by Mary Kubica
I watch out the bedroom window with its upward slanting blinds as Jennifer appears, turning circles on the street below as if utterly confused. She peers up, at the bay window in our living room and stares, and it’s only as she departs down the street, tossing one of the Starbucks cups in a nearby garbage bin, that I emerge from the bedroom and seek out my phone, the one which, from the hallway, Jennifer most certainly heard ring. Three times, or so the phone tells me, three missed calls, an awaiting voice mail. A text message.
Where r u?
WILLOW
Louise Flores beckons me again. A guard arrives at the cell I share with Diva, demanding I put my hands through the portal so she can cuff them before she opens the door. I climb down from the top tier of the bunk bed and place my hands behind my back.
We walk through the prison together.
Today Ms. Flores wants to talk about the baby, Calla. I sit down across from her, on a spent seat with its inflexible back. “Why did you take the baby?” she asks, and I picture that night, standing in the darkened woods, staring through the treasure-trove of windows of the A-frame home.
After visiting the old prefab home in Ogallala, I found my way back to the Conoco where I begged and pleaded with the ticket lady to trade my obsolete ticket in for a new one. I’d missed the bus to Fort Collins, of course. For twenty bucks she said she would. Grudgingly. It was dark by then. The next bus wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the night: 3:05 a.m.
But I hadn’t gone to the Conoco right away. After I’d stopped sniveling in that stranger’s yard, I made my way over to the cemetery off Fifth Street and laid down on the lawn, right between Momma and Daddy.
And then I got myself together and did what needed to be done.
Every single light in the A-frame must’ve been turned on. I saw everything as if I was in that house with them all, a fly on the wall. I saw Paul Zeeger in an upstairs room, slipping off a tie. Big Lily, cradling that gosh darn baby in her arms, rocking her back and forth in a subliminal sway, her hand sweeping across the baby’s stupid head. The dog, at her feet, began a happy dance, and when Big Lily meandered to the back door to let it outside, I hid behind an enormous tree. “Go, Tyson,” she said with a slight kick to his behind, “Hurry up,” and then she closed the door, and that dog, with its amazing snout, sought me out in the trees and licked me. I pushed it away, whispered Go! in whatever firm voice I could muster, letting my eyes run their course through the home. The fireplace was on, a TV in the Zeeger bedroom (where Paul now lay, spread out across the bed) tuned in to the news.
And then there was Lily, Little Lily, my Lily, in a bedroom, all alone, braiding the hair of a baby doll. She sat on the edge of a purple bed with that doll pressed between her legs, winding the strands around her fingers. My Lily wasn’t a baby anymore. In fact, she was older than I’d been when Momma and Daddy died.
And she was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Just like Momma had been.
“Why didn’t you just take Rose?” Ms. Flores asks as she breaks off a bite of muffin and sets it in her mouth, letting it slowly dissolve. “Rose was your sister after all.”
“Lily,” I snap. “Her name is Lily,” I say, imagining the way she tired of braiding the doll’s hair—maybe she didn’t know how to do it, or maybe she was just tired of playing with the doll, I don’t know—but I saw the way she spun that doll around and stared into her acrylic eyes for a split second before she flung it across the room. The doll’s head smashed into the purple wall and fell like a brick from the sky. At the same time, Paul and Big Lily jumped, but it was Big Lily—beckoned by the sound of my Lily’s cry—who placed the baby in a cradle and climbed the steps to my Lily’s room.
Lily hated Baby Calla. That’s what I told myself. And she was taking it out on that doll. I watched as she rose from the bed in a horse-print nightgown and plaid slippers and walked to where that toy lay facedown on the ground and kicked it with a vengeance.
Ms. Flores stares at me and then gives in. Sort of. “Fine,” she says. “Lily. Rose. Whatever. Answer the question, Claire. Why didn’t you take your sister instead of the baby?”
The truth was that my Lily had a grand life. Before. Before Paul and Big Lily decided to replace her with the baby they always dreamed of. There wasn’t a thing I could give my Lily. My only possessions in the entire world were stuffed inside a suitcase Matthew had given me: dollar bills that were quickly dwindling away, a couple of books, the photograph of Momma.
