Харлан Кобен - Run Away

The awful truth: Simon couldn’t even see the little girl anymore.

Oh, for the past hour he had tried. He tried again now to look at her and conjure up the angelic child he’d taken to swim classes at the 92nd Street Y, the one who sat on a hammock out in the Hamptons while he read her two full Harry Potter books over the three-day Labor Day weekend, the little girl who insisted on wearing her Statue-of-Liberty Halloween costume complete with green face two weeks early, but — and maybe it was a defense mechanism — none of those images would come to him.

Paige stumbled to a stand.

Time to make his move.

Across the mosaic, Simon stood too. His heart pounded hard against his rib cage. He could feel a headache coming on, like giant hands were pressing in against both his temples. He looked left, then right.

For the boyfriend.

Simon couldn’t say exactly how it all started spiraling, but he blamed the boyfriend for the scourge brought on his daughter and by extension his entire family. Yes, Simon had read all about how an addict has to take responsibility for her own actions, that it was the addict’s fault and the addict’s fault alone, all of that. And most addicts (and by extension, their families) had a tale to tell. Maybe their addiction started with pain medication after an operation. Maybe they traced it back to peer pressure or claimed that one-time experimentation had somehow evolved into something darker.

There was always an excuse.

But in Paige’s case — call it a weakness of character or bad parenting or whatever — it all seemed somewhat simpler:

There was Paige before she met Aaron. And Paige now.

Aaron Corval was scum — obvious, unsubtle scum — and when you blended scum and purity, the purity was forever sullied. Simon never got the appeal. Aaron was thirty-two years old, eleven years older than his daughter. In a more innocent time, this age difference had concerned Simon. Ingrid had shrugged it off, but she was used to such things from her modeling days. Now, of course, the age difference was the least of it.

There was no sign of Aaron.

A small bird of hope took flight. Could Aaron finally be out of the picture? Could this malignancy, this cancer, this parasite who fed off his daughter have finished his feast and moved on to a more robust host?

That would be good, no question about it.

Paige started east toward the path across the park, her gait a zombie-like shuffle. Simon started to make his move.

What, he wondered, would he do if she refused to go with him? That was not only a possibility but a likelihood. Simon had tried to get her help in the past, and it had backfired. He couldn’t force her. He knew that. He’d even had Robert Previdi, his brother-in-law, try to get a court order to have her committed. That hadn’t worked either.

Simon came up behind her now. Her worn sundress hung too loosely off her shoulders. There were brown spots — sun? illness? abuse? — on her back, blotting the once-flawless skin.

“Paige?”

She didn’t turn around, didn’t so much as hesitate, and for a brief second, Simon entertained the fantasy that he had been wrong, that Charlie Crowley had been wrong, that this disheveled bag of bones with the rancid smell and shot voice was not his firstborn, not his Paige, not the teenager who played Hodel in the Abernathy Academy production of Fiddler on the Roof , the one who smelled like peaches and youth and broke the audience’s heart with her “Far from the Home I Love” solo. Simon had never made it through one of her five performances without welling up, nearly breaking into sobs when Paige’s Hodel turned to Tevye and said, “Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again,” to which her stage father replied, “Then we will leave it in His hands.”

He cleared his throat and got closer. “Paige?”

She slowed but did not turn around. Simon reached out with a trembling hand. Her back still faced him. He rested his hand on the shoulder, feeling nothing but dried bone covered by papery skin, and tried one more time.

“Paige?”

She stopped.

“Paige, it’s Daddy.”

Daddy. When was the last time she had called him Daddy? He had been Dad to her, to all three kids, for as long as he could remember, and yet the word just came out. He could hear the crack in his voice, the plea.

She still wouldn’t turn toward him.

“Please, Paige—”

And then she broke into a run.

The move caught him off guard. Paige had a three-step lead when he snapped into action. Simon had recently gotten himself into pretty good shape. There was a health club next to his office and with the stress of losing his daughter — that was how he looked at it, as losing her — he had become obsessed with various cardio-boxing classes during his lunch hour.

He leapt forward and caught up to her pretty quickly. He grabbed Paige by the reedlike upper arm — he could have circled the flimsy bicep with his index finger and thumb — and yanked her back. The yank may have been too hard, but the whole thing — the leaps, the reach — had just been an automatic reaction.

Paige had tried to flee. He had done what was necessary to stop her.

“Ow!” she cried. “Let go of me!”

There were loads of people around, and some, Simon was sure, had turned at the sound of her cry. He didn’t care, except it added urgency to his mission. He would have to act fast now and get her out of here before some Good Samaritan stepped in to “rescue” Paige.

“Honey, it’s Dad. Just come with me, okay?”

Her back was still to him. Simon spun her so that she would have to face him, but Paige covered her eyes with the crook of her arm, as though he were shining a bright light in her face.

“Paige? Paige, please look at me.”

Her body stiffened and then, suddenly, relaxed. Paige lowered her arm from her face and slowly turned her gaze up at him. Hope again took flight. Yes, her eyes were sunken deep into the sockets and the color was yellow where it should have been white, but now, for the first time, Simon thought that maybe he saw a flicker — life — there too.

For the first time, he saw a hint of the little girl he once knew.

When Paige spoke, he could finally hear the echo of his daughter: “Dad?”

He nodded. He opened his mouth, closed it because he felt too overwhelmed, tried again. “I’m here to help you, Paige.”

She started to cry. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

He stretched out his arms to sweep his daughter into safety, when another voice sliced through the park like a reaper’s scythe.

“What the fuck...?”

Simon felt his heart drop. He looked to his right.

Aaron.

Paige cringed away from Simon at the sound of Aaron’s voice. Simon tried to hold on to her, but she pulled her arm loose, the guitar case banging against her leg.

“Paige...” Simon said.

But whatever clarity he had seen in her eyes just a few seconds ago shattered into a million pieces.

“Leave me alone!” she cried.

“Paige, please—”

Paige started to backpedal away. Simon reached out for her arm again, a desperate man falling off a cliff and trying to grasp a branch, but Paige let out a piercing scream.

That turned heads. Lots of them.

Simon did not back away.

“Please, just listen—”

And then Aaron stepped between them.

The two men, Simon and Aaron, were eye to eye. Paige cowered behind Aaron. Aaron looked strung-out, wearing a denim jacket over a grungy white T-shirt — the latest in heroin chic minus the chic. He had too many chains around his neck and had that stubble that aimed for fashionable but fell way short, and work boots, which were always a sardonic look on someone who wouldn’t recognize a day of honest work if it kicked him in the groin.