s not totally convinced there’s some accomplice serial killer out there who’s gone undetected for twenty years and counting.”

When Lindsay learned of the DNA match to the College Hill Strangler case, of course she assumed there was a connection. And when she read in an old newspaper article that the woman who was killed was a volunteer at a nearby summer camp, she had even imagined a teenage camp counselor who might have been the one to choose Janice Beale as the duo’s next target. “It does sound a little crazy,” she conceded. It was just as likely that the blood belonged to some kid who ran to Beale’s house when he cut himself on the playground. “If I had to guess, when Decker heard about the cash advance from Evan, his mind was made up.”

“Well, what if you could find a way to make her past actually work in her favor?” Scott suggested. She knew he was trying to make up for the things he had said about Hope earlier. “If you could offer the police a theory where Hope’s background makes it more likely she’s in danger, rather than a runaway, maybe they’d be more willing to take it seriously. You always thought Hope’s memory loss was from some kind of trauma.”

Because the earliest anyone could account for Hope’s existence was the moment of her car crash, the obvious explanation for her memory loss was the physical impact of the accident. But Lindsay had learned that psychological trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder could also induce dissociative fugue, or what used to be called a fugue state—a psychological condition characterized by an inability to recall one’s identity or personality. Usually these were relatively short-lived blackouts, but there were reported cases that lasted decades.

If Hope had suffered an extraordinary trauma before her car accident, it might explain not only her absence of recall but also her reasons for being in New Jersey, driving a stolen car from Indianapolis. It could even be the cause of the car accident itself, if she had blacked out behind the wheel. Hope had undergone hypnotherapy in an effort to draw out any buried memories, but, like everything else, it had yielded no further clues to her identity. Scott, of course, knew all of this.

“Did I ever tell you about going to the shooting range with Dad last year?” Lindsay asked.

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