She's Not There

by Joy Fielding

  “Shit.”

  “Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on?” Hunter pleaded.

  “In a few minutes.” Caroline walked into the living room, noting the open cartons of Chinese food and multiple empty beer bottles covering the coffee table. “As soon as everyone else gets here.”

  “Who else is coming?” Hunter asked.

  “I invited a few more people,” Caroline said. “Thought we should celebrate.”

  “Well, I wish you’d called and told me,” Mary said from the sofa, where she was balancing a plate of food on her lap and struggling with a pair of wooden chopsticks. “I would have ordered more.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t think anybody’s going to be too interested in eating.”

  “So,” Steve said to Michelle as he reached over from his chair to pile some more noodles on his plate, “I understand you were at the hospice. I hear people are just dying to get in.”

  Michelle stiffened.

  “Sorry. I guess you get that quite a bit,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’d like to see it sometime,” Samantha said. “Maybe I could go with you one day.”

  “Sure.”

  “Are we really making small talk?” Hunter demanded. “Is that why I rushed over here like a lunatic? What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

  “Who are we waiting for?”

  A car door closed. Hunter crossed to the window. “I rushed over here for Peggy and Fletcher?”

  “I thought they deserved to be here.” Caroline walked to the door and beckoned them inside.

  “Welcome,” Mary greeted them. “Help yourselves to some Chinese.”

  “Thank you,” Peggy said, looking anxiously around the room, “but no thanks.”

  “None for me,” Fletcher said.

  “A beer?” Steve held up a freshly opened bottle. “For some reason I’m getting the feeling that a little alcohol might be a good idea.” When both Peggy and Fletcher declined, he took a swig himself.

  “Is that everyone?” Hunter asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “For God’s sake, who else is coming?”

  As if on cue, another car pulled up outside. “Sit tight, everyone,” Caroline said, heading for the front door and returning moments later, the latest arrivals in tow. “I think you know almost everyone,” she said.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” whispered Hunter.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Steve said, setting down both his beer and his plate of food and rising to his feet.

  “Do I know these people?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever actually met,” Caroline said. “Mother, meet Jerrod and Rain Bolton. They were with us in Mexico. I believe they’d already left by the time you arrived.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” Jerrod said, managing to sound as if he meant it. He smiled nervously at Caroline.

  “And of course you remember Peggy and Fletcher.” Caroline smiled at Rain. She was wearing jeans and a mauve sweater, both of which were several sizes too small. Her hair still hung in long blond waves past her shoulders, as if she were auditioning for a part on one of those Real Housewives shows. But despite a face-lift that had rendered her once-lovely face almost immobile, her discomfort was obvious. There was a panic in her eyes that no amount of Botox could disguise.

  “You probably don’t recognize Michelle,” Caroline told them.

  “Oh, my God,” Jerrod said. “Little Michelle.”

  “You’re so grown up,” Rain said.

  “It happens,” said Michelle.

  “And this is Samantha.”

  “Samantha, my God,” Jerrod said. “I watched you on TV this afternoon. Could not believe my eyes.”

  Rain released a long, deep breath, said nothing.

  “I heard you two were separated,” Hunter said.

  “We are. Thanks, in part, to you,” Jerrod acknowledged with a grin. “But when the FBI suggests a reunion, one is hard-pressed to say no. Especially when they send a car to pick you up.”

  “The FBI?”

  “That would be me,” Greg Fisher said, entering from the foyer, where he’d been waiting.

  “What’s he doing here?” Steve asked.

  “He said he’d like to be here if we ever found out the truth about what happened the night Samantha disappeared. I thought it was only right to oblige.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hunter asked. “We don’t know what happened.”

  “You remembered something?” Steve asked Samantha.

  “Please, everyone,” Caroline directed. “Have a seat.”

  Rain squeezed herself in beside Mary, Peggy, and Fletcher on the sofa, while Jerrod helped Greg pull a few chairs in from the dining room. Steve sank back into the chair in which he’d been sitting as Hunter lowered himself into its counterpart and Samantha balanced on one of its wide arms. Only Caroline and Michelle remained standing.

  “I still don’t understand what Jerrod and I are doing here,” Rain said.

  “I thought it might be helpful to re-create that night,” Caroline told her.

  “How can that be helpful?” Steve asked.

  “I think we should start with a brief recap of that week,” Caroline went on. “Just to refresh our memories. Make sure we agree on the basic facts. So that we understand exactly how it all played out.”

  “How what played out?” Fletcher asked.

  “Samantha’s kidnapping.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “This is absurd,” Steve said.

  “You all got to Rosarito before us,” Caroline said, ignoring her brother’s remark. “I remember being so surprised to see you. And a little disappointed, if I’m being honest. I’d been hoping to spend more alone time with Hunter, and I was frankly a little shocked by whom he’d chosen to invite. I could understand Peggy and Fletcher. Peggy’s been my best friend since forever. But Jerrod and Rain, well, we weren’t particularly close friends. Of course, I didn’t realize you were sleeping with my husband at the time, Rain…”

  “Really? Is this necessary?” Rain glanced toward Hunter, who refused to meet her gaze.