“I couldn’t take care of Lily,” I tell Ms. Flores, “if I took her from that home.”
“But you could take care of the baby? You could take care of Calla?”
I shrug and say weakly, “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean, Claire?” she condemns, her lips thin, her eyebrows puckered. She removes her glasses and sets them on the table. My Lily could have that life again. The one with beach vacations and pink–and–mint-green bikes and Montessori schools. I just needed to fix things. And so, when Big Lily climbed up those steps and Paul rolled over onto his side and pretended he couldn’t hear the outburst my Lily was having, I let myself into the A-frame home, through a back door that had been left unlocked when the cocker spaniel was let outside to pee. I slipped my hands under that sleeping baby’s pink blanket and lifted her from the cradle, careful of her head like Momma always told me when Lily was a baby, and with that baby in tow, I walked out the wooden patio door and into the starless March night.
CHRIS
I oversleep.
When I finally do wake up, the hangover is immense: a splitting headache, the despotic sunlight blinding my eyes. I wake up to the impatient sound of my cell phone ringing, the tone, in my alcohol-induced state, out of place, jarring. Henry. His voice on the other end of the line, like a drill sergeant’s, calling out orders. “Where the hell are you?” he asks. It’s after nine.
I don’t have time to shower. I reek of tequila as I wait for the elevator at the end of the hall, my hair still smelling of rancid cigarette smoke from some bar I wandered to last night. My eyes are bloodshot, my hands still clammy. I forget my notes, the ones that tell me what I’m supposed to say to the group of potential investors awaiting me in the eighth-floor conference room, the ones we’re hoping to impress. As I slink into the conference room, all eyes are on me. I taste alcohol on my breath, stomach-churning in the morning light. Gastric acid propels upward and into my mouth before I choke on it, forcing it back down.
“Better late than never,” Henry slurs beneath his breath as I wipe my mouth on the back of a sleeve. I catch sight of Cassidy, leaned in close to some venture capitalist named Ted. She’s got her lips pressed so close to his ear, I imagine the way he feels her breath, the tingle of it on his skin. He turns to look at her all at once, and together they laugh in unison, laughter that I’m sure is at my expense.
I run my fingers through my hair.
At some point, Tom pulls me aside, tells me to get it together. He hands me a mug of coffee, as if the caffeine might change things, make my speech less slurred, my thoughts crystal clear. I dig into the depths of my briefcase for financial documents which are nowhere. I yank crumbled notes, memos out instead, the purple sticky note with the sole word: Yes.
The coffee settles me some. We take a midmorning break, and I return to my room to change my clothes, comb my hair. I find the missing financial documents strewn upon a table and place them in my briefcase. I brush my teeth; between the caffeine and the toothpaste, the taste of alcohol begins to slowly ebb away. I all but overdose on pain medication for the splitting headache.
When I return, Cassidy and Ted are sharing a bagel with cream cheese from a single plate. They’re leaned in close together. She licks her fingers with an overzealous tongue and leans in close to whisper something to him. Their eyes turn to mine and again they laugh. I imagine Cassidy, in my hotel room, unbuttoning the buttons of a starch-white tunic so that I will stay. And I imagine me, forcing on a pair of loafers and running t
hrough the door. I imagine that she left that hotel room and sought out Ted. Ted, a fortysomething venture capitalist with a tungsten wedding band on his left hand. Based on the looks of things, he, unlike me, didn’t turn her away. He let her unbutton that blouse, let her reveal what was hidden beneath.
I hear Heidi in my head, hear her chant femme fatale over and over again in my head: a rallying cry. Women unite! I wonder about Ted’s wife. I wonder if she’s pretty. I wonder if they have kids.
I’m not in the least bit let down. More than anything, I’m relieved, seeing now that Cassidy would’ve chosen any member of the male species to keep her company for the night. I’m grateful it wasn’t me.
Because then I’d be the one sitting like an ass at the conference table, drooling all over a bagel with cream cheese, watching the way her tongue wraps its way around a finger as she licks it clean.
When my phone rings, I find it in my pocket and see on the display screen: Martin Miller, the PI I hired to track our Willow down. I hurry, quickly, from the conference room and into the hallway, an eighth-floor balcony that looks down into the hotel’s atrium below, filled with banquet tables and plush sofas, tropical flowers and fish, dozens of big, fat koi that swim in ponds throughout the atrium.
