Page 7 of The Woman I’ve Become

I give a sad nod. “They were on their way home from the hooding ceremony.” I pause for a moment to gather myself. “After that awful time I took an extended break, then I concentrated on finding a place where I could help most.”

“You chose to work with women in need rather than start a private practice as a psychologist. Again, that was quite selfless of you.”

“It felt like the right thing to do. I was blessed with a generous inheritance; I wanted to give back. To help those not so fortunate. Before I knew it, I met Phillip and we were married. We had Olivia and here we are.”

“Most people,” she points out, “are the age you are now before they begin to reflect on where they’ve been and what they’ve accomplished, much less how they can give back.”

I’ll be thirty-eight soon, which feels far older, all things considered. “I suppose because I was so grateful to be alive at all after the abduction, I needed to do something more a little earlier than most. What happened, from my abduction to the loss of my parents, altered the entire trajectory of my life. It literally changed every single thing about who I was, what I wanted to be and do.” I pause for a moment to collect myself. “That’s the title, in fact, of my memoir. The Woman I’ve Become.”

“Wow, that is . . . perfect.” She presses her hand to her chest. “I, for one, would love a sneak peek at an advance copy.” She tilts her head and eyes me for a long moment as if she’s working up the nerve to segue into a new topic. “Will you be delving into the subject of the other girl, Wendy Neely, who disappeared in Westport around that same time?”

Suddenly the image of her looms larger than life in my mind’s eye. I blink it away. This is another matter I fully expected to surface. It has been broached so many times. So many, many times. The Westport police, the Connecticut state police, the FBI—all wanted to find the answer back then. Eventually the investigation slipped into that place where cases grow cold and die.

I stick with the story that was told from the very beginning. Too late to try to walk that one back. “I wish I knew. During my time in captivity, I never saw anyone else. Obviously, when I was home again, I heard about poor Wendy.”

“So you, like many,” she offers, “believe her disappearance was not related to yours.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I have no idea. I wish I did. I’m certain there’s someone out there who remembers her and cares about her . . . but I can’t help with the answer. I really didn’t know her. Of course I saw her at school. But we were in different classes and had different friends. Most of what I know about her, I read in the newspaper.”

A spark of that suspicion is back in her eyes. “There were a couple of your fellow students interviewed back then who claimed the two of you were friends. That you hung out together.”

This, too, was expected. Talia Brant did not achieve her current status by not doing her homework.

“Perhaps I would have been able to provide some insights to the authorities had those rumors been true. Unfortunately, like the Times article, they were fabrications.” Now for the next punch. “I do wonder, though, why she didn’t come forward eventually. If for no other reason than to stop the senseless waste of valuable police resources. If she simply ran away from her latest foster home, as many came to suspect, why not let the proper authorities know?”

“Her foster mother insisted she was abused in her previous foster homes. She claimed Wendy was really a good girl who just hadn’t been loved.”

Talia directs this information firmly at me, as if I didn’t already know and should be embarrassed to have spoken unkindly of the poor girl.

“Many have wondered,” she goes on in a somber tone, “if one of her previous foster fathers murdered her to keep her quiet and then hid the body.” Talia nods sadly at her own grave words. “Surely if Wendy were alive, she would have been found by now.”

“Surely,” I agree, wanting this part to be over.

She leans forward a bit, her gaze searching mine as if she might see something beyond my words. “It is possible that both of you were taken by the Judge and kept separately, is it not?”

Such a persistent woman.

“Anything is possible,” I agree, then angle my head and study her as she has me. “Frankly, after hearing about the horrors of Wendy’s childhood and homelife, I can understand how she may have felt her only option was to run away. Still, if she is alive and well somewhere, it was terribly selfish of her not to tell anyone.”

Talia tries but isn’t quite successful at hiding her surprise. My comments on the subject of Wendy Neely are less than compassionate. Let her and her audience conclude of me what they will. She does not need to know or understand my motives.

“As for the possibility of her being a victim of the Judge,” I add to move things along since she appears to have stalled, “the FBI concluded that if she had been a victim of the Judge, her body would have been found—unless she was able to escape as I did. There is no precedent to believe otherwise.”

Talia nods, her expression subdued once more. “That is the consensus, yes.” Her well-known public-personality smile reappears. “The whole world will be beating down bookstore doors to get their hands on the memoir when it comes out. The Judge has a dozen victims attributed to his reign of terror, and no one has a clue about his identity or what became of him.”

“Perhaps the renewed focus will make the difference.” I offer this though I am fully aware that will likely never happen.

“After your abduction,” she says for the benefit of those who will be listening to this interview on Friday, “there were no more victims that fit the Judge’s MO. The prevalent thinking is that he ended up in prison for some other crime. Given the lack of evidence and identifying details about him, there is no way to be certain.”

“Many,” I opt to point out, “suspect—hope—he’s dead.”

“Understandable,” she agrees. “On the other hand, it’s quite possible he took other victims we don’t know about, so finding him alive might bring closure to some of the many unsolved cases of missing women in the tristate area. I can’t help hoping for that sort of resolution,” she admits. “And frankly, I’d like to know why he murdered those women. Why the ‘failure’ designation written on their foreheads? In what way had they failed? Certainly they were all beautiful.”

“I doubt we’ll ever know.” I grimace at my slip. I have found it’s best not to allow those particular conclusions to be known. Too late now.

“One last question.”

I wait. All manner of possibilities as to the substance of her next query flits through my mind. I am, however, grateful she apparently didn’t latch on to my last statement.