  “And as for you and Becky,” Caroline continued, looking at her brother, “well, as I recall, Hunter told me the whole surprise thing had been your idea, that you’d more or less invited yourselves along. But Becky and I hadn’t been close in some time.”

  “She was always jealous of you,” Mary said.

  “Mother, please,” Steve said. “The poor woman is dead. Can we let her rest in peace?”

  “No,” Caroline answered. “I don’t think we can do that.”

  Another moment’s silence.

  “What are you saying?” Steve asked.

  “That our mother is right. Becky was jealous of me. She resented my supposedly stable marriage, my ease at having children, my so-called ‘perfect’ life. And that when the opportunity presented itself…”

  “You think she’s the one who took Samantha?” Peggy interrupted. “How is that possible? How could she have pulled that off?”

  “Think about it. I lost two keycards that week. I assumed I dropped them or left them lying around, but Becky could easily have taken at least one of them. She had plenty of opportunity. She was with us all the time. And don’t forget, it was a woman who called and canceled the sitter the night Samantha disappeared.”

  “This is crazy,” Steve protested. “These are wild suppositions. You have no proof that Becky took your keycard or canceled the sitter. Frankly, I’m astounded at your leaps in logic. You’re the math teacher. Where’s your proof?”

  “I have absolute proof that Becky was involved,” Caroline stated.

  “What kind of proof could you possibly have?” Disbelieving eyes shot toward Samantha. “Are you saying you remembered something?”

  “Not Samantha,” Michelle said. “Me.”

  “You?”

 
“I saw Becky.”

  “You saw her? When? Where?”

  “In our suite. In my bedroom. I saw her lift Samantha out of her crib.”

  There were collective gasps from around the room.

  “How could you have seen anything?” Rain asked. “You were asleep.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were awake?” Hunter said, his voice barely audible.

  “I saw everything.”

  “This is unconscionable,” Steve protested. “It was fifteen years ago. You were a child. It was dark. Even if you were awake, who knows what you really saw?”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “And you kept quiet about it for fifteen years?”

  Michelle looked toward her grandmother. Her grandmother looked toward the floor. “I repressed it…”

  “You repressed it? How convenient.”

  “Steve…”

  “For God’s sake, Caroline. To do something like that, Becky would have had to more than resent you. She’d have had to hate you. You visited her in the hospice. You saw how much she cared about you. Do you really think she was capable of doing what you’re accusing her of?”

  “I don’t think she hated me. I do think she was desperate and probably more than a little afraid.”

  “Desperate about what? Afraid of what?”

  “In the hospice, she kept apologizing,” Caroline continued, ignoring Steve’s questions, “telling me how sorry she was. I assumed she was talking about our estrangement, how she hadn’t been there for me after Mexico. But now I realize she was talking about her part in the kidnapping.”

  “Her part in the…What are you…?” Steve rose from his seat, then sat back down, throwing his hands in the air. “Will you just listen to yourself? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying.”

  “That your former sister-in-law, my ex-wife, kidnapped your daughter. That’s what you honestly believe?”

  “She knew Samantha hadn’t been taken by some pervert. She knew she was alive. She told me as much, said she was certain Samantha was with people who loved her…I thought she was just trying to give me hope. But now I know she was trying to tell me the truth.”

  “The truth? She had a brain tumor. She didn’t know what she was saying half the time.”

  “And you took care of the other half, didn’t you?”

  Another silence. Another collective intake of breath.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Keeping her stoned, staying by her bedside every minute. I always thought it was so strange, your sudden turnaround when Becky came back to town. You were so miserable to each other when you were married. You didn’t speak after your divorce. When I think of the vile things you said about her…And then she gets a brain tumor, comes back to San Diego, and checks into Peggy’s hospice. And calls you, of all people. Do you want to know why I think she did that?”

  “By all means,” Steve said. “Enlighten me.”

  “I think she was going to come clean about what happened and she wanted to give you fair warning. She told me she owed you that.”

  “Why would I need fair warning?”

  “Because you were there with Becky. Because taking my daughter was your idea.”

  “Oh, my God,” Peggy whispered into the stunned silence that followed.

  “Now you’re accusing me?” Steve jumped to his feet. “You know what? I’ve had enough of this crap…”

  “Sit down,” Greg Fisher told him in no uncertain terms.

  “This is absurd,” Mary sputtered.

  “You knew,” Caroline said, spinning toward her.

  “What? I knew no such thing.”

  “Michelle told you what she saw.”

  “A five-year-old child told me what she dreamt,” Mary insisted with such vehemence Caroline almost believed her. “She was confused. She was hysterical. There was no way your brother had anything to do with what happened that night. I didn’t believe it then. I certainly don’t believe it now.”

  “It was Uncle Steve, Grandma. I saw him.”

  “You imagined it.”

  “No.”

  “This is preposterous. Why would he do such a thing?”

  “My guess?” Caroline asked. “He needed money. Isn’t that what these things usually come down to? He’s a gambler. Becky had lost her job. He was strapped for cash.”

