Page 26 of Escape Girl
Maybe he did love me, but maybe that wasn’t enough.
Then, in July, I received a letter.
Emily,
We don’t know each other, but I’ve been wanting to reach out to you for months.
From December until May, I spent time with your father. During that time, I know he was an abysmal father to you—in the very worst period of your life. You needed him, and he wasn’t there for you. You were dealing with unspeakable loss and the one person you should have been able to count on, the one person who should have been holding you, the one person who could have understood what you were going through…he wasn’t there. I can only imagine the depth of youranger and your sense of betrayal. I can only imagine the amount of strength it must have taken you to power through those months all on your own.
There is no excusing your father’s behavior, Emily, but for both of your sakes, you need to forgive him.
Cutting him out of your life to punish him would be the cruelest thing that you could do to yourself. No one else will ever love you like he does and no one else will ever have the same connection to your mother. The two of you are still a family. There is still a staggering amount of love that is worth preserving.
Again, there is no excusing your father’s behavior, but I can try to explain it a little. He lost himself, Emily. He was drowning in unmanageable grief. Heartache that was as large and consuming as his love for your mom. When the strongest people come undone, it’s those people who need the most support to find their way again.
And now, I’m going to bring out the big guns and I apologize. But what I’m about to say is the truth:
Forgive your father, Emily. Because your mom would want you to.
Sincerely,
A friend
“Em? You…you picked up!”
“Hi, Dad.”
*
I left Bellaat the bar, abruptly and with only “Too much food. Gotta go!” as my explanation. She probably thought it was all the memories of my mom that made me flee. On another night, she might have been right.
But my brain was actually spin-spin-spinning on the fact that Jo Harper sent Bella to me, and that just didn’t make any sort of sense.
Jo Harper was a con artist.
True to his word about wanting to be honest with me, my father had long ago confessed that during his “vanishing,” he’d wandered into the Drake Hotel in Chicago, sat down next to a much younger woman at the bar—and proposed to her three months later. The King of the Universe, in his grief-stricken state, almost married a gold digger just a few years older than me.
But he did not return to San Francisco with a new wife on his arm. She disappeared instead, breaking it off with him in a goodbye letter that told him that he needed to grieve his wife and make amends to his daughter. After he confessed all of this to me, I put two and two together and realized that she had written that letter to me as well. For a long time, I was actually almost grateful to the woman.
Until August anyway.
Ignoring a sudden downpour of rain hitting my windows, I didn’t even turn the lights on in my studio before sitting at my desk and booting up my laptop. I was going to find that woman and make her explain. How had she managed to infiltrate my life for the third time? And why? What did she have to gain by linking me up with Bella’s case?
Out of a years-long habit, I glanced at my email inbox first. Goddamn it.
Subject Line:Can You Escape? Invitation inside…
Good evening, Emily,
On this evening, Bobby March has invited you to a personally designed virtual escape room: Indian Springs. Wander around, enjoy the sights, absorb the clues—but don’t stay too long! To win, to“escape,” you’ll need to type in the answer-phrase correctly within one hour. The timer starts the moment you enter the room. Up for the challenge?
At the bottom was a button that looked like a phone with a text message displayed:How would you feel about a road trip?
All thoughts of researching Jo Harper fled from my mind. Oh my goodness, Indian Springs.How would you feel about a road trip?Bobby was changing the game. He wasn’t matching his escape rooms to last year’s dates anymore. We hadn’t gone to up to Indian Springs, a resort in the Napa wine country town of Calistoga, until mid-October.
Why was he escalating the timeline? And if he cared about me at all, why was he going to force me to relivethatnight? Was this all part of some closure exercise he was doing in an effort to embrace his entirely new life?
You could just ignore it, the sane part of my brain reminded me.
