Proof of Life

by Sheila Lowe

  “There are plenty of ways to abuse people without hitting them,” Jessica said, having endured too many of them herself before waking up to the knowledge that her relationship with Greg was never going to improve. “Calling names, making threats. Making rules…”

  “I know that now. But I was in so deep that I couldn’t see it for what it was,” said Abby. “Now that she knew what was going on, Donna wasn’t surprised that Trey was talking crap about me to Ethan. I should have known better. I’m an attorney.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. It’s easy to get in and way harder to get out.”

  “On top of everything else, I—well, I checked Trey’s phone while he was in the shower. Maybe not my finest hour, but I’m glad I did. He was having an affair with at least one of his clients. I kept picturing him screwing around in our bed with Ethan in the next room. It tipped me right over the edge. I confronted him and said I intended to file for divorce and I was taking Ethan with me.”

  “The most dangerous time is when you’re threatening to leave,” Jessica said. She wished she knew what was happening at Ballona Wetlands marsh. And then, she didn’t. She got up and poured herself a refill of coffee.

  “No kidding. Trey got ice cold, which isn’t like him. Most of the time he would freak out. He said if I ever left him, he would find me and kill us both. I grabbed Ethan and ran into the bedroom. Trey followed us. He had a gun.” Abby started talking faster. “I never knew he owned one and he was pointing it at me. He said he would never let me leave him.”

  “Omigod, that’s horrible. What did you do?”

  “I was too scared to do anything, so I backed off. Ethan used to be the most loving child, but now—” She trailed off.

  “Oh, Abby. I’m so sorry. You’ve lived under so much stress for too long.”

  “One night I snuck into the garage and called Donna. Trey burst in. I guess he thought he was going to catch me doing something wrong. He refused to believe I was just talking to a work friend. He kept insisting that I must be having an affair.”

  “That’s like a thief accusing someone of stealing,” said Jessica. Abby’s story made her see her own life through a different lens and left her ashamed to have disregarded the warning signs for so long. Justin would be alive if she had left Greg sooner. Her culpability was a living thing that would gnaw at her soul for all the time she remained on earth.

  “…then he wouldn’t talk to me. That’s his favorite form of punishment—shutting me out for days at a time.”

  She nodded sympathetically, but Abby’s voice was stretching out like a slowed-down video, the words as meaningless as a foreign language. Jessica was back on that dark, hilly road, rain slashing against the windshield, Greg screaming at the car that overtook them. The red taillights of the semi in front of them—

  She jerked herself back. She was here to support Abby, who might well be about to face her own terrible loss. She had to pull herself together.

  “My sister and I made plans,” she said, when Abby fell silent. “We were driving to San Francisco. The plan was, we’d get to the hotel and Greg would drink himself into a stupor like he did every night. I would call my sister, who would be ready and waiting outside the hotel. That was supposed to be the start of a new life.”

  “But you had an accident—”

  “We had an accident,” Jessica echoed. The silence lengthened, each of them lost in her own misery until Jessica once again reminded herself of her duty to Abby and pulled them back.

  “How did Trey end up taking Ethan?”

  “Same as you. I was ready to take Ethan and go. Trey found out somehow. He probably hacked my emails.” Abby’s voice pitched higher as she described the bombshell of finding her son missing, her plans nipped in the bud. “Donna came home from work with me so I’d have some backup, but they were already gone. I called the police—he wouldn’t answer his phone. They said there was nothing they could do. I didn’t have a restraining order, we’re not divorced.”

  “That seems so wrong when he’d made threats against you.”

  “I was about to lose my mind, and then he texted me pictures of Ethan at Disneyland. I was relieved he was safe, of course, but I was beyond furious. I kept expecting them to come home. Like you, I planned to leave after Trey was asleep. He doesn’t drink a lot like your husband, but he sleeps like the dead.”

  “But they didn’t come back,” said Jessica.

  “I stayed up all night, waiting, but they never came home. I called the cops again. That time I told them about the gun and the threats. They treated me like I was making it up because I hadn’t told them earlier.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them?”

  Abby’s face reddened. “I guess I didn’t want to cause him trouble.”

  “He threatened your life, Abby. Didn’t you take it seriously? You know—gun?”

  “I guess some part of me still wanted to protect him. Yeah, it scared me at the time, but I didn’t believe he would go through with it. Now I hate him. I just want my baby back.”

  Yeah, I want my baby, too. I hope you don’t have to pay the same price I did.

  “Zach said they couldn’t track his phone,” Jessica said.

  “Apparently, he removed the sim card. So, the FBI got involved.”

  “And here we are.”

  The heaviness of the atmosphere in the Starkey house was like attempting to breathe at the bottom of a pool.

  A pool. A marsh…

  Zach’s ring tone interrupted. Without identifying her caller, Jessica rose from the table. If they had come upon the little boy’s body, she did not want to take the news in front of his mother.

  Excusing herself, she hurried to the den, her gut churning with anxiety, and answered the call.

  “Don’t say anything to Abby,” said Zach’s tense voice. “Just tell her we’re continuing to search.”

  “Okay. What’s up?”

