Run Away

Chapter Twenty-Three

No change.

Simon was so tired of hearing that. His chair was pulled up right next to Ingrid’s bed. He held her hand. He stared at her face, watching her breathe. Ingrid always slept on her back, just like this, so that coma looked amazingly like sleep, which may seem obvious or perhaps not. You expect a coma to look different, don’t you? Sure there were tubes and noises and Ingrid liked wearing spaghetti-strap silk negligees to bed, which of course he loved too. He loved the coil of her body, the broad shoulders, the prominent collarbone.

No change.

This was purgatory, neither heaven nor hell. There were some who argued that purgatory was the worst — the suspended, the unknown, the wear and tear of the endless wait. Simon understood that sentiment, but for now he was okay with purgatory. If Ingrid’s condition darkened in even the slightest way, he’d lose it completely. He was self-aware enough to realize that he was hanging on by a fraying thread now. If he got bad news, if something more went wrong with Ingrid...

No change.

So block.

Right, pretend she was asleep. He kept staring at her face, the cheekbones so sharp the surgeons down the hall could use them as scalpels, the lips he’d gently kissed before he sat down, hoping to get some kind of reaction out of them because even when Ingrid was deep in sleep, her lips would react instinctively, in some small way at the very least, to his kiss.

But not now.

He flashed back to the last time he’d watched her as she slept — on their honeymoon in Antigua, days after they’d officially tied the knot. Simon had woken up before sunrise, Ingrid sprawled next to him on her back, like right now, like always. Her eyes were closed, of course, her breathing even, and so Simon just stared, marveling at the fact that this was how he’d wake up every day from now — next to this wondrous woman who was now his life partner.

He had watched her like this for only ten, maybe fifteen seconds, when without opening her eyes or moving at all, Ingrid said, “Cut that out, it’s creepy.”

He smiled at the memory, sitting now at her bedside with her still yet warm hand in his. Yes, warm. Alive. Blood flowing through. Ingrid didn’t feel shrunken or sick or dying. She was just asleep and soon she’d wake up.

And the first thing she’d do is ask about Paige.

He had some questions about that too.

Simon had called Elena after leaving Sadie Lowenstein’s and filled her in on Paige’s interest in genetics and ancestry. Elena usually played it close to the vest, but this meant something to her. She’d peppered him with follow-up questions, only some of which he could answer.

When Elena ran out of questions, she asked for Eileen Vaughan’s phone number. Simon gave it to her.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Maybe nothing. But not long before he was killed, Damien Gorse also visited one of those DNA sites.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Let me run down a few things before we get into that. Are you going to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

Elena promised to meet him there and then she hung up.

The children seemed okay. Anya was home with Suzy Fiske, and Simon thought that was probably best for now. Sam had befriended some medical residents who were working the floor — Sam was good at that, always able to make friends quickly — and he was in their lounge right now, trying to study for his upcoming physics exam. He’d always been not only a smart kid but an industrious one. Simon, who’d been a do-enough-to-get-by student, was constantly amazed by his son’s work ethic — up early in the morning, exercising before breakfast, getting his homework done days ahead of time — and unlike most fathers, Simon sometimes worried that he should encourage his son to ease off the gas pedal a bit and smell the roses. Sam was almost too driven.

Not now, of course. Now it would hopefully be a nice distraction.

No change.

So block — though right now, he was blocking on more than Ingrid’s condition.

Simon didn’t consider himself to be an overly imaginative guy, but whatever imagination he had, it had shifted into overdrive after hearing about the DNA test, careening him down this dark, ugly road, one with barbed wire and land mines, one he’d never wanted to travel, but there seemed to be no other choice at the moment.

Eileen Vaughan’s words kept echoing: “Problems at home.”

Yvonne slipped into the room. “Hey,” she said.

“Is there any chance Paige isn’t my child?”

Boom. Just like that.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Simon turned toward her. Yvonne was pale, shaking.

“Is there any chance I’m not Paige’s biological father?”

“My God, no.”

“I just need to know the truth.”

“What the hell, Simon?”

“Could she have slept with someone else?”

“Ingrid?”

“Who else would I be talking about?”

“I don’t know. This is all such crazy talk.”

“So there’s zero chance.”

“Zero.”

He turned back toward his wife.

“Simon, what’s going on?”

“You can’t say for sure,” he said.

“Simon.”

“No one can say for sure.”

“No, of course no one can say for sure.” A hint of impatience had crept into Yvonne’s voice. “I can’t say for sure you haven’t fathered any other children either.”

“You know how much I love her.”

“I do, yes. And she loves you just as much.”

“But I don’t know the whole story, do I?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah, you do. There’s a part of her that’s hidden. Even from me.”

“There’s part of everybody that’s hidden.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then I don’t get what you do mean.”

“Yeah, Yvonne, you do.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“It’s coming from my search for Paige.”

“And now you think, what, that you’re not her father?”

Simon swung his body now, faced her full. “I know everything about you, Yvonne.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes.”

Yvonne said nothing. Simon looked back at Ingrid in the bed.

