What Was Mine (14 page)

“You're a good writer,” he said. “You'll be able to work on your own.”

I tried to contain the upheaval inside me, to keep from spilling my Bloody Mary on his white chair.

“Because I've got a present for you,” he said, and I guessed he was talking about a severance. No severance was in our contract, but I thought our personal relationship might induce him to give me one.

He brought out an envelope from behind his back and presented it to me with a flourish.

It was a large padded envelope from the publisher, the kind they sent early galleys in.

I drained half the drink, set the glass on the table, and opened the envelope. It wasn't a bonus. It was the galleys for
Baby Drive
. How was this a present? Was he suggesting I didn't have to read the 285 pages for typos, other errors, that he'd take over that job himself, sparing me, was that his idea of a parting gift?

“Look at the cover,” he said.

I looked. There was my name—Lucy Wakefield—on a book about kidnapping. Undeniably, indisputably, unmistakably, there it was, just below Lance's. Though the type size was smaller, the letters looked bold and colossal, the font jumping off the page. My face went hot, as if I'd been smacked.

“I knew you'd be happy,” Lance said. “You can make a lot more being out on your own.”

My first thought was to ask him to change it, even though a set of galleys would have been hard to change. But I couldn't bring myself to do that. My name on a book would help me make a name for myself. I needed that, now that he was letting me go. I reassured myself that the book contained nothing that could technically link the story to mine. But, as he refilled my drink, and our glasses clinked, unease coiled in the pit of my stomach and lodged there.

L
ucy wrote
Baby Drive
in far less time than it usually took her to get a book out. That boded well for her going out on her own. I knew I was going to have to drop her. That series had reached the end of its run and the publisher was after me for a new one. I'd already started working on a new series, but with somebody else. Another copywriter who, like most, wanted out of the business. She was younger, her stuff had more punch. We'd already begun seeing each other. Lucy and I had run our course. But I owed it to Lucy not to leave her in the lurch. I gave her what she wanted, her name on the cover. I did everything I could to set her up right. I gave her part billing on the invite to the pub party in Dumbo so she could make connections. I invited her to come with me on tour, to a few of the better stops: Seattle, Portland, Frisco, though she had to do that at her own expense—the publisher wasn't going to foot her bill. At first she said no, but I talked her into it. If she wanted to be an author brand, she had to start getting her face out there.

M
arilyn lived outside San Mateo, which—I'd checked MapQuest—was thirty-three miles away from San Francisco, a good distance. Still, I was nervous as my plane touched down at SFO. What if I saw her? I knew what she looked like, or what she had looked like. What if she happened to be in the airport when I got off the plane? If she passed me, she wouldn't recognize me, of course. She wouldn't know who I was. And yet I fretted about the possibility of running into her, at the airport, or elsewhere, watch her detect some stink of guilt I exuded.

I knew where she lived. I'd been keeping track of her for years, always needing to know that she'd come to no harm. Following the news, I tracked her relocation from New Jersey to California, her divorce from a clean-shaven husband and marriage to a bearded one. Several times, before caller ID, I worked up the courage to call their house, pretending to be a market researcher. I was always nervous, worried she'd hear the urgency I tried to conceal. She never did, though. In this way, I discovered she'd had other children. One, two, three. I was glad.

As I entered the airport, I saw Hari Krishnas, moving swiftly, their orange robes lifting from their bodies like sails, and for a second, I thought I saw her face under a veil. The woman in flowing orange wasn't Marilyn, of course. But she resembled the Marilyn I'd
seen on television twenty-one years before. Marilyn's face would be older now, I realized with relief as the woman floated past me, leaving a scent of cinnamon in her wake.

There was almost no danger of my running into Marilyn, I reassured myself as I maneuvered my roller bag into the trunk of a cab. And what if I did see her? There was nothing she'd see that would link me to her, or to something that had happened on the other side of the country, over two decades ago. How deliberate I'd been while writing the book to craft scenes and settings that wouldn't betray me.

