The Years Between Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  “Yes, I know her. My name is Luke, and I’m really worried about her.”

  Kyle has stopped now too, has taken a pair of ear buds out of his ears. “You’re her boyfriend,” he says knowingly.

  “You don’t look that old,” Cory tells me. “Mom said you were super old.”

  “What do you want?” Kyle asks, narrowing his eyes.

  “I’m concerned about your sister. I haven’t heard from her in four months. Have either of you… seen her?”

  They look at one another at the same time, a silent conversation between the two of them.

  “She told us she loved you the last time I saw her, that she’s having your baby,” Cory tells me, his face reddening. He’s definitely the one she’d called more sensitive.

  “That’s right,” I say, buoyed that they know I mean no harm to their sister.

  “She’s—”

  “Shut up, Cory,” Kyle snaps with an ease that will possibly make him a great lawyer someday.

  “I really need to know.” I can hear the urgency in my own voice, one I hope they don’t take for desperation.

  “Why can’t we tell him?” Cory asks his brother.

  “You can give me your number,” Kyle tells me after shutting his brother down with a forceful look. “Give me your number, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  I pause, debating on trying to get more out of Cory. But Kyle’s eyes are hard, unmoving, and so I recite my number to him and watch as he enters it into his phone. It’s not much, but it’s something.

  “Can you tell her that I love her and that I’d really like to see her?” I say after Kyle stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

  “Yeah, we’ll tell her,” Cory says.

  “Come on,” Kyle tells him, grabbing his arm and leading him away before Cory shakes free of him.

  I’m half hoping he’ll turn around and tell me everything he knows, but he keeps pace with his brother, and pretty soon, they’ve made their way around the block, and they’re gone.

  Letting out a breath I’d been holding, I ease down onto a nearby bench and wipe at my eyes. Claudia’s brothers don’t owe me anything and probably have a hell of a lot more allegiance to their parents than they ever would to me. And yet the fact that they even talked to me gives me a small amount of hope. It’s more than I’ve had in quite a while.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  CLAUDIA

  “And how are you doing today?” Lucille asks me with her usual, fabricated, fake-ass smile, a smile that will remain on her face as long as I don’t do anything to irritate her.

  “I don’t feel well,” I tell her, sitting in a chair at a table in the activity room of Clear Water. I have no idea how long I’ve been staring out this window, looking at the skyline of Vancouver in the distance, wishing I could be back there again like I had when that detective wanted to talk to me.

  “Well, of course not. You’re just sitting here doing absolutely nothing. You should be joining the other patients or participating in one of the group sessions. You won’t get well daydreaming.”

  God, I hate this bitch. She flits around this place like she owns it, tells me every day how lucky I am to have a family that cares so much about me, that they’d spend all this money trying to make me better and that I’m just wasting it.

  “You have to let me out when the baby comes,” I tell her, putting my hand on my belly, one that is big enough to reflect that I’m nearly eight months along now, too many of those months without Luke by my side.

  Luke.

  God, how I miss him.

  God, how I wish I’d asked that detective to help me instead of lying to him. It had been my one chance, and I’d screwed it up. My mind hadn’t been clear that day, and Mom and Dad told me they’d found something damning on Luke, that they’d destroy him if I didn’t tell the detective just what they wanted me to. They had made threats about my relationship with the boys too, basically telling me they’d ruin everything that was important to me if I didn’t go along with them.

  When I met with that detective in Vancouver, I reminded myself my lies to him were to protect the people I loved. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I can see how they’d tricked me.

  “Your child still has some time to grow before he’s going to want to come out,” Lucille tells me as she walks back to her medicine cart, unlocking a drawer and pulling something out.

  “I want to see a doctor… a medical one… not that psychiatrist,” I push, desperate to get out of this place that I’ve slowly been losing my mind in.