“I love her. I love her with all my heart. But there are parts of her I don’t know.”

She still said nothing.

“Yvonne?”

“What do you want me to say? Ingrid has an air of mystery, I’ll grant you that. Guys went gaga over it. And hey, let’s be honest. It’s one of the things that drew you to her.”

He nodded. “At first.”

“You love her deeply.”

“I do.”

“And yet you’re wondering if she betrayed you in the worst way possible.”

“Did she?”

“No.”

“But there’s something.”

“It has nothing to do with Paige—”

“What does it have to do with?”

“—or her getting shot.”

“But there are secrets?”

“There’s a past, sure.” Yvonne raised her hands, more in frustration now than confusion. “Everyone has one.”

“I don’t. You don’t.”

“Stop it.”

“What kind of past does she have?”

“A past, Simon.” Her tone was impatient. “Just that. She had a life way before you — school, travel, relationships, jobs.”

“But that’s not what you mean. You mean something out of the ordinary.”

She frowned, shook her head. “It isn’t my place to say.”

“Too late for that, Yvonne.”

“No, it’s not. You have to trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

“Good. We’re talking about ancient history.”

Simon shook his head. “Whatever’s happening here — whatever changed Paige and led to all this destruction — I think it started a long time ago.”

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

Yvonne moved closer to the bed. “Let me ask you this, Simon.”

“Go ahead.”

“Best-case scenario: Ingrid comes out of this okay. You find Paige. Paige is okay. She gets clean. I mean, totally clean. Puts this whole ugly chapter behind her.”

“Okay.”

“Then Paige decides to move away. Get a fresh start. She meets a guy. A wonderful guy. A guy who puts her up on a pedestal, who loves her beyond anything she can imagine. They build a great life together, this guy and Paige, and Paige never wants this wonderful guy to know that at one time, she was a junkie and maybe worse, living in some crack den, doing God knows what with God knows who to get a fix.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. Paige loves this guy. She doesn’t want to see the light in his eyes dim. Can’t you understand that?”

Simon’s voice, when he finally found it, was barely a whisper. “My God, what is she hiding?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

“—just like Paige’s drug past wouldn’t matter.”

“Yvonne?”

“What?”

“Do you really think this secret would change how I feel about Ingrid?”

She didn’t reply.

“Because if that’s the case, then our love is pretty weak.”

“It’s not.”

“But?”

“But it would change the way you see her.”

“The dim in the eyes?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wrong. I’d still love her just as much.”

Yvonne nodded slowly. “I believe you would.”

“So?”

“So her distant past has nothing to do with this.” Yvonne held up her hand to stop his protest. “And no matter what you say, I promised. It’s not my secret to tell. You have to let it go.”

Simon wasn’t going to do that — he needed to know — but just then he felt Ingrid’s hand tighten over his like a vise. His heart leapt. He spun his head back toward his wife, hoping maybe to see her eyes open or a smile break out on her face. But her entire body convulsed, went rigid, began to spasm. Her eyes didn’t open — they fluttered uncontrollably so that he could only see their whites.

Machines began to beep. An alarm sounded.

Someone rushed into the room. Then someone else. A third person pushed him aside. More people flooded the room, surrounding Ingrid’s bed. The movement was constant. They were calling out urgent instructions, using unintelligible medical jargon in borderline-panic tones, as someone else, the sixth person to enter the room, gently but firmly pushed him and Yvonne out.

They rushed Ingrid into surgery.

No one would tell Simon anything of relevance. There was a “setback,” one of the nurses told him, followed closely by the old chestnut: “The doctor will be with you as soon as she can.”

He wanted to ask more, but he also didn’t want to distract anyone. Just work on Ingrid, he thought. Get her better. Then fill me in.

He paced a crowded waiting room. He started biting the nail on his pointer finger, something he’d done a lot when he was young, though he’d quit for good his senior year of college. Or so he thought. He paced from one corner to the other, pausing in each corner, leaning his back for a second or two against them because what he most wanted to do was collapse to the floor there and just curl up.

He looked for Yvonne, hoping to shake the damn answer out of her about his wife’s past, but she was nowhere to be found all of a sudden. Why? Did she want to avoid him, or was she just needed — especially with her partner out of commission — at work? Yvonne had said something about that, about taking care of the office, about pacing themselves for the “long haul,” about not needing both of them here at the same time.

Simon was somewhere between annoyed and angry with Yvonne, but he also recognized that her argument for keeping her promise to Ingrid had merit and even nobility. Simon had known Ingrid for twenty-four years — three years before Paige was born. How could anything from before Paige was born or even before Simon and Ingrid met, no matter how bizarre or sordid or just plain awful, factor into this?

It made zero sense.

“Simon?”

Elena Ramirez was suddenly next to him. She asked whether there was any update on Ingrid’s condition. Simon told her that Ingrid was in surgery and said, “So fill me in on what’s going on.”

They moved to one of those corners he’d been leaning against, the one farthest away from the entrance and general population.

