Chapter 39 Hailey
Hailey
“What do you mean, she left?” Hailey said to her grandma, who was stirring a pot of oatmeal at the stove, looking distressed.
Four women in green polo shirts—the cleaning crew for tomorrow’s now-canceled anniversary party—were hauling in vacuums, mops,
and buckets loaded with cleaning supplies through the back door. Hailey’d just banged in through the side screen door. She
couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep at Jack’s house, and her guilty conscience conjured the wild thought that maybe her mom
was on the way to snitch to Noah. “Is she going to Portland?”
“No.” Grandma shuddered slightly. She was totally ignoring the parade of green-shirted women through the house. “Eastport.”
“What? Where is that, even?” For a moment this morning, upon waking, Hailey’s headache had been absent, but it was coming back in full force
now. Just then, she spotted a note on the counter and recognized her mom’s handwriting: H, Noah called 10 p.m. Told him you were asleep. I assume you were? Love, Mom
Crap, Hailey thought. Crap, crap, crap.
Her grandma was answering her question about Eastport. “All the way to the eastern edge of the state. She said she thinks it’s about a six-hour drive. I didn’t want her to go, but I couldn’t stop her.”
Tiffany and Raj came down the stairs, Raj calling out, “Good morning!” Hailey wondered where her grandpa was; the thought
that he was probably upstairs “working on his book” sent a cascade of sadness through her.
“What’s going on?” Tiffany said. She was wearing another brand-new camping outfit straight off the pages of the Eddie Bauer
summer catalog. “We got some intel on David?”
“Oh my God,” Hailey muttered. She grabbed her mom’s note off the counter and crumpled it up before anyone else could see it.
“I started to think, what if he did just go camping?” Hailey’s mom’s voice sounded far away at the other end of the line, as Hailey pressed the old landline
phone closer to her ear. The green-shirted women seemed to be everywhere—washing the windows, dusting the baseboards, carting
a vacuum upstairs. Grandma, Tiffany, and Raj were all in the kitchen, eating oatmeal and pretending not to be eavesdropping
on Hailey’s conversation. Outside, gulls were crying over the calm blue sea, as a lobster boat with a bright red hull motored
past.
“What?” Hailey said. She had thought, last night, that she had clearly put herself in charge of the search. Now her mom was
going rogue?
“I mean, I didn’t put it together last night when we were making our list of evidence,” Lindy said, “but when the twins and
I were down in Cranston earlier in the week, Eli looked for the camping gear, and it was gone. That was part of what made
me think he was off with Tiffany.”
Hailey interrupted. “Dad always puts the camping gear in the car anytime he’s driving up to Maine. He always thinks maybe
he’ll just find some time.” She thought her mom should have remembered that.
“That’s true! But I was so fixated on the idea that he was with Tiffany that I didn’t even think about that. I suppose I assumed
that he certainly wouldn’t have planned to go camping in the middle of everything we had going on!”
“Okay?” Hailey thought of Jack saying, It makes sense she’d be going insane, right?
Lindy went on. “And then, this whole time, we’ve all been so focused on thinking that, if he wasn’t with Tiffany, he had to
be hurt, or something must have happened to him. But when I thought of it early this morning, I realized he could have just gone camping by himself! I mean, I hate to think he’d have just gone off and done that thoughtlessly, but it is
better than the alternative—”
Hope was flaring in Hailey. “That could explain why we haven’t seen any charges on your credit cards! Remember how he’s always
restocking the dehydrated food supply, too?” Hailey and her siblings had always teased him about that, and about his excitement
whenever REI introduced a new variety of beef stew or chicken noodle casserole that he could add to the stash that lived in
the tote in the garage, waiting for its big day. This stuff lasts for thirty years! he would gleefully say. “Maybe he just went camping with supplies he already had. He would’ve had plenty of cash to pay for
campsites for a few days, even if he was only using the three hundred dollars from the ATM.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking!” Hailey’s mom said.
Quickly, though, Hailey wondered: Would her dad really have missed his own birthday party? Not even called?
But they really needed some hope to hang on to. Hailey wouldn’t bring up the implausibility of it all. “But, Mom, Eastport?
Why are you going all the way up there to look for him? Grandma said it’s, like, six hours away.”
