Where I Lost Her (16 page)

I bring her gifts. The soft stuffed dog, which she calls Amada,
pan dulce, champurrada,
embroidered dresses. But mostly I hold her. For each hour I am allowed inside these walls, I cling to her. Study her tiny fingernails, the lines that traverse her small pink palms. I memorize the shape of her nose, her eyes. I commit to memory the exact hue of her skin.
Mine,
I think, as she plays with my hair and curls into me.
Mine.

I
wake in the middle of the night, breathless, at the sound. An explosion. The sky detonating outside the cabin. It feels like someone has shaken me awake, but I am alone, twisted up in the cool sheets. I look at the window, and rain beats against the glass like pellets. I'd forgotten about the thunderstorms here, the electric buzz of the air. The violent utterances from the sky. In the city, storms are merely inconveniences. Never like this. Never
consuming
like this.

Thunder cracks again, and even though I know it is the storm this time, rather than a bomb, I still startle at the sound.

Normally, I have to drag myself from sleep, especially after a bottle of wine. But I am wide awake, my entire body electrified. A flash of lightning fills the cottage and I see myself, my legs, my arms, illuminated.

I feel an uneasiness, something I can't quite pinpoint. Because while my body is wide awake, my brain still feels muddy. Thick. It's almost as if I've forgotten something. It feels like a tickle at the back of my throat. An itch. And then, as my hazy thoughts begin to clear, clouds parting, lightning flashes again.

The little girl.

Oh my God. She is outside, alone, in this storm. I feel like I might cry. My throat constricts, my chest compresses. Thunder rumbles ominously, a warning. A threat.

By the time the lightning flashes again, I have crawled out of bed and am getting dressed. In the dark, I dig through my open suitcase for a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I slip on socks and my sneakers. I am not sure where I will go, what I will do. I only know that I can't stay here in this safe little cottage, protected from the assault going on outside, while she's out there alone. I feel the same nagging anger at Jake, at Andrews and Strickland, at all the people who have given up. At myself, even, for letting them.

I push against the door, but it resists. The wind and rain seem to want to keep me inside. When I am finally able to get the door open, the moment I step onto the little wooden porch, I am drenched.
Water,
the psychic said.

I'll need a flashlight, I think. And so I run up the pathway toward the camp, slipping on the slick grass, feeling my knee buckle then quickly righting myself. But the door is locked. Effie locked it behind me when I left last night. We never worried about locking the doors before, but now even she doesn't feel safe here.

I run back to the guest cottage, duck inside, and fumble around my purse, looking for my keys, which have a penlight as a keychain. I pull my sweatshirt hood over my head and go back outside to my car, unlocking it with the key rather than using the remote to keep it from sounding its alarm. But as the engine clicks on, the radio blares, and I move to turn it off. I turn on the heater, feel the warm air blow from the vents across my goose-pimpled skin. I check the glove box for a flashlight, but there's nothing inside save the car's registration, a couple of CDs, a charger that plugs into the lighter.

I back out of the driveway slowly, and then I am on the road. I drive south around the lake, but I can't see the water. I can only see the rain that is coming down in hard sheets now against my windshield, all of the windows. It's like I'm in a car wash. I click the wipers to the fastest setting, but their sweeping arcs are futile against the watery assault.

I don't know where I am going; I only know I can't stay inside that safe cocoon of a cottage while that little girl is out here. How could I have not considered the rain? The weather? This is New England in the summer. It is hospitable to no one, never mind someone exposed to the elements.

I feel overwhelmed by the sense that I have failed her: that the pathetic search, the ambivalent police, are my fault. I imagine if it had been anyone else who had found her, if it had been Devin or Jake for Christ's sake, people would still be looking. Searching. The search wouldn't end until she was found. Until she was safe. But I am unreliable. Untrustworthy. Unhinged.

There are no other cars on the road, but I still drive slowly, cautiously. Part of me hopes that she will just appear again. That she will emerge from the woods into the low beam of my headlights. And this time I won't be distracted. This time I will go to her, grab hold of her; this time I won't let her go.

But the road in front of me is empty. My headlights illuminate nothing but rain and dirt, trees. She isn't going to simply materialize. The idea that she will come back is magical thinking. I know this. It's the fingers crossed, breath held inside a tunnel. Another foolish wish on a star.

A couple of miles down the road, I pull over and turn off the engine. Without my headlights, it is dark. I really wish I had a real flashlight. It's stupid to be out here like this. When I get out, I feel like I have been swallowed by the night. Like a blind person, I try to navigate the road using my other senses, but the rain distorts things. Confuses things. I find the edge of the road and walk. I walk for at least a half a mile, searching. I study the edge of the road, looking for the mailbox. Looking for the driveway that leads to that man's house.

Everyone else has given up on her. But I have not. I will not. Not until I find her.

I
should be afraid, but instead I feel only determination as I walk up the dark gravel driveway. Sharp's porch light is on, an eerie beacon, but the truck is not there, which, I hope, means he's not home. I feel emboldened by his absence. And it isn't until I get to the collection of trailers that my pounding heart catches up with me.

