I wish Calli were here. She’d help me find the way, or at least we could be lost together.
I’m so thirsty.
DEPUTY SHERIFF LOUIS
Ben comes slowly down the steps. I’m struck at how much he looks like his father, and I am jealous. My boy, Tanner, looks just like his mother’s side of the family, dark and small with gray-blue eyes. Ben looks nervous, but then he always seems jittery to me, quick to startle, but nice, polite.
“Ben,” I say, “this is Agent Fitzgerald. He’s here to help find Calli and Petra.” Fitzgerald holds out his hand for Ben to shake. We all settle at the kitchen table, Toni right next to Ben. Fitzgerald and I sit across from them. Fitzgerald looks to Toni.
“Mrs. Clark, we like to interview family members separately. It sometimes allows them to speak more freely.”
“Oh, well, I think I’d rather stay here with Ben,” Toni says firmly.
“Toni, I’ll be right here. Don’t worry,” I reassure her and she reluctantly rises from her chair and leaves the room.
“Ben,” begins Fitzgerald, “how old are you?”
“Twelve,” he answers softly. Fitzgerald continues to ask Ben easy questions, keeping everything light, I know, to make Ben feel more at ease.
“Tell me about your sister, Ben,” Fitzgerald instructs.
“She’s good,” Ben says. “She never gets into my stuff, she does what I tell her to—”
“What do you tell her to do?” Fitzgerald interrupts.
“Things. Help take out the garbage, help put away the dishes, stuff like that,” Ben answers, shrugging his shoulders.
“Did you two ever argue?”
“No, it’s hard to argue with someone who doesn’t talk back.”
Fitzgerald chuckles at this. “She ever say no to you, Ben?”
“Not really. She likes to help out.”
“You two pretty close?”
“I guess. We hang out a lot together.”
“You’re what, twelve? Isn’t it unusual for boys your age to hang out with their seven-year-old little sisters?”
Ben lifts his shoulders and then drops them. “Calli doesn’t have a lot of friends so I play with her.”
“What about Petra Martin? She’s Calli’s friend, right?”
“Yeah, but she isn’t around all the time,” Ben explains.
Fitzgerald seems satisfied with his answers.
Quickly though, Fitzgerald changes his approach with Ben.
“Ben, I’ve heard some very nice things about you,” Fitzgerald says smoothly. “Your teachers, neighbors all think you are a nice boy.”
I think I know where this is going. Fitzgerald had asked me about it earlier, when looking through files. I told him it had nothing to do with this and to leave it alone.
“But,” Fitzgerald continues, “the parents of Jason Meechum have had some concerns about you, Ben, and their son. Can you tell me about that?”
“Jason Meechum is a jerk. And a liar,” Ben says stiffly.
“Tell me about it, Ben?”
“I don’t hafta tell you anything,” Ben says petulantly.
“No, you don’t,” Fitzgerald says mildly, “but you should. You want to help Calli, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but sitting around here answering these stupid questions isn’t gonna help her.” Ben is standing now, shouting. “The only way we’re going to find her is if we go looking for her. She’s somewhere in the woods!”
“How do you know that, Ben?” Fitzgerald questions softly.
“Because, that’s where she goes. When she wants to get away or be alone, that’s where she chooses to go!” Ben shouts.
Fitzgerald says, his voice just a low whisper, “What if she didn’t have a choice?”
And Ben runs.
ANTONIA
I hear the loud voices in the kitchen and hear the name Jason Meechum spoken. “What in God’s name was that all about?” I ask angrily as I come into the room. “What did you say to him? Do you actually believe that Ben has something to do with any of this? He’s trying to help, for God’s sake!”
I am furious. This stranger ran my son out of his own home and Louis just sat by and watched. He is looking down at his fingers now, something he has done since he was seven and knew he was in trouble. Agent Fitzgerald doesn’t look upset in the least. But of course, he wouldn’t. He just swoops into a place, creates havoc, and then picks up and leaves. I tell him so.
“I’ll go after him,” Louis offers, but I shake my head.
