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  He pulled away.

  “We will deal with it when the time comes. What matters now is that we have found her, and we have to concentrate on her recovery. And to make her accept us.” Madeline frowned as a brand new torment started slicing at her heart. What if her daughter rejected her? Behind her words her heart contracted. As much as rejection was an undeniable possibility, she failed to understand how her daughter could not reach out to her.

  “The doctors say that Miss Elisabeth is likely to fully recover, Madam,” Rockwood reassured her with all the gentleness he could gather. “They kept her in an induced coma to allow the brain swelling to subside, and woke her up when she was out of danger. They told me there will be some time before the amnesia fades away, but she will be most likely able to remember her entire past sooner or later.”

  “I would rather her not.” Arthur ground his teeth.

  “Arthur!” Madeline uttered.

  Arthur wriggled on the backseat, giving himself a little distance from his wife. He shot her a frustrated look. “I can only start to imagine the sort of scum she is. I don’t want to know she is a thief.”

  “Arthur!” Madeline repeated, staring at him appalled. “You are talking about our daughter. She was kidnapped when she was only one week old, mon Dieu! Do you think she chose her own fate, what she learnt throughout her life or what she became?”

  Arthur’s heart sank with remorse. “I was not passing any judgment, Madeline.” He reached out to take her hand to his lips then placed a delicate kiss on her knuckles. “I was merely expressing my dismay that something like this could have happened.”

  Madeline stared back at him unconvinced. Arthur was rattled by the news and lost. For every dream he had had for his daughter, this was not one of them. He clearly felt like he was sinking in a myriad of emotions so complex he himself couldn’t understand, let alone take control of. Madeline couldn’t push away the feeling that her husband was determined to set a threshold of expectations that risked hushing up the affection he genuinely held for his daughter.

  “Then please make sure you show due patience and understanding.” She honeyed her warning with a velvety voice, only her cutting gaze giving away her displeasure.

  Arthur returned her stare with a stubborn one, conscious that he couldn’t start a debate about Elisabeth’s education in front of his employee.

  A sudden realization rippled through him.

  “Rockwood, did you make sure that Police are not going to arrest her, now that she’s awake and ready to be discharged from the hospital?” he rapid-fired the question while straightening up.

  George Rockwood came back from his deep thoughts with a solid startle.

  “Yes, sir, I did,” he replied. “I contacted the area precinct and explained the situation. They will not intervene until Miss Elisabeth is released from the hospital. And Miss Elisabeth has been moved in the meantime to a private room. Two bodyguards have been placed outside her door. There is no way that someone could go past them, except for the hospital staff and visitors with security clearance.”

  “What visitors?” Arthur looked at him disconcerted.

  “Our own medical team, for instance,” Rockwood replied.

  A frown deepened on Madeline’s forehead as she listened to the conversation. She suddenly leaned forward to press a button. The privacy screen dropped down halfway, and with it the backs of the heads of two bodyguards and the driver came into view.

  “Gérôme, can you go a little faster?” she asked.

  “I am afraid I cannot do that, Madame,” the chauffeur replied without turning his head. “There is a police car not far behind us. But we will be at the hospital’s main entrance in less than two minutes,” he reassured her.

  With another push of the button the privacy screen went back up.

  Taut silence engulfed the ample interior of the limo for long seconds until Arthur decided to break it. “What does she know about us? What did you tell her?” He looked at Rockwood.

  “I didn’t speak with Miss Elisabeth in person, sir, but a psychologist explained to her the situation,” Rockwood replied. “At this point in time Miss Elisabeth is aware that you are her real parents but that she only lived with you during the first week of her life.”

  The limo stopped as his words came to a halt and again Madeline’s heart dropped. Her feet seemed to have a mind of their own as they managed to take her along the corridors, inside an elevator then down some corridors again. Her mind turned numb and barely registered Arthur’s voice at her side.

  “Why didn’t the psychologist just tell her that we are her parents, period?” Arthur grumbled.

