Chapter 5
He brought his face level with my arm.
He stared at that mark without moving.
His voice was almost gone. "Emma has had a birthmark on her arm since she was a baby.
"It's shaped like a leaf.
"It's on the inside of her left arm.
"It's exactly like her mother's."
The doctor answered him.
It was something about a DNA test and some kind of paperwork.
I couldn't follow any of it.
All I could see was him crouched there with his head down.
His shoulders were shaking.
James didn't make a sound.
But there was water on the floor that hadn't been there before.
One drop landed, then another, then another.
I reached my hand out.
It was a small hand with dirt packed under the nails.
I touched his hair.
I didn't know why I did it.
Maybe it was because whenever Linda hit me, I wanted somebody to put a hand on my head.
He looked up.
A five-year-old had just patted a grown man on the head.
His face was covered in tears.
But he smiled.
It was an awful-looking smile, and it was real.
*****
They took two vials of blood.
I didn't cry when the needle went in.
Linda had always said that a kid who cried was the worst kind there was.
The young man in the suit was named Alex Carter, and he went out to the hall and stayed on the phone.
I heard him telling somebody to rush it, to get the fastest turnaround they could, and to put the results straight into James' hands.
When Alex came back, he had a bag with him.
There was milk in it, a sandwich, and a stuffed animal.
He held the bag out to me.
He said quietly, "Emma, are you hungry? Have something to eat."
I looked at the sandwich and swallowed.
I didn't dare take it.
At Linda's house, nobody touched anything that hadn't been handed over first.
He unwrapped the sandwich and set it down by my hand. "Go ahead. It's all right."
I looked at the door.
He was still out there on the phone.
I could hear his voice, low, every word bitten off short.
"Pull every case involving a child in Maple County from July 2020 on. I don't care who you have to call. I want answers before daylight."
Alex sat on the stool by the bed and watched me take small bites of the sandwich.
His eyes were still red.
But he kept smiling, and it was costing him something.
He said, "Emma, do you know how long your dad has been looking for you?"
I chewed and shook my head.
Alex found a photo on his phone and showed it to me.
It was a wall.
The entire wall was covered with missing person posters.
Every one of them had Emma Perry's face on it.
The picture was different on each one.
Some were baby photos, some were from when she was one, and some had been made on a computer to show her at three, four, and five.
Alex put the phone away. "Your dad has been looking for you for four years.
"That's more than fourteen hundred days.
"There's a room in his office that nobody else is allowed into. Everything of yours is in there. Clothes, shoes, toys. Every year on your birthday, he buys a present and puts it inside.
"And your mother."
He stopped for a second.
Alex continued, "She got sick after it happened. But she waited for you to come home, every single day."
I put the sandwich down.
I couldn't chew anymore.
My throat had closed up.
Fear came over me all at once.
I had never been that afraid of anything.
Because I wasn't Emma Perry.
I was Emily Reed.
I had seen the poster and decided to pretend.
What if he found out?
What if the test came back and showed I wasn't her?
Would he throw me away, too?
I gripped the corner of the blanket until my knuckles turned white.
I had to tell him.
I had to tell him right then.
If I waited, his hope would only get bigger, and the truth would hit him harder.
I started, "Um."
He answered, "Yes?"
"I'm not really Emma Perry."