And Then She Was Gone

by Rosalind Noonan

Genres: Family Life; Suspense

Synopsis

Eleven-year-old Lauren O'Neil vanished one sunny afternoon as she walked home from school. Six years later, her parents Rachel and Dan still tirelessly scour their Oregon hometown and beyond, always believing Lauren will be found. Then one day, the call comes. Lauren has been rescued from a secluded farm mere miles away, and her abductor has confessed. Yet her return is nothing like Rachel imagined. Though the revelations about what Lauren endured are shocking, most heartbreaking of all is to see the bright-eyed, assertive daughter she knew transformed into a wary, polite stranger. Lauren's first instinct is to flee. For years she's been told her parents forgot her;now she doubts the pieces of her life can ever fit together again. But Rachel refuses to lose her a second time. Little by little they must relearn what it means to be a family, trusting that their bond is strong enough to guide them back to each other. Intensely moving and absorbing, this is an extraordinary story told with sensitivity and grace, and filled with the depth and breadth of a mother's love. Praise for Rosalind Noonan "Noonan has a knack for page-turners and doesn't disappoint." -- Publishers Weekly on All She Ever Wanted "The author once again takes on an emotional topic with great sensitivity." -- Booklist on The Daughter She Used to Be "Reminiscent of Jodi Picoult's kind of tale. . .it's a keeper!" -- New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson on One September Morning

Release date: March 19, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 337

Sample

It was a nothing day.

Nothing exciting had happened at school, and nothing good was going to happen tonight with all the homework weighing down her backpack as she plodded along Wildwood Lane, heading home. Homework was annoying because it took Lauren away from fun things, like reading about dragons in ancient kingdoms or sketching the gargoyles and winged beasts that decorated her thoughts. Lauren imagined sliding the heavy pack off and kicking it down the street. That would be fun, except it might mess up her sketchbook inside. She wiped the damp blond hair from the nape of her neck and sighed. Looking on the good side, at least Mom was letting her go home on her own instead of sitting in that stuffy classroom of babies in the after-school program.

Why-oh-why did Mom and Dad think she needed after-school babysitting? She wasn’t like Sierra, six years old and still a baby. Lauren was eleven and perfectly capable of walking home on her own, one foot in front of the other. And she didn’t mind the walk, even when it was raining, which was pretty often. Thirty-seven inches a year in the city of Portland; that was a fact. Some people acted like the rain would melt them, like the Wicked Witch of the West.

That would make a cool sketch. A melting creature.

More than anything else, Lauren liked to draw. Her new obsession had overtaken her passion for reading a few months ago when she’d realized that nobody was going to give her a job for reading, but sketching had possibilities. She could see herself sitting at one of those artist’s drawing tables, creating graphic novels or animated characters for movies. Already she had two sketchbooks filled with gargoyles and winged beasts, fairies and elves, and illustrated phobias. She was proud of her illustration of thirty phobias; from acarophobia, fear of itchy, crawly insects, to selachophobia, fear of sharks.

Someday, someone was going to discover her talent, and then she would get a chance to complete her phobia illustrations, because there were many, many more.

The Eastons’ overgrown bush blocked the sidewalk, and Lauren reached one hand out to bat off the leaves as she sideswiped it. The bush had grown into a giant mushroom shape, which attracted the neighborhood kids like catnip. Sierra and her friends would run underneath the springy twigs, shrieking like hyenas. Lauren grabbed onto a crisp leaf and imagined the bush coming to life: a giant mushroom with a cap that curled down over the unsuspecting children huddled under it.

Just what Sierra deserved. Mom got mad when Lauren talked about it, but Sierra was a six-year-old dodo birdbrain. In fact, because of her pesky sister, Lauren had almost been stuck in Aftercare with Sierra and her first-grade friends. Dad totally didn’t get why Lauren wanted out. He was disappointed that she didn’t like spending time with her sister. At least Mom was beginning to understand that the five years between her and Sierra made a huge difference. Huge.

She let the branch snap back. Just two more weeks of this. Sixth grade was boring—more of the same stuff they’d done before with the same teachers. She doubted that junior high would be any more interesting.

But summer . . . summer vacation was going to be awesome.

This year Lauren was old enough to stay with her grandparents on Mirror Lake. She longed to wake up on the lake and spend the day drawing birds and flowers and magical creatures that rose from the lake or formed in the clouds. Maybe she would get to sketch some more phobias.