  “Right down by the water’s edge, near the dinosaur, there was a Disneyland food wrapper.”

  NINETEEN

  Elaine Truman was giving Jessica that watchful look again, as if she might steal the family silver. She had showed up bearing another covered dish while Jessica was on the phone with Zach.

  “Beef stew,” she said, stowing it beside the intact tuna casserole in the refrigerator, chiding Abby for not eating. “It’s not that you couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds. But this is the wrong way to do it. You’ve got to eat, Ab. You need your strength. Ethan needs—” She faltered to a stop.

  Jessica came back to the kitchen. “Now that you’re here, Mrs. Truman, I’m gonna head home. Abby, Zach said he’ll call when he has some news.”

  “Thank you so much, Jess. It’s not your job, you didn’t have to come.” Abby came over and hugged her hard. “I feel like I’ve gained another sister. I feel horrible for what you’ve gone through, too.”

  “Just be strong. Ethan needs you to be strong.”

  Hope lit Abby’s face. “Have you felt him again? Is he—” She broke off with a gasp. Too late. Her mother’s sharp voice cut through.

  “What does that mean, Ab, ‘felt him’? How could she feel him?”

  “Nothing, Mom. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You said it. It has to mean something.” Elaine Truman’s friendly gaze hardened into suspicion. She swung on Jessica, who was getting into her jacket. “What’s she talking about, Jessica? What did you feel? What are you really doing here?”

  Jessica half-shrugged. “I have to go. Let’s talk tomorrow, Abby.”

  Doubtless alerted by their colleagues at the Ballona Wetlands, reporters were out in full force again outside the Starkey home. Their presence underscored the dire situation. Waiting for a reaction from the bereaved mother if Ethan’s body was in Ballona marsh.

  They surrounded Jessica’s car as she attempted to back out of the driveway, cameras flashing in her face through the windows. Shouting the same inane questions. “What’s new with Ethan? Have the feds found Tr
ey Starkey? How’s Abby doing?”

  Half-hoping they would not move out of the way and give her an excuse to run them down, Jessica gripped the steering wheel hard and backed up faster than she should. To her disappointment, they scattered.

  She got on the freeway, wracking her brain, looking for a way to help Ethan. Yesterday’s experience in his bedroom left her with little confidence that he was safe with his father. Why was he alone?

  Please, spirit guides, please protect Ethan. Help me find him.

  If anyone on the other side of life was listening to her plea, Jessica was not hearing an answer. But a clear picture of Sage’s face materialized in her mind.

  She could feel his disappointment at not having heard from her; his desire to see her. Was it a psychic sense or wishful thinking? A bleak wave of loneliness slammed into her.

  She missed her sister, missed her son. She missed Sage. It made no sense; they didn’t know each other that well. It was just, there was something so appealing about him. Besides the sexiness. Besides the good looks. Maybe it was infatuation. No. From the first moment they had set eyes on each other there had been a recognition, a sense of picking up where they had left off at some other time.

  A karmic relationship? If it was true that soulmates met again and again through many lifetimes, maybe she and Sage… Jessica smiled a secret smile. You really are going over the edge.

  His number was still in her phone.

  “Jessica,” was all he said, but he breathed so much into her name that it swept away the need for preliminaries or polite conversation. A flood of warmth left her body tingling from head to toe.

  “I’m on my way home from Thousand Oaks,” she said. “Can you meet me there? Or, if you’re busy—”

  “I’ll be there. Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I know you like Italian. I’ll pick up some food.”

  “I have some nice wine.”

  “I’ll help you drink it. See you soon.”

  As she ended the call, Jessica didn’t need to ask herself what she was doing. Even if this—whatever this was—lasted just one night, it was what she wanted.

  She woke in the wee hours wrapped in Sage’s arms, knowing she belonged there. For the present, nothing else mattered.

  Across the cottage, the kitchen window showed a sky the color of ink. As she lay there, content and a little spacy, the mental image of a jigsaw puzzle formed in the space above her: a black/white yin-yang symbol, male/female aspects in balance.

  At the center, one puzzle piece was missing between the two dots, overlapping the white and black edges. As Jessica watched, the missing piece appeared and dropped into the space, completing the picture.

  Yes. That’s how this feels.

  She had never believed in fate, but she had no doubt that she and Sage had been brought together by a power greater than their own. He stirred, murmured unintelligible words. Jessica ran her fingertips across his skin, felt him shiver. He reached out to her and they made love again. And later, again.

  Spooning against Sage’s long body, she let herself be engulfed by him. “I don’t want anything to spoil this moment,” she said.

  His arms tightened around her, his face buried in her hair. “Nothing could spoil this moment.”

  His words sent a ripple of fear over her. Tempting fate. She forced them into the attic part of her mind, where she stored all the bits and pieces that were too painful to examine, and slipped back into sleep.

  The evening before, she had arrived home from Abby’s to find Sage waiting with a big paper bag that held containers of mushroom ravioli, salad and garlic bread. The food had remained on the kitchenette counter top, uneaten.

  There had been no conversation. Just immediate, hungry sex and then later, more leisurely, relaxed love making, rather than simply satisfying the wild animal desires that had driven them. A little sleep, then hours of lying together, holding hands, desultory talk.