  She laughs, bringing a small paper cup full of pills and a glass of water with her. “You know as well as I do that you have full access to a doctor here, and there’s nothing at all to be worried about with your pregnancy.” She hands me the pills and sets the glass of water in front of me.

  “I don’t want to take them,” I say, never having learned to pocket them in my mouth or under my tongue and then spit them out later like they do in the movies. It’s basically impossible when Lucille sticks a tongue depressor in my mouth and double checks.

  “You have to take them,” she says, her voice still pleasant. “They make you feel better, Claudia, and if you won’t participate in therapy, then we can at least be sure the medications are helping to heal your brain chemistry.”

  “That’s a lie.” I should just shut up now, should just think about my baby and stop myself from getting upset, but I can’t seem to do it, not today after so many days of keeping quiet. “I was never sick before I got here. This is kidnapping… it’s against the law. You can’t keep holding me in a place I don’t want to be!”

  The slap is quick, and it surprises me, even shocks me a little. When I bring my eyes back up to Lucille, she’s looking behind her to make sure nobody else saw, but I don’t know that it would really matter if anyone did. The people who work at this place all turn a blind eye to things like this. It’s like they’re all untouchable and can do whatever the hell they want.

  “I’m sorry I had to do that,” she says, clearing her throat and looking over her shoulder again. “But you were becoming hysterical. Now take your pills.”

  “For all I know these pills are slowly killing my baby,” I continue, my heart rate speeding up with my resolve not to back down. “I won’t take them.” Still in my hand, I crumple the small paper cup up and throw it in Lucille’s face.

  It hits her right in the nose, and she flinches. It’s the first time I’ve seen her do that since I’ve been here. Then she closes her eyes, sighs and fists her hands.

  “Are you going to punch me now? Would you really do that to a pregnant woman?” I push, feeling like I’ve been backed up to a wall the entire time I’ve been here.

  She opens her eyes, eyes that are angry, no smile left on her face. She bends down toward me, the smell of her breath worse than usual. “Listen to me you entitled little slut. You will take your pills or we’ll strap your ass down and connect you to the IV. You want us to do that again, Claudia? Do you?”

  “You couldn’t do that again,” I respond, though I can hear my own voice wavering, beginning to shake. Of course she could. What would stop her from having the other nurses and therapists strap me down on my bed like they’d done twice before? They’d stick an IV in my arm and pump me full of drugs, meant to “calm me,” but really just something that would knock me out for days at a time, so bad that I’d awoken one time with a diaper on that was full of my own urine. I’d been disgusted, but not altogether surprised.

  “All I have to do is tell Dr. Oligard that you hit me,” she says with a cruel flicker in her eyes that tells me she means it. “Take the damn pills, Claudia.” She bends over, picks the crumpled up cup from the ground, opens the top and hands it over to me again.

  “I fucking hate you,” I tell her, throwing the pills back into my mouth, then bringing the water to my lips and swallowing.

  “Whether you hate me or not isn’t my concern,” she says, snatching the empty cup and water fro
m me, then walking back to her cart, humming as she leaves the room.

  The IV would have been worse.

  That’s what I keep reminding myself of as the day begins to draw to a close, as the windows blacken and begin to reflect the interior lights of this place, a beautiful prison that my parents seem content to keep me in, thinking that somehow I’ll change my mind about my and Luke’s baby, that when I give birth I’ll give it up for adoption. They even have a prospective couple in mind. But there’s no way. And they can’t keep me here forever.

  “You have visitors,” one of the therapists tells me as I’m just finishing up dinner alone in my room.

  “Luke?” I ask the woman who I can never remember the name of, a small thrill pulsing through my body at the idea it could be him, that he might have finally found me and is here to take me out of this horrid place.

  She shakes her head. “No, it’s your parents and a family friend,” she tells me like I should be excited about it. “They’ll be in shortly.”

  Even if I wanted to refuse them, the therapist is gone before I can say another word.

  I push my plate aside, having lost the appetite I try to keep only for the sake of my growing child.

