Chapter 35 Hailey
Hailey
“You lied? Mom! Why would you do that?” Hailey was aghast as she faced her mom, who stood in the living room beside the phone,
looking like she’d just seen someone get hit by a bus.
Lindy ran a hand through her messy hair. “I just—I really thought the only explanation was that he’d run off with Tiffany.
And I didn’t want it to ruin your wedding. Emma and Eli and I all agreed—”
“You don’t think my wedding is ruined now?” Earlier, Hailey’s medication had quelled the worst of her migraine—enough that
she’d indulged in working on her novel, totally ignoring the mess that was her own life. But now she could feel the pain lingering,
ready to reignite, and her anger was going to make it worse even than last night at the river with Jack. She couldn’t believe
Emma and Eli had gone along with this stupid plan, too. To “save” her wedding? And then head for Cranston as if they were
going to find some clue about their dad’s whereabouts there, without Hailey and the rest of the family being the wiser? “Where
is he, Mom? Where is he?”
Lindy blinked back tears. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea. I don’t know what’s happened to him.”
“What if he’s dead, Mom?” Hailey spat. “And what if, when you called off the search forty-eight hours ago, he wasn’t?”
Lindy staggered. “Don’t say that.”
Hailey pressed her temples with her fingertips, but it was clear that her headache was about to tsunami again. “I need some
air.” She wheeled and ran, pushing her way out the screen door.
She hurried down the road toward the point. Looking at the ocean could help a lot of things. She wasn’t sure it could help
this. Her dad missing for days now, her mom and siblings liars, her grandpa sick, her grandma going nuts, Innisfree about to be sold, her fiancé
being a jerk, her entire wedding a question mark—
Approaching the curve in the road, the ocean straight out ahead, she was about to step onto the rocks when she heard a familiar
rumble. She stopped and looked. Not funny, she said to God, as the Z3 came around the opposite bend, Jack at the wheel wearing Ray-Bans.
He drove slowly to where she stood beside the road and stopped. “Hales! What’s up?”
She burst into tears.
“Okay, don’t get me wrong, this sucks.” Jack squinted at Hailey from where he sat beside her on a rock facing the ocean. He’d
pulled the car off the road, jumped out, hugged her till she got her crying reined in, then invited her to go for a drive.
She’d refused—she needed to get back—but he asked her to sit for a minute and tell him what was wrong. So, she had, and it
had helped. A little.
“It especially sucks that your mom lied,” he went on. “But she was trying to protect you, right? And so were Emma and Eli?
I mean, if they really thought all the evidence pointed to him having an affair.”
Hailey shook her head. “She always told us there was no good reason ever to tell a lie. And she decides to tell one about
this? I mean, we need to start looking for him right away. I mean, now! He could be out there somewhere, like, hurt.” She suddenly recalled what her grandma had said yesterday when she was climbing upstairs with the gun and Lindy had asked if she was going to hurt herself. I’m not David.
What the hell did that mean? What did they know that Hailey didn’t? And how could her mom seriously have stopped looking for
him without knowing he was okay?
“I’ve got to get back,” she said, and started to stand.
Jack grabbed her hand. “One more minute? Your own oxygen mask first, remember?”
She huffed and sat back down. “You’re not my father,” she said—which made her start to cry again. The sun was on its way down,
softening the light. The air was cooling; the mosquitoes were about to come out. Time would pass whether she wanted it to
or not. Dad. 8/7/10.
“Hales,” Jack said. “We’re going to find him.”
“What if we don’t, Jack?”
He was quiet. She wiped at her eyes, watching a gull wheel over the waves, which were a deep blue under the pinkening sky.
The wind was picking up. I’m not David. Seriously, what the hell?
“Hey, Hales,” Jack said. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but, like, what if you put yourself in your mom’s shoes for a
second? What must it be like for her to have your dad missing? I mean, it kinda makes sense she’d be going insane, right?”
“You and your Zen,” Hailey grumbled, but then she had to take a breath. Because, of course, he was right. If Hailey felt this
hollow, this devasted, what must her mom feel like? Her mom and dad were, like, best friends. Two halves of one whole. Sure,
they squabbled, they disagreed, but how much they loved and relied on each other had always been clear. Hailey sighed. “Okay,
yeah.”
“So maybe her lying is more a symptom of that than a sign of who she truly is?”
Hailey squared her shoulders. Brushed her hair away from her face, as the truth of this settled upon her. The whole thing
still pissed her off, though. “Yeah, well, if that’s true, then she should not be the one in charge of the search,” she said, and stood.
“Can I come with you?” Jack said quickly. “Can I help?”
Hailey thought of Noah. He should be the one here helping her.
Well, she would have to call him. She would have to insist.
“I don’t know if that would be appropriate,” she said to Jack, keeping her tone very formal again.
His mouth quirked. Color came into his cheeks—or was that just a trick of the light? “Hales, I’m a concerned neighbor.”
She huffed again. “Fine,” she said, and held out her hand. He reached to take it, and when she helped him to his feet, he
gave her a little smile that, in spite of everything, made her smile back, made her almost want to laugh. Maybe just to keep
from crying, or maybe because life had gotten so ridiculously out of hand—or maybe because she was just so happy to have him
there, even if she shouldn’t be.
Still, she let go of his hand.
Jack had to drive the roadster back around the loop to park it at Seabreeze, so he dropped Hailey at Innisfree, saying he’d
walk over in a few minutes. Hailey banged in the screen door to see her mom and grandparents out on the deck, seemingly just
sitting there watching the light change over the water as the sun went down on the other side of the point. Doing nothing to try to find her dad.
Another sign Hailey needed to be in charge. Damn it.
At least for the moment she’d have privacy. She knew Noah’s number by heart now. She picked up the phone and dialed the rotary,
then pressed the receiver to her shoulder to go hands-free, twisting her diamond around her finger.
In her ear came the endless ringing again. For a second, she wondered: Had something happened to him, too?
Then she just wanted to scream. He had to recognize the Innisfree number, to know it was her calling. Yeah, he’d be at work this time of night, but still. She was
mid-crisis, and he was ghosting her. A week before their wedding.
There came the automatic voice. The beep.
Hailey swallowed—her mouth felt dry—then took the phone in her hand, straightened, and said, “Hey, it’s me.
” She told him the news, told him she needed his help.
She said again that she was sorry about what her grandma had done.
Then, she said, “Listen, I don’t know if we should even be thinking about going ahead with the wedding as long as my dad’s gone, but .
. .” Another hard swallow. She didn’t know what was getting into her, but she was tired of his bad behavior, and she was tired of trying to keep everything seeming perfect, when the truth was that everything was a fucking mess.
“If I don’t hear from you, like, tonight, I’m definitely calling it off.
” She hung up the phone in its cradle. She stood there for a second wondering if she’d just wrecked her life or saved it, then headed outside to get her mom.