Little Girl Lost

by Addison Moore

  He leans into the mic. “I would say please for the love of God return my baby. Bring her to a safe place, a grocery store, a fire department, a library, anyplace. Just bring her to safety and let her come home.”

  Another reporter waves over at us. “What about the other girl? Who is she? Why hasn’t anyone filed a missing person’s report on her?”

  “She was friendly.” The words come from me numb.

  Rich comes up and we voluntarily step aside as he takes over and fills the crowd in on the meager details we do know before fielding questions.

  After twenty uncomfortable minutes of standing behind Rich, listening to him say we don’t know over and over again, Marilyn McCafferty pulls James and me to the side.

  “ZNet and FOX both want to do an interview—this is evening television, the widest market to the nation. You’ll have to do it.”

  “Yes, of course.” I shiver. “Anything.” I glance back at the burgeoning crowd and feel the sting of people craning their necks to get a good look at us. We had offered ourselves up to the public like creatures of interest, a novelty. We were on exhibit and the house was our habitat.

  James and I are shuttled off to the living room where ZNet comes in first with its oversized cameras and takes the better half of an hour to set up. A makeup artist powders my face before adjusting a microphone down my cleavage and pinning one to the lip of James’ shirt.

  The interviewer, a woman named Gretchen MacAfee, with short red hair, a country twang, and an overall irate view of life beaming from her eyes, sits across from us.

  “Welcome to the show, Mr. and Mrs. Price. I’m so very sorry about the situation brewing around your daughter.” Her sentiment feels about as genuine as Naugahyde.

  James and I exchange a quick glance. Situation brewing around our daughter?

  “I’d like to start by asking you both to tell me exactly what happened that day your daughter went missing.” That curt tone, those accusing eyes. Each of my nerves catches fire like dominos.

  “I’ll start.” My voice hitches and McCafferty pushes a glass of water my way. “I was out running errands. I’m usually the one that picks up Reagan from school. But that day James stepped in. By the time I came home, she was already missing, only we didn’t know it at the time.”

  “And you, Mr. Price?” Her dark eyes shoot their venom at us as if we were the perpetrators.

  “Yes, Allison is right. I was home. I’m the one that approved Reagan going over to Ota’s house. That’s the name of the little girl who was with her. She mentioned she lived down the street. I had seen Ota around the house ever since the day we moved in, and I thought it would be okay.”

  “But it wasn’t okay, was it?” Her strangulating demeanor sharpens like daggers. A flashback of me hurdling furniture to tackle McCafferty comes to mind and my thighs twitch as if readying for the effort. “Where were you during the hours your daughter went missing? What were you doing at home while she supposedly went over to this friend’s house?” She stabs an accusing finger at him, her thumb in the air as if she were mock shooting him.

  James expels a choking sigh. “I thought—I was at home cooking dinner for my family. Allison showed up, and that’s when the panic started.”

  “I see.” The redheaded devil gives a sharp look to the ceiling. “How long have the two of you been living in Concordia? It’s my understanding that you were new to the area.”

  “A couple of weeks,” I offer. I can feel my anger boiling over at the way this woman has chosen to treat us. “I met Ota that first day we moved in.” A vision of that patch of dying grass where her feet stood pulses through me. “She seemed like a normal child.” Lies. She was anything but and I sensed it from the start.

  “And did she ever tell you anything about her family outside of the fact she mentioned she lived down the street?”

  “Nothing.” I shake my head at the man holding a sound stick looking for sympathy. For God’s sake, I need to feel like I have a friend in the damn room. “I baked cookies for her family once, but she said her mother wasn’t feeling well and that I couldn’t take them over.”

  Gretchen MacAfee sniffs at the thought. “And that didn’t set off any internal alarms in you, Mrs. Price?” Her lips contort until those viciously white teeth are visible.

  “Not exactly.” Hell yes, it did. Everything about that little beast set off a damn alarm.

  “It shows here”—she glances to her notes—“that there is no record in the state of Idaho at any school, public or private, of a kid who goes by that nickname—granted you did say it was not her full name. Has anyone outside of the two of you ever seen this child, Ota?”

  My jaw goes slack at what she might be implying. “I don’t know, maybe the movers.”

  “Funny you should say that.” She points a fiery red fingernail at me. “The police department did contact the movers, and not one of the young men who was present that day had any recollection of a second child around the premises.”