  “We have to tell her the truth, sir,” Rockwood explained patiently. “As I said, Miss Elisabeth’s amnesia is likely to be only a temporary condition. Her memory will come back, and all her past with it. Maybe it’s not my place to say that, but I think that she will need to know that she can trust you. She will remember the places she’s been living, the people she knows and her family if she has one. She may even be married for all I know.”

  “Nonsense,” Arthur said, menace in his voice.

  Rockwood flinched. “My apologies, sir, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought that marriage may be a possibility, considering that her kidnappers didn’t know her date of birth. Anyway, no marriage could be binding in the circumstances. Miss Elisabeth doesn’t have an identity and is underage. Here we are, room 31.” He counted off the last of the rooms.

  Madeline drew up short next to her husband, her hand a hair’s breadth from the handle.

  “How do you think she will react?” She looked at Arthur, her eyes huge, showing the pain of the last eighteen years.

  “Don’t worry, Madeline, everything will be all right,” Arthur replied a little gruff, having trouble containing his own emotions.

  “Madam, there’s nothing to worry about,” Rockwood dared. “Miss Elisabeth is most probably fast asleep.” His gaze skimmed Madeline’s grieving face. He conceded Arthur the same respect. “The doctors decided to keep her sedated,” he elaborated. “You see, since her discussion with the psychologist, Miss Elisabeth became a little agitated, and tried several times to leave the hospital.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Madeline covered her face with her hands. “Why would she do such thing?”

  Rockwood suddenly found that his necktie was strangling him. A lot.

  “Well… She was saying that she didn’t need counseling to recover her memory and get her life back,” he replied.

  “Now you tell me?” Madeline’s words were obscured in her hands, hiding from the world, from Rockwood’s words. “So it is clear she does not want us.”

  Arthur felt his inner kettle reach the boiling point. They were standing in the middle of a hospital corridor with two bodyguards not too discreetly eyeing them, not to count the curious passers-by that were openly staring. He was having one of the most personal conversations of his life just a breath away from the daughter they had lost eighteen years ago. He should be bursting through the door and pulling his daughter in an endless bear hug, letting the tears flow. But the reality was that he did not know what he was going to find behind that door. His hand locked on the handle, and it took everything he had to smash the door wide open.

  When they finally entered the room, they found a bundle wrapped in hospital blankets. It was lying still in the middle of the bed, only a slow rise and fall of the chest giving a hint of life.

  Madeline emerged from behind her hands and clenched the top of her bodice with rigid fingers, her knuckles white. She wished for her husband’s arm around her, but that time was long gone.

  Arthur was floating in a world that belonged to him alone, his face ravaged by a storm of emotions. Madeline walked a pace behind him, wrapped in her own pain, neither meeting.

  The door closed quietly behind them, leaving Rockwood and the guards outside. The couple tiptoed unsteadily toward the bed, their hearts drumming in unison hard enough to wake the dead.


  A face came into view at the top end of the bundle, framed by a mass of dirty brown hair that must have accumulated a lifetime of tangles. A hand showed from underneath the blanket just as Elisabeth’s used to, almost eighteen years ago from silky white, porcelain doll clothes embroidered with the initials EW. Only that this palm was callused, its skin rough and cracked. Black lines of dirt were visible underneath chipped fingernails, some of which bore the unmistakable sign she’d been constantly biting at them.

  Madeline smoothed an agonizing cry with her hands and finally let the tears flow, slowly shaking her head with painful awareness. Her daughter had without any doubt suffered the most terrible fate until now, and God only knew if there was anything that could ever wipe it away from her heart and soul. For once, Arthur’s words raised no grounds for contradiction. By the look of it, Lizzie would be most certainly better off if she didn’t recover from her amnesia. Ever.

  Silence floated around the room for what seemed to be an eternity, only interrupted by the soft beeping of the monitors. Neither Arthur nor Madeline dared to stir the air, too engrossed in studying the young woman’s features with desperate hunger and avid curiosity. They were hardened with visible tension as her chest rose and fell steadily, clearly engulfed in a deep sleep.

  “She doesn’t look anything like us,” Arthur dared to whisper after a while.