Eleven was a good age to get away from your parents for a while. Definitely a good age to get away from Sierra.

Just then a hummingbird zipped over her head and darted toward the Millers’ house. Lauren watched in wonder as it hovered over their porch—a flash of iridescent green—near a feeder shaped like a spaceship. The Millers didn’t seem to be home, so she edged closer; besides, they probably wouldn’t mind as long as she didn’t trample anything.

“Oh, little hummingbird.” It seemed like a sign of good luck and affection. The hummingbird wouldn’t have dipped so close to her if it didn’t know how she loved creatures. Although she knew the little bird was too fast to sketch, she dropped her backpack to the ground and took out her sketchbook. The cloud of glimmering green—that was what she wanted to capture in a speed sketch.

The hummingbird lingered, and Lauren sat down in the grass with her pad in her lap. Why shouldn’t she stay a minute?

She gasped as the little bird darted close again, buzzing her pulse to a rapid pace. And then, he flew off.

Lauren twirled strands of golden hair around one fingertip as the volume seemed to turn up around her. Birdsong and the smell of warm soil. Insects bouncing in a cloud over the yard and so much green. Leaves and ivy and grassy lawns. Tiny violet flowers wove through the grass beneath her in a random pattern that she found irresistible. This she could sketch.

“Hey, there.” Although it was a friendly voice, with the steady timbre of a teacher or a dad, Lauren was startled.

A man stood over her, a hulking figure backlit by the sunlight. She squinted up at him just enough to decipher the uniform shirt and the brown paper package in his hand. A white van idled by the curb.

Some delivery guy.

“Do you want to sign for this?” Clutching the package awkwardly, he hunched down beside her.

Too close. Lauren didn’t like people that close, especially strangers. The sun glinted off little slivers of gold in his short hair, but his face was in shadow.

Pressing her sketchpad to her chest, she leaned away. “I don’t live here.”

“No? You look pretty much at home.”

He was teasing. She knew that. Adults said stupid things like that all the time, even when they didn’t know you. Still, she wished he would just go away. “Is that for the Millers?” she asked.

“Yeah, the Millers.” He fumbled with a black gizmo beside the box. One of those electronic pads that scanned the packages. The man didn’t look creepy, but something about the way his blue eyes pinned her down made Lauren squirm.

She clambered back, away from him, and shoved her sketchbook away. “I got to go.”

“What’s your hurry? It’s too nice a day to be rushing around.”

Bowing away from the pressure of his stare, she fumbled with the zipper on her backpack. She heard the whir of a lawn mower nearby but didn’t see any neighbors or kids out on the block. Now she wished the Millers were home. She wished she hadn’t stopped. She had to get home.

Suddenly the man’s hand clamped over her arm, cruelty in his grip.

“Let me go!” she ordered, adrenaline shooting through her body. She yanked back, determined to shake him loose. But as she tried to pull away, he pressed something to her neck and . . .

Brrrr . . .

She sucked in a breath as her whole body cramped up in a cold jolt of pain.

Terrible slamming p-p-pain!

The instinct to get away was strong, but her body was useless, hunched and rigid and sprawled on the green lawn. Somewhere in her mind it registered that she had peed in her pants, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her mind didn’t have the strength to be embarrassed because it was wrapped around the pain.

How long did she lie there—seconds? Minutes? The sound of him near her pierced through her daze. She had to get up!

Face-to-face with the tiny purple flowers, she pressed into the earth, tearing at grass and clover as she tried to get up. Get up and get away!

But the best she could do was to tear up a handful of green clover.

She grasped it in one fist, holding on to the last trace of home as the man lifted her under the arms and dragged her away.

Six Years Later

Rachel O’Neil watched from the bleachers as one by one the members of the senior class crossed the stage to receive their diplomas from Dr. Kendris, principal of Mirror Lake High School.

“Nora Berton.”

Rachel applauded and whooped it up with her friend as Julia’s daughter crossed the stage. Julia shifted forward on the bleacher seat and snapped some shots with her digital camera as Nora accepted her diploma.

“Congratulations, Mom,” Rachel said quietly as Julia’s lower lip rumpled into a pout.

“I can’t believe it.” The two women exchanged a quick hug, and then settled back into their spots.

As other graduates were called, Rachel watched Nora make her way back to her seat, hugging classmates along the way. Such a good kid. A memory from years ago flashed across Rachel’s mind: overhearing Nora asking Lauren if she wanted to be best friends. Would the girls have remained friends through high school? Grown closer or drifted apart? The “what-if” game always taunted her this way.

