She's Not There

by Joy Fielding

  Caroline had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the shelf, her fingers stretching toward the neat row of glass vases. “I don’t suppose it would occur to you to help.”

  “It’s much more fun to watch you struggle,” he said as the heavy vase almost slipped through her fingers. “You sure you want that one?”

  Caroline carried the vase to the sink where she filled it with water, then unwrapped the roses.

  “Don’t forget to trim the stems,” Steve said with a wink.

  She located a large pair of scissors in the top drawer next to the sink and proceeded to snip an inch from the bottom of each long stem, her brother chuckling all the while. She noted that he was having trouble focusing. “I see someone started celebrating a little early.”

  “And I see you brought pie.”

  “Pumpkin.”

  “I prefer apple.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She finished trimming the roses, arranged them in the vase, and then picked it up and carried it into the hall. “Coming?” she asked her brother.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Steve, sweetheart, is that you?” Mary asked as Caroline and her brother approached. “I thought I heard your voice.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Mother,” Steve said, walking into her embrace. “Fletcher…Peggy. Good to see you again.”

  “How are you, Steve?” Fletcher asked.

  “You’re looking well,” Peggy added.

  “As are you.” Steve dropped into the chair Caroline had occupied earlier.

  Caroline deposited the vase on the coffee table in front of the sofa and stood back to admire it. “The flowers are so beautiful.”

  “They are. But why did you pick that vase?” Mary asked. “Surely there was a nicer one…”

  “I tried to tell her,” Steve said.

  “This vase is perfect,” Peggy said.

  Mary sniffed at the flowers. “It’s such a shame that roses don’t smell anymore.”

  “Why is that, I wonder?” Steve asked. “And more to the point, what’s everybody drinking?”

  “Fletcher and Peggy brought a lovely bottle of Chardonnay. So thoughtful.” Mary glanced pointedly at Caroline before pouring her son a glass and placing it in his outstretched hand.

  “I wouldn’t mind some,” Caroline said.

  “Are you sure, dear? You know how you get when you drink.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Allow me,” Fletcher said, jumping up and filling a glass for Caroline as the doorbell rang.

  “That’ll be Micki,” Mary said, heading for the front door.

  “What is she talking about?” Caroline asked Peggy. “How do I get?”

  “She’s just baiting you,” Peggy answered. “Try not to bite.”

  “I’d like to bite her head off, is what I’d like to do.”

  “And we’re off,” Steve said, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Caroline heard her daughter apologize from the foyer. “I waited forever for a bus.”

  “Don’t give it a thought. You’re right on time.”

  “I was at the hospice,” Michelle said, entering the living room and nodding hello to everyone.

  “I thought you worked mornings,” Mary said.

  “I switched shifts with this girl who needed her afternoons free. So now it’s every Monday and Thursday from four till eight. They let me leave a little early tonight because of Thanksgiving.”

  “You’re such a good girl. I don’t know how you do it.” Mary stroked her granddaughter’s long brown hair. “It must be so depressing.”

  “You’d think it would be,” Michelle said, “but it’s actually not.”

  “So, how did everything go?” Peggy asked. “They were serving a turkey dinner for the residents and their families,” she told everyone.

  “It went well,” Michelle answered. “Everyone seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy being a relative term,” Steve said, “considering everyone there is at death’s door.”

  “Well, you won’t catch me going to one of those places,” Mary said. “I intend to die at home.”

  “Who are you kidding?” Steve downed the balance of his wine. “You have no intention of dying. Ever.”

  “Oh, darling.” Mary laughed, and Caroline found herself wondering if her mother would have been so amused had she been the one to make that remark.

  “Well, thanks for everything you’re doing,” Peggy said to Michelle.

  “And thanks for joining us,” Mary added. “I was afraid your father would insist you spend Thanksgiving dinner with him this year.”

  “They’re going to Diana’s parents’ house for dinner. Besides, they understand that I always spend Thanksgiving dinner with my Grandma Mary.” She hugged her grandmother and Mary responded by throwing her arm around Michelle’s tiny waist with genuine affection.

  Caroline understood that their closeness was the result of the bond that had been forged between them in the months after Samantha’s disappearance, when Caroline had been unavailable, first physically and then emotionally, and she hated herself for being jealous of their obvious connection.

  “I’d say such good deeds deserve to be rewarded,” Steve said. “Perhaps a glass of wine…”

  “Perhaps not,” Caroline said quickly. “She’s not allowed any alcohol.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “Yes. And we’re very thankful she’s not in jail.”

  “Nice one, Mother,” Michelle said.

  “Was it really necessary to bring that up?” Mary asked.

  Caroline lifted her own glass of wine. “Well, we all know how I get when I drink.”

  —

  “Well, that was a nice evening,” Michelle said, following her mother into their house and closing the door behind her.

  “Yes. Dinner was lovely.”

  “Grandma Mary’s such a good cook.”

