Харлан Кобен - Run Away

Elena was laid to rest next to a man named Joel Marcus.

They overnighted at a hotel outside Chicago. On the drive home the next morning, Simon asked, “Do you mind if we stop in Pittsburgh?”

“Not at all,” Cornelius said. Then, noticing the look on Simon’s face, he added, “What’s up?”

“I just need to visit someone.”

When Simon knocked on the door, a young man opened it and peered out. “Doug Mulzer?”

“Yes.”

Mulzer had not been able physically or emotionally to return to Lanford College after his ordeal. Simon didn’t care. Or maybe he did. Maybe there had been enough vigilante justice.

“My name is Simon Greene. I’m Paige’s father.”

When they got back to New York City, Simon dropped off Cornelius and headed to PPG Wealth Management’s office. It was late in the day, but Yvonne was still there. He pulled her aside and said, “I think I know what Ingrid’s secret is.”

That night, when he reached his apartment building, Suzy Fiske was holding the elevator door for him. She greeted him with a big smile and a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey,” she said, “I see Sam is home from Amherst.”

“Yeah, he came back tonight for break.”

“So you got all three home?”

“Yup.”

“That must be great.”

Simon smiled. “It is.”

“And I hear Paige enrolled at NYU.”

“Yes. But she’s still going to live at home.”

“I’m really happy for you guys.”

“Thank you, Suzy. I know I’ve already thanked you a million times—”

“And gave us that gift card for RedFarm. Which was too generous. We’ve eaten there like four times already.”

The elevator stopped at Simon’s floor. He got out and opened the door with his key. Bad Wolves’ version of “Zombie” was playing over a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen. Ingrid was singing the chorus:

“What’s in your head, in your head, zombie...”

Simon leaned against the kitchen doorframe. Ingrid turned and smiled at him.

“Hi,” Ingrid said.

“Hi.”

“How was the trip?”

“Good,” he said. “Sad.”

“Your son is home.”

“So I heard. What are you cooking?”

“My famous Asian salmon recipe. His favorite.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

“Where’s Paige?”

“She’s in her room. Five minutes to dinner, okay?”

“Okay.”

He headed down the corridor and knocked on her bedroom door. Paige said, “Come in.”

His daughter still looked pale and drawn and harried, even after all this time, and he wondered whether that would ever leave her. There had been bad nights and sweats and nightmares and tears. It was a struggle and he wasn’t sure that Paige would ever win it — he knew the odds — but maybe she would. He had wondered about Aaron’s influence on Paige, their bizarre and twisted bond. Maybe again it was all simple. Like Fagbenle had said.

You kill a man to protect your child.

You kill a man, you save an addict.

“I never understood how you first connected with Aaron,” he said. “That was the part I couldn’t shake. Elena Ramirez saw Henry Thorpe’s DNA test. It showed all the half brothers, including Aaron. But you took that DNA test too, Paige, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So I never understood — what was your connection to Aaron? What would make you so attached to someone so awful?”

Paige had been pulling a hoodie out of her drawer. Now she stopped and waited.

“You know what struck me as weird about your apartment in the Bronx?” he continued. “There were two single mattresses — one on either side of the room.” He spread his hands. “What kind of young couple doesn’t share a bed?”

“Dad.”

“Let me just finish this, okay? I went to see Doug Mulzer today in Pittsburgh. We need to talk about that at some point, about what he did to you, or maybe you have in your therapy sessions.”

“I have.”

“Okay, but see, he was attacked. Viciously.”

“That was wrong,” Paige said.

“Maybe, maybe not. That’s not my point. But Doug told me that a man with a ski mask assaulted him. It was Aaron, right?”

“Yes. I should have never told him what Doug did to me.”

“Why did you?”

Paige said nothing.

“I couldn’t figure that out. But then Mulzer told me what Aaron kept screaming at him during the beating.”

Tears came to Paige’s eyes. They came to Simon’s too.

“‘No one hurts my sister.’”

Paige’s shoulders slumped.

“When you took the DNA test, you did indeed find out that Aaron was your half brother, but not on your father’s side.” Simon could feel himself shaking. “You both had the same mother.”

It took a few seconds, but Paige managed to raise her chin and look at him. “Yes.”

“I checked with your aunt Yvonne. Your mom’s big secret? She didn’t model overseas when she was seventeen. She fell in with a cult. She got pregnant by the leader. But they told her... they told her that the baby was stillborn. She thought maybe they intentionally killed the baby. She became suicidal. Her family, your grandparents, they grabbed her and got her deprogrammed. At a retreat. The same one she took you to.”

His daughter crossed the room and sat on her bed. Simon joined her.

“He was so damaged,” Paige said. “His father abused him from a very young age.”

“Aaron, you mean?”

She nodded. “And you have to remember where I was. I’d been assaulted by Doug Mulzer at school and then I take this DNA test and it was like my whole life had been a big lie. I felt lost, scared, confused. And now I had this new brother. We talked for hours. I told him about the assault. So he took care of that. It was awful, but I also felt, I don’t know, protected maybe. Then Aaron got me high and it was like... I liked it. No, I loved it. It let me escape from everything. Aaron made sure I got high again and again, and...” She stopped, wiped her eyes. “I think he knew what he was doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think Aaron loved the idea of a sister. He didn’t want to lose me. He needed to keep me hooked so I didn’t abandon him — and maybe, maybe he also wanted to get revenge on his birth mother. He was the child she threw away — why not destroy the one she kept?”

“And you never confronted your mother?”

“No, I did.” She took a deep breath. “I came home and asked Mom if she ever had a child. She said no. I begged her to tell me the truth. She finally broke down. She told me about the cult. She said she’d been impregnated by an awful man, but the baby died.”

Based on what Yvonne had just told him, Ingrid still believed that.

“I thought she was still lying to me. But you see, I didn’t care anymore. I was a junkie by then. I only cared about my next fix. So I stole her jewelry — and went back to my brother.”

That sick, twisted bond — it was forged in blood.

“You talked about hitting rock bottom,” Simon said, feeling something harden in his chest, something that made it nearly impossible to breathe, “the fact that you’d forced your mother to kill someone...”

Paige squeezed her eyes shut tightly, so tightly, as though trying to wish this all away.

“...but she didn’t just kill ‘someone’...”

They both knew what was coming. Paige kept her eyes closed, bracing for the blow.

“...she killed her own son.”

“We can’t tell her, Dad.”

Simon shook his head, remembered what he and Ingrid said on that bench in Central Park. “No more secrets, Paige.”

“Dad—”

“Your mother even told me the truth about killing Aaron.”

Paige slowly turned to face him, and Simon thought that she had never looked so clear-eyed. “This secret isn’t like that. This secret will destroy her.”