Martin’s voice is reticent. He’s found something. I lay my hand on the balcony rail to steady myself, staring down on eight floors of nothingness that, when combined with the aftereffects of too much alcohol, make me woozy.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice discomposed. The koi, eight floors below, are little more than white-and-orange smudges in the water.
Martin says that he’s emailing me a newspaper article he found, dated the middle of March. There’s no mention of a Willow. Or a Ruby. But he says it might just be our girl.
I wait for the email to come through on my phone, my limbs numb by the time my phone vibrates the email’s arrival.
I open the article and there, staring me in the eye, is Willow Greer. Except that she’s not Willow Greer. The caption reads, Claire Dalloway, wanted for questioning in the death of an Omaha man and his wife, and for the kidnapping of an infant girl abducted March 16 from her home in Fort Collins, Colorado.
I skim the article and see that this Claire Dalloway may be armed, dangerous, that this man and his wife, Joseph and Miriam Abrahanson, were stabbed to death in their Omaha home while they slept. I read about the baby, Calla Zeeger, born to a lady named Lily and a man named Paul. In Fort Collins. Colorado. There are identifying features: the color of her eyes, the shade of her sparse hair, a close-up of a birthmark on the back of a leg. A port-wine stain, the article states, shaped like the state of Alaska.
There is a reward. For her return.
I read about Joseph and Miriam Abrahamson, Ms. Dalloway’s foster family, who graciously welcomed Claire into their home upon the death of her own parents when she was eight years old.
I read how they were murdered in their beds while they slept.
“The Abrahamsons have boys, as well,” Martin is telling me. “Two sons, two biological sons,” he adds. “Isaac and Matthew, both in their twenties. The oldest son, Isaac, has an alibi for the night in question. He works the third shift, stacking shelves at Walmart. He came home early in the morning of March 19 to find his parents dead, in bed.
“The other son, Matthew Abrahamson, is on the run. Like Claire Dalloway, wanted for questioning in the murder.”
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you, Martin?” I ask desperately.
“No, Chris, of course not. But we’ll need to,” he says. “We’ll need to turn your girl in. If she’s the one,” he says, and I think, of course, of course we do.
“Twenty-four hours,” I beg. “Just give me twenty-four hours,” and he says okay. I need to get to Heidi myself, I need to be the one to tell her.
I wonder if he means it, if Martin really will give me twenty-four hours before he phones the police.
There is a reward, I reread. For her return.
Good God, I think, telling Martin that I have to go. I must call Heidi. I must warn her. I dial the numbers, press send.
The phone rings and rings but there is no answer.
My eyes reread the words: Armed. Dangerous.
Stabbed.
Death.
WILLOW
The bus ride to Chicago was long. Over twenty-three hours to be exact, with some sixteen stops. Twice we had to gather all our belongings and move to a different bus, one that was going the same way as us. I saw more of the world than I’d ever seen: the mountains of Colorado that shrunk as we crossed the state, and became near nothingness, only cattle farm after cattle farm with so many cows jam-packed inside, it made me claustrophobic just looking at them all, fighting for food from the trough. We retraced our steps through Nebraska, crossed over the Missouri River, and were welcomed to Iowa by the people of the state, or so the sign on the side of the road said.
I chose Chicago because of Momma. There I was, staring at another big chart on the bus station wall. Arrivals and Departures it said. And I saw that word Chicago, and thought of Momma and her list of one days, and how she didn’t get to cross too much off that list before the Bluebird went tumbling down the road. I didn’t see Switzerland on that list, nor did I see Paris, but I did see Chicago, and I thought of that Magnificent Mile Momma longed to see—the one with the Gucci and Prada stores where she wanted to shop.
I thought that if Momma couldn’t see it for herself, then I’d see it for her.
The baby slept peacefully, wrapped up in the soft pink blanket on my lap. I didn’t dare set her or the suitcase down and so the three of us, we shared one seat. She slept much of the time but when her eyes were open I held her so she could see through the window, first the sunset and, later, the sunrise over the Gateway to the West, a city that used to be my home. At some gas station stop at a town called Brush, I lugged the baby and suitcase inside and purchased formula, like Momma used to feed Lily, and a plastic bottle. When the baby finally did fuss at some point in the night, I thrust that bottle in her mouth and watched her suck herself back to sleep.