“He’ll be fine. I know exactly where he is going. I’ll go after him, and I’ll go look for Calli while I’m at it. Nobody else appears to be doing anything but insulting the family who is missing somebody,” I mutter.
“That’s not a good idea, Mrs. Clark,” Agent Fitzgerald informs me. “It’s not in the best interest of the investigation.”
“What about Ben?” I ask. “Who is serving his best interest? What’s all this nonsense about Jason Meechum? This has nothing to do with Calli, and I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up.” My voice is shrill and I hate the fact that I was losing control of it.
More softly, I continue. “Deputy Sheriff, I am surprised that you found it necessary to share that information with Agent Fitzgerald.” To Fitzgerald I say curtly, folding my arms in front of me, “Tell me now what it is that you think I should be doing. Then you tell me what it is you are going to do in order to find my daughter.”
Agent Fitzgerald stands and mirrors my own stance. I wonder if that was something that they taught him in agent school to put me more at ease.
“I’m sorry about upsetting your son. However, as I have said many times, we must look at all angles. Have you considered that someone may be upset with someone in your family and be taking it out on Calli? I’m not saying this is so, but we must look at all possibilities. As for Deputy Sheriff Louis, he had no idea I was going to broach the subject of Ben and Jason. Please don’t blame him.” Fitzgerald looks properly chagrined.
I shake my head in disgust. “What is this? Good cop, bad cop? I’ll stay here. You go do what you have to do to find Calli, but if you do not find her by six o’clock this evening, I’m calling everyone I know, forming my own search party and going into those woods. I know she’s in there, and I am going in after her.”
“I will not support a search after dark,” he replies. “But I understand your need to participate in searching for her. We are, at this moment, organizing a search. The key word is organizing. We don’t just want anybody out there stomping through the woods looking for the girls. We may bring in dogs to aid in the search and do not want the area to be compromised more than is needed. We have officers out looking now. If we need more, we will get the manpower. Everyone is doing all that they possibly can to find your daughter, Mrs. Clark.
“I will also need to speak with your son again. Getting upset and running away will not help Calli.”
“Ben would do anything for Calli,” I say through clenched teeth.
“I believe that is true, Mrs. Clark. We’ll speak soon.” Fitzgerald turns to leave.
“Wait,” I call after him. “What are you going to do now?”
“We are going to follow up some leads, interview neighbors and other individuals and we are going to search for Calli and Petra.”
“What leads? What individuals? Do you know something?” I ask desperately.
“Nothing concrete that I can share with you at this time, Mrs. Clark. Oh, and please be aware that the media will most likely be contacting you shortly. This can be a very good thing. I suggest that you say no more than that your daughter is missing. Get the girls’ pictures out there. The more people who see their faces, the more likely that they will be spotted. A crime lab team will also be here shortly to gather evidence from the home. Please stay out of Calli’s bedroom. We want to have as much evidence intact as possible. I suggest that you stay at a family or friend’s home for the duration of this. Please let the officer know where you will
be staying. We’ll talk soon, Mrs. Clark. Goodbye.”
They are gone before I can argue about not wanting to leave my house. Ben’s gone, Calli’s gone, and I am in my home all alone, except for the police officer, and I hate that feeling. I walk outside, trying to decide on whom I can impose by showing up on their doorstep. Who wants to be dragged into the middle of this mess? Maybe Mrs. Norland, our elderly neighbor. She is as close to a friend that I have anymore, even though most of our interactions are simple waves from across our yards. My eyes take in my garden, which needs weeding, and I decide to wait a bit for any news before calling Mrs. Norland. I’m not going to let a stranger run me out of my own home. I go to the shed to gather up my gardening gloves, trowel and bucket. I haven’t watered in days, but know not to do so now. The blazing sun would evaporate the droplets immediately and the plants would not be able to drink.
In the darkened shed, a knotty, peeling structure that is beginning to lean, I grab my gardening tools and notice among the cobwebs four old gallons of paint, a soft, creamy yellow. Years ago, my brothers had moved away and my father joined them soon after. The house was too lonely, he said, without my mother. After Griff and I were married, he handed me the keys to the white, peeling two-story, and wished us much happiness there. I was eighteen.