“Trevor Feron.” Amidst applause, it was announced that Trevor would be heading to the University of Oregon next year.

As the tall boy moved in measured steps across the stage, Rachel smoothed back her hair, once the color of caramel, now layered with streaks of gold to blend with the gray. She had aged, but so had the students. Although he’d grown a soul patch since Rachel had been his seventh-grade English teacher, he was still the same unkempt Trev. “Still blinded by those bangs,” Rachel muttered.

Her friend Julia leaned close to add, “It’s a wonder he can see to make it across the stage.” Julia Berton knew all of these characters as well as Rachel. It was Julia, parent of a graduate, who had scored these seats in the bleachers for Rachel and Dan, who had bowed out at the last minute.

“I can’t do it,” Dan had told her that morning as he’d stared into his coffee. “I can’t sit there and watch every other kid in that class graduate just because my daughter should be there with them. I can’t stand to look at the faces of Lauren’s classmates and long for what could have been. What should have been.”

“That’s not why we’re going. Don’t you want to see Nora graduate? She and Julia are like family.”

But Dan had not budged. “You go. They were your students; you taught most of them in junior high. They’ll be happy to see you.”

Rachel doubted that anyone in Mirror Lake was happy to see her these days. She knew she had gained a reputation as a bulldog mom, voraciously chomping at city and state authorities to keep the search for her daughter open and active. When parents dared to make eye contact with her, there was pity in their eyes . . . pity and hopelessness and relief that it had not happened to their daughter. Rachel understood their discomfort. Some kept their distance out of fear that her tragedy might be contagious. Others didn’t know what to say to her, the parent of a child of uncertain destiny.

Lauren had been in a class with achievers. On stage now, Brooke Fitkin towered over the administrators. She was headed for Stanford on a basketball scholarship. Kara Gaines was off to Southern Oregon University. Jordan Gilroy was going to UVA for swimming. And Erica Glass had earned a javelin scholarship to a university in Hawaii. “A full ride,” as Julia kept saying.

Mirror Lake had one of the top-ranked high schools in Oregon—of course it did. It was one of the reasons she and Dan had scraped and saved and borrowed money from Dan’s parents to buy a modest house here when they could have afforded a nicer place with property just about anywhere else in the Portland area. Great schools, plenty of parks and green space, responsive police force, low crime rate . . . these were factors that wooed young families to the lake community. Outsiders mocked Mirror Lake residents for their “life in a protected bubble,” but who would not choose a town where the “civil war” was between rival football teams instead of rival gangs?

Seeing these students now, Rachel recognized them all with their little quirks. Yes, she cared about these kids, but Dan was wrong about one thing. They were not her kids. They were not Lauren. She had not come to any other ceremonies to watch her former students graduate. Sitting here beside Julia, the mother of Lauren’s best friend of long ago, Rachel knew that Dan had been right the first time. She was not here for these kids; she was here to represent Lauren, in some sick way. Lauren, who should have graduated from high school today. She couldn’t let go of that. She couldn’t give up on her oldest child. This was Lauren’s class. What if Lauren’s abductor had let her continue school somewhere else—in another state? Maybe Lauren was graduating today.

Since the day Lauren started kindergarten, Rachel had pictured this day. Her bright, artistic daughter had started school a year before most and would be graduating high school at the age of seventeen. “I can’t hold her back,” Rachel had told people. A teacher herself, Rachel could see that her daughter was ready for school, hungry to learn, pushing for routine and independence at the age of four. Rachel and Dan had shared high hopes for Lauren. An Ivy League school. A dynamic career. “How high can you soar?” she and Dan used to ask Lauren when they pushed her on the tree swing. Lauren would kick her legs and lean back to propel herself high in the air as she answered: “Up to the stars!”

Throughout grammar school, Lauren had been a highflier. Maybe not the most social kid. But Dan and Rachel had vested so many hopes in their oldest daughter, looking toward this day. Graduation day . . . but not for Lauren.

No, Lauren’s day had been little more than a week ago, the sixth anniversary of the day she’d disappeared, when the grounds of Mirror Lake Junior High had been crowded with people, hundreds of them, assembling to honor the six-year mark of Lauren’s disappearance and continue the search for her. Messages like We will find you! and We love you, Lauren! had been attached to hundreds of balloons that the searchers had released to the sky, shouting: “Find Lauren!”

