Chapter Twenty-five

September 26, 7:45 p.m.

Vancouver , British Columbia .

Cullen Hornbeck picked up his phone and looked at the number to call his ex-wife, Sydney, at her home in Sedona, Arizona. He hated making the call, but he had no choice. Cullen had hoped that his own phone would ring with a call from Skye telling him that she’d hitched to Arizona. She’d grown tired of Vancouver ’s rain, the overabundance of blue and green as mountains and trees conspired to hem in British Columbia ’s largest city. Skye was twenty-four, a young woman who was the curious mix of her mother, a silversmith and jewelry designer, and her father, the chief financial officer of an import/export business that procured Asian antiquities. Cullen was drawn to the arts, but his emphasis had been on the business side of things. Sydney was the proverbial free spirit, the kind of woman who seemed both buoyant with her flair for fashion and design yet weighed down by the realities of an artist’s life. She had left Cullen and Skye, a fourth-grader then, with no plans other than to “find her center” and the life that the creator had devised only for her.

Although he followed strict process flow for his import business and knew his way from Point A to Point B on most matters, Cullen was left to raise his daughter without a road map. A girl, he quickly learned, required a completely different set of skills. A young girl was not a commodity. When Skye had her first period three years later, Cullen drove to a drugstore at breakneck speed and visited the male’s most unfamiliar aisle, only to return home to his amused daughter with a box of Kotex supers.

“I think I need to get some pads, Dad,” she’d said, allowing a smile to cross her face. “I don’t think what you’ve picked up will work for me. But I’m new to this, so what do I really know?”

Cullen felt his face go hot. The errand had been embarrassing, of course. This was his daughter, a young woman, at least biologically. He’d miscalculated. He’d failed where Sydney would have succeeded.

He wondered if this was one of those times too. Skye had been restless in the past few months. She’d graduated with a degree in art restoration from the University of British Columbia. She’d thought she could straddle her parents’ worlds, perhaps. Maybe bring them together in some way. Yet, over and over, she let it slip that she wanted adventure.

“I want to do something off-the-wall, Dad,” she said, looking at him intently. “Something fun-dangerous, even.”

“You’ve backpacked across Europe and the U.S. Isn’t that dangerous enough?”

Skye laughed. “No. I’m looking for a life experience, Dad. I don’t want to…” She hesitated. “You know…end up like Mom at thirty-five or you, sorry, at fifty.”

He furrowed his brow, feeling a little stung. “Exactly, Skye, what do you mean?”

She knew she’d hurt him. Her eyes pleaded for understanding. Her choices were her own. She was trying to be the woman she wanted to be.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That came out a little harshly.”

“You can say that again.”

She didn’t take the bait. “What I can tell you, Dad, is that I want an adventure. I want to do something that I can remember always. You know, something that doesn’t fit within the prescribed boxes that you’ve followed in your life.”

Cullen put his arms around his daughter. “You and your mom were always the boxes that I could never checkmark cleanly.”

So there he sat, replaying that conversation, staring at his phone. He’d gone to work the previous Friday, and she was gone when he returned.

There was a note, of course.

Dad, I’ve left on my adventure. I’m not sure when I’ll return, but I’ll call you soon. Don’t tell Mom.

Skye never called. Cullen was unsure when he should start to panic. Was it after three days? Or four? By the sixth, he’d made inquiries with the Vancouver police. He notified the hospitals.

“Were you and your daughter getting along all right?” the cop in the Missing-Persons Unit had asked, in a tone suggesting boredom more than concern.

“Yes, we were,” Cullen shot back, a tad defensively. “We’ve had our moments, but this wasn’t a running-away-from-home situation. She’s twenty-four.”

“That’s right,” the cop said. “She’s an adult. If she wants to disappear for a little while, she’s entitled. Lord knows, I’d like to vanish sometimes myself.”

Cullen wanted to snap at the man: This isn’t about you. This is about my daughter and the fact that I’m a complete failure as a father. This is about the fact that she might be at her mother’s, and I hate calling up the bitch to concede said failure.

Cullen said none of that. He thanked the man and dialed his ex-wife. Before he could even get to the point of his call, Sydney cut to the chase.

As she always did.

“Is Skye all right?”

He wondered for a split second how she’d known the reason for his call. Then he remembered: Skye was all they had in common anymore.

“I was hoping you would be able to tell me,” he said.

“Me? How am I supposed to know how she’s doing? I haven’t heard from her for a couple of weeks.”

Cullen could feel the air drain from the room. “I thought you two were talking again.”

“That’s beside the point.” Her tone was sharp. “Are you calling me because you don’t know where our daughter is?”

He hated how Sydney occasionally deigned to use the modifier our when referring to the little girl she’d left behind. On a whim. A selfish whim!

She’s my daughter. And I don’t know where she is!

Instead, he swallowed hard and let the bile drop back down his throat. “Look, Sydney, I’m calling to let you know that I’m a little concerned about Skye. She’s been gone for about a week. I was half hoping she was headed down your way.”

“Gone? Like missing?”

Cullen gulped. He hated the woman on the other end of the line. He imagined her in a house swimming in crystals, diaphanous fabrics, and beaded curtains that she tied back with a string of bells from an import store.

“Like missing, yes.”

The sound of wind chimes clattered in the background. “Of course, you thought I had something to do with her finally getting out of that rain gutter, Vancouver, right?”

“No, it wasn’t that at all. I just thought…” He let his words trail off to silence.

“Cullen?” Again her tone was ice, as it had been since the day she left him.

“Yes, Sydney, I had hoped she’d gone to see you. She was seeking an adventure somewhere, and you wrote the book on that one, didn’t you?”

His words were meant to punish. It was as if Skye’s words about the reason Sydney left them were a double-edged blade. She’d pierced him with it, and he’d shoved it right back at his former wife.

Syndey was silent for a moment.

Was she remembering? Was she sorry? Was she only angry that every call-every call spaced out over a fourteen-year period-had ended just the same?

“Good-bye, Cullen. I’ll let you know if I hear from her. You do the same.”

Click. The call was over. Cullen Hornbeck felt sick to his stomach. If his grown daughter had any friends, he didn’t know them. If she had any real connection to another human being besides himself and her mother, he didn’t know who it would be. The police had said she was an adult and could damn well do what she wanted. He felt like screaming into the phone at the officer, who didn’t seem to care.

“She is all I have! She might be an adult, but she’s fragile. She’s dear. She’s headstrong. She would tell me where she would go. Not disappear for a week! She loved me.”

Still carrying his phone, remembering the seven minutes he’d spent on the phone with Sydney, he flipped on the light in his daughter’s bedroom. At her urging, he’d redecorated the room after she went to college. Yet, there were remnants from her childhood. In the corner by a window there was a hammock that was brimming with Beanie Babies she had collected in grade school. He remembered how thrilled she’d been when she found the purple Princess Diana teddy bear at a Surrey five-and-dime. He picked up the bear and looked at it for a moment before setting it back among its cadre of animal friends. There was also a poster of Justin Timberlake on the back side of the door.