A Daughter's Story Read Online Free

out of town—but first, they’d
been kicked out of the family.
    Rose processed the news silently. Emma’s heart cried for both
of them.
    She breathed a sigh of relief when her mother finally spoke.
“Have you heard from him?”
    “No. I really don’t think they’d contact us, Mom. Not
after…”
    Beside herself with grief the day Claire had disappeared, Rose
had latched on to any hope at all of finding Claire—even if that meant she
believed her fiancé was the one who could lead them to Claire. She’d latched on
and lashed out. With a vengeance.
    “I… Oh, my God…”
    “Detective Miller told me they’re living in Tyler, Tennessee,”
Emma said slowly. “They know your address. I’d be shocked if we heard from
them…but we might. So…”
    “They? They…who?”
    “Cal and Frank.”
    Rose didn’t ask the question Emma read in her mother’s eyes.
“Neither of them ever married. They still share a home. Cal’s an English
professor at Tyler University, Mom.”
    “A professor?” Rose’s lips tilted slightly upward.
    Emma smiled. “Yeah.” She’d missed him so much over the years.
They’d only lived together a year, but there’d been no doubt in Emma’s mind that
Cal was her big brother.
    That he’d always be there to look out for her. Protect her.
    Minutes passed. “And Frank?”
    “He worked as a janitor until just recently.”
    “A janitor?”
    “In a nursing home.”
    “I have to call Cal, Mom.” Emma finally got to the real point
of the conversation. “I can’t not call him.” And she couldn’t contact Rose’s
ex-fiancé’s son without letting her mother know.
    “I accused an innocent man....” Rose’s words trailed off and
hung there.
    “You were a mother who had to do whatever she could to find her
missing child.”
    “I threw him out. Threw them out…”
    “You were agonized.”
    “I sent letters, contacted schools.…”
    “You did what you felt you had to do to protect other
children.” The crusade to stop Frank Whittier had probably saved Rose’s life. It
had certainly given Emma her mother back, as it had provided Rose with an outlet
for her anguish.
    “You did what any mother would have done, given the evidence.”
From his backyard hideout, Cal had seen Claire in his father’s car. When the
police had searched the car, they’d found Claire’s favorite teddy bear, the one
she’d slept with the night before and brought to breakfast the morning of her
disappearance, under the front seat of Frank Whittier’s car.
    “Cal was hiding under those bushes that used to be in the
backyard. When he first got there, he peeked around the corner to make sure
Frank’s car was still there. That’s when he saw Claire. He didn’t look again,
but he heard the car drive off. There’s no way he or any of us could’ve known
she’d gotten out of the car during those six or so minutes.”
    Rose’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked over at Emma.
“I loved him. I should at least have given him the benefit of the doubt.”
    “At the risk of losing Claire forever?” If Frank had been
guilty, and Rose had protected him, stood by him, it could have been too
late.
    “We did lose her,” Rose said. “And we lost Frank and Cal,
too.”
    And Emma and Rose owed the Whittiers the respect of an apology,
at the very least.
    “I have to call him, Mom.” She’d handle this one.
    Her mother had forbidden Emma to write to Cal over the years,
but she’d wanted to. So badly.
    Would her life have been different if she had? Would she have
avoided coming home to find another woman in her man’s arms if she’d ever, even
once, dared to take a chance? To demand for herself as much as she gave to Rose
and Claire?
    Looking sick to her stomach, Rose nodded, and retreated to the
balcony that looked over the Atlantic Ocean, in the distance.
    Putting their untouched dinner in the refrigerator, Emma
cleaned up and let herself out.
    Life wasn’t easy. Not for Rose. Not for any of