Little Girl Lost

  Ota bounces her finger over the first eye and nods to Allison before proceeding to trace it with her finger. She does the same with the second eye, only she looks to me that time. She lands a lanky little finger, the size and shape of a runt French fry over the third eye before looking past the two of us at the fluffy stuffed letters nailed to the wall that spell out Reagan.

  Allison gasps. “This is Reagan’s eye?”

  Ota gives a solemn nod, her gaze lost in my wife’s as if they have a supernatural connection. She resumes her attention to the page at hand and proceeds to color in Reagan’s eye in haste, sealing it shut forever.

  Reagan’s eye is closed. I may not need a road map to figure out what that’s supposed to mean, but I’m not sure I believe it.

  It can’t be true.

  Reagan can’t be dead.

  Reagan. Dead Reagan.

  Dear God, no.

  13

  Allison

  The sky clots up with soot as the day turns ashen, and the evergreens that line our home lean across the roof like insolent shadows bearing down their judgment over us. Fall was crushing us with those pregnant, tenebrous clouds. Every chimney in the neighborhood spewed the thick scent of charcoal, choking out the oxygen in the air. We didn’t have a need for oxygen anymore. Without Reagan, we couldn’t take our next breath.

  McCafferty let James know she’d be here in fifteen minutes as we pace the living room like skittish caged animals. She wasn’t taking no for an answer. She certainly wasn’t about to wait for morning.

  “I can’t do this,” I say it mostly to myself, rubbing down my arms, staggering from one foot to the other as if the motion alone could somehow bring me comfort. “I need to get some air.” That horrible drawing. The unholy eye with its final curtain call makes the bile stir up in the back of my throat. All signs point toward Reagan’s death. Dolla Chetney shouted it from the rooftop as if it were a winning lottery number. And when Ota showed up solo I wondered. Had they been purposefully separated? Why did they keep Reagan? Do they even realize they gave me back the wrong child? Maybe that’s what comes next. Some big press conference to let them know there’s been a mix-up. But what if it’s too late? Yes, all the signs point to something tragic. They did weeks ago, only I was too blinded by hope to see them.

  I snatch the keys off the hook and pull a trench coat out of the closet. “I’ll be back in a minute. I just need to clear my head.”

  James catches me by the waist as if we were teenagers. “But—”

  “I know. I said I’d be right back.” I give a hard glance upstairs. “Watch her.”

  In some barbaric move to preserve our trump card, James proceeded to jam the door to Reagan’s room from the outside. I’m sure she could get out if she really wanted to, but the poor thing doesn’t have the energy. She’s so listless, so dehydrated, nutrition and oxygen deprived. In the mother of all ironies, Reagan will come home, and I’ll go away for unintentional homicide.

  James tries to increase his grip on me, but I slink away and open the door enough to let in a whistling wind, Mother Nature berating us for doing to someone else’s child what someone else has done to ours.

  “Where are you going?” His eyes do their best to beg me to stay.

  “Just out.” I seal the door shut behind me, careful not to slam it and invoke the curiosity of the dwindling number of reporters getting paid to eat their Subway sandwiches and guzzle their half-gallon Cokes to the tune of their intermittent laughter. The ranks have diminished. The world is losing interest. But after McCafferty shows up, after Rich does, it will all ratchet right back up again.

  I drive past the infantry of evergreens, their judgmental boughs all pointing down at me as if to call me out on my own indiscretion. I don’t know that I would call Len an indiscretion. James and I weren’t married. But I’ve perpetuated the lie for almost seven years and going strong. A part of me thinks why back down now? And the other part of me says the fever of this nightmare won’t break until I tell James the truth. Like any good parent, I’ve devised a way for this to somehow, existentially, be all my fault. I already know that James is absorbing the blow. This is where he spent his childhood. He’s the reason we’re back here. His home turf. But casting blame his way feels a little too convenient. I like to make things difficult. That’s my specialty. I’m not letting James and his I-slept-with-a-glorified-stripper-and-now-I’ve-lost-my-family head game get to me. I get to own this one, James. You might have plunged your penis into someone else’s body for three weeks straight, but I’ve pulled the wool over your eyes for over six long years and never felt half the remorse that you did.