“I remembered something he said to me once about it. Call it a hunch, I guess. I mean, it doesn’t explain the missing money,
but . . . if he did go all the way up there and we haven’t heard from him yet, I’m afraid he might be hurt in the woods somewhere,
just like we’d been thinking, only in a different spot!” She actually sounded cheerful about the prospect that he could’ve
blown out his knee or fallen off some cliff. Hailey’s head was hurting worse again.
Lindy went on. “Do me a favor and let your brothers and sister know? I don’t think I’ll have signal much longer.
Just so you know, I tried Cody but haven’t reached him yet.
I haven’t told Kate and Josh yet, either.
I think maybe I can find David before they’re any the wiser!
Kate was taking it so hard. I don’t want her to suffer any more than she has to, you know? ”
Hailey blinked back sudden tears. Her mom was totally abandoning not only her usual commitment to total honesty, but also
her usual MO of making sure everybody was all right before she did anything else.
Had she seriously just taken off by herself, heading for the farthest, wildest reaches of Downeast Maine—on a “hunch”? Without
even telling the rest of the family about it?
Was Hailey going to end up with both her parents lost in the wild?
“You should’ve waited for me, Mom. Or for someone. Where are you even going to stay once you get up there? It’s too far to
turn around and come back, and I can’t believe—” Hailey cut herself off before she could say any more of the whole swirl of
stuff that was in her head: You’re making such terrible decisions, you lied, you made the twins lie, you left me all alone when I’m supposed to get married
a week from tomorrow and you’ve clearly forgotten all about the wedding and I don’t know what to do!
She took a breath, reminding herself that it made sense for Lindy to be acting insane right now.
“I’ve got a . . . No time . . .” was all Hailey heard, as the line had started to crackle.
“What, Mom?”
“Oh, honey, I think I’m losing signal—” Lindy said, then she was gone.
Hailey looked at the receiver in her hand for a second, then hung up and redialed her mom’s cell phone.
No answer.
Unbelievable.
The lobster boat was out of sight now, but the gulls still wheeled and cried.
Hailey glanced toward the back of the cottage, toward Tiffany, Raj, and Grandma in the kitchen.
Caught at their eavesdropping, all pretended suddenly not to be paying any attention to her at all.
Grandma grabbed the coffee pot and began to pour, as Tiffany and Raj exclaimed how delicious the oatmeal had been.
Upstairs, a vacuum whirred into action, while from the next room came the squeak of a paper towel wiping a window clean.
The scene—people acting like things were normal—felt jarring, unreal.
Hailey needed to call Noah. And Emma. But she wasn’t going to get any privacy unless she left this house.
She’d arranged to meet Jack in an hour. They had their plan for searching the lighthouses of southern Maine . . .
But she was pretty sure now that she ought to follow her mom to Eastport instead—just to make sure Lindy had support, or didn’t
get lost herself? (Or else just to try to get her back?)
Or because a hunch from Lindy seemed to carry much more weight, suddenly, than what Reese had “heard” days ago?
Because it was true that Hailey’s dad would’ve had all the equipment with him in the car that he’d need for camping. Hailey should ask Emma
to check if the little tote with the camping food in it was gone, too.
Okay, so she didn’t have privacy. She still needed to make these calls, and Noah had to come first, though she dreaded it.
She turned her back on the kitchen, looking out the front windows toward the ocean and the morning sun. She picked up the
receiver and dialed the number.
In her ear, Noah’s phone rang and rang. It was still early; he must have his ringer silenced. Damn it.
The automatic voice came on. The beep sounded. “Uh, hey. Noah?” She didn’t know what to say about the wedding, or about her
threat last night to call it off. He had returned her call .
. . “I’m sorry I missed you last night. So, now I need to go Downeast to help look for my dad.
I need to get going right away, so don’t worry about coming to help.
I’ll try to call you as soon as I can, but I might not have signal. Sorry,” she said, and hung up.
Lame, she thought then, and the word applied to her, him, the message she’d just left, their whole relationship. We’re supposed to be getting married in eight days.
She needed to actually talk with him. But right now, the truth was, making sure her mom and dad were okay was more important.
She could not invite Jack to come along Downeast.
But if she didn’t, then she would be out there in the wilderness on her own, too.
Unless she invited Tiffany and Raj to come with her. Or Grandma and Grandpa.
No. And no.
What about Aunt Kate? No, because that would be betraying Lindy’s hope of sheltering Kate and Josh from learning that David
was still missing. Anyway, Hailey couldn’t ask Aunt Kate to leave her kids.