Chapter 35 - Raquel Disappears
Raquel stopped answering everyone.
Three days.
Then five.
Tobias answered once.
“She needs space.”
On day seven, Sawyer called Mom from his tablet.
“Grandma, Mommy’s gone.”
Mom nearly dropped the phone.
“What do you mean gone?”
“She left this morning.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“At work.”
“Are you alone?”
Sawyer nodded.
Within twenty minutes, Mom was driving toward their house.
I called Tobias.
He sounded frantic.
“I thought she was taking Sawyer to school.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Her car was gone.
Phone off.
Laptop missing.
Closet half-empty.
This wasn’t a walk to calm down.
She had left.
By evening, police had a missing-person report.
Tobias kept pacing.
“She’s been angry for weeks.”
“At me?”
“At everyone.”
He looked exhausted.
“She thinks nobody sees her.”
That stopped me.
Because once, I felt exactly that way.
“What do you mean?”
“After your family reconciled, everything became about healing. Your parents babysit Matilda. Your studio. Dad’s health. Then this lawsuit.”
“And Raquel?”
“She thinks she became background.”
I remembered her words.
You always get to be the hero.
Had I dismissed them because they were cruel?
Maybe there was pain underneath them.
Not justification.
But pain.
Vaughn tracked a charge on a shared family account.
Gas station near Roanoke.
Then another.
West Virginia.
She was driving north.
“Where would she go?” Dad asked.
Aunt Teddy answered.
“Pennsylvania.”
We turned.
“Why?”
“Our cousin Melissa has a cabin outside Gettysburg.”
Nobody had spoken to Melissa in years.
Tobias called.
No answer.
We drove.
Four hours later, we found Raquel’s SUV outside a small rental cabin surrounded by bare trees.
I knocked.
No response.
“Raquel.”
Nothing.
I knocked again.
“It’s Emmy.”
The lock clicked.
She opened the door.
Her eyes were swollen.
“I knew they’d send you.”
“Nobody sent me.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Of course not. Saint Imagin volunteers.”
I almost fired back.
Instead, I said, “Can I come in?”
She hesitated.
Then stepped aside.
The cabin smelled like stale coffee.
Raquel sat on the couch.
“I’m tired.”
“Of what?”
“Being wrong.”
That surprised me.
She started crying.
“Do you know what it’s like watching everyone become better people while realizing you’re still angry?”
I sat beside her.
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“No, you don’t.”
“I spent months being angry after Matilda was born.”
“But everyone agreed you deserved to be.”
I understood.
“You think your pain doesn’t count because you also caused pain.”
She nodded.
That was more honest than anything she had said in years.
I took her hand.
“Pain counts.”
She cried harder.
“But responsibility still counts too.”
“I know.”
“Then come home.”
“Will everybody hate me?”
“No.”
“Will they forgive me?”
“I don’t know.”
She laughed through tears.
“Terrible sales pitch.”
“I’m a photographer, not a hostage negotiator.”
May you like
For the first time, she smiled.
Then she whispered, “I want to go home.”
