PROLOGUE

H eidi had these memories she’d never been able to fully understand or shake off. There was a woman standing in front of her, handing her a balloon. In another instance, the same woman, with blonde hair and blue eyes, sat next to her on the floor and helped Heidi stack blocks. There were more. Some of them had faded over time, but a few had remained, and she often wondered what they meant. As she stared into the employee bathroom’s mirror at age thirty-five, she could see those same blue eyes and the same shade of blonde hair staring back at her. She’d been thinking about that a lot recently. Every night before she fell asleep, she tried to put herself back inside those memories. She’d push her mind to its very limit, trying to interpret them and put them in their proper place. It was infuriating, but she had to do it. Something inside her was imploring her to figure out who this woman was, why she looked so similar to Heidi, and why Heidi felt such a connection to her.

She finished washing her hands and left the bathroom, walking back into an office she shared with the other staff members who worked at the small branch of the library just outside of Vancouver, Canada. She’d lived in Canada for most of her life, but they’d never stayed in one place for too long. Her dad had always had a bit of wanderlust, so they’d moved around a lot. Sometimes, they’d end up in a tiny town. Other times, he moved them to an apartment in a city. They would go camping for weeks at a time, and they’d also lived in a log cabin for over a year. Once, he’d even moved them all the way to the other coast, and they’d driven to get there. They’d taken their time, too. Over the summer, they’d stopped in small towns along the way to Milton in Ontario. They’d stayed there for a couple of years, but by the time Heidi was sixteen, he’d moved them again .

That was when it had started to bother her. Heidi had been a teenager. She’d made friends. She’d wanted to finish school with them and go to university with them. They’d been talking about where they could all go together, or, at least, how close schools were to one another and which ones they thought they’d get into, when she’d come home to their truck and attached trailer packed up, with her father ready to roll out of town.

Heidi had cried silently for most of the drive to the next town and then to the next. For two years, they’d moved almost every three or four months. Her father explained it away as an adventure, but she’d always suspected it had something to do with his difficulty keeping a job. He was a handyman of sorts, and when jobs in the area dried up, they usually had to move on. It made life difficult for her the older she got, but when Heidi finally graduated from what was her tenth school, she told her dad she wasn’t moving anymore. She’d gotten into the University of British Columbia, and her dad had decided to move close to Vancouver to be nearby. He’d stayed there for years. In fact, he was still here, only about a thirty-minute drive from her apartment. It struck her as interesting how he hadn’t moved since she’d left home, but he’d found good jobs and seemed to be fine financially, so maybe he really had just wanted adventures with his only child while she was growing up.

“We just got a new batch of donations in,” Sandy told her, wheeling the cart over to Heidi’s desk. “A lot of true crime in this one.”

“Maybe the person who donated them was done learning how to kill people?” she joked.

The donation box outside the library received a few books a day at most, but every now and then, they’d get a big donation, likely from someone who was moving or doing some spring-cleaning and needed to get rid of books they’d read or had on their shelves as conversation pieces. Heidi knew that for some people, e-books were the way to go, but she’d always loved holding on to her books. At times, they were her only companions. She’d stopped bothering to make friends, so the fictional characters she’d surrounded herself with were the only people she felt close to. The one thing she demanded whenever they moved was getting a library card. The moment they had a bill with their address on it, she’d march to the closest library, get a card, and she’d pour through as many books as she could before they moved on to the next town. Every now and then, her dad would give her money to buy a few books she could keep. Heidi still had all of them. She also still had every library card she’d ever gotten.

“Can you enter these in for me?” Sandy requested. “I’m going to take my lunch.”

“Sure. I’ll take care of it. Oh, the reader canceled for tonight.”

“Reading hour?”

“Yeah. She said she was sick and didn’t want to risk getting the kids sick.”

“Kids… That would imply more than one actually shows up. We’re lucky when we get two these days.” Sandy rolled her eyes. “They’re too busy playing games on their phones now.”

“I can stay and do it,” Heidi volunteered.

“No, it’s fine; I’ll take care of it. You got here first today,” Sandy replied.

“You sure?” Heidi checked.

“Yeah. I’ll pick out something to read when I get back from lunch. Do you want anything?”

“No, I brought my lunch. Thanks, though.”

Sandy nodded before she left the office.

Heidi logged into the computer and picked up the first book to catalog. She’d made it through ten entries before getting interrupted by a line at the desk. After checking out a few patrons and answering some questions for another, she helped a woman who wanted to use the computer but wasn’t sure how. Then, Heidi returned to her desk with a refilled water bottle in hand. She reached for the next book in the pile, flipped it to the back to get the ISBN number, and entered it into the library’s system. She flipped it back to the cover, noting in her mind how much she preferred hardbacks to paperbacks for their durability. Then, she saw it. The image was of a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked to be about four or five years old. She looked just like Heidi. Heidi stared at the image, the only one on the cover of the book. Then, she checked the title. The book was called ‘Unsolved: Missing Children.’

Heidi shook herself out of it. This was just another little blonde girl with blue eyes. Still, she couldn’t shake the fact that her dad had a picture on the wall at his house that was of her at six years old, and it looked just like this little girl. The memory of the woman handing her the balloon entered her mind then. Heidi took a long drink of water and leaned back in her chair as her heart raced. Something was wrong. Something was off. The woman held on to her hand as they crossed the street. Her dad was there, too. He was holding on to her other hand. Then, Heidi was with the woman again, and they were alone. The woman was crying. Her dad walked in. He was yelling. What the hell was happening? Heidi was having a hard time breathing. She stood up, pushing her rolling chair back against the one behind her, and didn’t even hear them clang together.