  Len is dead. Len was already dead before I knew I was having a baby. James and I were in love, locked and loaded and ready to roll the marital dice anyway. What reason, outside of cruel honesty, would I have to tell him the truth? James wouldn’t have cared. Or at least I’d like to think so.

  I wonder where Reagan and I would be if I had told him the truth all those years ago.

  My car makes a left and I come to. Driving with only half your mind at attention to the task will land you in exactly this type of seedy end of town, past the homeless shelter where I half-expect to see Charles on his daily do-gooder mission, past the hotel that doubles as a brothel, past the church that doles out salvation—and straight for the no-tell motel where I left Heather and her make-believe daughter. Finally, after all these years, Heather Evans and I have something in common. We both have an invisible child.

  I park and head up the back stairs as icy bites of wind chew at my flesh with their knife-sharp teeth. I’m showing up unannounced, a surprise visit that will probably make her year. No sooner do I reach the crest of the stairwell than a short stalky woman in a blue janitorial uniform jumps backward out of Heather’s room with a shriek. I watch as she swims uneasily down the hall hissing frenetically to herself, making the sign of the cross as she disappears out of sight.

  My heart jumps into my throat as I race to the room, my feet stall unnaturally on the threshold. The blackout curtains are drawn, dampening the light right out of the room, save for the flood coming through the door. My eyes dart directly to the desk, directly to a very slumped over Heather Evans.

  “Heather?” I start in slow, her motionless body lies limp. “It’s me, Allison. Your very best friend.” I try to evoke a chipper tone as I come up behind her, but my voice shakes beyond recognition. And then I see it. A scream gets locked in my throat.

  The head of a hatchet lies firmly embedded in her forehead as a pool of crimson waterfalls over the side of the desk. Her hair is matted in clots, but her eyes, they’re looking right at me, lifeless, and yet so very aware of my presence.

  A choking sound comes from my throat as I clap my hand over my mouth. A rumple of voices emit from downstairs, but my feet remain frozen, my joints locked and unwilling to move.

  Her hand lies over her cell phone. Clean hand, no blood.

  God—no, no, no, don’t do it.

  I reach down and swipe it up, bolt out the door and down the stairs before the small crowd amassed around the screaming woman ever maneuvers in Heather’s direction.

  “Dear God,” I hiss as I carefully back the car out. No sudden moves. I roll past the curb and stop abruptly as a tiny bobbing head steps in front of the car. A little girl, a little older than Reagan strides by, ponytail, big dark eyes—yellow pinafore. Her head turns abruptly and she shoots a quiet look my way.

  “Ota.” Her name burps out in the expanse of the car and I sound like a donkey braying. She walks on by adjusting a shiny pink backpack over her shoulders and my body turns into one raging pulse.

  I give a quick glance in the rearview mirror as the crowd behind me swells—as shouting stems from the bloody scene.

  “Ota.” I roll down my window and lean over, but she’s gone, vanished into thin air just like Reagan.

  My foot hits the pedal and I make it home by sheer muscle memory. The sight of a bludgeoned Heather Evans has my bo
dy and mind wound tight, fragile as glass and ready to snap at my next breath.

  I park crooked in the driveway and bolt to the door, out of breath and lightheaded, my body clammy, my vision blurred.

  “Is she still here?” I shout as I let myself in, my feet skidding out from beneath me in the foyer. “Is she here?” I run screaming into James who materializes from nowhere. “I thought I saw her. Out there. God, is she here?”

  “Yes.” James pulls me in, smothering my face in his chest, his heart slamming over my cheek like a punishment. “She’s in the dining room. We waited for you.” He gives my shoulders a hard pinch as if to say snap out of it and I come to long enough to see McCafferty glowering my way from over her glasses.