“I haven’t put it all together yet,” Elena said in a low voice.

“But?”

Elena hesitated.

“You found something, right?”

“Yes. But I still don’t know how it connects to you. Or your daughter.”

“I’m listening.”

“Let’s start with Paige and this family tree club.”

“Okay.”

“We know that Damien Gorse visited an ancestry DNA site called DNAYourStory dot com.” She looked around as though she feared someone would overhear her. “So I asked my client to check his son Henry’s charge cards too.”

“And?”

“There was a charge to DNAYourStory. In fact, Henry Thorpe signed up for several DNA ancestry sites.”

“Wow.”

“Right.”

“So I guess I need to check Paige’s credit cards,” he said. “See if she signed up too.”

“Yes.”

“How about Aaron? Was he on the site?”

“There is no way to know, unless we find it on a charge card. Do you think you could ask the mother?”

“I could ask, sure, but I doubt she’ll help.”

“Worth a shot,” Elena said. “But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that they all sent in their samples to the same DNA site and got tested. Do you know how these tests work at all?”

“Not really.”

“You spit into a test tube and they analyze your DNA. Different sites do different things. Some claim they can look at your DNA and give you a genetic health workup — do you possess certain variants that make you more likely to get Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s?... Stuff like that.”

“Is that accurate?”

“The science seems questionable, but that’s not really important right now. At least, I don’t think it is. The basic package is probably what you’d know about if you’ve read anything about these DNA sites. It gives you an ancestry composition — like you’re, say, fifteen percent Italian and twenty-two percent Spanish, that kind of thing. It can map your ancestral migration too, like where your people first started and where they settled over time. It’s pretty wild.”

“Yeah, that might be interesting, but how does that play into this?”

“I doubt it does.”

“These tests,” Simon said. “They also tell you about your parents, right?”

“And other relatives, yes. I assume that’s why both Henry Thorpe and Damien Gorse took the test.”

“Because they were adopted,” Simon said.

“And didn’t know anything about their birth parents. That’s the key. It’s very common for adoptees to sign up for these services, so they can find their parents or learn about siblings or really, any blood relative.”

Simon rubbed his face. “And Aaron Corval might have done something like that too. To learn about his mother.”

“Yes. Or maybe to prove his father wasn’t his father.”

“You mean like maybe Aaron was adopted too?”

“It could be, I don’t know yet. One of the problems is that these DNA sites are highly controversial. I mean, millions of people have done them, maybe tens of millions. More than twelve million last year alone.”

Simon nodded. “I know a lot of people who sent in their samples.”

“Me too. Yet everyone is naturally squeamish about sending their DNA in to an internet company. So these ancestry sites are absolutists about security and privacy. Which I get. I tried every contact I know. DNAYourStory won’t tell me a thing without a warrant — and they’ve promised to fight any warrant to the Supreme Court.”

“But the connections you found—”

“—are right now tenuous at best. Two otherwise unconnected murders — different means, different states, different weapons — we can only link marginally to someone in Chicago via a few internet messages. It’s less than nothing in a court of law.”

Simon tried to absorb what she was saying. “So you think Aaron and your client and this Gorse guy — all three of these guys — could all be related?”

“I don’t know. But maybe.”

“Two of them have been murdered,” Simon said. “And the third — your client — is missing.”

“Yes.”

“Which leads to the obvious question.”

Elena nodded. “Paige.”

“Right. How would my daughter fit into your hypothesis?”

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Elena said.

“And?”

“There have been cases where law enforcement has used these DNA tests to solve crimes. So maybe, don’t ask me how, Paige stumbled across a crime.”

“What kind of crime?”

Elena shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“And why would she track down Aaron Corval?”

“We don’t know that she did. We only know Paige drove to see him in Connecticut.”

Simon nodded. “So maybe Aaron Corval reached out to her first.”

“Maybe. The thing is, it’s hard to figure out the connections. My tech guy, Lou, is working on it. He figures Henry was using an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp or Viber, so he can’t see it all. But now Lou’s thinking that maybe Henry was messaging through the ancestry site — they have their own messaging capabilities — and it just looked like a messaging app.”

Simon gave her a blank look.

“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Elena said, waving it away. “The important thing is, Lou is still searching for names. I also have my office looking into Aaron Corval’s background — his birth certificate, anything — so we can get a handle on that. Which brings me to the big thing.”

Elena stopped and let loose a deep breath.

“What?” he said.

“I found another connection.”

There was something odd in her voice. “Between all of them?”

“No. Between Henry Thorpe and Damien Gorse.”

“What’s that?”

“They were both adopted.”

“That we know.”

“They were both adopted from the same agency.”

Boom.

“The agency is called Hope Faith.”

“Where’s it located?”

“Maine. A small town called Windham.”

“I don’t get it. Your client lives in Chicago. Damien Gorse lived in New Jersey. Yet they were both adopted out of Maine?”

“Yes.”

Simon shook his head in amazement. “So what do we do next?”

“You stay here with your wife,” she said. “I’m flying up to Maine.”