I glance back to apartment 707 and frown at its door. I’ll find out who took my Bunny, whether it was Alan or the man who just slammed the door in my face or someone else altogether. It’s only a matter of time. God help whoever gets in my way.
Twelve
I take a few steps toward the stairwell entrance to leave the seventh floor, only to realize Henry is waiting for me by the elevator. I turn to him with a shake of the head. “I’m not taking that thing. It’s the stairs or nothing.”
“Are you serious?” he asks.
“Yes. I’m not getting stuck inside that malfunctioning box again while Alice is still unaccounted for.”
Henry lowers his head and mutters to himself as he walks toward me. “Fine, we’ll take the stairs.”
“Good,” I say, as I push open the door to the stairwell. I walk through and turn to him as a thought hits my mind. “Who’s watching reception?”
“Don’t worry. The front door is connected to my smartphone. If someone hits the intercom, I’ll get a notification. I can look through the small camera in the intercom and speak to them, tell them to go away, or unlock the door. Pretty cool, huh?”
I don’t reply. My main concern is Alan. If he has taken Alice from me, could he have left the building while Henry was up here? I still can’t decide if I believe he has abducted my little girl, or if she is simply lost somewhere in the apartment complex.
I make my way down the stairs and pick up the pace, not concerned if Henry is keeping up or not. He’s the one making me go back down to the lobby when I should be searching the building for Alice. I know it would be quicker for us to take the elevator, but I can’t get stuck inside it again. Not with my luck.
I rush down the steps at a hurried stride that leaves Henry at least a full flight of stairs behind. He can barely keep up with me.
“Come on! Get a move on!” I yell up to him.
Henry yells something inaudible down the stairwell. I shake my head in response. I start to descend even quicker, not wanting to waste time waiting on him. If I’m to wait for the police in the lobby, I should get there as soon as possible, in case they manage to find a spare officer who is not needed to help out with the gas leak Henry told me about downtown.
I keep walking with my eyes glued to the ground. I travel down to the fourth floor on autopilot. Then I spot something, sitting there for all to see, splotched on the wall of the fourth floor’s landing at hip height: a small circle of blood. The blood appears to be fresh and is low enough for a four-year-old to have left it there. The world slows around me. Something is horribly wrong.
I drop to my knees, mouth wide open. This can’t be real. This has to be a mistake. How can there be blood here? “No, Bunny,” I say, my voice barely audible. “Please. Not her.”
I crawl over to the splat on the wall and touch the liquid that covers a few inches of the rough surface. I let the red substance coat my fingertips, as if I can analyze my findings like a computer. My hand starts to shake as I study the blood “No, no, no,” I mutter, as I try to shake off the warm fluid, scuttling backward until I hit the steps behind me. I spin around and try to escape by crawling back up the stairs.
Henry sees me and stares with his mouth open. “What are you doing?”
My stomach twists itself into knots. I hold up my bloodied right hand, gripping it at the wrist with the clean fingers of my left. Despite the firm grasp I have, my hand still jitters and shakes. What have I found? What does this mean? It can’t be from her, can it?
Too many questions cry out for answers as I try to rationalize what I’ve discovered. Maybe the blood belongs to someone else. That makes sense. But it’s at the perfect height for Alice to have hit her head. I can’t ignore that fact. All I want to know is how a four-year-old kid could hurt themselves like this. Memories flash into my mind.
I can’t help but remember the time Alice cut her hand at the park. My mind slips back to that moment—to the blood. Alice was excited to go burn off some energy at the park. It was the day after a visit with Michael, so she was feeling quite energized and happy. Whenever she saw her father, she had an extra glow about her that lasted for a few days. It both delighted and angered me. Michael barely spent four hours with her on Sunday at his apartment. That somehow made him a hero in her eyes for the next few days.
Where was my appreciation? Where was my lasting impact? I’d taken care of Alice from the day she was born. Nights spent holding her, feeding her, changing her diapers, absorbing her loud cries, tending to her every need on my own. Michael wasn’t there for any of that. Even when we were still together, for that brief six months after Alice’s arrival, he would barely lift a finger to help his daughter when he got home from twelve or more hours of being away. Sure, he’d come into our room and spend time with his baby girl, but he didn’t take care of her the way I did. Instead, he’d just stare at her in her crib, without saying a word to me.
Even now, after the mess of the divorce, I was like a piece of furniture to Alice. At least, that was the way it felt after she got to visit Michael. Eventually, Alice’s glowing admiration of her father would fade into the week and vanish. It wasn’t until a day or so before the next visit that she would pipe up again, wanting to see her Daddy. But I would always be there for her, and I would never need any acknowledgment for the effort I put in.
We went to a different park than usual that day, as we had found ourselves in a part of town we hadn’t been to before. I had some errands to run and used my phone to source a nearby playground that was on the way home. It wasn’t as big or as beautiful as the one we frequented where we lived, but it would do.
I checked the jungle gym over with a sweep of my eyes and realized it was for older children. Alice had already beaten me to the punch, though, and was climbing up the slide before I had a chance to change my mind. She was so cheeky about it, too.