  Holy shit. “They wouldn’t. She was in the backyard. She never went through the house.” My chest thumps wild like a herd of pigs begging for a lake to drown in.

  James flinches and Gretchen must sense the fact that fight-or-flight has set in.

  She takes a deep breath as if James and I had somehow exasperated her. “Let’s go to the phone lines. I believe we have some callers. Who do we have first?” A cue card is thrust her way. “Jessica from Phoenix. Hello, hon. How are you doing tonight?”

  The audacity to shoot the shit with Jessica from Phoenix. I want out.

  “Good, I’m doing great. How are you doing, Gretchen? I just want to say quickly that I love your show. I never miss it.”

  Gretchen winks into the camera and it feels like treason. “That’s sweet of you to say. What can we do for you tonight?”

  “My question is for Mrs. Price. First, I’m so sorry for your loss.” My stomach bottoms out because it sounds so final, so very morbid. “You mentioned that you were usually the one at home, but that you went out running errands. Why on that day? Do you think that whoever did this was prepared to take your daughter whenever the moment arose? I mean, if they meant to kidnap her, couldn’t they have lured her to the street and took her whenever they felt like it? It sounds like you were pretty loose with your daughter.”

  My heart ratchets up my throat and into my ears as my entire body turns into one big pulsating bomb ready and willing to go off on whoever necessary.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.” I clear my throat in lieu of vomiting up an expletive. “I had to run a few errands, much like anyone else. We’re a normal family. My husband sometimes picks our daughter up and cooks dinner.” Liar. I can’t remember the last time James Price cooked me anything, let alone picked up our daughter other than that fated day. It was a day of firsts. I try to remember back to that morning. He distinctly told me I should take some time for myself—that I work so hard as a mother and wife. My lids snap open wide as I look to him with the realization. Does James know? Does he know what I’ve worked so hard to keep from him for the last six years? Maybe the only one not buying this we-are-a-normal-family bullshit is James.

  He leans in, his dark brows sit over his eyes like a caterpillar. “My wife ran errands. I picked up our daughter. It was nothing out of the ordinary.” It wasn’t really. Only that it was.

  “Why don’t we move along.” Gretchen takes the next cue card. “Next caller is from Nevada—Heather Evans. Let’s hear your question.”

  I freeze. My body solidifies in fear and hate as every mixed emotion runs through me at once. Damn Jane for summoning her to life like the devil she is. Heather Evans can’t speak. Some people should have a muzzle welded to their faces, and she happens to be one of them.

  “I’m feeling a little heated.” I give a quick tug to my mic, but not a body moves my way.

  “Hi! Am I on?” The disembodied voice swims from the speakers. “Allison Greer is one of my best friends! Oh, heck—I
guess it’s Price now.” You can hear the enthusiasm in her voice as if I were auditioning for Ms. America and she was here to cheer me on.

  James gives my foot a slight kick without making eye contact with me. I hadn’t told him about Heather. Some psychotics are best kept under lock and key.

  Gretchen leans into her mic. “Best friend.” She nods my way, amused. “I guess you would know her best. Can I ask—what kind of a person would you say Allison is? How would you describe her personality to someone you just met on the street? We’ve got a lot of viewers, and some of them are making hard judgments about her. What would you like to say to them?”

  “I would say Allison Price, nee Greer is a guarded person.”

  “What the hell?” I mumble to myself.

  “Yes, she has her secrets. But, heck, we’ve all got a handful of those, now don’t we?”

  Crap.

  James looks over so fast I can hear his vertebrae cracking. “Who the hell is this chick?”

  “We went to school together.” I clear my throat. “Heather and I were friends in high school. I’m pretty sure she means silly little high school boy crush secrets.” Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Heather’s voice pitches before rising an octave. “Like I said, everyone’s got them. I’ve got mine. I’m betting that handsome husband of hers has his fair share, too. Not long after the two of them got together, they broke right up.” Holy hell—she is singing like a bird. “But look at them now!”

  “Yes.” I inch my body to the edge of my seat. I need to rein this crazy train in before we collide with her big fat mouth again. “James and I are as happy as can be.” I can feel the sweat beading on my upper lip. And try as I might, I can’t catch my breath. “We’ve been very happy for a very long time. The focus here is on our daughter, Reagan. We love her very much and she loves us, and I know that she’s very, very frightened.” I jump forward, demanding the camera’s attention. “Honey, if you’re out there—please know that Daddy and I love you so much. We’re looking for you every moment. We will never give up!” Heather’s voice comes in faint and I see Gretchen swipe her hand at some tech guy sitting to the side. Good. I will keep talking and we will cap that shithole Heather calls a mouth. I look to Gretchen. “We’ve been so happy for so long we’ve even thought about another baby before this horrible thing happened.” James offers another tap to my foot, this one much stronger, a what-the-hell kind of a tap. “We’ve had some trouble and a friend referred me to IVF.”