It is still pouring rain. My clothes are soaked, heavy. I feel like I am carrying an extra fifty pounds. Stealth is nearly impossible, and so I am grateful for the storm. For the cacophony of rain. Of thunder. I'd forgotten how loud storms are. How deafening.

I walk slowly, carefully, through the labyrinth of metal outbuildings: this maze of rusted husks. There's a teardrop trailer, two horse trailers. Grass and weeds grow through them, nature trying to reclaim the metal. There's one of those campers that attach to a pickup truck, but the hitch is sunk into the ground. This is like a graveyard. Like a strange garden.

In the distance I can see a single-wide trailer with plywood windows, and I start to feel sick. What am I doing here? Still, I move forward. The sky rumbles angrily. I step over broken bottles. Trash. This is a wasteland, a dump.

Suddenly, I trip and feel the familiar cold shock as my foot sinks into a large puddle of water. I gasp. As I pull my foot from the depths, I see a streak of lightning in the distance. It's like a flash has gone off, and my eyes water, blinking to adjust. It's not a puddle though. It's a
pool
. A plastic kiddie pool.

I think of the psychic again.
So much water
. Could this possibly be what she meant? And what the fuck? What is this guy doing with a kiddie pool? I feel sick to my stomach, but I rush forward, a renewed sense of urgency. I get to the boarded-up trailer, but the latch is padlocked.

This trailer, for some reason, has been liberated of its wheels, and so the bottom is flush with the ground. I wonder why on earth someone would have taken the wheels off of a trailer. But then again, why someone would have a compound of rusted-out trailers in their yard is also a mystery.

Another crack of thunder, and the entire world shudders. And then, beyond the sound of the rain, I hear an engine. A truck. With a bad muffler. And the light is coming from not one but two sets of headlights. I go behind the trailer, I hold still, hold my breath, try to make myself disappear.

I hear car doors slamming, and then the sound of voices. Of two men talking. My ears strain, but it is impossible to decipher their voices in the rain.

I drop to the ground, to my hands and knees. As I start to crawl, I feel a sharp pain. I wince and try not to cry out. I lift my knee up and grope to see what I've knelt on. It feels like glass, but it's just something plastic. I pick it up and peer at it in the dark. I can't tell what it is though, and I'm too afraid to turn on the penlight, so I shove whatever it is in the pocket of my sweatshirt.

I peer out around the edge of the building. Sharp's pickup is parked in the driveway, and there's another vehicle behind it. The two men's silhouettes move like beasts in the night, unloading something from the back of the second vehicle. Another truck, filled with landscaping equipment. Garbage bags. In the weak porch light, I can see.

Massachusetts plates.

I am low-crawling quickly along the ground like a soldier at boot camp. I have to get the hell out of here.

The entire world smells of rain and mud. There are leaves all over my body, mud in my eyes, in my hair. If I could burrow into the ground, under the ground, like a gopher, I would. I am moving faster than I would have ever thought possible.

I don't stand up though, until I have made it to the road and am sure they haven't seen me. Only then do I stand upright and run. I run until my lungs are on fire, and I find my car where I left it. I am breathless. My heart feels as though it is beating outside of my body.

I turn to the lake and it seems like something alive, its surface battered by the rain that continues to fall.

I've left the car unlocked, and so I climb in, aware that I am going to ruin the upholstery with the mud and rain I am wearing like a second skin. I need to get out of here. I don't want them to see my car with its New York plates, if they haven't already.

I reach into my sweatshirt pocket for my keys and my hand touches something plastic. I pull it out, but it's still too dark to see. I am worried about turning on the overhead light, so I quickly turn the car on and hold it up to the faint glow of the dash.

It's a plastic barrette, an orange bunny barrette. The kind Effie used to put in Plum's hair.

I am overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu. Like trying to remember a dream. The barrette. Oh my god . . . it's the little girl's barrette.

P
ink tutu, ladybug rain boots. Curly hair. And I remember now this barrette hanging precariously from one of her curls. I recall that fleeting impulse to reach over and snap it shut, the same odd instinct to fix the reporter's earring, which had lost its back. That familiar urge, that compulsion to take care, to fuss and right and steady and fix: an urge I had felt a thousand times with Zu-Zu, with Plum, with Jake even. A mother's fingers rubbing away a smudge, smoothing a cowlick, clearing the yellowy wax from an ear. Though more often than not, it has been an impulse to ignore. An electrical current connecting to nothing. A broken synapse.

I remember the overwhelming feeling of tenderness toward the girl though, exacerbated by that barrette come loose in her curls,
this
barrette.

But I didn't tell anyone. I completely failed to mention the orange plastic barrette that clung by its sharp teeth to one curly lock. I didn't tell Sergeant Strickland, the reporter, even Effie, who made up the flyers with my description. It was the one detail I forgot.