Rachel would never forget the sight of those hot-pink balloons—Lauren’s favorite pink—rising into wide-open blue until they became small dots. It had been touching that so many people showed up for her, even six years later. They didn’t think Rachel was crazy. They believed she was out there, alive and waiting to be rescued.

Dan still went looking every morning as he jogged along the paths that cut through the town’s parks and neighborhoods. Every six months the local television stations broadcasted images of Lauren: photos from sixth grade and computer renderings of how she would probably look now.

Squinting over the graduates below, Rachel could see her down there, crossing the stage, her honey-blond hair streaming out beneath her mortarboard cap. If her hair hadn’t been cut in these past six years, there would be flaxen gold spilling over her shoulders and down the back of her royal blue graduation gown.

Rachel could hear the principal calling her name . . .

Lauren O’Neil.

Would she be attending U of O, Dan’s alma mater, or Brown? Stanford or Northwestern? Lauren had been an excellent student, more interested in reading and learning how things worked than parties or boys.

How high can you soar?

Rachel pressed her lips together, trying to tamp down the swell of emotion. These days, the only things soaring were latex balloons. The memory of those fat pink balloons, swaying and rising, made her mouth go sour.

She bit her lower lip and turned to Julia. “It’s hard to believe our babies are old enough to graduate from high school.”

Julia’s eyes glimmered with compassion as she squeezed Rachel’s hand. “Hard to believe. Time really flies.”

And sometimes it drags, second to second, day to day. Time was a race through molasses when you were waiting for your daughter to come home.

At the podium Natalie Miller’s name was announced, and Rachel held her breath as she watched Russ and Trudy’s granddaughter cross the stage. The Millers were neighbors, two doors down. The police believed a van that had stopped in front of the Millers’ house had been used to abduct Lauren when she was walking home from school. One woman saw the van at the curb, its motor running. A plain white van, but the man who emerged was wearing a uniform.

As if that made it all okay. Rachel still seethed over the way our society teaches us to trust a person in a uniform.

“And I saw him carrying a package,” the woman, Allie Cotter, had insisted. “It was a delivery for the Millers. Just a deliveryman with a package.”

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Except that, when the Millers arrived home from their oldest son’s house in Bend, they were mystified by the brown paper package that contained no address, no postage, and no markings whatsoever. The package had been a cover, a way to park a van on Wildwood Lane and drive away without attracting attention. There was a slightly trampled section of the lawn. A section that might have been torn up by a digging squirrel. Had Lauren run to knock on the Millers’ door when she sensed danger, but then struggled with the abductor on the lawn? And somehow, without anyone seeing, he had managed to get Lauren into his van.

Or at least that was how the theory went. Rachel refused to believe that her daughter would get into a stranger’s van without a fight, but there were other factors involved. Maybe he wasn’t a stranger. And it was too painful to think about the weapons an abductor could use to subdue a girl who fought him.

Beads of sweat were forming on Rachel’s forehead, and she had to remind herself to breathe. Was the gymnasium hotter than usual? Was she suffering a hot flash at the age of forty-two, or was the heat because of her own voyage to the Inferno, the serpentine layers of hell surrounding Lauren’s disappearance?

Julia leaned closer. “You okay?”

Nodding, she swiped the back of one hand over her forehead and accepted a small bottle of water from Julia’s bag. Even tepid water was a relief in this hotbed of community. It helped Rachel focus, helped her remember the positive reason she had come, to celebrate the graduation of Julia’s daughter Nora.

She took another calming breath and looked to her left to find people watching her, staring, contemplating.

When she faced them, they glanced away, uncomfortable and nervous. Were they able to do the math and realize that her daughter should be graduating today, too?

You should be here, honey. Rachel sent the message out the way most people transmitted a prayer to the heavens. Somewhere out there, Lauren was alive and receiving at least a flicker of telepathic activity.

Like the flyers that shouted DON’T STOP BELIEVING! Rachel held on to the conviction that her daughter was alive. Sure, people thought she was deluded. Living in denial. Let them think what they wanted.

Lauren was out there somewhere; Rachel knew that. She could feel it. And one of these days, she was going to come back to them.

Sis’s foot twisted in the loose soil, and the pain that shot up her leg sucked her breath away. She braced herself against the hoe and used it to edge back, out of the dirt and against the fence, where she collapsed with a sigh.

