Chapter 30

Maisy sitsat the patio table on Bastian and Chloe Tremblay’s back deck and surveys their small, tidy yard. The air is cool, but the day is bright and the light dances along the garden beds and flowers. The Tremblays sit across from her, watchful and silent. Rich broods in the seat next to her, fidgeting. Chloe had offered and Maisy’s accepted a glass of sweetened tea. Apparently, the Canadians use a light hand with their sweetener. Although she’s itching to ask for some sugar or honey, she doesn’t.

Instead she takes a small sip of the bitter liquid and smiles. “Someone has a green thumb.” She nods toward the backyard.

“That’s all Chloe’s doing,” Bastian tells her. “I attend to the herb garden by the kitchen, but everything else is hers.”

“Bastian’s a chef. He has a restaurant in Vieux Quebec,” Chloe explains, radiating pride at her husband’s accomplishment. “He uses the fresh herbs in his cooking. The flowers and vegetables are mine. It’s just for fun.”

Maisy studies her. She’s polished and chic with a cap of glossy dark hair cut short and expertly applied eye makeup. Her husband is fair and shaggy, with longish, sandy hair and the broad, expansive gestures that Maisy associates with the French.

“I can’t thank you enough for reaching out about your pager,” she begins. “By the way, our data shows we have just one listener here in Quebec City. This person has been playing the trailer and both episodes repeatedly. That’s you, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why you play them over and over?”

Bastian laughs, turning pink with embarrassment, and his wife answers for him. “Bastian grew up speaking French only. He practices his English by listening to audiobooks and podcasts and watching American movies.”

Maisy gives him an astonished look. “You’re completely self-taught?”

“Yes.”

“Your English is fabulous. I never would have known that you didn’t grow up speaking English.”

“Really?” He looks pleased.

“Really. Now, to the extent you’re learning from me, I oughta tell you my diction’s non-standard.”

He laughs. “Yes, some of my customers wonder why I know so many Southern sayings.”

With the ice broken, she turns back to business. “I showed the picture you sent of the pager to Heather Ryan’s youngest sister.”

“Kristy,” Bastian says.

“Right, Kristy. She confirms it’s definitely Heather’s.”

The couple nods. They’re not surprised, but she senses they were hoping for a different answer.

Maisy treads carefully with her next question. “I understand you have some gaps in your memory, Chloe. Is there anyone who might know how or when you ran into Heather?”

Chloe takes her time answering. When she does, she gives her head a mournful shake. “I’m sorry, no. I really—I don’t know. The social services team in Montreal, I later found out, didn’t really try to find out who I was. They thought I might be running from a bad situation, so they didn’t want to probe. For all I know, I was. The earliest memories I have are of my social worker and my foster family. I picked Chloe as my name because of the C sticker—I thought it was my pager.” She laughs shortly before continuing. “We listed my birthday as the first of January. The doctors said I seemed to be about age fifteen or sixteen. Mademoiselle Robart, the social worker, told me to say I was fifteen because that would give me an extra year in the system to get my feet under me. So Chloe Tremblay, born 1 January 1979 is a fiction created in 1994. And before 1994, I’m a cipher, a ghost.”

Maisy studies the woman. She’s not lying and she’s not withholding information. She just doesn’t have any. Rich kicks her under the table, and she gives him an irritated look.

“I need to talk to you,” he says out of the side of his mouth.

She turns back to their hosts and smiles brightly. “Would you excuse us for a minute?”

“Bien s?r. Of course.” Bastian gestures broadly to the backyard. “You can talk down there or we can go inside and leave you to talk privately here.”

“We’ll go down to the gardens.”

She leads Rich down the stairs, barely suppressing the urge to grab him by the ear. When they get to the backyard, she turns and hisses at him. “What?”

“These people are scammers. Let’s get out of here.”

Maisy closes her eyes and counts to ten. When she opens her eyes, she’s no less angry, so she closes her eyes and does it again. Sometimes ten doesn’t get it done and a gal’s gotta count to twenty or thirty. Although the more time she spends with Rich, the more likely she thinks she’s going to have to count to infinity.

When she can speak without shooting fire from her mouth like a dragon, she says, “We have a flight out this evening. We’re not leaving before then, so we might as well talk to these people and see if they can think of anything else. If you don’t want to contribute to the conversation, just sit there quietly.”

He’s been on her last blessed nerve from the moment they got on the plane. The flight attendant had to tell him three times to stow his phone because he kept texting. Maisy tried to keep her eyes off his screen, but it was clear he was giving his poker buddies a minute-by-minute update.

“It’s a waste of time,” he pouts.

“You know, Rich, I’m convinced the Tremblays are playing it straight with me. I’m less sure about you.”

He opens his mouth to protest, then snaps it shut instead.

She stomps back up the stairs and takes her seat with an apologetic smile.

“I wish we could be more helpful,” Bastian says as Rich rejoins them with a dour expression.

Chloe reaches into her pocket with trembling fingers and places the pager on the table. “I can’t imagine there’s anything to recover from this after all this time, but take it and see. You can do forensics, maybe?”

Maisy has no idea how one would perform forensics on a thirty-year-old deactivated pager, but she’s grateful for the chance.

“I promise you’ll get it back,” she tells Chloe. “I know it’s a connection to your past.”

Bastian has told her that Chloe’s mental state is fragile. Maisy doesn’t want to upset her, but she’s here, so she says, “Did you by chance go to the website for the podcast and look at the photographs we have of Heather from 1994?”

The couple exchanges glances with one another.

Bastian answers, “No, I messaged you through the app on my phone. We haven’t been to the website.”

“Would you mind looking now?”

Without waiting for an answer, Maisy pulls up the website on her laptop and turns the device around for the Tremblays to see the photo gallery. Rich is muttering under his breath and thumbing out a text like he’s angry at his phone. Maisy pettily hopes he has to pay international messaging rates. The atmosphere shifts and the Tremblays look startled. No, frightened.

“What is it?” Maisy asks.

Chloe speaks slowly. “I don’t understand. Why do you have photographs of our Emilie?”

Maisy blinks at them. “Who’s Emilie?”

“Our daughter.” Bastian tells her. “She’s fourteen. This is her.” He points with a trembling finger to the photos of Heather that Diana had given Jordana to scan.

“No, this is Heather Ryan,” Maisy says gently.

Bastian is shaking his head. He pulls up his photo gallery on his phone and hands the device across the table to Maisy. Her breath catches in her throat. The girl in the photographs could be Heather Ryan. The hair and the clothes aren’t dated like the ones on the website, but otherwise, she’s the spitting image of the missing Ryan girl.

“This is your daughter?” Maisy asks, seeking clarification as her heart pounds in her chest.

“Yes.” Chloe says, “I don’t understand.”

Maisy’s eyes flick across the table and meet Bastian’s. He does.

Beside her, Rich finally rouses himself to glance up from his phone when he sees the pictures of the girl on Bastian Tremblay’s cell phone. His face goes white.

Maisy hands the device back to Bastian and focuses her attention on Chloe.

“Chloe, I think you are Heather Ryan.”