“Your daddy and I love you very much.” She heard a voice in her head say. “This isn’t your fault. We want you to know that, okay?” It had been that woman’s voice. “Hollis, do you understand, baby?”

“Hollis?” Heidi said out loud in the office. “Hollis.” She repeated it out loud again and then in her head a few times.

She could hear the woman saying that name over and over again. She could hear her dad telling her something, too.

“Heidi,” he’d said. “Can you repeat that for me? Heidi.”

“That’s not my name, Daddy. You’re silly,” she’d replied and then giggled.

She swallowed hard and crashed back down into her chair.

“Heidi is your new name, baby,” he’d said, smiling at her. “Isn’t it so pretty? ”

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Sometimes, we change our names. I’m changing mine, too,” he’d replied.

“You’re not Daddy anymore?” she’d asked.

“Oh, I’m always your daddy,” he’d said, tickling her tummy. “But I’m changing the name everyone else calls me. So, you and me, we’ll have new names. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“What about Mommy?” she’d asked.

“Mommy…” she said to herself and closed her eyes as she pictured the woman again.

Her father had always told her that her mother had died. When they left that day, he’d told her that her mom wasn’t coming with them, but later, he’d explained why after she’d begged and asked for her mother. He’d told her she was gone.

“Oh, my God,” she said as she looked down at the cover photo.

She cracked open the book and flipped to the table of contents that usually existed in true crime books like this. She put her finger on the page and ran it down until she came across a name: Hollis Richardson. Her eyes blurred until she rubbed at them and saw the same name and a page number. She went to turn to it but noticed the section in the middle of the book where there were photos. This was also common in true crime books that dealt with multiple cases or topics: the publishers would just print black-and-white photos in one section of the book and refer to that section throughout to save on printing costs. Heidi stopped there first and flipped through the ten or so pages until she gasped and had to pause. There were two photos on one page. One was of the little girl from the cover with a stuffed monkey. The other was of Hollis, her mother, and Hollis’s father. They were posed as a happy family. Heidi still had that stuffed monkey.

“I got you those chips you like from the deli. Thought you could use something positive after cataloging all those– Heidi?” Sandy said after dropping something onto Heidi’s desk. “Heidi, are you okay?”

“I need to go home.” It was all she could say.

“Are you feeling all right?” Sandy asked.

“No, I might throw up,” Heidi replied honestly.

“Do you need a ride home?”

Heidi looked up to say no but nodded instead, grateful.

“I’ll have one of the volunteers drive you. Is that okay?”

Heidi nodded again, unable to speak.

Minutes later, she was in the car, with the book in her purse. Yes, she’d taken it from the library, but she didn’t know what else to do with it. The volunteer dropped her off at the door of her apartment building, and Heidi ambled up the stairs, unable to focus on just one thing. Eventually, she was able to get her key in the lock of her front door before she fell onto her sofa and stared at the framed photo on one of her shelves. It was her at ten years old, holding up a fish she’d just caught, with her proud father standing next to her, smiling.

“Dad, what did you do?” she asked herself.

Then, she opened the book and began reading the chapter on Hollis Richardson. Hollis had been born in a small town in the US. Her mother’s name was Olivia. Her father’s name had been Joe. His new name was Jake, but she remembered it now – she remembered them calling one another Joe and Olivia. She remembered them fighting and yelling those names at each other. One day, Hollis Richardson had been in kindergarten, and the next, she’d been gone. Her father had disappeared at the same time. He’d picked her up from school that day. She remembered that, too. It was the day her dad had gotten a new truck. Well, it was old, but it was new to them. There were things under a tarp in the back, and he’d told Heidi they were going on an adventure. No, he’d told Hollis that. It was a few days later that he’d given them new names and trained Hollis to say, ‘Heidi,’ when people asked her for her name. She’d been forced to repeat it over and over again, along with his name .

“I’m Hollis Richardson,” she whispered to herself.

She knew she should rush over to her father’s house and ask him what the fuck he’d done, but she was frozen in place. She could only keep reading. Her mother, Olivia, had searched for her, along with the police and the FBI. There had been a few leads over the years, but nothing had panned out. Someone had reported seeing them in Michigan; then, in Port Moody and Burnaby; and later, around Toronto. She remembered it now: Michigan. She’d lived by a lake in Michigan briefly. They weren’t there long. Then, her father had moved them again, and this time, to Canada.

This book had been published seven years ago. Was her mother, if Heidi really was Hollis Richardson, still looking for her? That was all Heidi could think about, so she put the book down and picked up her laptop. She typed in the search bar the name Hollis Richardson, and the first result was an article from a newspaper, which linked to a news story on the girl’s disappearance. But the third result caught her attention first, so she clicked on it.

Olivia Richardson had a website for her daughter. She was still looking. It had been updated just five days ago. There were sections for a blog, for past leads, and for people to contact her or the FBI with information and photos. Heidi clicked on the photos first and saw an artist’s rendering of what she might look like today. Her mind swirled as she saw herself staring back at her. She didn’t know what to do. Memories were flooding her now. She was certain she was Hollis Richardson, but she also didn’t know if reaching out to a woman who had been searching for her daughter for thirty years was the right thing to do. What if Heidi was wrong? What if she was seeing something that wasn’t there? What if she got this woman’s hopes up?

“Hello?” she said into the phone hours later.

“This is the FBI tip line. Do you have a tip about–”

“I think I’m Hollis Richardson,” she said to the man who’d answered the phone.