I still had wanted to live in a yellow house. I had spent hours in the hardware store, staring at paint chips, trying to decide on the perfect shade for our home. I lugged the gallons of paint home the week after the wedding; Griff smiled and said he would get right on it. He never did. I was eighteen then. Now I’m thirty-one and still no yellow house.
I step back out into the blinding sun and scrutinize my flower beds. Where to start? They are all neglected; it has been too hot to venture out into the heat these past weeks. My vegetable garden is brimming over with overripe tomatoes and zucchini. My flower beds are filled with creeping charlie, deer-bitten blossoms and wilted stems. My eye settles on a patch of dirt just beyond my vegetable garden. I had sowed it with grass seed earlier in the summer, but it didn’t take. Instead, it appears that the plot has expanded to a stretch of soil about five feet long and three feet wide. I step over an overgrown stalk of rhubarb and examine the patch. Two perfectly shaped child’s footprints are imprinted in the dust. The toes are entirely defined. Larger prints of a man’s boots are facing the smaller marks, almost toe to toe. Then a few steps farther just the boot prints, somewhat swept over by drag marks. My stomach fills with dread. The footprints could be old, I reason, but I know better. I bend down, lightly touch the dust and rub it between my fingers. I stand quickly and run back to the house to tell an officer and to call Louis.
MARTIN
Before Fitzgerald and Louis leave they encourage us to go over to a relative’s or a friend’s house for the remainder of the investigation. They say it will be comforting to have family and friends nearby and that we shouldn’t compromise any evidence in the house by having people coming in and out.
“What if Petra comes home?” Fielda argues. “I need to be here for her!” They assure her that someone will be at the house at all times and someone will contact her with all updates.
I drive Fielda and myself over to Fielda’s mother’s home. Mrs. Mourning greets us tearfully and flutters nervously about Fielda. Fielda looks ill and we both persuade her to go lie down.
Her head is aching and I search through the bathroom medicine cabinet for some Tylenol PM’s to help her rest. I suspect she needs something more, but I would never give her something stronger. I bring the tablets and a glass of ice water to the bedroom where Fielda is curled up under the quilt her grandmother had made. She looks so frail there, and old. This surprises me. Fielda, when in motion, is solid and vibrant, a force of nature, young. I am not used to this, taking care of her; she always has looked after me. Odd, I know, because being a bachelor until I was forty-two ensured that I took care of myself quite efficiently until I met Fielda.
I enter the bedroom and close the door behind me. The room is hushed and cool. Fielda obediently lays the pills on her tongue and sips the water that I offer her. I pull the sheet up around the curve of her shoulders as she settles her head on the pillow. “Just for a minute,” she says about resting. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t know how she possibly could rest with our daughter out there somewhere, but I murmur softly into her ear to just close her eyes for a moment. Her curly hair fans out, dark on the crispness of the pillowcase. I long to crawl in next to her, to swallow a handful of pills and let sleep pour over me. I cannot, though; I need to be alert, prepared to aid in the search for Petra. Louis and Fitzgerald assured me that they would contact me when their interviews with Antonia and her son were complete.
When Fitzgerald and Louis had finished questioning Fielda and me, shaken my hand and climbed into the car, a feeling of dirtiness edging toward perverseness crept next to me. Agent Fitzgerald did not accuse me of anything, certainly. However, he did request that Fielda and I stop in at the police station and have our fingerprints taken. Exclusionary purposes, Fitzgerald reassured us. I am not an uninformed man—oblivious at times, I admit, to the world around me—but not unaware that family members are the initial suspects in any missing child situation, and that more often than not, they are the guilty ones. The verity that the police, my community, my colleagues would entertain the notion that I could harm two young children, my daughter, makes me angry. I know that Fielda and I had no part in this and the fact that crucial minutes are being squandered in that consideration makes me ill.