  “Hello, dear,” Mom says, the first to come into the room, trailed by Dad and a woman that I’ve never met before.

  But she looks familiar, so very like… Danielle?

  “We brought you a visitor,” Dad says, ushering the woman further into the room before closing the door behind us.

  She has the same color of blonde hair as Danielle, and I know right here and now this is Danielle’s mother, Luke’s ex-wife. The woman standing before me is Isabelle Prescott, but why is she here?

  “Hello,” she says, taking me in, her eyes wide and troubled looking.

  “Hi,” I whisper, thinking how beautiful she is but also how tortured. It’s in her eyes, and I could see my own eyes going that way. Another couple of months in Clear Water, and I’ll be just as messed up as she is.

  “This is Isabelle Prescott,” Mom says, even though I don’t need the introduction. “Why don’t you get up and out of that bed and come over and sit with us?”

  I don’t want to get out of bed at all, but I do, dressed in maternity sweats and a blouse that is all function without even a sliver of fashion, my hair pulled up into a ponytail and not a stitch of makeup on my face.

  Dad gives me a kiss on my forehead, then walks me over to the couch and two chairs by the window where Mom and Isabelle are already sitting.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why we brought her here,” Dad tells me, waiting until I sit in one of the chairs before he sits in the one opposite me.

  Isabelle eyes me, especially my very pregnant belly, her gaze intense.

  “I don’t know…” The pills I took before dinner are just now kicking in and starting to make me sleepy. I actually have to jerk my head in an attempt to remain focused.

  “She’s here to end your fascination with Luke once and for all,” Mom says.

  “To bring you back to reality,” Dad adds.

  “Lucille slapped me,” I say. If I don’t get it out right now, then I might just forget.

  “What?” Dad’s brows furrow.

  “She slapped me across my face… when I didn’t want to take my pills this morning.” I say this to Dad—of my two parents, he would be the one most sympathetic.

  “I seriously doubt that,” Mom says with a deep roll of her eyes.

  “Why would she slap you?” Dad asks.

  “Because I wouldn’t take my pills… those drugs they force on me!” I repeat, jolting back from the hazy effect of my medication.

  “We’ll have a talk with her, then,” Dad tells me, his look of concern fading.

  “But in the meantime, we want you to listen to what Isabelle has to say,” Mom prods, demanding I turn my focus to this woman who I don’t want to see, don’t want to hear anything at all from.

  “He won’t love you,” Isabelle pushes out, her speech pressured. “He’ll always love me. He’ll always come back to me.” The words are stilted, like she’d rehearsed them, and she looks over to Mom as if to ask if she’d done what she’d been told.

  “That’s a lie,” I say, not just to Isabelle but to everyone. “Luke does love me, and he’d be here if he knew where the fuck I was.”

  “Language!” Mom chides.

  “He and I are… together again,” Isabelle tells me after a nod from Mom. “We want to be a family again, and I want you to forget all about him. It will only upset him if he hears from you.”

  “That’s not true,” I tell her, that fog from the drugs coming back even though I have plenty of fighting words left in me. “You love his brother… you love… Galen? Greg? Ga—” I’m so tired. So very, very tired.

  “His name is Gabe,” Isabelle says, straightening on the couch. “And I made a terrible mistake with him, but now I know… I know it was Luke all along. He and Danielle and I will be a family again.”

  “No you won’t.” I push through the haze. “You killed his son… he’ll never want you… never.”

  “Claudia!” Dad barks, pulling my eyes to him for a moment before they roll back to Isabelle.

  “You promised she wouldn’t talk about Brandon!” She’s jumping up from the couch. “And I did not kill him! It was an accident!” She’s waving her finger in my face, and Mom and Dad are up, Dad pulling her back, Mom telling her words I can’t really hear.

  A tight pain snaps in my stomach. “Uhhh!” I cry out, bringing my hand to it.

  The baby.

  Please. Not the baby.