“Hop down, Bunny,” I said to her. “Take the stairs like everyone else.” There were a handful of other people in this particular park. If we were on our own, I would have let her do what she wanted. I felt it was important for her to experiment and not do everything by the book all the time.
Despite my intervention, I still got the look from one of the other moms. She was there with her partner, watching her two kids go wild and scream their heads off. Apparently, that kind of behavior was acceptable, but not Alice climbing up the slide. I couldn’t seem to escape the judgment, wherever I went. It was the burden of being a parent in such sensitive times, I figured. People were always so keen to argue or take offense. Some days it was exhausting.
I sat away from the other parents by the trunk of an old tree. It was the perfect place to set up for Alice’s fruit time. She called out to me while she played, making sure I witnessed every little thing she did on the equipment. “Yes, I’m watching,” I said for the third time, as I continued to cut an orange into slices for her.
“Ouch,” I said, when the tip of the blade accidentally cut my index finger. I dropped the knife as the sting of citrus entered the tiny wound. I sucked the blood and harsh liquid from my finger and fished around in my handbag for a Band-Aid, before remembering that they were located in Alice’s backpack. I often took a small first-aid kit along with us in case of emergency. I wasn’t exactly dying, but I didn’t want Alice to see me bleeding.
My little girl hated the sight of blood. Most children did, but she was particularly frightened by the slightest drop and would often faint when exposed to it. I never understood where her fear came from. I guessed some things couldn’t be explained.
“Mommy,” she called out to me, as I fumbled with the plastic strips to get the Band-Aid on the right way. I always managed to screw the process up. I would make a terrible nurse.
“Mommy,” Alice called again.
“I can see you,” I lied. “Very nice.” I could hear myself getting frustrated. Some days I just wasn’t in the mood to be mommy of the year.
“Damn thing,” I said, as I realized I had put the Band-Aid on
wrong. I huffed out loud and was fishing around for the next one in the pack when a loud scream broke my concentration.
The high-pitched yell could only have come from Alice. Before I knew it, I was on my feet, searching for my daughter. I rushed over to the jungle gym and found her on the ground next to the metal swing. Another child had hit her with the side of the swing, cutting open her hand. The boy was a few years older than my Bunny and knew better than to swing so wildly when younger children were around. He only stopped swinging when I ducked down to Alice’s side and scooped her up. I had no idea who was at fault, but I let the kid have it.
“You need to be more careful. She’s just a little girl!”
The boy maintained his distance and silence, showing only a fraction of remorse for getting caught. He ran off before I got another word out, straight to his mother. He pointed toward Alice and me, most likely telling her a bunch of lies. I shrunk away as Alice continued to cry in my arms. I didn’t have time to deal with that kid, or his mother, who would no doubt dispute the whole thing with me.
I placed Alice down by the tree and got to work fixing up the cut on her hand. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it appeared, but my Bunny thought she was dying when she saw the blood flowing over fingers.
“It’s okay, little one. You’ll be fine,” I said, as I covered the cut with a wad of tissues.
Alice sniveled. “No, I won’t, Mommy.”
“Yes, you will. Look, it’s already starting to stop. Nothing to worry about, Bunny.”
She sniffed and stared up into my eyes as her shoulders rose and fell. “Do you promise, Mommy?”
“Cross my heart,” I said, as I made an X over my chest with my index finger. She didn’t seem to believe me, though, so I pulled her in tight for a cuddle. She cried quietly as I closed my arms around her.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I whispered into her ear. “You’ll see.”
Thirteen
I stare at the blood on the wall in the stairwell. I’m still on the ground, propped against the step behind me. The blood is so fresh that I can smell a metallic odor coming from the stain. I glance down and can sense the same fragrance coming from my blood-covered fingers. Why did I have to touch the wall, like a moth to a glowing light bulb? I try to wipe it off on my sleeve, but the red stain won’t budge.
Henry crouches down in front of me to get a closer look. We can both see that Alice will need medical attention as soon as possible—if this is her blood.
I know the police have already been called, but I need to update them on the situation. With shaking hands, I pull out the company cell phone from my pocket and try the passcode Henry told me. I enter it wrong too many times and end up locked out of the phone for a minute.
“Dammit,” I yell, grabbing Henry’s attention. He turns around and sees what I am trying to do, so he takes the phone from my useless hands and gets it unlocked once the minute passes by.
“You need to call the police again,” I say, avoiding eye contact.
He nods at me, already knowing what I was trying to do. “I’ll ask them for an ambulance too.”
“Thank you,” I say, as my gaze falls back to the blood on the wall. How did it get there? What happened here? I need to know the answers to those questions, but I am afraid to discover the truth.
I close my eyes, trying to understand how I found myself in this position. Had Alan been chasing after Alice? Did she trip over and hit her head? Surely I would have seen them on my way up, unless…
My mind thinks up all kinds of desperate scenarios. If Alan took Alice, he must have hidden her somewhere near this floor. When I banged on 707, the criminal may then have warned Alan over the phone that I was sniffing around and had called the police. Did my visit cause a chain reaction that sent Alice running off into the stairwell?
How many people are involved in this? What kind of person would want to take a child from their mother? I can’t help but let the murky images into my head.