  “Shit,” James mutters almost indistinguishably. “Look, we just want our daughter back.” He leans into the one-eyed monster looking voyeuristically into our lives for ratings. “We are onto you and your stupid, silly little games. Whoever you are, you sick fuck, bring back our baby!”

  Gretchen gives a pantomimed slit of the throat, and just like that, the lights go out overhead.

  One interview down, one to go.

  James pulls me upstairs in haste while the electronic switch out occurs in the living room. It feels clandestine, as if we were teenagers running up to my bedroom to hide our lust from my parents. My mother would have Bobbitted him if she caught us in the act of fornication. Lorena Bobbitt was as close to a deity as you could get in my mother’s eyes.

  James lands us in the bedroom and slams the door shut with a kick. His eyes are wild with rage, his breathing uneven. “What in the hell are you thinking? Talking about more children? And we have never talked about IVF.” His voice is sharp as barbed wire and my ears pinch just hearing the pain in it. James has always wanted a brood—of his own, I would add, but he doesn’t really know the facts.

  “I’m sorry. I panicked. She was some woman from my past and I just—I was spooked.”

  He grinds his palm into his eye. “I get it. We’re exhausted. This can’t go on. We’re going to get through this. We’re going to get Reagan back, and then we’ll have lots and lots of babies together.”

  I wrap my arms around him and pull him in so he doesn’t see the terror in my eyes. So he doesn’t see the fact I’d rather die than have Heather Evans and her frightening epiphanies showing up on my proverbial doorstep—and God, I pray that’s all it’ll be.

  Heather was right. I have a secret.

  James would like to have lots and lots of babies together.

  And what Heather knows is that we’ve never had a single one.

  4

  James

  Days bleed by with no Reagan, no Ota, no sleep, and no rest from the barbaric media. Some dark force in the universe had slit me open like an old pillow, sending everything that once held me together off into space. The nexus of who I really am blew away like feathers, and yet that dark force insists on the constant vacuuming of my soul. There is nothing left but grief and agony.

  We stepped from one pile of shit to the next. That nut job Heather Evans has set up a GoFundMe and already we’re at over a hundred thousand dollars.

  “We don’t need this money,” I lament, tapping my finger to the screen. “What the hell are we going to do with it, anyway? It’s blood money. I don’t want it.”

  Allison comes over in her sickly green robe, her hair disheveled. We’ve devolved to bathing under a strictly as-needed basis, and since there’s not a soul we want to see outside of our daughter, our hygiene has hit rock bottom.

  “Neither one of us is employed if you haven’t noticed,” she points out. “I’m pretty sure the money we have saved will dry up within a year.”

  The money we have saved is a misnomer, but I know better than to correct my wife without infusing her first with coffee. And that seems to be why my father is still hanging around. He’s been our butler in every capacity, and for the first time I can honestly say it’s a pleasure. I’ve never needed him like I do now. God knows we’ve been through it all together.

  Allison shuts the laptop over my fingers. “Don’t look at it. I hate it. And I hate her.”

  “Son,” Dad calls me over with a tick of the head.

  “I’ll be right back.” I touch my hand over my wife’s, and for the first time in years it feels like a genuine display of affection.

  “What’s up?” We head out back to the dusty earthen-scented soil that’s rich with humidity. A heat wave in late October. Reagan would have loved it. Would have. I slap my hand to my forehead to keep from slipping to that dark place that calls to me as enticing as sleep. “God help me.”

  “I’m here,” Dad says it with such sincerity I give a half-hearted chuckle, first one in as long as I can remember.

  “You’re not God.”

  “I’m close enough.” Those mirror blue eyes of his, that face, my face in thirty years’ time. Dad has always been a preview of what I might look like some day. “How are things going between you and Allison? There’s no more talk of divorce, I take it? Rumor has it, there’s talk of babies.” He offers a congratulatory slap to my back.

  “No, she just panicked. Our only concern is Reagan.”

