I take one last look at the blood as Henry guides me down the stairs. Only one thought clouds my brain: Where are you, Bunny?
Fourteen
Then
It had been a day and a half since I’d last felt the baby kick. I’d been monitoring and counting her movements ever since I reached twenty weeks. She usually kicked a lot throughout the afternoon and into the early evening. She seemed to be most active when I was trying to go to bed on time.
We’d found out the sex of the baby about a month previously. Not wanting a surprise when the time came for our little bundle of joy to arrive in the world, we asked our doctor what we were having. I was over the moon to learn we’d be the proud parents of a little girl in roughly four months’ time.
Panic began to set in when I hadn’t felt a single kick in a few hours. By the end of twenty-four hours, I was really starting to freak out. On an average day, I could count several hundred kicks or movements. There would be times when she was less active, but this was beyond concerning. It was like she had disappeared. My mind dreamed up all kinds of reasons why she wasn’t moving and kicking, and they all centered around me. I must have been stressing out too much, or I’d eaten the wrong thing. My husband would be furious with me.
Michael left work early to take me to the doctors. He seemed even more worried about our little one than I was. In general, he made sure I did everything in my power to stay healthy and stress-free. He’d monitor my diet and exercise like a hawk, bugging me throughout the day with what he thought were helpful text messages. I had to remind him on more than one occasion that I was the one having the baby and not him. He thought he knew best, but Michael wasn’t the one who would have to push our daughter out when the time came.
I sat in a small waiting room, anxious to see our doctor. The clinic was a private practice in Manhattan that Michael insisted we use. The specialist we’d come to see was highly regarded and had been present at every checkup since day one. Michael paid through the nose for the service, even with his insurance. It was fortunate he had gotten his new job, which allowed him to cover the ongoing cost of these appointments. I couldn’t even imagine what the hospital bill would be like after our baby was delivered.
I held my belly with both hands, desperate to feel a kick or a movement. She had to do something soon. It had been so long since I’d felt her tiny yet powerful legs. I kept moving my hands around to different places, wondering if I had lost the ability to sense her presence. Was that even possible? Since I’d first felt her move, she’d been busy every day, jumping around and kicking me to let me know she was doing well.
“Anything?” Michael asked from the seat next to me. He had a magazine rolled up in his hand. I don’t think he’d read a single page, instead flicking through it to try and distract himself.
“No, sorry. I just wish she would do something. I can’t take another minute of this.”
Michael shook his head. He held out his hand and placed it on my belly. The baby didn’t respond. We thought we had special powers as her parents, but nothing we did was making a difference.
“Why won’t she kick?” I asked him, as if he were the doctor.
He shrugged and placed the magazine back down on the pile. “I wish I could tell you. I really do.” He released a heavy breath and pinched the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. “Maybe she’s just feeling a bit lethargic at the moment.”
“For this long, though?”
“It happens.”
“I know,” I said. I’d spent most of the day on the web, looking at forums and articles on fetal movement. I couldn’t help myself. It both helped and made things worse. The polar opposite opinions online were enough to drive a person stupid.
I stared at Michael, as his gaze wandered around the empty room. He was deep in thought about something, his eyebrows raised and then crunched down. What was happening inside that head of his?
“How did your boss take it?”
Michael turned to me with furrowed brows. “Sorry?”
“For leaving early today. How did your boss take it?”
“Oh, yeah. Fine. She understands what it’s like. She’s got three kids of her own. All grown up now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Crazy, right? Beats me how you raise three kids while building a solid career in law. I guess she’s just a natural at it.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant motherhood or being a lawyer. I didn’t want to push for clarification and spoil our conversation. We’d argued time and time again about me quitting my job for the baby. The further along I got in the pregnancy, the worse I felt about the decision. Now, he was telling me his high-achieving boss had managed to have three kids and a successful career without causing her children harm, while I could barely keep out of danger while sitting at home on my butt.
Michael loved to run my life while he worked long hours at the firm. At the moment, he was working anywhere from seventy to eighty hours per week. Sometimes more. He claimed he wouldn’t work this much if he had a choice. I didn’t believe him, though. He didn’t have to be a top-notch lawyer. It wasn’t sustainable, especially once the little one arrived.
I knew that he’d worked hard to get to where he was today, but something had to give if he wanted to be part of a proper family and not just a father who was there for the fun times only. I didn’t want to end up raising this child on my own. It was an argument I knew was coming, but which would have to wait for another day. Right now, our baby needed her parents.
Our doctor called us into her office a few minutes later. She was a middle-aged Indian woman with black hair, wearing thick-rimmed glasses that you would find on a woman half her age. She sat me down on a special chair that she could control at the click of a button. Michael sat back in a regular seat, watching the examination unfold.
“How are you feeling?” Doctor Gilliam asked.
“I’m fine,” I replied. I was anything but fine, though. My back was killing me, my feet hurt, and I couldn’t sleep at night. Michael knew this too, but he didn’t say anything.
