When Smiles Fade (10 page)

Over the next several weeks, the girls were forbidden to go over to Brianna’s. They had to come straight home from school, but Emma talked to her friend every day in school anyway. On a few occasions, they ditched classes and hung out at a local pool hall. They shot a few games, but mostly they obsessed about how to get Jake out of the picture.

The man hadn’t hit Gracie again since the night the two sisters had walked out, but he had shoved her around a lot. Each time, Emma had stepped in and stopped him, but she didn’t know how long it would be before he got to her little sister again. It was impossible for her to be with Gracie every minute of the day, but she tried her best. Jake had also started drinking in the house. While he was nowhere near the raging alcoholic that Pepper had been, he did drink every day, and Emma had noticed that he couldn’t really handle his liquor. When he drank, he lost control of himself and staggered around the house, half-cocked, before falling asleep on the sofa.

One night, having polished off a pint of whiskey, he lay on the sofa, snoring and emitting strange animal sounds. As she observed him, it dawned on Emma that she had found his weakness. She tucked the information into the back of her mind to be used later if she needed to. As long as he kept his hands off the two of them, she would stand down, she decided, but the minute he caused them any harm, she would make sure he paid for it.

Three weeks later, Jake told Emma before he left for work, “Your punishment is done today. Let me warn you that you better keep yourself out of trouble, sugar bottom. If you don’t, you may find yourself locked up. Now Gracie, on the other hand: who would ever lock her up, innocent and naïve as she is? Mind your business and keep your fucking mouth shut! Understand?”

Emma smiled at him tauntingly and hissed, “Fuck you, Jake!”

He cackled scornfully and was still laughing as he left the house and went off to his job that involved “helping” children.

When Jake arrived home that night, the girls were setting the table for dinner. He sat down in his usual chair and gawked at them as they scurried around the kitchen. He liked his new home, which he could enjoy thanks to his beautiful, stupid girlfriend. He liked thinking dirty things about the girls. His mind lingered on Emma as he imagined her giving him a rough ride on that long, lean body of hers. While Gracie, with her overwhelming fear of him, turned him on so much, he had to keep fucking Valerie to prevent his balls from exploding. The woman wasn’t a half-bad-looking broad either, but compared to the promise her two young daughters held, she was nothing.

After dinner that night, Emma scooted over to Brianna’s house and Gracie went up to their bedroom to finish reading a book for a report she was doing at school. Emma had only intended to be gone for half an hour or so, since she and Brianna were pulling their money together—what little they had—to buy fake IDs from a kid at school. With their counterfeit IDs, they could buy their own beer and get past the bouncers at night clubs. Emma was surprised when she looked at the clock on Brianna’s nightstand and realized that she had been at her friend’s place for almost three hours.

When she hurried home and walked through the front door, Valerie was sitting on the sofa alone, staring into space. She looked startled when Emma asked her where Gracie was.

“Well, um, Jake took her out to get ice cream,” Valerie stuttered. “They’ve only been gone a short while. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

No sooner had the words left her lips, Jake walked in through the front door. Gracie was not with him.

“Where is Gracie?” Emma demanded.

Jake sized her up, obviously amused by her outburst. “Little bitch ran off,” he said casually. “I took her to buy ice cream. She was sitting at the table, and when I came back from getting our stuff, she was gone. I looked for her, but I couldn’t find her. I figure when she gets hungry enough, the little whiner will come home.”

Emma made the mistake at that moment of taking a swing at Jake. He dodged her fist and landed a powerful punch on her nose. Blood splattered everywhere. She remembered then, in that one moment, all the physical pain she had endured at the receiving end of Pepper’s hands. She reached up and grasped Jake’s hair, holding onto it as if for dear life. He lunged at her breasts and grabbed them, pinching the flesh so hard the pain forced her to release his hair. When she was able to focus again, she charged at him. In one swift motion, he punched her in the throat.

Emma was down for the count. She lay on the floor gasping for breath, fearing that Jake had broken something and she would suffocate to death. Slowly, she began to feel air entering her lungs and eventually she was able to sit upright on the floor.

