Only Ever You (13 page)
Authors: Rebecca Drake
Jill leaned into his touch, wanting to believe him.
JOURNAL—AUGUST 2009
You left early again and I’m splayed on the bed, your seed spilling out of me. At the end you never want to linger. You believe in the quick finish. It has taken me some time to cut through the flattery and charm that brought me literally to my knees. That’s where you like me to be when I suck your cock. Is that too vulgar for you? I picture you wincing, though this is precisely the sort of language you prefer when you tangle your hand in my hair and use it to control my head.
When we are together, you tell me that we have an incredible connection that you just don’t have with your wife. Not that you’ve ever called her that or called her anything at all. “Home” is the euphemism. “I don’t have this at home,” you say. “You’re the only soul mate I’ve got.”
I know, I know. Stupid, right? I am the classic dummy when it comes to male behavior. Your secretary tried to tell me once, did you know that? She approached me in the ladies’ room, the one that the male partners like to crow about whenever gender discrimination issues come up because they added three more stalls and think that makes them supersensitive to women’s issues. We stood at adjoining sinks. “Do you mind if I tell you something?” She had a smile on her heavily powdered face, and it didn’t occur to me that it would be anything less than friendly. I gave her an expectant smile in return, standing there with the water running. “You’re not the first easy lay in this firm and you won’t be the last, so stop thinking that you can fuck your way to partner.”
My face flamed; I felt offended, misjudged. I didn’t realize the real message behind her warning, not for some time.
I think about leaving every day, but I’m too inexperienced to attract the attention of another decent firm. Every interviewer asks why I’m leaving my present firm, but I can’t tell them the truth, can I? I’m stuck, which means I’m stuck with you because as much as I long to end it, the truth is that I’ve fallen in love with you. It’s an illness, this sort of obsession. I know you’re bad for my health, but like a smoker reaching for “just one more” from that pack of cigarettes, or the dieter who justifies eating that slice of chocolate birthday cake, I keep acquiescing.
You’ve never said you’ll leave your wife, but I fantasize about it all the same. We don’t talk about her, but she looms large between us when you’re fucking me, D. Sometimes I think I can even see her, a ghostly apparition hovering in a corner of the room during every encounter—watching, judging.
I have seen her for real, you know. Once we actually rode the elevator up together. I recognized her from the photos you have on your desk, the pictures of a life that you should be having with me. She’s a beautiful woman, and I felt a surge of jealousy that she got to be with you, sleep with you, wake up next to you every morning.
NOVEMBER 1, 2013—THE DAY
Jill woke suddenly, startled by something. She sat up in bed, heart racing, while David lay snoring softly beside her. A glance at the clock showed it was 6:27
A.M.
Her alarm would go off in three minutes anyway. She’d had the nightmare again, another endless journey down a shadowed hallway, the feeling of dread gaining in intensity the closer she got to the door at the end. Except she’d woken sooner this time and she didn’t know why. She had the sense it was something external, a noise of some sort, but she couldn’t hear anything beyond David’s heavy breathing and the low hum of the furnace kicking on.
She slipped out of their king-size bed and padded into the large master bathroom, the tile floor a sudden chill under her feet. The first day of November and there had already been flurries. Soon the remaining leaves would fall and winter would arrive with the promise of lots of snow. She hated the cold, but she did love photographing the clean, unbroken sweep of a snow-covered hillside or the starkness of black tree trunks against a perfect expanse of white. And Sophia loved the snow—making snow angels and snowmen, throwing snowballs. Jill smiled remembering Sophia’s grin as she’d clomped through mounds of snow in the pink sparkly boots she’d worn last winter.
Thinking of Sophia made her realize that they’d gotten through the night without her crawling into bed with them.
David was still lying in bed when Jill came out of the bathroom. She leaned down to kiss him. “Good morning.”
“’ello,” he mumbled into his pillow.
“Notice anything?”
He stared up at her, bleary-eyed. “Um, you’re more awake than I am?”