“It’s the baby who’s got me worried,” I said. “She hasn’t moved or kicked in over thirty-six hours.”
The doctor gave me one of those looks that filled my body with a gripping fear. I tried to read into what her eyes were trying to hide, but she moved away from me in a hurry.
“Let’s take a look and see what’s going on.”
Within a few minutes, I was lying back for an unscheduled ultrasound. The gel felt cold on my stomach as Doctor Gilliam rubbed the substance over me. I stared up at the cloned monitor above and saw the baby come into view from multiple angles. Something seemed different about her position from the last time we did this.
“I see what’s happened. She’s moved away from her last position, toward your spine. That makes it hard for you to feel her movements. They do that sometimes.”
I leaned up to the monitor. “But she’s okay, right?” I asked, sounding desperate.
“Perfectly fine. Here. Listen.” Doctor Gilliam flicked a button on her station and turned a dial. A throbbing heartbeat filled the room, thumping away with perfect rhythm. It was like music to my ears. I slid back down and breathed a sigh of relief as a smile etched its way across my lips.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. Now, I can assure you everything is fine. Your baby will move forward again soon enough. She is going to do a lot of growing over the next few months. You’ll feel her presence a lot more as time goes on.”
“That’s great to hear, Doctor,” Michael said as he stood. “Thank God she’s okay.” He started walking toward the door.
The doctor ignored his eagerness to leave and refocused on me. “Seeing as you are here, is there anything you are having trouble with? There are a lot of symptoms around this time that can be quite frustrating to deal with.”
I wanted to tell the doctor about the various problems that were giving me grief on a daily bas
is. I glanced over to Michael and saw how desperate he was to leave. He knew I’d been struggling a bit lately, but he didn’t seem to want to bring it up now that we had learned that our daughter was okay. As long as the baby was doing well, nothing else mattered.
“Why don’t you head back to work,” I said to him. “I’ll take a cab home after we’re done here.”
“That would be amazing,” Michael said. “I’ve still got a huge pile of paperwork to get through.”
I gave him a feeble smile and said, “I’ll see you at home,” knowing full well that he wouldn’t get in until some late hour and would want nothing to do with me.
Michael didn’t need further prompting. He stepped over to me and rubbed my belly. “You scared us, little one. Don’t do that again.” He thanked the doctor and opened the door. He closed it without looking back as my fake smile faded.
I couldn’t believe it, but he left me on my own so that he could go back to work. Would he ever care about me again?
Fifteen
Now
Henry accompanies me down the stairs to the lobby, letting me go first. The stairwell is too narrow to walk side by side, forcing me to be alone with my thoughts.
The blood we found can only mean bad things have happened in this building today. I try not to think about how close I was to possibly running into Alice in the stairwell. If I had come up only a short time later, would I have spotted her trying to escape from her kidnappers?
I know there is more than one person involved in her disappearance. I’m still trying to come to terms with my suspicions about Alan and the man in 707. If anyone has arranged Alice’s abduction, it has to be them, right? But why?
I try to push down the possibilities rattling around in my head and hope instead that Alice is simply lost somewhere on a floor I haven’t been to, trying in vain to find her father.
Michael flashes into my mind in a way he hasn’t this entire time. Several thoughts hit me at once, as I think back to only a few weeks ago, when I sent him a text saying that he needed to do more to support Alice and me. Lately, Michael had been late to pick up Alice. As much as I didn’t want him spending time with her, it frustrated me to see her disappointed face whenever he showed up an hour later than scheduled.
It wasn’t his punctuality that had me concerned, but his reply: “It’s all going to be fine soon. You won’t have to worry anymore.”
“Oh God,” I say, as my legs buckle beneath me. The revelation cripples my body into submission, and I drop to the concrete floor of the final landing before we reach the lobby.
“Miss Rice?” Henry asks. “Are you okay?”
I don’t respond. The collar of my top feels tighter than it should around my neck. I tug at it, feeling that I won’t be able to breathe unless I get a few fingers into the gap. Painful thoughts fill my brain with doubt. Has Michael arranged for Alice to be kidnapped? Am I really thinking about this possibility? The scenario plays out in my head.
Alan was in the lobby when the elevator screwed up and stopped at seven. The criminal was on the seventh floor where the elevator stopped. They couldn’t have been where they were by chance.
Michael had to have been in charge of this whole operation. He must have known I was coming. He just had to orchestrate the right scenario to take his daughter back from me.
He paid the former maintenance man of the building to rig the elevator to stop at a floor where his secretive criminal friend lived. Michael knows how terrified Alice is of elevators, and allowing the doors to open part of the way guaranteed that she would run away from me—right into the hands of a man Michael had paid to abduct her. It had all gone according to plan, except for when they decided to move her around.
“Are you okay?” Henry asks again. “Miss Rice? Please. I need you to get up.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I glance up to Henry. His eyes are stuck wide open. I bet he never expected any of this to happen when he woke up this morning. Neither did I. How could I have expected any of this? There were signs Michael was up to something, but I never imagined this was what he had in mind.