  “Now that you got some time alone, don’t you think the two of you should get on a right path together?”

  I look over at him, bewildered where this might be coming from. “Reagan is not at the sitter’s, Dad. And we’re not on vacation. She’s missing. So excuse me if Allison and I aren’t up for wooing one another in the interim.” My eyes close involuntarily as I let out a stiff breath. “Look, I know you mean well. Everyone is saying things that don’t make any sense. We’ve all hit a wall.” I stagger out into the yard a few feet and spot her hula-hoop buried under inches of grass, the periphery yellowing like a halo and the pain of not having my child here safe with me is suddenly too much to bear. “God, when will this end?” I roar out in grief as I let the heat bite through my clothing.

  He grunts out something between a groan and a laugh. “The reporters have come by sniffing in the mornings when I take my walk.”

  My lids spring wide at the thought of my father, the marriage counselor, carrying on a conversation with any of them.

  “You didn’t s
ay anything, did you?” That’s right. I don’t even need to preface it with the subject matter. We both know the topic, dead and buried as it may be.

  “Oh no. Heaven’s no.” He slaps the back of his neck and offers up a sheepish look. “But a few have asked about your siblings. Seems good news travels fast.”

  Good news. That’s his verbal way of whistling Dixie.

  “Shit.” I stalk past him and head back into the kitchen to find Allison holding up my phone, that curious frown embedded on her face.

  “Who’s this Hannigan?” Her lips twist at the screen. “And why doesn’t he think we need IVF? As if it’s any of his damn business.”

  I snap the phone out of her hand and head into the living room. Shit.

  “Don’t mind him.” I hear my father say in his inappropriately cheery tone. He’s gone from coffee butler to a dancing devil in a single bound. “I got him a little worked up. My fault. I’ll take the blame on this one.”

  My father is so fixated on gluing the frayed edges of my marriage back together he has no clue he just covered for my mistress and me.

  Mistress. I hate the word. It sounds like something off the cover of one of those regency romance novels my mother used to devour. Something old and archaic like a courtship or taking an evening constitutional. I don’t have a mistress. What happened with Hailey last summer was just an off moment for me. A moment of abject weakness driven by the almost certainty that Allison and I were about to throw in the towel. She didn’t make a secret of it.

  When I think back on that dark season—a brighter light than that of today—I think of the arguments, the fact we were perennially angry with one another over the most trivial things. One of us forgot to pay the car insurance? The other one was mad. Someone forgot to put the trashcans out for the week? The other one was angry as hell. Left a trail of bread crumbs in the margarine tub? That would be me, and Allison was markedly pissed.

  And now, in the light of a very scary day, none of it seems to matter. If I could go back and bask in the glory of those barbed wire lined days, it would be a pleasure. But I didn’t bask in anything at the time. Instead, I became a willing party to Hailey Oden’s own insecurities, always asking if her jeans made her ass look wide, if that sweater she wore enhanced her figure or hid it? We played fashion trivia for so long I felt like her personal stylist. And then one sweltering Southern California day when the temperature hit triple digits, she invited me over for a swim. Allison had driven upstate with her parents to visit Jane—Faulk was out of town on business, and it was so damn hot. She wore a red bikini, bright red. It reminded me of the Hawaiian Punch my mother used to give us out of the big can back when I was a kid. There was nothing as thirst-quenching on a horribly hot day. And when she asked if I could tighten her bikini top for her, of course, I said yes. Who the hell was going to help her out if it wasn’t me? She stood at the foot of the pool, toes pointed to the water as my fumbling fingers did the honors, but as soon as I untied the knot, her top slipped south and she grabbed my hands, landing them right over those store-bought tits. That’s what Allison used to call them, store-bought. She was right, of course, but at the moment I didn’t care. I had a painful hard-on that couldn’t be quenched. I had already tossed off to her so often it only felt like an inch past the crime I had already committed. We dove into the pool, me hoping to cool off, and her in an effort to lose her bottoms, too. And she did. And we did. Right there in the pool. We spent the weekend together. After that, anytime I saw Faulk swimming in that semen-infested water, I felt bad for the guy. Bad for me. Bad for Allison. It went on for three long bad weeks. That’s when he caught us. And that’s when I woke up and realized I was horrifically at fault for a crime against my marriage. I prayed it wasn’t too late—and with therapy, our move to Concordia, we somehow miraculously patched ourselves back together—only to blow to pieces again the night I sent our daughter to the wolves.