“Sophia slept in her own bed.”
“Great.” He yawned and rolled up to a sitting position with a groan. “Then why don’t I feel any more awake?”
She smiled and slipped into the silk robe hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. “You can have the shower first; I’ll get Sophia up and start the coffee.”
It was dark in the hallway. She pulled the robe tightly around her, trying to rub warmth into her arms, and padded down the long hall to her daughter’s room. The master bedroom was at one end of the second-floor hallway, separated from three others by a laundry room and the large main bath. Sophia’s door was a tiny bit ajar, the way they left it every night, because Jill wanted to be able to hear her daughter if she needed them.
Jill listened at the door for a second, then slowly pushed it open. In the dim light coming through the gauzy curtains she could see the bed piled high with the blankets that Sophia loved to snuggle under. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she called in a soft singsong, walking quietly across the carpet to the bed. She put her hand on the top blankets, expecting to feel the warmth and firmness of her daughter’s small body, but her hand sank into softness instead.
“Sophia?” Jill pushed down on the blankets, then pulled them off. Her daughter wasn’t there. Surprised, Jill switched on the light, looking around the room. “Where are you, sweetie?”
She took a quick peek under the bed, hoping to find Sophia stifling giggles underneath, but no such luck. Jill sighed and headed out of the room and down the stairs to the first floor. Twice, lately, they’d had a variation on the sleepless theme with Sophia going downstairs to make her own breakfast, in both cases before five
A.M
. The first time had involved cereal scattered across the counter and floor and a half gallon of spilled milk. The second time, it was grape jelly smeared on every available surface. Worse than the mess, however, was the fear that Sophia would try to use the stove or toaster on her own. The first time, Jill told her that she could help make breakfast like a big girl, but she had to wait until the morning and had to have Mommy or Daddy’s help. The second time, David spoke to Sophia very sternly and put her in time-out for three long minutes, during which she sobbed loudly and heartrendingly. Jill thought they’d gotten through to her, but apparently not.
She rounded the corner into the kitchen with a scold on her lips, only to stop short. All lights were off and the kitchen was dark. “Sophia?” No sound, except the steady drip of the kitchen faucet that they kept meaning to fix. No food out on the granite island, no dishes because she’d left the wine glasses and bottle upstairs. All the chairs were pushed in at the kitchen table. No one had been there.
The rest of the first floor was in shadows. Jill crossed out of the kitchen and into the empty family room beyond, tripping over one of Sophia’s stuffed animals lying on the floor. She put it up on a shelf, surprised that Sophia wasn’t curled up on the sectional in front of the TV. She moved on through the dining room, her footsteps quick enough to make the crystal glasses tremble in the china cabinet, and into the living room. There was no sign of Sophia anywhere.
Jill felt uneasy. She ran back upstairs taking the steps two at a time. “Sophia? Sophie, where are you?” She went back into her daughter’s room. “If you’re hiding it’s time to come out now.” She opened the closet door and swept her hands between the clothes on the lower rack, separating them. No Sophia. She checked under the bed again and then strode out of her room and through the next door into the empty guest bedroom. No Sophia.
Real fear came first as a tiny prickling feeling. She checked the bath, then Sophia’s bedroom again, before running back toward her own, the sound of the shower in the master bath getting louder. “Sophia? Are you in here?” She dropped to her knees and looked under the bed before checking the walk-in closet. The shower stopped and in the quiet she could hear herself panting. David came out of the bathroom toweling his hair.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sophia’s not in her room.”
He stopped drying and stood there with the towel in his hands. “She’s probably downstairs making breakfast again.”
Jill shook her head. “She’s not. That’s the first place I looked.”
“Well, where else could she be?”
They stared at each other for a second, then Jill ran to the window while David said, “Could she have gone outside?”
Jill scanned the backyard. “Did you lock the French doors last night?”
“I don’t know, I think so.”
“You think so?” She couldn’t see her anywhere. “Oh my God, do you think she could have left the yard?” She turned and saw David pulling on jeans and hurried past him to do the same.