Henry pulls me to my feet and makes sure I can walk on my own. I shrug him off and continue down the next flight of stairs.
We reach the bottom of the stairwell, and Henry moves ahead of me to open the door to the lobby. The area is empty. No residents are walking around, no police officers are charging in, and there are no paramedics to speak of.
“Follow me,” Henry says. “I’ll take you to the back office so you can rest up until Alice is found.”
“No, I can’t. What if she escapes the building?”
“She won’t. The front door is locked and can only be opened by a button she wouldn’t be able to reach.”
“What about the fire exits? She could have gone through one of them.”
“No alarms have gone off. I would receive an alert on my cell the second one of them did.”
Henry has thought of everything and seems confident that Alice is still somewhere in the building. I hope he’s right. She has to be here. I gaze around the lobby and see a few security cameras fixed to the corners. “Do you have access to those cameras? Maybe we could find her on one of them?”
He shakes his head. “The system has been down for a few days. We’re still waiting on a technician to come and fix them. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say as my shoulders slump. “The police won’t be long, though, will they?”
“The gas leak could still be causing some delays. Hopefully, our update to them will get things moving.”
I shake my head and silently curse to myself. I know Henry didn’t mean anything by the “update” remark, but it’s hard not to take offense. My little girl is somewhere in this building, kidnapped and bleeding from a wound that I should be attending to. Instead of helping her, I’m down in the lobby, waiting for the police to arrive.
Henry takes me through a locked door, only accessible via a key card he has tucked away on his lanyard. We walk down a damp corridor and arrive at a small back room which has a kitchenette attached to it. He points out the sink, where I can wash the blood off my hands, and then a hot-water boiler. The unit is connected to the wall above and is bordered by some cheap facilities that the building provides him.
“Help yourself to a coffee. It’s just instant, I’m afraid.”
“That’s fine,” I say, as I think about the number of times Michael has sent coffee back at cafés for not being perfect. Did he drink a cup of coffee when he planned on kidnapping our daughter?
“You can relax on this chair here while I hold down the fort. I’ll come collect you the second Alice is found. If you need to come back out to the lobby, the door unlocks by itself from this side. There’s also a phone in the corner there. Just hit the button labeled ‘Lobby’ if you want me for any reason.”
I drop into the chair and don’t respond. My words seem pointless right about now. Alice is still missing, and I’m sitting on my ass about to drink coffee. My Bunny is probably staring at her kidnappers right now, afraid for her life, and I’m deciding how many sugars I should have.
Henry slinks back to the lobby. He simply carries on, business as usual, as do the residents in the building. The whole world goes about its day while Alice slowly suffers.
I pull out a Styrofoam cup from a packet and toss in three teaspoons of the foul-smelling instant granules Henry directed me to. I put in just as many sugars, deciding I need all the extra energy I can get. The hot water splashes over the cup and burns my hand. I don’t even feel it. I’m numb to pain. Nothing could hurt me worse than knowing what I know about this day.
I drink the coffee, slurping it down. It scalds my lips and throat with every last drop. I make another one and repeat the process. After the second cup, I can feel my eyes popping with the caffeine hit I’ve been craving for hours. I silently pray it will do the trick and help me to stay focused. I need to be ready to go the second the police arrive.
Th
e liquid hits my stomach and reminds my body that I need to pee. I’ve been so focused on finding my Bunny, I’d forgotten to use the bathroom. I wonder, if I had just taken Alice to pee to begin with, would this day have turned out the same? Would Michael still have gone through with what I suspect of him?
I duck out of the room, desperate to empty my bladder. I think about heading to the restroom just off the lobby, but I stop when I see a small toilet sign in the opposite direction. Deciding not to interrupt Henry, I use the staff toilet.
I feel slightly less anxious after using the tiny restroom. I wash my hands and see my reflection in a mirror, which looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years. I swear my appearance has gotten worse since I last looked. I feel like I’ve aged one year for every minute Alice has been missing.
On my way out, I notice another small room tucked away to the left at the end of the corridor. I’m not sure why, but I travel further into the belly of the building, only to find an office with a light on. There’s no one inside, so I venture in—looking for something to keep my mind distracted from the waiting. Every second I have to myself is filled with guilt and worry. I hate this feeling of uselessness that is hovering over me at all times. I despise myself more and more with every second that goes by. Only finding Alice safe and sound will begin to remove this feeling.
I walk into the small room. All I find is an old desk covered in a mess of papers, and a few filing cabinets shoved against a wall. I realize I’m in the office of the maintenance supervisor. I instantly think of Alan and feel a stab of pain hit me in my chest.
“Where are you, Alan?” I ask out loud. I imagine him sitting at this desk, going about his day. Camille said he had been forced to retire from his job. Why? And what would make him want to help Michael commit such a vile crime? What made him team up with an ex-con, of all people? It makes no sense that a man would suddenly take such dangerous risks during retirement. Did he have money troubles? Did Michael promise him the world in return for his part in all of this?
The Day I Lost You: A totally gripping psychological thriller Page 8