Meanwhile, Sarah, who has spent three years publicizing Piper’s disappearance, keeping her in the public eye, giving interviews, putting up posters and running a website, has been hollowed out by the news of Natasha’s death.
I have seen hundreds of couples overwhelmed by loss. Some can look straight into each other’s eyes without needing words. Others are like strangers sitting on a long-distance train. Some fall to the ground shrieking while others remain unmoved, seemingly devoid of emotion. Some blame themselves, and others search for someone to blame, while a few drink themselves into oblivion or pretend nothing has changed.
I can picture this couple lying side by side in bed at night, hollow in heart and soul, wondering if Piper is still alive, one abandoning hope, the other clinging to it—until today when the roles have been reversed.
I have been there. I have lain awake staring at the ceiling, my bones aching with exhaustion, knowing Gideon Tyler had taken Charlie, wondering if she was still alive. I have been visited by every shade of grief and know that it doesn’t come in black or white.
Dale Hadley takes me upstairs to Piper’s bedroom. He pauses outside the door, as though unwilling to cross the threshold.
“I haven’t set foot in this room,” he explains. “Not since she went missing. Piper had this thing about her privacy. She didn’t like anyone invading her space.” He uses his fingers to make inverted commas around the last statement.
“She was secretive?”
“Aren’t they all? Teenagers, I mean.” He scratches his unshaven jaw. “We let her put a lock on her door, but we took it off after she and Natasha got into trouble. They went to a college-age party… there was an incident.”
“I heard.”
“We knew Piper had been drinking and we caught her with pills in her bag. That’s why we grounded her. She wanted to go to the festival, but we told her no. She snuck out anyway. That’s the last time… you know…” He sighs. “The last words she said were that she hated me.”
“She didn’t mean it.”
“I know.” He glances at the single bed. “We blamed Natasha. She was always a wild child. You know how girls like pretending to be grown-up, dressing in their mothers’ clothes, tottering in high heels? Natasha acted like she was always grown-up. Precocious isn’t the right word. She was trouble. We tried to separate them by sending Piper to one of those camps for troubled teens, but that didn’t do any good.”
“You tried to stop her seeing Natasha.”
“Did we do the wrong thing?”
“You shouldn’t punish yourself.”
“Why not? Maybe it was our fault.”
His eyes close in a delta of wrinkles. Dale Hadley, like Isaac McBain, has spent three years debating the “what if’s” and “if only’s.” What could he have done? How could he have changed things?
Piper’s room is exactly as she left it. Her desk has textbooks stacked smallest to largest and there are pictures pinned to a notice board, mostly of Natasha. It is a typical teenage girl’s room, full of lip gloss, bracelets and acne creams. Nothing strikes me as being odd or out of the ordinary, except for the fact that none of the posters or photographs feature boy bands or sex symbols.
Everywhere there is evidence of girlhood adventures: a jumble of novelty pens, knick-knacks, key rings and cheap jewelry. I run my fingers over the bookcase. One shelf contains cloth-colored notebooks.
“She liked writing,” explains Dale, still standing in the doorway. “We found them all over the place after she’d gone—behind the radiator, under the mattress, in the cavity behind her drawers. Some were wrapped in masking tape so that her sister couldn’t read them.”
“You gave them to the police?”
“Of course.” He sighs. “She wrote some hurtful things about the family. You know what teenagers are like. They love and hate in the same breath.”
I pick up one of the journals. “Can I borrow these?”
“Go ahead.”
He looks absentmindedly at his watch. “I have to make some calls. They’ll have heard the news at work, but I should say something…”
He turns and leaves, walking like a man submerged in water.
Taking the journals, I cross the corridor to a small home office, which is the “mission control” center for the “Finding Piper” campaign. There are posters on the walls, along with newspaper clippings, emails and photographs of Piper in every stage of her young life.
One image shows her digging earthworms from a muddy bank, concentrating so hard that her brow is furrowed. It’s an inconsequential moment frozen in time, but something about the way it is framed and displayed makes Piper seem almost deified, like a child chosen for a higher purpose.