“No,” he said, yanking a T-shirt over his head. “At least I don’t think so.”
Jill ran from the room and heard David racing down the hall behind her. Back down the stairs and through the kitchen to the family room and the French doors. She stepped onto the back patio, the cold air like a slap against her face. She scanned the dark yard rapidly, searching for her daughter. It was still so dark out; would she really have gone outside on her own? “Sophia!” Her cry scattered a group of crows resting in an oak tree, and they rose shrieking into the air. David came out with the flashlight they kept under the kitchen sink, the beam bouncing erratically off bushes and the wooden playhouse.
Jill ran toward it and David followed. Sophia loved the little white house accented with pink shutters and door and real window boxes, a birthday gift from David’s parents. “Sophia?” David called this time, his voice louder than Jill’s. A light came on in an upstairs window of a neighbor’s house. The playhouse was empty; the toy table set with cups and saucers, and one of two small wooden chairs lay on its side.
Jill thought it looked untouched. “She hasn’t been in here.”
David swung the flashlight up and over the rest of the yard. Nothing.
“Do you think she would have left the yard?”
“No,” she said at once, then hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Beyond the lawn the yard sloped down into woods. “It’s so dark,” David said. “Would she really wander this far in the dark?”
They’d talked about getting a fence, but had deemed it an unnecessary expense. It wasn’t as if they had a dog, though Sophia kept asking for one. Jill suddenly wished that they’d gotten the dog; if they’d gotten the dog they would have gotten the fence and Sophia would be here.
“Sophia! Sophie, where are you?” Jill’s voice seemed to echo in the silence. There was no answering cry. “We’ve got to check the woods.”
Jill hurried after David down the dark hillside, flashlight bouncing off tree trunks and low-hanging branches and once the ghostly wide eyes of some animal almost as frightened as they were.
She tripped over a tree root and fell heavily to the ground, her hands sinking through a dense carpet of pine needles and molding leaves before slamming into rock-hard soil, the smell of decay souring the air around her. She clambered to her feet, glancing back at the house as the sun crept up, a frightening ribbon of blood orange spreading on the horizon. For just a moment, in a trick of light, the dark windows at the back of the house made it look like a large, leering face.
Reaching the ravine within seconds of David, she clambered over the rocks that formed the bottom, following him down the creek toward the culvert that ran under the road over fifty feet away. Icy water soaked through her shoes, but Jill barely felt it. She screamed Sophia’s name until her throat was raw, but when they reached the entrance to the culvert she tried again, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. A raccoon exploring a small pile of debris in the corner bared his teeth at them for a moment before running out the opposite end. It was deserted, but David ran its length anyway, bent over, running the flashlight all around.
“Where is she?” Jill’s voice cracked; she was sweating despite the cold.
David stopped at the end of the culvert for a moment, hands on his knees and head bent, catching his breath. When he turned back seconds later the look on his face frightened her.
“Call the police.”
DAY ONE
By the time detectives arrived, Jill had recounted multiple times the story of how she had discovered Sophia missing. Originally to the young, acne-scarred patrolman who arrived first, and then again and again to the older, more senior officers who came after him.
Jill’s jeans had dark stains on the knees and her hands were scraped and dirty. Inside she felt empty, scraped and hollowed out, like the jack-o’-lantern sitting on her own front porch. She didn’t think she could replay this nightmare one more time, but that was exactly what the detectives expected her to do.
“We’ve already told the other officers,” David said with exasperation when the male detective asked Jill to repeat the story again.
“Yes, I understand, but I haven’t heard it from you.” Detective Ottilo moved ever so slightly, turning his attention fully to Jill.
They were in the living room, Jill and David seated together on the sofa like teenagers being grilled by parents before their first date. They’d been asked to sit down in there so that they didn’t interfere with the police work going on in the house around them. Beyond them, in the front hall, police officers moved in and out hauling various cases and bags. Fear warred with a feeling of violation.