  “How would you know? You hardly touched a thing.”

  Michelle gave her mother a look that Caroline was only too familiar with. “I ate plenty.”

  Caroline said nothing. She was too tired to argue.

  “You were pretty quiet all night,” Michelle said.

  “Sometimes it’s safer that way.” Caroline headed for the stairs.

  “You’re not going to bed, are you? It’s not even nine-thirty.”

  “I’m tired. Your grandmother takes a lot out of me.”

  “Ever think you’re being too hard on her?”

  “No,” Caroline answered honestly. “Never.”

  “Well, I think you are.”

  “Ever think you’re being too hard on me?” Caroline had no wish to continue the conversation. All she wanted to do was climb into a steaming-hot bath and crawl into bed. “Are you staying here tonight?” she asked when she felt Michelle’s footsteps on the stairs behind her.

  “Don’t you want me to? I can go to Dad’s if you’d prefer.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “It’s what you implied.”

  Caroline stopped at the top of the stairs. “Michelle,” she said, her patience evaporating. “Please. Do what you want.” She turned and walked down the hall toward her bedroom. Stepping out of her shoes and unzipping her gray slacks, she left them lying on the floor as she crossed into the bathroom, her bare toes burrowing into the plush carpet. She reached into the claw-foot tub and turned on the hot water, watching the steam fill the room, mercifully coating the mirror over the sink and blocking out her reflection. She pulled her white sweater over her head and dropped it to the floor, then unhooked her bra and removed her panties, watching her underwear float toward the small mint-green bath mat. She was climbing into the tub when the phone rang.

  Quickly wrapping a large green towel around her torso, she returned to her bedroom and answered it.

  “Don’t hang up,” the voice said before she could speak.

  Caroline sank down on the bed, her heart pounding. “
Lili?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Where were you? I flew to Calgary, waited all day and night…”

  “I know. I wanted to come.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was on my way. Then, I don’t know…I just chickened out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of what? That you’d be unmasked as a fraud?”

  “I’m not a fraud.”

  “What, then? That we’d take the test and you’d find out you were wrong?”

  A second’s silence. Then: “That I’d find out I was right.”

  “I don’t know what to say. You’re the one who contacted me…”

  “I know.”

  “I believed in you, that you believed…that you honestly wanted to find out the truth…”

  “I do.”

  “I did exactly what you said…”

  “I know.”

  “I spent the night in a hotel, waiting by the phone, praying you’d call…”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  “I took two days off work.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “How? I’m not flying to Calgary again.”

  “I’ll come to you.”

  “What?” Caroline was suddenly aware of a figure standing in the doorway.

  “Who are you talking to?” Michelle asked, stepping into the room.

  Caroline waved her away.

  “I said, who are you talking to? It’s her, isn’t it?” Michelle marched to the bed and wrestled the phone from her mother’s hand. “I told you she’d call again,” she said, eluding Caroline’s frantic efforts to get the phone back. “Listen to me, you lying little bitch…”

  “Michelle, please…Don’t…”

  Michelle ignored her. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what sick game you’re playing, but I swear that if you ever call this house again, if you try to contact my mother in any way, I will call the police and have you arrested. Do you hear me? This shit stops now. Am I making myself perfectly clear?” She paused for breath, then threw the phone angrily to the bed.

  Caroline immediately lunged in its direction, grabbing it and pressing it to her ear. “Lili? Lili?”

  “She hung up. And of course she blocked her number. There’s no way to check…”

  “What have you done?” Caroline stared helplessly at the phone, then at Michelle.

  “What have I done? What have I done?”

  “You shouldn’t have talked to her like that.”

  “Really? How was I supposed to talk to her? Oh, hello, Lili. Or would you prefer I call you Samantha? So nice to meet you. I’ve really missed having a sister. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “You didn’t have to call her a liar.”

  “Why not? That’s what she is.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I know. And so do you. Didn’t I tell you this was going to happen? Didn’t I? What did she say? That she was sorry, that she’d make it up to you, that she’d come to San Diego…Shit, is that the water I hear running?” Michelle ran into the bathroom.

  Caroline heard the bathwater suddenly shut off.

  Michelle came back into the room, wiping her hands on the front of her black denim jeans. “Well, that was lucky. The damn thing was about to overflow. Good thing I was here.”

  “Good thing you were here,” Caroline repeated without conviction.

  “Yeah, well. Hurray for me. Another crisis averted.” She pried the phone from Caroline’s hand and tucked it into a back pocket of her jeans. “For safekeeping,” she said. Then she walked to the bedroom door. “I’ll be in my room. Shout if you need anything.”

  “I won’t need anything.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  The next time Caroline looked toward the doorway, Michelle was gone.

  “Mr. Wolford will see you now.”