  “Good.” I give Heather’s phone a strangulating squeeze before rushing to the kitchen and shoving it deep into the junk drawer along with the keys. “I’m here.” I take a seat opposite James. “I was afraid I would miss this.” I swallow down the tension and taste blood in the back of my throat. It makes me want to vomit, but I swallow the first bitter spring of that down, too. “I’m sorry. I just stepped out for some air.”

  “So James tells me.” Her lips twist, annoyed. “It’s nice to have you with us.” There’s a slight drawl in her voice I don’t remember hearing before. I’m so exhausted that any moment now I expect her to sprout another head and I’d be fine with it so long as one of them offered up some good news.

  “Is there something new?” I claw at the table, desperate for a morsel. The truth. A lie. It makes no difference. I’ll take it any way she wants to give it to me so long as it gives me hope. Hope is a dangerous word when your world collapses on itself. A four-letter word—I glance to James—just like love.

  “Something new to me.” She folds her hands over the table. “You can imagine the hundreds of tips my team has had to navigate these past few weeks.” Her eyes drag from mine to his. “Remember that little pact we made in the beginning? No secrets between us? Every little detail could help bring home your daughter. Now—which one of you would like to go first?”

  James and I appraise one another, each of us trying mightily to disguise the worried look we long to don like a mask. Secrets. James and I seem to be rife with them these days.

  McCafferty draws in a long slow breath. “I see where this is headed. How about I say a name and one of you tells me what they know?” Her bird-like features harden as she looks to me. “Monica Percale.”

  “That would be his ex.” I point a mock gun at James.

  “I know that,” she sears. “But, tell me, James. What else should I know?”

  He looks to me a moment as if asking permission. “I paid her a visit the other night. I practically ransacked the house looking for Reagan.” He bows his head in his hands before coming up for air. “She wasn’t there, of course.”

  “What made you think she was there?” McCafferty bleeds her wicked smile as if laying the groundwork for a bear trap.

  “Something my father said,” he mumbles the sentence into one long word. Charles. Charles who has been MIA for the last week and a half. Charles, who much like my mother, is out there shaking up the town. I think the two of us could learn a lesson from them. Stop sitting on our sorry asses and get up and do something. Accuse someone of something for God’s sake.

  Heather’s head with its freshly embedded hatchet bounces through my mind and a shiver runs through me. That was the end—her abrupt ending. How terrible. No matter what, she didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves any of this. If it weren’t for Reagan missing, she wouldn’t have been here. If it weren’t for James…

  “Your father implicated her”—McCafferty doesn’t look amused—“and you thought enough of it to pursue it.”

  “My daughter is missing. If he implied that you had taken her, I would be turning over tables at your home, too.” He gruffs it out a little too hostile. The lack of sleep is brutal. We’ve both morphed into monsters right before our own eyes. “Anyway, I didn’t turn over any tables. I didn’t see anything until I hit the attic. I found some things my father was getting rid of—personal things. She claims to have found them by the side of the road, the curb in front of his house, and was keeping them for me. It was odd. It’s as if she’s been obsessed with me, only I didn’t realize it.”

  I offer a peaceable smile and take up his hand in a show of support. It seems James has another hobby, turning women into obsessive lunatics. Although, Hailey seems to have a rather valid reason for tracking him down.

  “She contacted me yesterday.” McCafferty purses her lips and the hard lines around her mouth look as if someone carved them deep with a razor. “She said she was being stalked. Imagine that.” She slaps her hand over the table, barks out a short-lived laugh and it startles me. “On top of everything else, she claims someone in this town has been lurking in her bushes.”

  “That’s shocking.” I swallow the Heather Evans’ sized lump down my throat—that hatchet makes for a painful ride.

  She scoffs at the idea. “What’s shocking is that she caught the girl.”

  “Who was it?” James barks. He wants blood. He wants to strangle whoever it is that was snapping those photos of him and sending them to me in an effort to make us both suffer. As sorry as James may be for his wayward ways, he’s equally sorry he got caught.