I recall feeling the same when Fielda left me, the second of two instances when we have been apart, a panicked, out-of-control sensation that started in my extremities and coursed through my veins toward my center, tossing me off balance. Since the day Fielda and I were married, Fielda spoke of children, a home full of curly-haired, dark-eyed babies who loved books as I did and who loved food as Fielda did. To be honest, I was so astonished to have this wondrous, beautiful woman next to me, the whole of being married seemed unreal to me, magical. I viewed children in the same manner. I could not imagine being a father.
Fielda would spend hours looking through parent magazines and children’s clothing catalogs, perusing and planning. I always nodded and made a noncommittal noise when she showed me a particular article about prenatal health care or organic baby food. Months passed, then a year, and no baby. Looking back, I should have seen the change in Fielda—the gradual slump of her shoulders, the slight pull of the corners of her mouth downward, the way she would stare at new mothers in grocery stores and at church—but I did not notice.
For two years, three, then four, Fielda continued to pore over parenting books. All she could talk about was babies. How to become pregnant with one, having one, raising one. I’m ashamed to say that I lost patience with her. I’m not a handy individual, but once in a while I’ve been known to try and tighten a pipe or replace a fuse. I went down to our basement where I keep my toolbox, nearly pristine from lack of use. I was going to attempt to change the showerhead in our bathroom. I don’t know why the box caught my eye, but it did. It was a large, plain, clear plastic container with a blue lid and it appeared to be filled with clothing. Maybe it was the bright pink fabrics that were such a contrast to the gray dark basement that made me take notice. I don’t know. But I pulled the box down from the shelf and opened it, almost fearfully, as if I was doing something wrong. Inside were dozens of tiny baby outfits in pinks and blues and yellows with the price tags still hanging from them. There were dresses for a girl and overalls for a boy, there were socks that would barely cover my thumb. There were bibs in bright colors that said Daddy’s Little Girl or Got Milk? It wasn’t the money, though the amount of clothing in that box must have cost a small fortune, that bothered me. It seemed to me so sad in some way. Pathetic, really. Looking back, I can see that it was simply hope. That for Fielda, purchasing the clothing meant that she was going to conceive and have a child. She had to, she already had the outfits. I didn’t look a
t it that way, though. I grabbed a fistful of the clothing, dropping impossibly small T-shirts and booties behind me as I stomped up the steps.
“Fielda!” I bellowed, startling her so that she dropped the pot of spaghetti she was carrying to the sink to drain. She hopped back to avoid the scalding water, and limp strings of pasta slid across the floor.
“Martin!” she snapped back impatiently. “What’s the matter?”
“This is the matter!” I said, holding out the baby clothing. “Are you crazy?” I asked. Words I immediately regretted because, by the look on her face, I think she may have wondered the exact same thing of herself. Still I ranted on. “Fielda, there is no baby. There may never be a baby. Maybe it’s time you faced it.”
“I’m going to have a baby, Martin,” she told me, her voice low and dangerous. “I can’t not have a baby. I’ve got to have a baby,” she went on, and I saw a light go from her eyes. A sense of dread wheedled through me but I pushed it away.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I said cruelly. “I’m not going to sit by and watch you waste money on a baby that doesn’t exist.” I might as well have slapped her. The hurt on her face still takes my breath away and the fact that I caused it to be there still makes my face burn with shame.
She stalked out of the room, nearly slipping on the spaghetti as she left. She didn’t talk to me for nearly a week. And even after she did begin to talk to me, she didn’t allow me to touch her. She spent endless minutes in the bathroom and she would emerge with red, swollen eyes, but she never cried in front of me. One day I found the sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet. Good, I told myself. Maybe she would begin to sleep through the night again instead of the endless pacing, pacing. If I had thought about it, I would have known. I should have known. I should have thrown that bottle away the minute I saw it.
Then one day it was as if nothing had ever happened and she appeared to be the same old Fielda. I thought she had come to her senses, decided to let nature take its course. But I was wrong. Her mission to become a mother was as strong as ever, and I found out about the doctor’s appointment when the receptionist from the office called to confirm the appointment. “We have the test results in,” the receptionist explained. “He’d like for Fielda to come in to discuss them.”