Where I Lost Her (23 page)

“What does that have to do with this?” I say. Why is he trying so hard to make this about that? It's not the same. She's not the same girl. None of this is the same.

Mama, mama, mama,
she whispers in my ear, her tiny fists clutching at my hair.

I
leave Ryan's with no more of a sense of what to do next than I had when I got there. I need to talk to Strickland. He is the only one who can actually,
will
actually, do something. I have to trust him; right now, I have no other choice.

I sit in my car in the parking lot and dig through my purse for the card he gave me that night, then dial his number.

“This is Strickland,” he says, probably mystified by the 718 area code.

“Hi, it's Tess Waters,” I say.

“Waters,” he says.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

He coughs.

“I have something to show you,” I add.

“My shift ends at five. Meet me at McDonald's,” he says, and then hangs up the phone.

5:00 is still two hours from now. I debate whether I should go back to Effie's house or if I should stay in town. If I go back to the camp, then I'd have to explain to Effie why I'm leaving again. She doesn't know about Strickland. She doesn't know anything about what I saw in the barn, or when I followed Alfieri.

And so, I decide instead to just drive around to kill time.

I grew up in Quimby in the seventies and eighties. Not much has changed since then besides what fills the storefronts. It is a time capsule, this town, a place that holds my memories. Every time I come home, I feel like I've just dragged a box out of storage filled with mementos. I am both nostalgic and saddened by this place.

Here is the corner where I smoked my first cigarette. Here is the river where Michael Knapp kissed me. Here is my elementary school, my high school. Here is the house where I grew up.

I park across the street from the little brick split-level house near the high school. It looks pretty much the same as it did when I was little. The tree out front that I used to climb, whose branches and leaves served as my own private hideaway, is gone now, which makes the house seem exposed. Vulnerable somehow. I think about the way the house looked to me the first time I came home from college in Boston. How its simplicity and modesty had embarrassed me. I am ashamed now of that shame.

This is the house where I was a child. The bay window where we always put our Christmas tree. The porch where Effie and I used to camp out in sleeping bags on hot summer nights. The small window upstairs to my room where I slept and played and cried. This is the house where my mother died.

The front door opens and a woman comes out. She is thin, pale, wearing only a dingy tank top and a pair of cutoff shorts. Her face is long, drawn, and her hair stringy. I think she is younger than she looks. She is followed by a guy who is similarly thin, sickly thin. They sit together on the front steps and she leans against him, her head resting on his shoulder. I feel embarrassed, an odd voyeur.

I start to turn the key in the ignition; it's 4:45, if I leave now I will get to McDonald's to meet Strickland right on time.

A car pulls into the driveway next to the house, and the guy on the porch stands up, ambles down the steps. His faded jeans cling to his narrow, bony hips. He is like the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz,
nothing but sticks beneath his clothes. He walks over to the open driver's side window, pulls some loose bills out of his back pocket, and bends down to the driver. When he stands upright again, he's holding a ziplock bag. As the car backs out of the driveway, he glances across the street, notices me, and shoves the bag in his back pocket.

I turn the key.

On the porch, the man opens up the screen door and ducks inside. The woman stands up to follow him. Her legs are pale, and the backs of her knees are mottled with bruises, scabs.

I squeeze my eyes shut trying to unsee this, as though I can restore the image of my house, the yard where I learned to walk, the walls that held my whole childhood inside. But it is spoiled. Tainted. I remember finding the syringe in the woods. What has happened to this place?

 

Strickland is sitting in a booth near the back of the restaurant by the bathrooms. I sit across from him, and he nods in acknowledgment. He has a tray in front of him with a burger, french fries, a soda.

“I didn't know what you liked. If you're a vegetarian or whatever.”

I shake my head. “I'm not hungry.”

He takes a tentative drink of his soda but says nothing.

“Alfieri is back,” I say. “I saw his truck in town today, and I followed him out past the old drive-in. Somebody out there is keeping dogs. Pit bulls, I think. I don't know what this has to do with anything, but I thought you should know.”

