Chapter 6 - Hunting for Audrey
The drive from Greenwich to Providence took two and a half hours, but to me, it felt like traversing an ocean of lost time.
Hailey sat in the back of my Range Rover, buckled safely into the leather seat. Before we left Greenwich, I had stopped at an upscale children’s boutique that I forced the manager to open thirty minutes early with a five-hundred-dollar cash tip.
Now, Hailey was wearing a soft cashmere sweater the color of buttercups, warm fleece-lined leggings, and brand-new leather boots that fit her feet perfectly. Her hair was brushed, shining softly under the morning sunlight, braided neatly down her back.
She held a stuffed velvet rabbit I had bought her against her chest, staring out the window at the autumn trees flashing by on Interstate 95.
"Daddy?" she asked quietly from the backseat.
I looked at her in the rearview mirror, offering a gentle smile. "Yes, sweetheart?"
"Where are we going?"
I hesitated, wanting to prepare her, but terrified of breaking her fragile heart if something went wrong. "We’re going to see someone very special. Someone who has missed you every single day."
Hailey’s hands tightened on the velvet rabbit. Her breath hitched. "Is it... is it Mommy?"
"Yes, baby," I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. "It’s Mommy."
Hailey didn't cheer. She didn't smile. Instead, a look of profound, agonizing confusion crossed her small face. "Grandma said Mommy hated me. She said Mommy went to a party and never wanted to come back because I was too loud."
A fresh surge of disgust for my mother washed over me, but I kept my voice steady, filled with absolute certainty. "Your grandmother is a liar, Hailey. Your mother loves you more than life itself. She was forced away by bad people. But Daddy is fixing it. We are going to bring her home."
We entered the outskirts of Providence just past noon.
The address Marcus had provided was on the south side of the city—a neighborhood of aging triple-decker wood-frame houses, auto repair shops, and cracked sidewalks. It was a world away from the manicured, multi-acre lawns and private security gates of Greenwich.
I pulled the Range Rover up to the curb outside an old brick building. On the ground floor was a faded coin laundromat with flickering neon letters. Above it were three stories of small apartments with rusted fire escapes clinging to the exterior walls.
According to Marcus’s intelligence, Audrey worked night shifts at the clinic and usually returned to her apartment around one in the afternoon.
I turned off the engine. The silence in the car was deafening.
"Wait here for a minute with me, okay?" I told Hailey.
I looked down the street. Walking toward the building was a woman carrying a canvas grocery tote in one hand and a cheap umbrella in the other.
She wore a faded navy-blue nurse's scrub top beneath a worn winter parka that was clearly a size too large. Her shoulders were curved inward against the biting wind, her dark brown hair pulled back into a simple, utilitarian bun.
She looked exhausted, her face thin and pale.
Audrey.
My breath caught in my throat. Three years ago, she had been a vibrant, laughing woman whose smile could light up the darkest room. The woman walking down the sidewalk looked like a shadow of that person—hollowed out by grief, worn down by relentless, grinding labor.
Hailey suddenly pressed her hands against the car window. Her eyes went wide.
"Mommy," she gasped.
Before I could unlock the door, Hailey was already fumbling with the handle. I hit the master unlock switch, opened my door, and stepped out onto the cold asphalt.
"Audrey!" I called out.
The woman stopped dead in her tracks fifty feet away. She turned around slowly, her guard up, the defensive posture of someone used to living in dangerous, unforgiving places.
Then, her eyes landed on me.
The canvas grocery tote slipped from her fingers. A carton of eggs hit the concrete and cracked. A loaf of bread rolled into the gutter.
"Nathaniel?" she whispered. Her voice was barely audible over the hum of the city traffic, but I read her lips.
Then, she saw what emerged from behind the Range Rover.
Hailey stepped onto the sidewalk. Her tiny yellow sweater stood out like a beacon against the gray concrete of Providence. She stood there for a second, clutching her stuffed rabbit, frozen between disbelief and overwhelming longing.
"Mommy?" Hailey cried out.
Audrey didn't ask questions. She didn't look at me. She dropped her umbrella, fell to her knees right there on the dirty, freezing sidewalk, and opened her arms wide.
"Hailey!" Audrey screamed—a sound torn straight from the deepest, most wounded part of a mother’s soul. "My baby! Hailey!"
Hailey broke into a run. Her new boots slapped against the pavement as she sprinted as fast as her little legs could carry her, crossing the distance in a blur of yellow.
She threw herself into Audrey’s arms with such force that both of them tumbled backward onto the cold concrete.
Audrey wrapped her arms around Hailey, pulling her against her chest, rocking her violently as tears poured down her cheeks like rain. She buried her face in Hailey’s hair, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, over and over and over again.
"You're here... you're really here..." Audrey wept, her body shaking with uncontrollable convulsions. "My baby... my sweet, beautiful girl... I thought I’d never see you again... I thought they took you forever..."
Hailey was sobbing now, her little arms locked around Audrey’s neck with a grip so fierce her knuckles were white. "Mommy! Mommy, don't leave! Please don't go away again! I won't be loud, I promise!"
"Never!" Audrey cried out, kissing her daughter’s tears away. "Never, never, never! I will never let anyone take you from me again! I love you! I love you so much!"
I stood twenty feet away, watching them. The weight of my own failure, my unforgivable blindness, crushed down on my chest until I could barely breathe.
I had been three thousand miles away, flying on private jets, sipping champagne with foreign investors, believing I was a great provider, while the two people who mattered most in the universe were living in hell.
Audrey finally lifted her head. Over Hailey’s shoulder, her eyes met mine.
There was no warmth in her gaze for me. There was only raw, incandescent fury, mingled with profound, shattered agony.
May you like
"Why are you here, Nathaniel?" Audrey demanded, her voice shaking with rage as she held Hailey tighter. "Did your mother send you to take her back? Did you come to finish destroying me?"
***