  An unspoken understanding kept the two of them rambling around the edges of Jessica’s spiritual awakening, rather than revealing their personal secrets. There would be time for that.

  Somewhere around daybreak, Sage said, “Being with you—making love with you—it’s too familiar to be coincidence. You feel it, too, don’t you? We’ve known each other before, in many lifetimes.”

  Jessica smiled, savoring the sheer joy she had felt from giving herself to him without reservation. “If someone else I’d just met said that to me I would run as fast as I could. I realize it sounds lame, but it’s like being touched by magic. So many things that have happened in this life have become irrelevant.”

  Not Justin, of course. Never Justin.

  She was going to have to tell Sage that she’d had a child and that due to her negligence, was liable for his death.

  Not yet. Too soon.

  “It’s not lame,” Sage said. “I feel the magic.”

  They rolled out of bed after nine and took turns in the shower, which was too small to accommodate them both at the same time.

  “We’ll have the pasta for lunch. It’s always better on the second day, anyway.” Jessica placed the container in the otherwise almost-bare refrigerator. “For breakfast, all I can offer you is oatmeal.”

  “Oatmeal is fine. Right now, I could eat the carton and not notice.”

  Sage came up behind her at the stove and pulled her close against him. He leaned down, his breath warm on her neck, his hands in her hair, caressing her shoulders with those long, elegant fingers, making her shiver in a way she was quite certain she had never done before.

  He turned her around and kissed her slowly, as if there was no hurry and no place in the world he would rather be. He kissed her, savoring her mouth as if her lips were fine chocolate, the only piece he would ever eat. He kissed her with childlike delight and she kissed him right back.

  Sitting across from each other at her small table, eating oatmeal, they exchanged soulful glances like teenagers discovering love for the first time.

  Once the food had been consumed and cleared away. They lay under the comforter together, arms and legs entangled.

  “I guess you wondered why you hadn’t heard from me,” said Jessica,

  “It doesn’t matter now. I’m just happy you called.”

  “Me, too. I’ve been helping to look for that boy who’s missing. Have you seen it on the news? It became all-consuming for a couple of days.” She was not about to taint the moment by letting him know she had read the newspaper article about his mother’s death. She imagined him being hurt that she had looked him up, going into a cold silence… Stop mixing him up with Greg. Sage is warm and wonderful and…

  “Just so long as it wasn’t because you were repulsed by me,” he said, joking. Then his eyes opened wide in a look of mortification. “What a shitheel I am, making jokes when—do you think they found him?”

  “Zach would have called. Anyway, if he’s in the marsh, I don’t want to know.”

  Would the little boy’s spirit come to her if he had crossed over? She didn’t know enough about how it all worked. In one of the books she had read, it stated that a loved one is always there to meet a newly crossed person, to take care of them, which was comforting. But in another it said there were lost souls, including children wandering around on their own, afraid. That had left her upset and worried for Justin, despite the evidence to the contrary.

  She told Sage about the food wrapper Zach’s ERT had come across at the marsh, and Trey Starkey’s credit card being used at Dinah’s.

  “So, they were definitely there,” he said. Today, his eyes were bluer than blue, the color of lapis lazuli. From the crook of his arm, Jessica tilted her head to look up at him. During the years of her marriage she had never felt safe the way Sage made her feel. If it were possible for them to stay just as they were and never have to think about missing children again, she would be the happiest person in the world.

  As she was thinking that, a key turned in the lock. She bo
lted up. “What the—?”

  There was no time to get to the door before Jenna swept in on a blast of cold air, Zach behind her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jessica demanded.

  Jenna stopped short, hands on her hips. “What the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Then she noticed Sage. “Oh.”

  Sage did the standard shocked double-take, staring back and forth at the twins.

  “My phone never rang,” said Jessica, glaring at her sister. She turned to Sage. “Meet my sister. She forgot how to knock, and I forgot to mention we’re twins.”

  While Sage introduced himself to the visitors, Jessica checked her phone. In all the commotion of yesterday with the marsh and Abby, then the much nicer distraction of the night, she had forgotten to put it on the charger. The battery was dead.

  “Sage,” said Jenna. Being the married mother of two little girls did not stop her from being impressed, if her frank appraisal of him was any indicator.

  Zach introduced himself and the two men shook hands, eyeing each other like rival lions over a fresh kill. Neither said ‘pleased to meet you.’

  “What are you doing here?” Jessica demanded. It made no sense for Jenna to be here with Zach. She had nothing to do with Ethan. Unless Zach had brought her to cushion the blow of bad news. Jessica started trembling. “Have you found him?”

  “No,” Zach said. “We’ve called off the search. There’s nothing at the marsh, other than what I already told you.”

  “I guess you’ve been too busy to watch the news,” Jenna cut in. “You’re trending, Jess.”

  “Trending? What are you talking about?”

  Rummaging in a purse the size of a small suitcase, Jenna pulled out her phone and tapped keys. The screen she pointed at Jessica sucked the breath out of her:

  Psychic helping FBI find Ethan.

  “How did they find out? Who would tell—oh, hell. Elaine.”