One of his eyebrows rises, though almost imperceptibly. “Do you know the address?”

“Listen,” I say. “I know you are hoping to get something on this guy. And I hope you do. I really do. But I'm having a hard time understanding how this is helping her.”

“Who?” he says.

“The little girl,” I say in disbelief. “That child. Christ, why did I even come here?” I start to stand up.

“Wait,” he says, reaching out for my arm.

“What?” I ask. “What the fuck is this? I thought you were going to help me.”

“It's drugs,” he says.

“What?” and I think about the couple I just saw sitting on the porch of my childhood home.

“I've been tracking Alfieri. He makes a weekly run from Holyoke up here and back. Sharp and he are in cahoots, and Lisa figures in somehow too.”

“What about her barn, what I saw?”

“Dog-fighting,” he says.

“Gambling. The pit bulls you saw? The blood stains, they're not human. They're from the dogs.”

I shake my head. But the momentary relief I feel gives way to disgust. Terrific. These freaking low-life drug dealers are fighting dogs too. And all of this next to a day care center, down the road from my best friend and her daughters. But none of this has anything to do with the little girl who stumbled out of the woods and into my life a week ago. None of this will save her. None of this matters at all.

And I realize that he doesn't care about finding her. He only wants to make some big bust and save face after the disaster last week.

“You don't think she's real, do you?” I ask. “You think I'm crazy too.”

I think about Ryan, the way he looked at me, the pity in his eyes.
What happened after Guatemala?

Strickland sets down the burger, and wipes his hands on a napkin. “Miss Waters,” he starts.

I reach for my purse, and for a moment he looks scared. Like I might just pull a gun out of it and shoot him. And for the briefest moment, I have a fantasy of doing the same.

“What is this?” he says.

We both stare at the orange bunny barrette, sitting next to a limp french fry.

“It belongs to her. I found it on Sharp's property. If you don't fucking go there and find her, I will.”

T
he rain stops as I drive back to the camp, the sun emerging triumphant and hot from behind the receding clouds. When I walk into the kitchen, Effie is on the phone with Devin.

“I'm so proud of you,” she says into the phone. “This is amazing.”

A little pang, a sharp sting. I haven't told her yet about Jake. About what happened between us at that Irish bar. I haven't told her that everything has fallen apart.

“It's really happening,” she says when she hangs up. “
Gagosian
.”

“That's amazing,” I say. “Is he beside himself?”

“He can't believe it's real,” she says. “This is so, so big.”

“How is Zu-Zu doing?” I ask. And she reaches for her phone on the table. “She sent me these today.” She smiles. It's a picture of her leaping in front of Rockefeller Center. I hold the phone, peer at the screen, swipe my finger across, and look at the photos she has taken of her dorm room, of the dance studio, of her bloody toes. In the last picture, she is pressing foreheads with another girl whose hair is also tied back into a tight bun.

“She's already got a friend,” Effie says. “It doesn't look like she's very homesick.”

“I'm sure she misses you,” I say.

“Oh my God,” she says, shaking her head. “I am such an asshole. How is Shirley?”

I sigh. “They still don't know. There was a bleed in her brain, so she may have some permanent damage. They'll probably transfer her to Boston as soon as she's stable.”

“Oh honey,” she says, and reaches for my hand. Her hands are tiny, childlike in mine.

“It's okay. I think she's going to pull through. They say the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours is the most critical. Jake said he'd call tonight.”

“Why are you back here already then?” she asks.

I take a deep breath. “I'm leaving Jake.”

She squeezes my hand and I look up at her. Her sweet face that I know better than my own.

“Are you sure? It's not just . . . everything that's happened?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “It was time. It was time a long time ago.”

“I'm so sad,” she says, her voice cracking.

