Read Online Chance Harbor by Holly Robinson - Free Book Online

Andrew go with her on air. She’d done local television before, was comfortable in front of cameras, but the studio in New York was still a surprise. So small, crowded with people and equipment.
    Eve had let them do her makeup and hair at the studio, sitting in a row with other guests waiting for their three minutes of fame as the crew applied eye concealer, combed and sprayed her hair, brushed lint off her jacket. Meanwhile, she’d been thinking,
Why? What does it matter how I look, when my daughter’s missing?
    Then she and Andrew were seated in orange swivel chairs with the cameras on. The news anchor, a woman in a red dress so bright it hurt, wound her spray-tanned legs together as if they were made of rubber and asked Eve questions about Zoe. At the end of the interview, she’d asked, “Is there something you’d like to say to your daughter if she’s listening?”
    “Don’t lose hope, Zoe,” Eve had said, staring directly into the camera. “Wherever you are, know that we’re using every resource to find you. And we
will
find you, honey. Help is on its way.”
    Nothing had come of the interview. Years of investigating by the police and two different private detectives they’d hired at great expense turned up very little as well.
    Eve was promoted to director of public relations at the hospital shortly after her television appearance. A pity promotion. Two years later, the hospital offered her a golden parachute—a forced retirement, no other way to look at it.
    She’d worked at the hospital for twenty-five years. Her career was her identity; she felt lost without it. More important, after Zoe disappeared, her job was the lifeline that had kept Eve tethered to earth. It gave her something to do besides obsessively search for Zoe on her own after Andrew refused to pay for a third private investigator.
    “I’m as sorry about this outcome as you are, honey,” Andrew had said. “But we give our kids wings so they can fly out of the nest. Zoe followed her own compass. The consequences were tragic, but at least she’s at peace now.”
    “But what about
me
? I’m not at peace!” Eve had shouted at him.
    That was the last time they’d dared speak about Zoe. The memory of their daughter had the power to tear them apart, just as her tumultuous existence had nearly destroyed their marriage and their faith in themselves as parents when Zoe lived with them.
    Eve wiped sweat from her forehead and continued attacking the weeds in Catherine’s garden, wishing she could tear these thoughts out of her head the same way she was ripping plants from the ground. But it was impossible. Even now, five years after Zoe’s disappearance, a small, stubborn part of her refused to believe her daughter was dead. If Zoe had truly left them, Eve was certain she would have felt a shift in the cosmos, a tear in the very fabric of the universe.
    Eve carried the baskets of tomatoes over to the picnic table. Why go back to that horrible time in her life? It was over. All of it, finished: the worry over Zoe, the fights with Andrew, the disappointments of work and marriage, her husband’s final betrayal.
    Much of her life was over. Work. Motherhood. Nothing left for her to do but occasionally help Catherine, who had never really seemed to need her at all, even as a child.
    Eve was searching the garden shed for a pair of clippers when she heard a car pull into the driveway. It must be Catherine. She wiped her hands on her shorts and walked around the side of the house to greet her.
    She reached the driveway and saw that Catherine was still in the parked car. How odd. Her daughter was gazing straight ahead, her hands on the steering wheel as if she were still driving.
    Where was Russell? Maybe Catherine dropped him off at school. Russell sometimes went into his office on Sundays to get a head start on the week, or to work on his boring-sounding book, a memoir of life with his father, a second-rate senator from Virginia.
    Eve walked toward