She closed her eyes and let the tears flow down her cheeks. Kevin would be mad if he found her crying, but he was off at the Portland Saturday Market right now, and the tears came automatically when she wrenched her bad leg. Bad because Kevin had made it that way. Even after all these years, six years of minding him most of the time, he still let her have it when he thought she was disobeying him.

She shifted her leg, and winced. It still hurt, but she couldn’t let it slow her down. Kevin would be mad if he came home to an untended garden. Silly girl.

She swiped at her cheeks and took a breath. No use in crying. Besides, it wasn’t so bad, out here in the sun. Using the hoe as a cane, she propped herself up, back on her feet. Testing the tool against the moist earth, she imagined herself pushing off the stick and bouncing over the fence like one of those pole vault guys.

Just thinking of it made her smile. She would bounce over the fence and just keep bouncing from one green hill to another, bouncing into the deep blue sky.

She had hopped the fence once, jumping from a nearby tree. It had been one of those hot summer days when the sun pounded down mercilessly from a clear sky, and all she had been able to think of was the cool gurgle of the little stream a few yards from their compound. The spring that ran over the rocks at the bottom of the hill had just enough water to cover your body in the summer. When Kevin had found her down by the creek, he had been real quiet as she had explained that she wasn’t breaking any rules. She hadn’t been running away, just cooling off. Later, back behind the fence, he had beat her hard and chopped down the poor little beech tree.

The sun was hot on her head, and she wished she could slip into the river right now and wash her hair. “Not until Kevin gets back,” Sis said aloud. Sometimes, you needed to remind yourself of the rules. She was limping because she’d broken the rules.

“You should know better,” Kevin had hissed. “I haven’t had to lay a hand on you for a long time. I thought you stopped trying to git away.”

Because of Mac . . .

She couldn’t leave her daughter behind, and even if they could have gotten away, who would take in a teen mother and her baby? She couldn’t risk it. It was her job to protect her baby.

As pain flared in her ankle again, she could still see him, the metal wrench silhouetted over his head as he’d swung it up. And then down on her bad leg.

The wound that was never allowed to heal.

“That’s so you’ll remember the rules,” he had told her. It seemed like he’d told her that a thousand times.

Kevin was a stickler for the rules. With a hack of the hoe, she flashed on the first time she had broken the rules, that day in the beach house when he had pushed her out to the edge of the jetty.

Her knees still trembled when she thought of the icy shock of the stun gun and the long finger of boulders jutting out into the ocean.

Sharp, slippery rocks. But Kevin didn’t care. She’d been eleven years old, and he had pushed her out on those rocks.

The jetty was a long mound of boulders, some of them the size of coffins, many of them pointy and unforgiving. They were lined up at the edge of that beach, as if a giant had stacked his rock collection at the water’s edge. “How did these get here?” The magnitude of the rock pile, with seawater splashing over the jagged stones, had momentarily eclipsed the knowledge that he was mean and angry and hurtful, that she shouldn’t ask him any questions because she didn’t trust his answers anyway.

“That’s the Army Corps of Engineers for ya. They come in here and build a wall of rocks on the beach and spend millions of dollars doing it.” He loved to show off that way, when he knew something.

He was mad at her for telling him to mind his business and keep his hands off her. She had tried to slap him away when he’d followed her into the shower and put his hands on her private parts. She wrenched away, slashing at him with her fingernails, and he threatened her with the razor, telling her he could do much worse.

He’d been waiting for her outside the shower with a stupid flowered dress for her to put on, along with a gray hoodie. And no panties. That was his way of making her feel uncomfortable and naked. She really wanted her underwear back, but she was too embarrassed to ask him for it. Without a word he had stuffed her into the back of the van and driven to the beach. The short ride told her that the house he’d locked her up in must have been close.

When the van door opened at the beach, he greeted her with a cool smile. His hand held the stun gun, a black object that reminded her of Dad’s electric razor. Only the stun gun held a cold, electric sizzle that made a person curl up and die inside. She knew, because he’d used it on her in the Millers’ yard.

He held it up to her, an angry squint in his eyes.

“N-no!” She scooted back on the van’s rough carpet.

“Then get out of the van, or I’ll zap you good.”

She scrambled quickly and did as she was told. She pulled her hood up and walked along the packed sand that filled the center of the jetty.

“Do not look around, and do not walk out of line, unless you want the shock of your life.”

Knowing she couldn’t take another cold blue shock, she walked out toward the ocean. Were there people on the beach around them? She didn’t think so, n. . .