And this, more than anything, brings it all home. And I am angry at Jake for ruining everything. Angry at him for letting me go. For not wanting me, for not wanting
us,
as much as he wanted everything else. I have eight years of anger stored up, eight years of disappointment and frustration and regret.

Tears run hot from my eyes. Then I realize I am falling apart in Effie's kitchen. I wipe at my eyes with the back of my wrist.

“Where's Plum?” I ask, worried she's just witnessed this.

“She rode her bike over to a friend's,” she says.

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “With everything that's going on?”

Effie waves her hand in front of her face, dismissing my concerns. “She's fine. It's just up the road.”

“Are you sure?” I say.

“She's
fine,
” Effie says. “She'll be home by suppertime.”

I know I should tell her about all the new stuff that's come up, the fact that in addition to a pedophile, she has drug dealers, animal abusers, God knows who else living down the road from her. That people are dealing drugs in broad daylight in town. But I have promised to keep my mouth shut. Until the police make their move. Plum is just up the road at her friend's. She's
fine
.

“I think I need to take a nap,” I say, exhaustion overwhelming me.

“Go,” she says, and leans in to hug me. “I'm sorry about Shirley. And about Jake. Get some sleep and we'll talk about it later.”

In the guest cottage, I toss and turn. There is a small fan, which drones on and on, uselessly spinning the hot air around and around. I throw the sheets off, kick at them as if they are intentionally binding me. I slip in and out of sleep for hours before my body and mind finally relent.

I
wake up to a banging at the door. I am disoriented. Confused. At first I think I am in that hotel room. My body aches in that same desperate, impossible way. As the dream dissipates, I think I am in the guest room at Jake's parents' house. When the banging comes again, I realize I am here. Through the window, the sky has the golden cast of late afternoon: those golden hours before twilight.

“
Tess,
” Effie says. Her voice is panicked. And I think,
Oh my God. Shirley has passed away.
While I was sleeping, Jake's mother died. My heart thumps hard in my chest as I struggle to extricate myself from the twisted sheets.

I stumble out of bed. My hand, which I have slept on, is tingling, asleep, but underneath the pins and needles is the prevailing steady pain of the wound. Still confused, I look at my knuckles, expecting to see them bloodied and swollen.

I unlock the door, ready myself.

Effie's eyes are puffy, red. Her hair is disheveled; she is hugging herself.

“What's the matter?” I ask.

“It's Plum,” Effie says. “I can't find her.”

It feels like my entire body is made of pins and needles now.

“I thought she went to her friend's house,” I say.

“I called over there when she didn't come home, but they said she left over an hour ago.”

I try not to panic, to be logical.

“Did you go down to the boat access area?” I ask. As though Effie hasn't searched everywhere already, as though this wouldn't be the
first
place she looked. Effie was there the night Devin's sister, not much younger than Plum, drowned.

“She would never have gone anywhere near the water by herself,” she says, shaking her head, wringing her hands. “She knows better.”

“The tree house?” I try.

Effie shakes her head again. “She's gone,” she says.

“You need to call the police,” I say.

 

I wait at the house as Effie drives around the lake, banging on all the doors, asking if anyone has seen Plum. She's called Devin and he is driving up from New York. I couldn't listen to their conversation. It was too familiar, history repeating itself.

I pace back and forth in the kitchen. Outside the sun is still bright. It is 6:00. There are two hours of daylight left.

It's Lieutenant Andrews who pulls up this time, and my heart sinks.

He saunters out of his car, shutting the door and pushing out his chest as I rush outside to meet him.

“Well, well, if it isn't Tess Waters,” he says. “How's this for déjà vu?”

“My friend's daughter is missing,” I say, determined not to let him get to me. “She rode her bike to a friend's house and she left to come home over an hour ago. But she never came home. You need to look for her.”

“Seems to me, there's a story that goes like this,” he says, sneering. His voice is mocking, singsongy. “Something about a little boy crying wolf. You know that one, right? The boy hollers and hollers, about the big bad wolf that's come to eat the sheep, gets the whole village riled up. But there's no wolf.”