  “You’re crazy,” Steve said. “The real estate market was booming in those days. I was making a fortune in commissions.”

  “And losing it just as fast. What happened, Steve? You bet on the wrong horse? You owe the wrong people money? They threaten you? You offer them something in trade? Ultimately convinced Becky to go along with you or risk being the target of a mob hit?”

  “A mob hit?” Steve laughed. “I think you’ve been watching way too much TV.”

  “I think you’d been planning this for quite a while, that you bided your time, waiting for the right opportunity.”

  “And I think you’re forgetting a little something,” Steve said, turning around in hapless circles, as if appealing to everyone’s better judgment. “I was with you guys when Samantha was taken.”

  “No,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “You weren’t.”

  “Yes, he was,” Rain said. “We were all together. Except for Becky. She’d gone to her room with a headache.”

  “And then you left to check on the kids,” Peggy said to Caroline.

  “And when I came back, you were gone,” Caroline said to her brother.

  “I went back to our room to try to convince Becky to rejoin the party. All of you…you know that. It wasn’t my idea to go back, but you were giving me such grief about it…”

  “Yes, we played right into your hands, didn’t we? Except you didn’t go back to your room because you knew Becky wasn’t there. She was waiting for you in the lobby, or wherever it was you’d arranged to meet. All you had to do was wait for me to check on the kids and leave.”

  “Your timeline is all wrong,” Steve insisted. “You’re forgetting I was with you when Hunter came back from checking the kids at nine-thirty.”

  “Except he didn’t check on them,” Caroline said.

  “That’s right,” Jerrod concurred. “He was too busy screwing my wife.”

  “Do we have to keep harping on that?” Rain asked.

  “You saw Hunter in the hallway,” Caroline reminded her brother. “You told me so yourself. You realized then he hadn’t checked on the kids.”

  “Which proves only that Hunter was a liar, not that I’m a kidnapper.”

  “Which proves you had both the time and the opportunity to kidnap Samantha.”

  “So you’re saying that Becky and I stole Samantha from her crib and then…what? What exactly did we do with her?”

  “You put her in some kind of carrying case,” Michelle said. “A man was holding it. He’d been standing in the doorway. I couldn’t see his face. He closed the bag and walked away.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Everything worked exactly according to plan. Even better, actually,” Caroline continued. “You thought you had half an hour to steal Samantha and spirit her out of the country. Turned out you had twice that.”

  “How would I know for sure you’d leave the kids alone?”

  “You didn’t. But you knew Hunter. You knew he’d arranged a special surprise for that night because, once again, that surprise was your idea. You knew he’d probably be able to persuade me.”

  “That’s a whole lot of probability. Again, where’s your proof?”

  “Come to your Uncle Stevie,” Michelle said in a tiny voice.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you said when Aunt Becky lifted Samantha out of her crib and handed her over to you. You said, ‘Come to your Uncle Stevie.’ The same thing you said to her yesterday. That’s when it all came back to me. That’s when I knew for sure it was you.”

  The room fell silent.
<
br />   Steve’s eyes shot to Greg Fisher. “This is wild speculation. Surely you don’t believe this garbage. They have nothing—”

  “They have an eyewitness,” Fisher said, smiling at Michelle. “She sounded pretty credible to me.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone, pressed a series of numbers, and spoke softly into it. “There are agents waiting outside,” he told Steve, taking his elbow and leading him to the door. “You might want to contact an attorney.”

  “You’re not actually going to arrest him,” Mary protested, following them outside.

  The rest of them remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

  “What just happened?” Jerrod asked as the front door slammed shut.

  Caroline sank to the floor beside the Christmas tree. Her eyes darted from Hunter to Peggy and Fletcher, to Jerrod and Rain, their shocked faces reflecting their attempt to make sense of everything they’d just heard. Michelle and Samantha sat down on either side of her, holding tight to her hands.

  “Did I tell you that Jerrod got us tickets for Dance with the Devil?” she heard Rain ask, her voice reaching across fifteen years, transporting Caroline back through time.

  Caroline closed her eyes and watched that night unfold behind her eyelids, as if it were a movie she’d seen before. Only this time she was playing all the parts.

  “Did I tell you that Jerrod got us tickets for Dance with the Devil?”

  “What’s that?” Caroline snuck a glance in the direction of her suite and then at her watch. She pushed away what was left of her lobster dinner, which was most of it. She was too nervous to eat. It was almost time to check on the kids.

  “They were fine when I checked on them thirty minutes ago,” Hunter whispered. “They’re fine now. Finish your meal.”

  “Dance with the Devil? It’s only the hottest show on Broadway. It’s impossible to get tickets, especially on Thanksgiving weekend. But Superman here managed to do it.” Rain threw a proprietary arm across her husband’s shoulders, sneaking a smile in Hunter’s direction.

  “So you’ll be spending Thanksgiving in New York,” Becky said. “Lucky you.”

  Rain smiled. “What are you guys up to?”

  “My mother always has Thanksgiving dinner at her place,” Steve said, providing Becky with the perfect opening, and wondering if she’d take it. She’d been vacillating all day, threatening not to go through with their plan.