I notice a few droplets of blood leading to the fourth-floor entrance. I stand on two shaky legs and gaze at the trail. My hand has stopped its shaking for now, with the new distraction. By some miracle, I’ve managed to avoid a full-blown panic attack.
While Henry requests an ambulance, I take in a deep breath and let the air drain from my body through parted lips. I open my eyes back up and start to follow the blood trail one step at a time.
As cautiously as I can, I open the door. I can only imagine that Alice would have been carried at this point if she had hit her head. I have no way of knowing if that is what happened, but the splatter on the wall is at perfect head height for her. The idea makes me want to vomit. I choke on the image in my brain of my Bunny hurt and lifeless. The lump in my throat is enough to cut off my airways. This can’t be happening.
I find more drops on the floor and see that the blood continues along into the corridor. I follow the trail the short distance to the elevator.
“Erika?” Henry calls out to me. “Where are you—?”
The stairwell door closes on him, cutting him off. I don’t care what he has to say. I only care about my Bunny. I don’t want to stumble across a scene I will never forget, but I have to see where this blood leads.
I walk a few paces and stand in front of the elevator. There’s blood on the call button. My legs begin to buckle beneath me as I lose feeling in my feet. I stumble and catch myself on the nearby wall as Henry comes through.
“Erika?”
I don’t face him. “Someone hurt her,” I whisper.
“What did you say?”
I turn and stare at him. “You heard me. Someone took Alice and hurt her. They chased my Bunny into the stairwell and made her trip into that wall.” I can feel the tears forming in my eyes, provoked by a mix of rage and fear.
“How do you know that someone tried to take her? And how do you know that blood came from your little girl? It could be from someone else.” His voice doesn’t sound convincing in the slightest. I can tell Henry is trying to avoid the worst possible scenario from becoming a reality.
“Someone kidnapped her. And I know that blood belongs to her.” I stare at the red on my hand. I can sense Alice in the stain. I know this is from her. It sounds insane, but only a mother could ever tell such a thing.
I face Henry as he stands in silence. I notice he is no longer holding the spare cell in his hands. Clearly, he is not going to give it back to me. “Did you update the police?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“And?”
“They’ll try to be here sooner than planned,” he says. “Why don’t you come down to the lobby and sit in the back office with me.”
“No. She’s still here in this building, bleeding.”
“I realize that you—”
“No, you don’t understand. Look at the call button on the elevator. It’s covered in blood. She must have been running from someone when she tripped into that wall. That person picked her up. I need to track them down before it’s too late. Before…” I don’t dare finish the thought. My brain can’t handle it right now—or ever, for that matter. I stare at the floor and feel the world start to spin.
Henry doesn’t say a word, as if he can’t understand what I’m saying. Something flashes in his eyes. “Maybe this isn’t her blood. Maybe she’ll turn up soon.”
“It has to be her blood. This wasn’t here when I walked up to the seventh floor; not until I spoke to that man in 707.”
“What man in 707?”
I flick my neck up. “The ex-con,” I say, to gauge his reaction.
“Sorry?” Henry asks.
I study his face, attempting to figure out if he is playing dumb. “You know exactly who I’m talking about. Don’t pretend that you don’t know about the criminal who lives in apartment 707.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve only worked here for a month. Who told you there was a criminal living in 707?”
“No one told me,” I li
e. “I knocked on his door and saw him.”
“And you worked out he was an ex-con?” Henry asks with crossed arms. “How, exactly?”
I don’t have time for this. “It doesn’t matter. I know he is.”
Henry huffs. “Even if that were true, it doesn’t mean that he would be behind any of this.”
“Do you know his name?” I ask.
“No,” Henry says. “And neither should you, so drop it.”
I can see he is keeping something about the man to himself. He shuffles on the spot and rubs the back of his neck. I’ll get it out of him, one way or another.
“God. I’m going to lose this job if anything else crazy happens today,” he says, staring at the wall. “There’s no way around it.” He continues to babble away, so I drown it out as I think to myself.
I run my hand through my messy hair and scratch at my skull as Henry continues to talk to himself. His words no longer sound real to me as I drift in and out. How can things get any worse?
My eyes fall once more to the blood on the call button. Should I ride the elevator and try to locate the blood? I can’t go inside that box again, though. Not after this morning. All I can see is the fear in Alice’s eyes any time I’m near the damn thing. Now that image is covered in blood.
I press the call button and jump backward, pressing my body hard against the wall opposite the elevator. I can’t stand the sight of the reflective surface of the doors, but I need to see inside it. After a short delay, the elevator arrives and opens. It’s completely empty, with no traces of blood.
“Come on,” Henry says, having pulled himself together. “We need to go back to the lobby.”
He grabs me by the elbow and directs me to the stairwell entry. He pushes the door open.
I see the bloodstain on the wall again. “Wait,” I say. “We can’t just leave the blood like that. It could get contaminated before the police arrive.”
“Right,” Henry says, lightly slapping his head. “I’ll call our maintenance supervisor to put up signs.”
The Day I Lost You: A totally gripping psychological thriller Page 7