I take a deep breath, try to stay calm.

“But you forget, Lieutenant. In the story the wolf
does
come to the village. That's how the story ends,” I say, furious. “The wolf actually comes.”

“Touché,” he says. Except the way he says it rhymes with douche.

I hate him. But I need to keep calm, to play this game if I want him to help me.

“She's ten, she's has dark curly hair, green eyes. Here is her school picture.” Earlier I sat down and clipped apart the professional photos that Effie brought to me in a sheet, the images repeating again and again on the page.

He looks at the photo, and I hope that it will be enough to move him. This beautiful child enough to break through that stone wall.

“This Devin Jackson's kid?” he asks. Devin is one of only a couple black men in this town. Their kids are likely the only mixed kids.

I nod, irritated.

“He donated some of his art for the last Policeman's Ball. Not my taste, but it brought in a lot of money at the auction.”

I don't know if this means he's going to help me or not.

He crosses his arms, studying me.

“You know, if you're fucking with me, with this town, again, that's all the DA will need to proceed with the charges against you.”

I nod and nod. “I don't care about the charges. I just want to find her.”

This time, there are no helicopters, but there are dogs. By the time they arrive, it is 7:00
P.M.
Daylight still, but only an hour left.

Effie is still driving around, handing out the photos to everyone, searching the edge of the road for her bicycle. It is bright purple with streamers. It would be hard to miss. I stay at the camp in case she comes home, to keep Devin updated. He calls the landline every fifteen minutes checking in. And though I should expect him, each time the phone rings, my entire body goes limp.

I try to think about what I can do to help. But there is nothing. And then I think of Mary, the psychic. This house is full of Plum's things. Effie gave the police one of the shirts from her hamper to give the dogs her scent. Maybe if I gave her one of Plum's stuffed animals, one of her hair ribbons, she'd be able to find her.

I try to remember where I put her business card. I search my wallet, but it's not there. I check my pockets. Nothing. And then I remember tucking it into the visor of the car.

I go outside to my car. When I open the door, I am greeted by that familiar sour smell of the wine. I wonder how much longer it will linger. If it will always smell like that night.

I sit down in the passenger seat and flip the visor down. The card is there. I pluck it from the little pocket and start to get out of the car, and then I see the grocery bag sitting on the floor. When I got the call from Jake about his mom I must have forgotten it here. I reach down and pick it up, realize there are a dozen eggs inside. I reach into the bag to pull them out, figure they should go outside in the plastic bin. And I realize there's something else in there as well.

Gumdrops.

The gumdrops I bought to put in the fairy house by the swimming hole. I promised Plum that I would take her back there to leave the note for Star, to see if she'd come and taken the Reese's Cups we left. She wouldn't go swimming alone, but she might go looking for fairies.

I go to the shed where I left Effie's bike, climb on, and pedal away from the camp as fast as I can, my legs burning as I go. All around me, in the woods along the road, I hear the sounds of the dogs. The policemen tromping through the brush.

Please, please, please,
I think as I pedal up the incline.

The road is rutted from the last rain. I have to ride in the center of the road to avoid the gully-like tracks left behind. I think, ridiculously, about bowling with Jake back when we first started dating. We were drunk. I was practically seeing double, as I threw the balls down the lane, each of them winding up in the gutter. I was so wasted I walked out of the bowling alley with the rented shoes still on my feet. Didn't realize it until the next morning when I found them at the foot of Jake's bed.

Something about this memory fills me with a deep sort of shame. A familiar shame.

As my legs burn and I pedal and pedal furiously against the incline, I feel like I am in a dream where I am moving my legs as hard as I can but not making any progress. I get to the spot before the little wooden bridge, and set my bike down. I search the edge of the woods for Plum's purple bike, seeing nothing.
Please, please, please.

But her bike is not here. I feel in my pocket for the psychic's card and think I should have called her. She could be on her way here already.

