Page 60 of Dead Man's Hollow
Keep me posted.
Will do. How’s it going up there?
We had a bombshell up here, too. I’ll talk to you later.
She hurriedly finishes typing the text and flips her phone over as Bastian and Chloe open the sliding door and come outside.
“Dr. Marchand thinks that I should go,” Chloe says without preamble. “But I need Bastian and Emilie to come with me.”
“Of course, you’ll want them to meet your family.”
“Yes, but no.” She seems at a loss.
Her husband steps in. “Chloe had an … episode when Emilie was a baby. She wandered away from the house and forgot who she was. It’s a condition called dissociative amnesia. And Dr. Marchand says it could happen again if she’s in a high-stress situation. But if we’re there with her, it will help to ground her.”
Maisy processes this information. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“To find out who I am? To meet my sisters? Yes, I’m sure.”
“Can Emilie miss school? What about the restaurant? How soon can you come?”
Bastian smiles indulgently. “This is important. I’ll make arrangements for my general manager and assistant chef to cover the restaurant. And I’m sure Emilie will be excused from school for something like this. We’ll be ready to go tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’re positive.”
“I’ll call and get three more tickets on our flight. I’ll just need your passports.”
Chloe bustles back into the house to get them.
Rich is still silent.
Bastian throws him a curious look. “So you are Chloe’s brother-in-law, then?”
“I guess I am,” Rich answers before falling silent again.
In light of the news from Jordana, Maisy has to wonder whether he recognized Chloe immediately and pretended not to. If he did, he played it very cool—and that makes Maisy wonder just how skilled a liar Rich Marino is.
ChapterThirty-Three
Somehow,Maisy sweet talks half the plane into switching seats so they can sit five across—the Tremblay girl has the window seat, her father sits in the middle, and then Chloe/Heather is on the aisle seat. Across the aisle, he claims the window, the middle seat is empty, and Maisy sits in the aisle seat. As soon as the plane takes off, she leans across the aisle to chat with Chloe/Heather.
Rich puts on his headphones but doesn’t turn on his music. He wants to hear their conversation. No, heneedsto hear their conversation. He’s been mildly panicked from the moment he and Maisy walked through the front door of the Tremblays’ house.
He recognized Heather in a heartbeat and instantly started planning his attack. No matter what she said about that night, he resolved to call her a liar and a fraud. But given the blank look she greeted him with, she genuinely didn’t seem to recognize him or remember who she was. Dissociative amnesia, she called it. He’s not sure he buys it.
He looks up the term on his phone while they’re waiting to board and is surprised to learn it’s a real condition. It’s what Jason Bourne has in the movies. In the real world, sometimes people with this kind of amnesia regain their memories. But Heather’s been Chloe for thirty years. If that was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Right? Or maybe it has, and she’s keeping it to herself.
He shifts in his seat and surreptitiously checks his phone so Maisy doesn’t bitch at him again. He’d tried to call Amy earlier, but the call wouldn’t go through. And his text messages to her remain unread. It looks like they sent, but they must be hung up in international airspace. He doesn’t like not being able to deliver the news about her sister through his own lens. And Maisy excused herself when she called Amy and the others, leaving him no opportunity to talk to them.
It’s unsettling. He jiggles his leg and half-listens to Chloe and Maisy yapping about Diana, Amy and the kids, and Kristy and her family. Then Maisy saying his name catches his attention. He holds his breath and strains to hear.
“Seeing Rich didn’t bring back any memories?”
Chloe squints at Maisy, leans forward to peer around her at him, and then shakes her head. “Should it have? Did I know him?”
“You did. You went to high school together.”