But when the cab left the bridge and turned onto Market Street, crowded with lunch-hour pedestrians, I pulled back from the window, suddenly certain of seeing Marilyn in the crowd on the sidewalk. For a terrifying moment, I thought I saw her crossing in front of us as we were stopped at a light. Her proximity—or my sense of her proximity—made my insides liquefy.

E
ver since it happened, I'd been reading books on kidnapping or watching movies about it. It didn't matter to me whether or not the stories were true. I hated myself for being so obsessive about wanting to absorb every detail about how it was done, how someone got away with it, or didn't. Sometimes I'd have to put down the book or walk out of the movie because I couldn't breathe. I didn't want to think about any of those things happening to Natalie. Tom couldn't understand why I'd torture myself, and really, I couldn't explain it. But something was driving me, and later, Sonya explained it was my mother's instinct, keeping myself open for coded messages, intimations that would lead me to Natalie.

So when I read
Baby Drive
I was open to knowing it was telling me something. It wasn't the story of my baby. The baby was a boy. But he was stolen at four months, just like Natalie was. And there was something in the way the story was told, the intensity of it . . . something in the way that the aftermath of having a baby was described, that spoke to me. As I read page after page, my skin prickled and something cold came up my spine. There wasn't anything in the story that described my baby. And yet I felt somehow, this story was connected to me.

I read the book at night in the bathtub, turning page after page, all the while sensing Natalie's presence. I finished reading it in less
than an evening. It was a gruesome tale, full of base horrors preying on the lower regions of the mind. But something made me feel that it was drawing me nearer to my daughter. I had to knock terrible visions of her out of my mind. I wouldn't let myself descend into madness again. I told myself wherever she was, she was all right. The book was fiction, a made-up story, a thriller. None of the story's facts were real.

That night, I had a powerfully vivid dream about Natalie, the first dream I'd had about her in a while. In my dream, it was night. She was all grown up, in a nightgown, standing in a high window, without a pane. “Want me to teach you?” she asked, then jumped out the window and lifted into the stars, and suddenly I was with her, flying behind her, wind in my hair. There was a full moon. Over the years, I'd often talked to the moon, knowing wherever Natalie was, it was the same moon she was looking at. Even as I was dreaming, I knew that the dream was a dream, but that this part of it was real: that Natalie was reaching out to me, telling me she was alive and fine and that soon we would be together again.

The next day, I saw an ad in the
Chronicle
for a reading by the writer of the book, Lance Orloff. It was at the big Barnes & Noble, in San Francisco, where I'd meant to go anyway. I wanted to check out the “If You Lived” kids' series for Chloe. Another homeschooling mom, like myself, had told me about this series that makes history fun instead of something to dread. Our local bookstores didn't stock them. Grant was home between jobs and could stay with Chloe. I drove up to the city, not knowing (and yet knowing) that my daughter was on her way back to me.

C
oming into the store, I saw posters announcing an appearance by Lance Orloff. My name wasn't mentioned. He looked tan and jaunty in his photos, but he'd stayed back in our last stop, Seattle, because he'd been too ill to fly. He told me he had a flu, but I guessed it was a hangover. An old college buddy had come to the reading and they'd gone out afterward. He hadn't let the publicist know he wouldn't come to the reading. If he'd told her, the reading would have been canceled. My life would have continued just as it was.

I was nervous about doing the reading without Lance. At Elliott Bay (Seattle) and Powell's (Portland), we'd worked out a duet: he'd talk about how he came up with the story, he'd read for ten minutes, then I'd read for five.

This Barnes & Noble was huge. I took the escalator upstairs, to the corner of the store set up for the reading, and as I rose, looking down on the people and merchandise on the first floor, I began to feel more and more confident, as if I was rising into a headiness of what it means to be a real writer, not a copywriter anymore. I imagined the books I might write, without Lance. He'd already scheduled me a meeting with his agent.

