Secrets in the Attic (Secrets 1)

"New York City?" Lieutenant Cooper said, perking up.

"Yes. I took my wife and daughter to a show, Silk Stockings," my father said.

"You were there overnight?"

"Yes. I had a suite at the St. Regis," my father said.

"Then I'll get right to it," Lieutenant Cooper said. "Karen Pearson called Mrs. Pearson yesterday at about four-thirty from New York City."

"Oh, dear," my mother said.

Lieutenant Cooper turned to me.

"Did you see or meet with her while you were in New York City, Zipporah?"

"She couldn't have," my mother said quickly. "She was with me all day, and at the time you mention, she and I were back in our suite preparing to dress to go to dinner and the theater."

"At no time was your daughter out of your sight?"

"At no time," my mother said firmly, forgetting about when she was in her bath. She simply assumed I had been soaking in mine, which only made me feel even more terrible. I was causing my mother to tell a lie unknowingly.

Lieutenant Cooper sat back, obviously looking disappointed. He had been hoping for a big

breakthrough. He glanced at Detective Simon, who just nodded.

"Well," Chief Keiser said, "it does look like Karen's gotten herself to New York."

"She took money, a good deal of money, when she left," her mother said, and sank back into her chair. "Still, I can't imagine where she's gone or what she's doing. We don't have any family in New York City, nor does Karen have an

y friends who live there. She's never been there on her own. She's never been on a subway or ridden a city bus. Children her age don't just check into hotels."

"Into decent hotels," Lieutenant Cooper corrected. "There are fleabag places a leper with half his face missing could check into in New York," he muttered.

"Or she could be sleeping in the park. Lots of homeless people do that," Detective Simon added.

Karen's mother moaned and rocked a little in her chair. She had her arms around herself as if she were trying to stop her body from falling apart. What a wonderful perfoi mance, I thought, but then I thought that no matter what she had done or ignored, she might now be drowning in regret.

She stopped rocking abruptly and looked so sharply at me I caught my breath and held it.

"Zipporah, do you have any idea where she might have gone in New York City? Did she tell you anything that would help us find her and bring her home? I can't imagine her out there by herself. She's going to get hurt for sure. You wouldn't be a good friend if you knew something about her going to New York and didn't tell us."

I glanced at my father. His eyes were fixed intensely on me the way I saw he could fix them on a witness in court. The detectives were staring at me as well, and Chief Keiser moved down so he could look directly at me.

Would my voice fail me? I actually thought I would start to speak but be unable to make a sound.

"She always talked about New York City and had some brochures about it," I began. "Karen wanted to live in a big city where there was excitement and always something to do."

Her mother smiled and shook her head. "She was so full of fantasy," she told the detectives, both of whom nodded as if they had known her as well as her mother had. "Sometimes, I felt as if I were pulling her down to reality as you would pull a kite back down to earth."

She turned back to me. "You two were as close as sisters, Zipporah. Surely, you had some idea something terrible like this might happen."

"No," I said quickly. That was so true. I wanted to shout back at her that I never thought this would happen. We were only planning to scare him off, to stop him from abusing her. Visions of all that returned, especially the way Karen had first described it to me. What was Darlene Pearson trying to do now, find a way to blame me? Was she trying to say I should have told someone so that it wouldn't have happened?

Was that true? Should I have done that? Was I really partly, maybe significantly, at fault? Was Mr. Pearson dead because of me as well as Karen?

I felt the first tears escape my lids and begin to trickle down my cheeks.

"You're making her feel as if it's her fault," my mother softly told Darlene. "She's had difficulty sleeping and functioning as it is."