I didn’t think much about the baby being cute, or the way she wrapped her tiny hand around my finger and squeezed. I wasn’t thinking about how her eyes watched me, or the words Little Sister scrawled across her shirt.
What I was thinking about were those sea anemones, the ones in a book Matthew had brought for me when I was a kid: would-be murderers in delicate, angelic bodies. I thought of their wispy tentacles when the baby twined her hand around my finger, I considered their brilliant colors when the baby looked and me and beamed. They looked like flowers but they were not. Instead, they were predators of the sea. Immortal. Injecting paralyzing venom into their prey so they could eat them alive.
This baby was a sea anemone.
I thought that I hated her, I did. But as the bus drifted across the country, and the baby held tight to my little finger, and from time to time just stared at me or smiled, I had to remind myself that she was evil, as if that thought just kept slipping from my mind. I told myself I wasn’t going to like her. Not one bit.
But in the end, I did.
* * *
As we boarded a new bus in Denver, some girl slid into the seat beside me, dropped down into the chair like a plane crashing from the sky, and asked, “What’s your baby’s name?” I opened my mouth but no sound came out. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
The girl was all skin and bones, her cheeks hollowed in. She wore clothes that were too big on her, an unshapely coat that just drooped. Her hair was dark, her eyes dark. Around her neck she wore a dog collar with spikes.
“No, it’s...” I stuttered, unable to come up with a name.
“She’s gotta have a name, don’t she?” not even flinching when I couldn’t tell her my baby’s name. Course I couldn’t say the baby’s name was Calla. Then she might have known. “How about Ruby?” she asked then, as she gazed out the window, watching as the bus b
ypassed a Ruby Tuesday restaurant on the side of the road. There it sat, right before the expressway entrance. Karma, I believed.
I stared at those words, the big bold red letters. I’d never known anyone named Ruby before. I thought of that brilliant red gemstone, red, the color of blood.
“Ruby,” I repeated, as if tasting the word in my mouth. Savoring it. And then, “I like it. Yeah. Ruby,” I said again.
And she said, “Ruby,” ingraining the word in my mind.
The girl had a bruise the size of Mount Everest on her head, slashes across a wrist that she tried to cover by yanking down the sleeve of a green coat. She caught the bus in Denver, and by Omaha she was gone. I tried not to look at the bruise, but my eyes found it near impossible not to stray to the purple goose egg on her head. “What?” she asked nonchalantly. “This?” She swept her hair down, to cover the bruise. “Let’s just say my boyfriend’s an ass,” she said, and then asked me, “What brings a girl like you out on the road in the middle of the night? With,” she adds, pinching the baby’s tiny nose, “a babe.”
We got to talking, that girl and me. She had a low-key approach that I liked, a way of holding my eyes when she talked. “Let’s just say we needed a change of scenery,” I said and with that, we stopped asking about where we were going and where we’d been because we both knew the other had come from someplace ugly.
We had a stopover in Kearney, Nebraska, during which time the girl poured a bottle of reddish hair dye over my head and I did the same to her. It didn’t sit long enough, and so, instead of ginger hair, as depicted on the box, I remained snot colored, tinged with red. The girl shimmied out of a pair of torn jeans and a sweater. “Here,” she said, thrusting the clothing into my already jam-packed hands. “Switch.”
I slipped the baby into her tattooed hands, a half butterfly on each palm that, when pressed together, made it complete. “A tiger swallowtail,” she said when I asked. In the stall of the bathroom—the walls covered with ink: Benny loves Jane and Rita is a gay—I took off the pants Matthew had given me and pulled the sweatshirt up over my head. I left on the undershirt, the one dotted with Joseph’s blood. This, I couldn’t dare let her see. I slipped on that girl’s clothing: the jeans and sweater, a hooded coat the color of green olives and leather boots with frayed brown shoelaces. When I emerged from the stall, she was holding the baby in a single arm, a safety pin in her right hand.