Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [105]
“Listen,” Milo said, leaning forward in his chair. “I know this probably won’t make any sense to you, but there’s a chance that Tess Bryson doesn’t want to be found. She might even be afraid to be found. If that’s the case and you know her, you might be protecting her, and I understand that. You don’t know me.”
“Look, I really don’t …”
“Please. Let me finish. If you know where Tess is and can get a message to her, please just tell her this: I’m a friend of Cassidy. I know how Cassidy helped her run away, and I know why. Cassidy isn’t doing well. She thinks Tess is dead, and she blames herself. She’s blamed herself for the past twenty years. I’m hoping that Tess could just give Cassidy a call. Tell her that she’s still alive and well. That she made it to Chisholm in one piece. Just to put Cassidy’s mind at ease.”
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know who she is. I’d help you out if I could, but I just don’t know the girl.”
“I know,” Milo said, and he meant it. It was clear that Kelly Plante did not know Tess Bryson. But he continued. “But just in case you do, take this.” He passed a slip of paper over to Kelly Plante with his name and cell phone number written on it. “Like I said, I’m sure that you don’t know her, but I just want to play it safe. Okay?”
“All right,” Kelly Plante said, rising from her seat and stuffing the slip of paper into her jeans. “But I mean it. I don’t know the girl.”
“I know. But thanks anyway.”
Once he was back in his car, Milo checked his watch. Twenty past seven. He still had time to stop by the home of Emily and Michael Bryson if he hurried. He figured that eight o’clock was probably the cutoff for knocking on strangers’ doors and asking about a missing girl from twenty years ago.
On his way over to Federal Street, Milo’s hope began to wane. When he had left Connecticut a little more than twenty-four hours ago, he had been so full of anticipation and excitement. He had expected to drive down to North Carolina, spend an afternoon chatting with the locals, and turn up an appreciative and cooperative Tess Bryson without much trouble. She would in turn contact Freckles, and just like that, Freckles’s guilt and uncertainty and pain would be gone. Not only would she discover that her friend was alive, but she would learn that the maps and the planning and the forty dollars that she had lent her friend as a thirteen-year-old had actually done some good. She had helped a young girl escape an abusive and potentially dangerous father and find a new life here in North Carolina.
In discovering that Milo had a hand in this reunion, Freckles might in turn forgive him for watching the tapes, express appreciation and gratitude for his efforts, and move past the possible awkwardness of secrets revealed. Perhaps the two could even find a way to be friends, and maybe, someday, something even more, though Milo could barely admit this secret longing even to himself.
But most important, Freckles would no longer be forced to live with a secret that had plagued her for years. Milo could not envision a better gift. Though it was impossible to rid himself of his own secrets, he found himself in the unique position to do so for Freckles, and he couldn’t begin to imagine the joy and the sense of relief that she would feel on realizing that she was free from her burden. Though hardly a believer in fate, Milo believed that he, more than almost anyone else in the world, could understand Freckles’s circumstance, and that perhaps it was for this reason that he had found the video camera and the tapes. Perhaps he could do for Freckles what no one could ever do for him. Unable to rid himself of his life of secrecy, perhaps the best he could ever do was save someone else from a similar fate.
Perhaps this would be enough.
But with half of his potential contacts now scratched off his list, Milo was depending on Emily and Michael Bryson to save the day, and he was beginning to realize how unlikely and unrealistic this expectation might be. Tess Bryson had disappeared