  Madeline shot a side glance at him before returning her gaze to her daughter.

  “How can you tell, dear, you have not seen her in eighteen years,” she whispered back. “And half her face is covered by this mass of hair, you cannot even figure out what is underneath.”

  A pair of eyes snapped wide open from under the untamed fringe, making them jump back, startled. Elisabeth Wilburn’s pained, time-worn eyes emerged. She snatched the pulse monitor off her finger and reached out to the side table for a pair of glasses with enormous red, thick frames. She put them on, pressing them hard on the bridge on her nose with the pad of her forefinger. From the corner she now inhabited she stared at the couple who were standing in shock next to the bed.

  “Who are you people?” she asked, her voice raspy.

  Honey-colored eyes. Madeline’s heart took a delirious leap. “We are…” she started, swallowing hard to force down the lump wedged in her throat.

  “You must be Madeline,” Elisabeth cut over her, propping herself on her elbows. “You look like me. Or I look like you. Whatever.”

  Arthur forgot for a moment the tumult of his emotion. Sadly, his daughter had only inherited a very shabby copy of Madeline’s features. But as much as this may start affecting Elisabeth once she’d gotten used to being around her mother, she’ll probably get over it. With time. No one can choose their looks, but they can always bring out their inner beauty.

  Elisabeth shifted her gaze from Madeline to her father and looked him up and down, mild curiosity flashing through her features. This man who was standing in front of her had a granite-hard face, unable to display any emotion. He obviously had none. Just a stiff, pompous rat, Elisabeth assessed.

  “And you must be Arthur.” She looked him up and down again, her gaze turning insolent all of the sudden. “Omigosh, you have a dinosaur’s name,” she murmured. “Never heard about nobody called like that.”

  Arthur looked at her open-mouthed. Elisabeth was clearly traumatized, the child that he knew in his heart would not speak like this to him. His heart pounded painfully in his chest.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked gently, quite sure she’d meant something else.

  “Are you deaf or somethin’?” Elisabeth squinted at him through her glasses. “Your name. A mummy could be called that. Not a man these days. Now did you hear what I said, Arthur?” she drawled, continuing her insolent gaze.

  Arthur shot a side glance at his wife and took a deep breath. “We are your parents,” he said gently. “You can’t call us by our names. To you, we are ‘mother’ and ‘father’,” he said.

  Elisabeth’s mouth fell open a little. “‘Mother’ and ‘father’? I don’t know you, dammit! You just turned up sayin’ you’re my parents, but I ain’t sure about that. And why the hell didn’t you come yesterday, huh? You knew damn well that I was awake.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Arthur uttered without realizing that his voice had suddenly turned shrill.

  Madeline bit her upper lip with despair. This was not how she had pictured their reunion. “Arthur.” She tugged feebly at the cuff of his jacket. “Our little girl is still traumatized.”

  Guilt and profound shame washed over him. His wife was right. His only daughter was sitting in front of him after having gone missing for eighteen years. She needed his support not his condemnation.

  “We are your parents. You said it yourself, you look like your mother,” he started afresh, his voice now charged with the years of pain and longing. “We didn’t come yesterday because you had just woken up from the coma and needed time to adjust. It’s not because we didn’t want to. You cannot understand what we’ve been through since we were told that you had been found. You can’t even begin to understand how much we missed you, Elisabeth…”

  “Elisabeth?” the messy bundle shot back at him. “Elisabeth? Hell no! That ain’t me. What now? Do I have my face stamped on a damn English coin?”

  Arthur stared at her in utter disbelief, his face mirroring the sudden indignation that jolted through his heart. He had just laid his feelings at his daughter’s feet, and she had in response kicked them hard as if she were in the middle of a soccer field, hitting the ball to mercilessly smash it through the goalposts of his heart and soul. He opened his mouth to say something in return.

  “Lizzie, this is your name, my dear,” Madeline pinched hard Arthur’s arm while her other hand ran gently along her daughter’s cheek. “You were taken from us when you were too young to remember. I will show you on your birth certificate when we get home.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your papers,” Elisabeth countered. “I can’t be named like royalty,” she almost growled at her.