  A vision of Monica driving that hatchet into Heather’s skull makes me unsettled. She’s too self-centered, probably too afraid of icky blood, wouldn’t want to soil her shoes. It was too violent for a woman to have pulled off, wasn’t it?

  McCafferty takes a moment to glare at me. “A woman by the name of Denise Riley.”

  “Who?” Both James and I chant in unison. A part of me was hoping it was Heather, so that when they seek out her murderer—all roads would point to that high-pitched, real live bouncing Betty Boop doll, Monica. I’m so sick of my husband’s girlfriends mucking up the water in my life. For once I’d like to see one sent to visit my sister permanently.

  “Denise Riley is a parolee from Saginaw County. It turns out she’s been summoned to Concordia for work.”

  My mind stagnates on the word parolee. Dear God, Janey has finally come through.

  “What kind of work you ask?” McCafferty initiates all the sarcasm she can muster. Not her strongest suit. “She belongs to an internet of women who run something akin to a gang network that spans in and out of prison. The ones that get out vow to take care of the needs of their new prison family, and very often they do.” Her lids lower a notch. Originally this would strike me as sexual, but in McCafferty’s case it’s clear she’s letting us know she has the upper hand. “Do you know anyone on the inside who might need a few things done for you?”

  “Oh my shit,” I say it out loud, so stunned I can hardly breathe. “Jane would never do that.” It’s a lie, but one I’d best perpetuate. My God. Heather. Jane has some madwoman running around town with an ax to the grind—literally.

  “It’s okay.” James brings my hand to his lips for a kiss like a good husband as a wave of nausea takes over.

  This can’t be happening. Jane said Heather, Monica and Hailey needed to go. And James—she wanted to save him for herself. But knowing my sister, she would be willing to settle for a close knife-wielding second.

  My eyes widen as I look at my husband’s gorgeous face. Those high-cut cheekbones, that straight beautiful nose, they could so easily be rearranged by a hatchet. Dear God, whatever happened to simply telling someone off? Did she need to bury an oversized razor into the poor woman’s skull?

  James leans in, brows hovering over his eyes as if each were its own storm. “How did you figure it out? Did she confess?”

  “Partially.” She eyes me with her disdain. “She doesn’t want to go back to prison. She’s ready to wheel and deal. She said she never intended on hurting anybody.”

  McCafferty’s phone gives off a shrill cry and she answers it abruptly. “What’s this?” She rises and takes a few steps away, holding down her other e
ar as if to avert the noise. “I’ll be right down.” She dumps her phone into her purse. “That was quick.” She looks to me accusingly. “Heather Evans is dead.”

  My mouth opens, and as much as I want to shriek or gasp in horror, all I can do is stare past McCafferty through the wall and into this mad world that we’ve all fallen into.

  “I’ve got her.” James wraps an arm around me. “Go ahead and do what you need to do. We’ll be here. We’ll continue this another time.”

  “I’ll see you both in the morning.” She takes off, slamming the door behind her. No sooner does James pull me in to comfort me than a miniature face appears just feet away.

  “Is the mean woman gone?”

  A breath gets locked in my throat as I look at the fragile girl with her wide eyes, her hair miraculously combed neatly into a thick glossy ponytail once again.

  She speaks.

  Now we’re getting someplace.

  * * *

  It turns out Ota found a bag of pistachios I keep near my bed and shelled them to her heart’s content. She drank water straight from the bathroom sink and assured us she feels much better now. So much for starving the truth from her.

  “Shall we sit in the living room?” Her light voice ices the room with its sugary tone.

  Shall we? James and I share a brief glance, equally uncertain what to do with this strange child.

  “Anywhere you like.” No sooner do the words bleed from my throat than I regret them.

  “No.” James winces out the window. Of course, we can’t sit in the living room. Not with the megawatt floodlight they have set on us like a spotlight, not with the million-dollar camera equipment ready and willing to record our every move. “How about the kitchen? We can sit at the island like a real family.” He gives her a quick pat to the head and breaks out that killer smile that’s able to slay women of every shape and size, and apparently age.