Jake had been sitting in his chair the whole time, watching her. While the scuffle was on, Valerie had turned on the television to divert her attention from what was happening right in front of her.

When Emma was finally able to get up, she walked over to Jake. Although she was barely able to force the words through the insane pain in her throat, she managed to say, “I want to know where she is, Jake. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the police.”

Jake handed her the phone with a leisurely gesture. “Go ahead,” he challenged with winning confidence. “Call the police and see if I care. It’s not like they would believe you over me anyway. Let’s not forget that I happen to know them well. Besides, with that scene you made with them a while ago, shooting off that filthy mouth of yours, they’ll just think you’re being a troublemaker. Better yet, maybe I’ll just tell them that you left with Gracie and I’m concerned that you have her hidden somewhere. Yeah, they would believe that. You did kidnap her earlier and we didn’t press charges, remember?”

Defeated, Emma turned and went up to her bedroom. She sat on the edge of her bed and cried for a long time. She thought about Gracie and how dumb she had been to leave her sister at home with her obnoxious mother. Why had she done that? If only she had kept track of the time! The self-accusations went round and round in her mind, tormenting her endlessly. The regret that gripped her was relentless. If only she could turn back time. Just this once.

Early the next morning, not being able to resist sleep anymore, she drifted off. In her dreams Gracie was calling to her, asking Emma for help, but there was something between them, something that Emma couldn’t get through to reach her. She woke suddenly with her heart thudding in her chest. She had an unnerving sense of doom. Emma needed a plan to find Gracie. She needed it now before it was too late!

Emma heard the front door shut and knew that Jake had left for work. She ran into her mother’s room.

“Where’s Gracie, Mom?” she asked frantically. “What did that motherfucker do to her? What did you let him do to her?”

“Emma, do you have to be so melodramatic about every little thing?” Valerie said casually. “Calm down. I’m sure she’ll come home soon. Besides, Jake’s in a very good mood today and I don’t want you spoiling it all with your big mouth.”

Emma lunged forward, seized the neck of her mother’s nightgown, and backed her into the closet door. “Let me tell you something, you worthless piece of shit!” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Thanks to all the shit I’ve put up with in this house while you stood watching silently, I have perfected the art of hating. If anything happens to Gracie, I will make sure that you suffer more than you could ever imagine. See these bruises on my neck? This was where your boyfriend punched me last night while you sat five feet away and pretended that it wasn’t happening. These will seem like nothing compared to what I do to you. Someday I will get even with you for being such a lousy, nasty, stupid person.”

Clearly frightened by her daughter’s threats, Valerie retreated into her own little make-believe world, where nothing unpleasant ever happened to her. Speaking like the victim of a crime, she said softly, “It saddens me to see that you have become such a mean person. I am your mother, after all, Emma. Sometimes I think you’re just jealous because I always have men in my life that love me. You seem to provoke anger in men because of how you act. Maybe if you took a little more time to make yourself look nice, you could find a boyfriend too. It might be good for you.”

Realizing once again that she was wasting her time talking to a complete idiot, Emma swung around and left the room. She had real things to worry about, like finding Gracie. She quickly dressed and left for Brianna’s.

The moment her friend opened the door, she knew something was wrong. “What the hell happened, Emma?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” Then she said jokingly, “You look like someone just killed your best friend, but since I’m standing right here…”

Emma cut her short. “Gracie is gone, Bri! Jake claims he took her out for ice cream and she ran off. You know she would never willingly go anywhere with him alone. She was scared to death of him. I never should’ve left her there alone.”

As her face crumpled and she gave in to her pent-up emotions, Brianna wrapped her arms around her. “It’ll be all right, Em,” she said soothingly. “We’ll find her. Don’t you worry. We’ll find her. I’ll get dressed and we’ll take my mom’s car and go look for her.”

Within ten minutes, the two girls were in Pam’s car and on their way to find Gracie.