I head into the woods anyway. I am not entirely sure why, but I push my way through the overgrown path. I can hear the trickling of water, the swimming hole is close. The golden light from the sinking sun gilds every leaf.

I can see the swimming hole from the overlook, and I scramble down on my butt, hollering, “Plum? Plum!”

I try to remember where I built the fairy house for her. How far away from the water it was.

“Plum!” I scream as I jump from one flat rock to the next.

And then I see.

The
I HEART NY T
-shirt. Two puffs of curly hair.

“Tessie?” Plum says, standing up. She's crying, one of the ribbons she wears in her hair come loose.

I run to her, the branches scraping my bare legs.

She falls into my arms, and I hold on to her. As though she too might just slip back into the woods if I let go.

I hold on to her shoulders and say, “Plum, your mom is so worried about you. Why didn't you come home? Where is your bike?”

“I got a flat tire,” she says. “But I was worried somebody might steal it, so I hid it in the woods by the lake.”

“Why didn't you come to the camp? I would have brought you here.”

“You promised we'd come here today, but then you left.”

My throat constricts.

“You told me she was real. But look,” she says, pointing at the fairy house. It's amazing that it survived the last rain. The two chocolates we left there earlier are still there. The fairy didn't come and take them. I didn't come and take them. If I had been here, if I had been thinking, I would have exchanged the gumdrops for the chocolate. I would have made sure she had everything she needed to hold on to this dream. I've ruined everything.

Never mind what could have happened to her out here. Never mind the wolf that lives in these woods.

“I bet she couldn't come because of the rain,” I say weakly.

She scowls.

“Fairy wings aren't strong enough to fly in the rain. Didn't you know?” I am almost pleading with her.

But it's too late.

This is
ten
: she knows there is no such thing as fairies. She knows they are not real.

 

She sits on the seat of my bike, and I pedal standing up. When we get back to the camp, the sun is dipping into the lake. No one is there. I need to call Effie, but her cell doesn't work here. Nobody's cell phone works here.

I dial Devin's number on the landline.

“I found her,” I say when he picks up. “She's okay.”

“Oh my God,” he says, and it sounds like someone has just sucked all of the breath out of him. “Where
was
she?”

“She was looking for fairies,” I say. “It's my fault.”

“No,” he says. “No. Is she okay? Can you put her on?”

“Plum,” I say. She's trying to pour herself a glass of lemonade, but the pitcher is too heavy. “Talk to your daddy, honey.”

I take the pitcher from her and hand her the phone. She takes it and walks into the other room. I pour the lemonade into the plastic tumbler, the one with the picture of Elsa from
Frozen
on it. I bring it to her in the living room, where she is talking to Devin about her turtle.

“Mommy says we're going to get a bigger terrarium for Harold. And maybe we can get another turtle? So that he can have a friend. I think he's lonely. He looks kind of lonely.”

When she hangs up, I think about putting her in the car with me and driving until I find Effie. But Effie could be anywhere.

And so instead I pick up the phone and call the police station. My heart in my throat, I tell the woman who answers that the little girl reported missing earlier this afternoon has been found. I ask if she can please radio Andrews. Let everyone know to stop searching.

Effie arrives first, followed by Andrews's cruiser.

The sun has slipped away now; it is evening. Exhausted, Plum has fallen asleep on the daybed on the porch. Effie runs past me through the camp to her, curls up next to her. I can see her body heaving, the sobs wracking her entire body.

I go outside, feeling like an interloper, and stand next to the cruiser.

“So I understand you found the little one,” he says.

I nod.

“Huh,” he grunts. “Funny, how you seemed to know right where to go.”

“She was looking for fairies,” I say as if this explains anything.

“In that story,” he says. “The one about the boy? There's a message, right? A moral?”

“It's Aesop,” I say. “Of course there's a moral.”

“What is it again?” he mocks. “Oh, yeah, nobody believes a liar . . .” He points his finger at me, tsk-tsking. “Not even when they're telling the truth.”