  “All right, my dear,” Madeline conceded. “What is your name then?”

  A deep frown settled between Elisabeth’s eyebrows. That was when her parents noticed that a big ball of superglue was adorning the glasses right above the bridge of her nose, where the frame must have snapped in two at some point in time.

  “Dunno,” she answered. “Can’t remember a damn thing.” Her frown deepened as her gaze wandered restlessly over the blankets. “It’ll come back to me,” she said suddenly with forceful determination. “Definitely not Elisabeth.”

  Arthur’s face started borrowing a reddish tint.

  “All right, my dear.” Madeline smiled, sending an imperceptible elbow in her husband’s ribs. The message she sent was, once again, crystal clear. Elizabeth needed their support and love not disapproval. “We will talk about that when you feel better. Why don’t you get dressed and we will go home now?”

  Elisabeth looked at her a little disconcerted. “Where’s home?” she asked.

  “In Manhattan, the Upper East Side,” Madeline replied.

  “I know no home in the Upper East Side,” Elisabeth countered. “I don’t know you either.” Her anger was palpable.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Elisabeth,” Arthur uttered. “You don’t know any other home, or anybody else for that matter. Just come with us.” His bluster turned into a plea to his lost daughter.

  “My name isn’t Elisabeth.” Her chin shot up in defiance. “Just get the hell outta here and let me get changed.”

  Arthur’s face turned dark like the darkest storm. “Watch your language, Elisabeth.” He forgot himself and raised his voice.

  A spasm contorted Elisabeth’s face. She recoiled under the shelter of the blankets, only to straighten up the next moment, defiant and fragile all at once. Her chin was once again tilted up in the air, but unspoken fear lurked in the depths of her eyes. “You ain’t goin’ to tell me how to speak and what to say. I’m not your damn pu
ppet, understand?” she defied. “Let me get changed now.”

  “Arthur,” Madeline warned silkily, pulling him by the elbow toward the door. She sent a tentative smile Lizzie’s way and walked out silently. Once outside she waited for her husband to close the door behind him before opening her mouth again. “She needs time, dear.”

  And that was all that was spoken between them for a good ten minutes while they stood still a few yards away from George Rockwood and the two bodyguards, their faces hard and unreadable. When the door to room 31 finally opened, they both summoned all their strength and years of relentless practice in the art of pretense to stifle a collective appalled gasp.

  The creature who stepped out was no woman. Elisabeth’s hair looked very much like a straw broom stopping a palm below her shoulder blades, the thick, tangled fringe reaching halfway down her nose. Tan man leather boots with the laces undone encased her feet and grey woolen socks peeked from beneath the carelessly rolled back legs of her baggy jeans. She wore a faded denim jacket three sizes too big. Underneath it, a long, baggy T-shirt that bore a peculiar pattern of carnivorous flowers and graffiti style writing. The T-shirt was loosely held around her hips by a thick braided leather belt at the ends of which dangled two silver eagles.

  George Rockwood’s eyes popped open in utter disbelief until his training kicked in. “Miss Elisabeth, what a pleasure. I’m George Rockwood. I’m honored to make your acquaintance,” he recited without thinking, staring in fascination at the creature.

  Elisabeth’s eyebrows suddenly met in the middle underneath the strawy fringe, making the ball of superglue bulge out for him to see.

  “Go to hell and take the ‘Elisabeth’ with you.” She gave him a revengeful nod. “Damn you people. You all speak like you come from another planet,” she muttered to herself as she stormed past him, only slowing down in front of her parents.

  More pain lanced through Arthur. His daughter’s abuse of an employee was a blatant affront to him. Wave after wave of shattering embarrassment racked through his brain, only subsiding when Madeline’s delicate hand reminded him why he was there. The poor girl was his only child, and it wasn’t her fault that she’d been raised in the gutters. He tried to focus on the blessing of having her back. He and Madeline had a lifetime ahead of them to wipe away the harm that had been inflicted on their dear Elisabeth.