The reading area was near the café and the smell of coffee was strong, and I was so nervous, the smell made me nauseous. About
forty people were gathered on folding chairs, or milling about, looking at books or magazines. A woman was adjusting the mic at the lectern and I went up to her and introduced myself. When I told her that Lance wasn't going to make it, her eyes bulged behind her tie-dye-colored glass frames. But she simply sighed and asked for my name and lowered the mic to my height. She apologized to the audience, explaining Lance's absence, saying that his cowriter would be reading instead. I heard what seemed a collective groan, and when a man got up, gave a little snort, then gathered his man-purse and huffed away, others followed and then others, so that when I tested the mic, there were only about ten people left.

Still, I was excited to be reading solo to an audience, even a small one, words I had written, words that told a story instead of extolling the virtues of a product for sale.

I thanked people for coming—and for staying—then, with little preliminary, I began to read, looking up now and then from the page, using tricks I had learned in executive trainings: speak slowly, more slowly than sounds natural to you; breathe between sentences; look up and look at everyone in the room.

Then, I saw something that made my throat close. In the back row was a woman who looked like Marilyn. She had the same facial structure. I stepped away from the mic, afraid my heart was beating so hard the sound might be picked up and amplified.

But perhaps it wasn't Marilyn. I'd thought I'd seen her many times that day. What were the chances she'd actually be here?

I stepped back to the mic and continued to read, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

Each time I looked up, my eyes settled on her. Her face, its angularity; the way she touched her hand to her throat, evoked, indisputably, the woman televised into my living room in New Jersey years ago.

I began to read very fast, not looking up, just wanting to get to the end. I skipped a whole paragraph, which no one seemed to notice.

I kept my eye on the cell phone I'd placed on the lectern. Its screen was a timer, ticking off the minutes. It said 7:47. When it got to 10:00, I knew I could stop. But I couldn't wait. At 8:48, I looked up abruptly. “And to find out what happens next, you'll have to buy the book,” I said brightly, as if I'd cut the reading short for the purpose of sales.

I
was surprised Lance Orloff wasn't at the reading. A writer no one had heard of was at the podium instead. She was too short for the microphone. A store employee had to adjust it. “Hello?” she said, as if it were a question. Her voice wobbled. I saw she was nervous. She explained that Lance couldn't come and apologized that she'd be reading instead. I decided to stay, although most of the people I was sitting with left. She waited until the commotion was over before she began to read, rarely looking up from the page, stumbling over the words. I guessed that she was embarrassed that the audience had dwindled down to just a few people.

Her voice trembled as she read:
I told myself: I was only taking the baby outside for a moment, to get him out of the cold of the air-conditioning.

And suddenly I was flooded with memories from that terrible day. I remembered how cold it was in the store, what a relief it was from the August heat. I remembered the bolt that shot through my stomach when I saw that my baby wasn't where I had left her.

I decided I'd stay and say something to her when the reading was over. I'd tell her that the book resonated with me, that I'd been the victim of a real-life kidnapping, see what her reaction would be to that.

The line to see her was slow, even though just a couple of people were in it. She didn't just sign a book, she made small talk. Still, I
waited my turn. I wanted to get close. I felt I had to get next to her, that the nearness of her presence would tell me—something.

But waiting in line, I began to lose heart. What was I thinking? What would I say? Ask her if she knew where my kidnapped baby was? That sounded ridiculous. Here was a woman who was a professional writer, a woman in a smart haircut, wearing an expensive suit. Lucy Wakefield couldn't possibly have anything to do with my baby's kidnapping. And yet, I sensed there was a connection.

It occurred to me that I should have brought my copy of the book, to get it signed. I took one from a stack by the podium, I put on my reading glasses, and opened it to the right page. The man in front of me stepped away and her eyes fell on me. Immediately her face changed. It wasn't just her expression that shifted. It was her breath. I heard a sharp intake. Her cheeks darkened. She looked scared as a trapped animal.