  “Get her out of here,” Mom snaps to Dad as Isabelle keeps yelling about Brandon and how she never meant for him to die.

  And then the pain hits again. Dad has taken Isabelle out of the room, and Mom stands and looks at me for far too long, her eyes going from my belly and then back up to my face… calculating. It’s like she wants this baby to die. I think that’s exactly what she’s going to do, maybe even let me die too. Her eyes spark just then, like she’s been jolted back into a reality where a mother is supposed to help her child.

  “I’ll get help,” she says and leaves the room.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  LUKE

  “You look like hell,” Steven tells me.

  “I think I already knew that.” I’m trying to find the humor in his words, to find the humor in anything, but always falling short.

  I’m in Seattle for work, a project I’ve been freelancing for Steven’s tech company. Work is the only thing that keeps me sane, keeps my mind occupied when I’m not thinking about Claudia or trying to find her.

  “Well, if you can’t sleep, you might as well work, right?” He takes another gulp of his energy drink and eases back into his office chair. “If I get four or five hours a night, I’m pretty much stoked.”

  Sitting across from him, my laptop opened up, I take a slug of my coffee. “I’m lucky if I get three. I’ve got you beat.”

  Somehow I function because I have to, because I still have a daughter in college and have to keep my business afloat, and because I have to fund the PI’s and the lawyer I’ve kept on my payroll in the hopes that it will bring Claudia and our child back to me.

  “The whole thing really sucks, man,” he says, shaking his head. “And it’s all kind of unreal in a way, right? She disappears, tells a detective she doesn’t want to see you, then your PI follows her mother across the Canadian border, only to lose her?” He lets out a big breath. “It’s like a god damn movie.”

  One of my PI’s had followed Genevieve Cartwright to the border between Washington and British Columbia, but she hadn’t been able to get through customs in time to stay on her tail.

  “Let’s just hope this one has a happy ending,” I say, wishing there were more to go on, still hoping beyond hope that her brothers will come through for me.

  Steven wants to keep talking about my situation with Claudia, but at my request, we move beyond
the personal and get back to the professional. I’ve compartmentalized my search for Claudia, my feelings for her, and my work all separately as a way to remain sane and to stay as sharp as I can in hopes of finding her. I’ve avoided crumpling up into an emotional mess on my couch because that would do absolutely nothing to help in my search.

  But after eight hours in the same office with Steven, only taking a quick fifteen-minute break for a lunch, and with a good five or six more hours of work ahead of us, I need a moment for Claudia.

  “I’m heading outside for a few minutes,” I tell him before he waves me off without question.

  It’s February, and snow still fills the courtyard area outside the building I’ve just come out of. I wonder what Claudia would think of the snow on this side of the mountains—it’s a rarity to stick around in Seattle for as long as this batch has with more forecasted by week’s end. Standing with my back against the building, I close my eyes and fill my lungs with the cold air, can almost picture Claudia here, me holding her in my arms.

  I think about the baby, wonder if she’s still pregnant or if her parents got to her. She’d be close to eight months along now, a time we should be together, planning and preparing for our future.

  Opening my eyes, the evergreen trees are still heavy with snow and sway in the breeze while puffs of cold air rise around me every time I breathe. I take out my phone and check in with my two PI’s, the one who followed Claudia’s mother into Canada slightly more valuable than the other, but neither of them have anything new to report tonight. Next, I leave a message for my lawyer, tell him I’d like to set up an appointment for next week to start legal proceedings. If our baby is still growing inside of Claudia, now is the time to start my fight for my paternal rights for when he or she is born.

  And I hate all of it. The only mercy fate seems to have shown me is that while I’ve been dealing with trying to find Claudia, Isabelle has been quiet, healthy for as far as I know. Maybe she and Gabe finally figured their shit out or all of those months spent in psychiatric facilities over the years has clicked. If her happiness holds, I’ll be glad, not just for my sake but for her, and for Danielle’s.