  Caroline smiled at the young woman, the youngest and prettiest of the three secretaries sitting behind the reception counter in the main office of Washington High School. Bidding a silent goodbye to the gum-chewing teenage girl slouched in the seat beside her, she pushed herself out of her uncomfortable wooden chair, one of four resting against the wall of the small waiting area in which she’d been sitting for the better part of twenty minutes. She tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened the creases of her dark blue dress, then followed the apple-cheeked young woman into the office of Barry Wolford, ignoring the veiled stares of the other secretaries, and almost crashing into a lanky six-footer who was just leaving the principal’s office.

  “What do we say, Ricky?” a man’s voice boomed from inside the room.

  “Excuse me,” the boy said to Caroline, eyes resolutely on the floor.

  “It was my fault,” she acknowledged in return. Everything, my fault.

  “Teenagers,” Barry Wolford said, motioning for Caroline to sit down in the chair in front of his desk. He was about fifty and balding, with noticeable stains under the arms of his pale yellow open-necked shirt. “Close the door, please, Tracy.”

  A look of disappointment crossed Tracy’s unlined face, causing her bright coral lips to turn down. No doubt she and the other secretaries had been hoping to catch snatches of the principal’s interview with the infamous Caroline Shipley. Caroline had heard their whispers as she sat waiting for her interview. Really? She thinks she’ll get a job here? Wolford’s out of his mind if he hires her. What would the parents think?

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting.” Barry Wolford lowered his ample frame into the curved-back wooden swivel chair behind his cluttered desk. He cleared his throat and smiled. The smile was halfhearted at best, stopping well short of his eyes. Caroline immediately understood that this interview would go the same way as the ones she’d already endured at other high schools in the area over the last four months, which was not well at all.

  She wasn’t sure how many more such interviews she could subject herself to. It had taken all her courage and what was left of her self-esteem to put herself out there by re-entering the workforce. She knew there’d be opposition to hiring her, that the San Diego Unified School District Board would frown on her application, that there would be parental opposition to any school brave enough to take her on. But what choice did she have? She was going crazy sitting at home, wallowing in self-pity, waiting for the phone to ring with news of Samantha, news that never came. “So, I see you used to teach math…”

  “At Herbert Hoover High School, yes. For four years. I’ve always loved math. My father was a math teacher…”

  “I assume you’ve already spoken to someone at Hoover?” he interrupted.

  “I did, actually, yes. There were no positions.”

  “I’m not surprised, considering.”

  “Considering?”

  “You’ve been out of the workforce for a while now.”

  “Yes. Yes, I have. But I’ve kept up my skills…”

  “That’s admirable. But unfortunately for someone like you, we seem to be enjoying a glut of teachers at the moment.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Eager new hopefuls graduating every day. Hard to get back into the job market when you’re competing against all these fresh young faces.”

  “On the other hand, there’s something to be said for experience.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he said, and Caroline felt a surge of hope. “Mind my asking why you stopped teaching?”

  Caroline swallowed. “Uh…the usual reasons, I guess. Family, children…”

  “Yes, they can certainly slow one down.”

  “Well…that’s not really what I meant.”

  “You’re saying you quit to be a stay-at-home mother,” Wolford said, rephrasing. He lifted his pen as if to jot this down, then lowered it without writing anything. “Nothing more rewarding than being a parent.”

  Caroline nodded.

  “I have four children of
my own.” He turned several framed photographs on his desk in her direction.

  “They’re lovely,” Caroline said, glancing at the smiling faces of his family.

  “Not always easy, of course. But whoever said that being a parent was supposed to be easy?”

  Caroline tried to smile, but managed only a twitch. She tried to tell herself that Barry Wolford was only making conversation, that his comments were innocent. Was it possible he had no idea who she was? Her picture had been all over the newspapers and television for more than a year. Last week had marked the first anniversary of Samantha’s disappearance, and it seemed as if every paper in the country had made note of that fact. She’d even made the cover of People, standing blank-eyed and erect under the lurid headline WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY SAMANTHA? Her name was practically a household word, a synonym for bad parenting. Could it be that he really didn’t recognize her?

  “How many children do you have, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “My daughter is six years old,” Caroline said, straining to keep her voice steady.

  “Sorry. I thought you said ‘children,’ plural,” he prodded.

  “Yes. Uh…is this relevant?”

  “Only if you consider children relevant, I guess. Some people do. Some don’t.”

  Caroline felt her stomach constrict. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “What’s the expression—out of sight, out of mind?”

  “What exactly are you getting at, Mr. Wolford?”

  “Just trying to figure out what motivates someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “A woman who leaves two young children alone in a Mexican hotel room so she can go out partying with her friends…”

  So he did know who she was, had known all along. He’d been toying with her, having cruel fun at her expense.

  “Assuming, of course, that’s the least of what she did.”

  Caroline jumped to her feet, although outrage kept her rooted to the spot.

  “There are no jobs available to you here at Washington High,” Barry Wolford said, standing up and looming menacingly over his desk. “Nor will there ever be, as long as I’m principal here.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why even bother setting up an interview?”