“Where did he take her for ice cream?” Brianna asked.

Emma’s mind was racing. “We only ever go to Joe’s Water Ice on Johnson Highway, the one with the picnic tables outside.”

The two girls drove for hours, looking for Gracie. They went to the local malls, delis, and other places where a thirteen-year-old might seek refuge. There was no sign that Gracie had been at any of those places. They talked to a couple of Gracie’s friends, who said she had been in school on Thursday, but that was apparently the last time they saw her.

The next day Emma and Brianna drove over to Elmwood Park Zoo. Many of the teenagers from Gracie’s school hung out there, and the girls hoped to gather information from them that might help them find her. They walked around talking to all the teens they came across. Some of them knew Gracie, but no one had seen her since school on Thursday. She had been missing for thirty-six hours now and Emma was on the verge of panic. All kinds of morbid thoughts took shape in her imagination: what if Jake had killed Gracie and dumped her body somewhere? What if he had her locked up somewhere and was torturing her?

Disappointed that their efforts had provided no useful information, Emma and Brianna drove home. Emma stepped out of the car and blasted her way through the front door. She found her mother slouched on the living room sofa, watching a rerun of some stupid reality TV show.

“Mom,” she said firmly, “you need to call the police. Gracie has been missing for almost two days now.”

“Emma,” Valerie said, annoyed at being disturbed and letting it show in the tinge of exasperation with which she enunciated her name, “Gracie will come home when she’s ready. I mean, really, don’t you think you’re over-the-top with all of this? I can’t call the police about her yet, because they won’t let you file a missing person report until a person is missing for forty-eight hours. That’s on TV all the time.”

Emma nearly imploded. “She’s a thirteen-year-old kid, Mom! So I’m pretty sure you don’t have to wait for forty-eight hours before informing the police. Or don’t you care? Are you really so self-absorbed that you don’t care about your daughter missing for days? What’s wrong with you? You sent her off with that asshole, Jake, and he didn’t bring her back home. Did it never occur to you to consider what the fuck he might have done to her? Or do you already know what he’s done to her?” Emma ranted hysterically.

Had Emma blinked, she might have missed the familiar expression of forced denial that crossed her mother’s face for a fleeting moment. Far more perceptive than Valerie, she knew right away that her mother held the secret, but Emma pretended not to notice. She was confident that she could yank the truth out of her mother, but held back, fearing Valerie would tell Jake and jeopardize her chances of finding Gracie. That was her mother, Emma thought, a completely self-centered cuntress.

Emma ran across the street to Brianna’s again, leaving her pathetic mother to watch her equally pathetic reality TV show. She needed a plan to find Gracie.

“Is she home yet?” Brianna asked the moment she opened the door.

“No,” Emma sighed. “My brainless mother won’t call the police either. I was about to call them myself when I freaked out on her. I asked her if she knew what Jake had done to Gracie and she said no. But I can tell she was holding back something. I’m taking that as a sign that Gracie is still alive. I need a plan that will force Jake to tell me where Gracie is.”

Brianna smiled slyly. “Oh yeah? What kind of plan?”

“Bri, I need to seduce him so that he’ll tell me about Gracie. He’s such a perv he would jump at the chance to have sex with me. The other thing is he can’t handle his alcohol. So if I can convince him that I want to have sex with him and get him drunk first, I can get him to tell me where Gracie is. After that, he’ll pass out and that will be that.”

Brianna giggled, “I’m in! When?”

“We can’t wait any longer. It has to be tonight,” Emma stated with a sense of urgency that, for the first time, made Brianna feel scared.

Emma went home and showered. Then she waited tensely in her bedroom. She knew that Jake always came home right after lunch on Saturdays. It was his day to check on his young clients and their parents. Sometime later, she heard the front door open. Jake had returned. As he closed the door and started up the stairs, Emma’s stomach began to twist in anticipation of what she was about to do. She opened the door of her bedroom and stood leaning against the jamb. As Jake reached the top of the stairs, he glanced at her.