The Colonel's Daughter Is Gone novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Two Days

Rodney locks Hattie's passport and phone in his safe. Lydia learns the code, finds the Alaska program's rules, and takes the passports at night. At JFK the phone rings.

"Sit down, Lydia," Rodney said again.

I sat.

Hattie stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed.

Alana stayed behind his chair, holding her phone at chest height.

"I know whose building that is," Rodney said. "You told me you cut that family off. You lied."

"I called my father," I said. "That's all."

"Holcomb money buys nothing in this house." He slapped the photo flat on the table. "You are a Rainey. Your daughter is a Rainey. She goes where I send her."

"Dad," Hattie said, "you took my applications."

"I fixed what your mother let slide," he said, still looking at me.

"You never asked me what I wanted."

"I don't need to ask. I know what you need," he said. "She'll thank me when she's grown."

"I am grown," Hattie said. "I turned eighteen in March."

"Then act like it and do as you're told."

He stood and held out his hand.

"Phone. Passport. Now."

Hattie looked at me.

I gave her the smallest nod.

She went upstairs and came back with both.

Rodney carried them down the hall to his study, and I followed with my own passport in my hand.

Alana came too, because Alana always came.

The safe was in the closet, behind his dress uniforms.

He turned the dial with his thumb, and I watched his hand.

Zero. Nine. One. Four.

It was Alana's birthday.

I had baked her a cake on that date for seven years, and I had always thought it was kind of him to use it.

The door swung open.

He dropped in Hattie's phone and both passports and spun the dial.

"You too, Lyd," he said.

I put mine in his hand.

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. I was scared for her, and I called my father in a panic. It won't happen again."

His shoulders came down.

He pulled me into his chest, and I let him.

"That's my wife," he said.

Over his arm I saw Alana watching me with her head tilted, a small crease between her eyes.

Then she smiled and put her arms around both of us.

"I'll look after everything while you're gone, Aunt Lydia," she said. "I promise."

Hattie was waiting at the top of the stairs.

I walked past her into her bedroom and closed the door.

Alana's boxes were already stacked against Hattie's wall.

"Mom," Hattie whispered. "He locked everything."

"I know the code," I whispered back.

She stared at me.

"It's Alana's birthday."

"Oh, Dad," she said, so softly I almost missed it.

We packed one bag between us.

Hattie took her sketchbook, her drafting pencils, and the balsa bridge she'd built at fourteen, wrapped in a sweater.

"I can't leave it here," she said.

"Then we won't."

I waited until two in the morning.

The study door was never locked.

I knelt in the dark closet with a flashlight in my teeth and turned the dial.

Zero. Nine. One. Four.

The door opened without a sound.

My passport, Hattie's passport, and her phone sat on top of a folder.

The folder had my name on the tab.

Inside was a printed schedule for the Alaska program, and the first page was stamped with the Army's seal.

I read the line he had underlined in red.

Residents surrender all personal devices on arrival. No outside contact for the first ninety days.

Below it, in his own handwriting: No visitors. Lydia to be informed after intake.

Not a school.

A place where my daughter would disappear.

And I had been meant to hand her over, smiling.

Behind me, a floorboard creaked.

"Lyd?"

I switched off the flashlight and stayed on my knees.

Rodney stood in the study doorway in his undershirt, with the hall light behind him.

"What are you doing up?" he said.

"Water," I said. "I couldn't find the glass in the dark."

I heard him take two steps in.

Then he stopped.

"Come to bed," he said at last. "We have a long flight."

"Coming."

He turned and went back down the hall.

I took the folder with the passports and Hattie's phone, and I closed the safe with my hands shaking.

At five o'clock the sergeant pulled the staff car up to the curb without his notebook.

He loaded our one small bag.

I had told him the terminal, and he had asked nothing else.

Rodney had left for Columbia with the paperwork.

Alana waved from the window with a coffee mug.

At JFK I stood in the departures hall beside my daughter, with two passports in my pocket, two boarding passes to London in my hand, and nobody behind us.

My phone lit up.

Rodney.

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