As I drive back to the camp, the realization of everything I have just seen and heard, of what I just found, collects and accumulates like a gathering storm. Lincoln Sharp, the man with the truck. The dog at Lisa's, her lies. The barrette.
The barrette.
So much hinges on this little piece of orange plastic, but I fucked it up.

I pound my palms against the steering wheel until they feel bruised and tender to the touch. What am I supposed to do now? How can I still save her?

Oddly, my first thought is to tell Jake. Though that impulse, like the other, is based on habit. On a body's involuntary reflex. But that current too has been broken. Failed. Shorted out. It connects to nothing anymore.

Effie. I need to talk to Effie.

 

I am filthy, covered in mud and leaves. I check my reflection in the rearview mirror. I am unrecognizable: a monster that has crawled from the murky depths of somewhere. It is 4:45
A.M.
; no one is awake. Only the faintest bit of light suggests that morning will come. I make my way to the guest cottage. I am exhausted, but I can't climb into those clean sheets in these clothes, so I strip them off and fall asleep nude on top of the coverlet.

 

I wake when the sun begins to burn my cheek. I can barely roll over, my back aches from crawling along the ground last night. I need to get into the shower before Plum wakes up. I put on my robe and knock quietly at the door to camp. Effie gets up early; I know she will be in the kitchen making coffee.

When she sees me, her mouth opens into a startled O.

I don't know how to explain anything that happened last night without sounding like a lunatic, and so I simply hold out my hand. I have been clutching it in my fist the whole night, even as I slept. When I open my palm, the skin is red and pocked from the sharp plastic tines.

“What is that?” she asks.

My throat is thick, and I shake my head. Tears coming so quickly now, there is nothing I can do to stop them.

“It's hers,” I say. “It was in her hair. It must have fallen out.”

Effie picks it up, takes it from my palm, and studies it like a foreign object, an artifact from another time and place.

“You didn't mention it,” she says, her eyes seeking something in mine. “You didn't say anything about a barrette.”

“I forgot,” I say, choking on the words. On my failure. I don't know how to explain that moment, that my hand longed to reach and touch her tangled hair, to snap it shut.

And now I worry that she too won't believe me. That maybe I
am
crazy. If I had really seen this barrette, why did I fail to catalog it with all the other details? How could I have forgotten when I remembered everything else?

No.

I
saw
her. She's real. This is the proof of her existence, not of my insanity.

A sob escapes from my throat, and Effie pulls me close.

“Where?” she says. “Where did you go?”

I shake my head.

“Where did you find it?” she asks again, this time in the same tone of voice I have heard her use with the girls when they aren't being forthcoming. “Tess, you have to tell me where you found it.”

“At Sharp's,” I say.

I feel her entire body tense. “You went to
his
house? In the middle of the night? What if he had a gun?”

I realize then how truly insane this sounds. I don't know how to explain that it was the rain, the storm that propelled me out of my bed and into my car. That I couldn't stand the thought of her outside alone as the sky made its assault on the earth. I don't know how to justify this odd trespassing. The only thing I have to offer is this little orange barrette.

 

I take a hot shower, watch the night swirl down the drain in muddy rivulets. I pluck out leaves that accumulate in the rubber drain catch and toss them in the trash. It takes three shampoos and rinses before the water from my hair runs clear.

When I come out of the shower, Effie has made breakfast and hands me a cup of coffee. I sit down in the kitchen nook, and she sits across from me. Plum is still asleep. She will likely sleep another hour or two before she stumbles down the stairs, bleary-eyed and hungry.

And over coffee and thick slabs of hot coffee cake, I tell Effie everything that happened. But this time I am careful not to forget a single detail. The trailer, the child's swimming pool. Sharp, the truck with the Massachusetts plates. I even tell her about what the psychic had said:
Water, sharp
. I struggle to remember the other things she said, that I dismissed. She said she saw red, felt there was something underground?

“We have to tell the police,” she says. “They can't ignore this.”

“I was trespassing,” I say. I think of the hardware store signs, the neon orange missives nailed to Sharp's trees.
BEWARE OF DOG. NO TRESPASSING. “
If they find out I did this, the police will have everything they need to make a case against me.”

“But you have
evidence,
” she says. “You have proof now. If not that he has her, that she's been on his property.” She gestures to the barrette, which sits on the table between us.

“But they don't
know
about the barrette,” I say. “I never told them. I forgot.”

“What about DNA?” she asks. There must be something on there. Her hair?

“But according to them, there's no missing child,” I argue. “Nothing to compare the DNA to. She does not
exist
.”

Effie sighs, crosses her arms, and holds her shoulders. “I think you should tell Ryan. There's got to be some sort of—what do you call it? Like client confidentiality?”

“Attorney-client privilege,” I offer. I have been here before. I know about secrets between lawyers and their clients. “But won't he drop me? Normal people don't do things like this.”

Effie smiles and reaches across the table for my hand. “You're not normal people.”

And I know she doesn't mean it as an insult. That she may be the only person in the world who, despite everything, still believes me.

“Okay,” I say. “I'll call him later.”

“Good,” she says.

“But I have another call to make first.”