She held up the roll of bills. “William left this in his trousers the other day. I hid it, because I thought if I got away from him I would need money.”
C.P. tilted his head to the side, studying her. “I didn’t think you had the guts for something like that, to be honest. When we first met you, you were such a scared little mouse.”
Mattie felt her cheeks reddening. “You were two strange men wandering around our property, and I hadn’t seen anyone other than William in years. You can’t blame me for being cautious.”
“That wasn’t caution. That was terror.”
“Are you trying to make me angry?” she said, standing up. She felt something in her chest, something bubbling and boiling.
“I don’t know. Can you even get angry?”
“I’m sure I can,” Mattie said, stung by the way he dismissed her. “I think I am now.”
He held up his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I have to stop treating you like a regular person, I know. You haven’t had the same life as everyone else. If Jen was awake she’d definitely be beating me about the head and shoulders right now.”
William grabbing her shoulders. William’s fist in her face.
“You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” she said. “I know that you’re trying to be funny so that you don’t think about your friend, but it’s not funny at all.”
C.P. rubbed his face with one hand. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s not funny. I’m sorry. For real. I’m sorry. It’s not like I’m not sitting here looking at your black eye and the marks around your neck. They just kind of faded into the background, and I forgot who I was talking to. Let’s see how much you’ve got there.”
Mattie had forgotten about the money, even though she was holding it in her hand. She was still angry, still felt the bubbling and the boiling at the edge of her consciousness, but she recognized that he was sorry if he said so. He was foolish and awkward and often said the wrong thing, but he was sorry. She handed the money to C.P., who unrolled it.
“Holy crap!” he said. “These are mostly hundreds.”
He started counting the bills, putting the different types into piles. When he was done he looked up at her, his expression dazed.
“There’s $2,517 dollars here,” C.P. said. “Where did he get all of this money? Is he rich?”
“I don’t know,” Mattie said. There was so much she didn’t know about William. There was so much she still didn’t know about herself, huge chunks of her life that were missing, puzzle pieces that had no connector.
“I could buy a train ticket with that, right? And pay for a place to stay?”
“You could buy a plane ticket with that, never mind a train,” C.P. said.
“A plane,” Mattie said. She’d never been on a plane, not even when she was a child. She remembered longing to fly, longing to be so high up in the sky that everyone below was smaller than an ant. “William could never find me if I was in a plane.”
“Don’t you worry,” C.P. said. “That guy is going to be arrested once I can call the police. Your case is really famous, you know? It’s probably not something you want to be famous for, I guess. But you went missing and your mother was killed in a really brutal way—not to be mean about it or anything, I know it’s probably upsetting for you. There was a big search for you. It was on every TV station. And every year on the anniversary of your disappearance there are stories, you know, ‘what happened to Samantha Hunter,’ those kinds of things.”
“Samantha Hunter,” Mattie said. “I forgot that name for a long time. William told me my name was Martha, and he called me Mattie.”
She paused, taking a deep breath before going on. “In all those times that you heard those stories—did they ever say anything about Heather? About my sister, Heather?”
C.P. frowned. “I don’t remember anything about her. They always talk about you and your mom and they always show this same clip from around the time you were taken, of some guy, your mom’s boyfriend talking about . . .”
Realization lit his face. “Your mom’s boyfriend—it was that guy! The guy who kidnapped you! He was talking to reporters, acting like it was such a tragedy, and that he didn’t have any idea what had happened. The police interviewed him, I remember now, and they searched his house and everything but they didn’t find any sign of you and they had to eliminate him as a suspect. What did he do, stash you somewhere while he was off pretending to be worried about finding you?”