“Are you all right?” Still the irritation. Then, after a moment, “If there’s a problem, I have to inform you that I will call the next person who’s responsible for your daughter—”
Her daughter.
On impulse, Erin dropped the phone on the counter and ran to the stairs and up toward Korrie’s room. She froze in front of the closed door. Impossible, she thought. She should count to five. Her self-care instructions. Stop. Breathe. Count. Step back. Break the loop.
Her thought was to open the door slowly so the dust wouldn’t stir, the air wouldn’t shatter—the quiet that had accumulated over all the months when she had stopped outside the door and held her breath and listened. The empty room should be just as it was, nothing but dark space; in the closet, the neat white boxes of Korrie’s things that Erin’s mother had packed up and placed in stacks. For an instant, Erin wondered if Korrie’s specter would wake, silver light in the dimness, and turn to her, a stunning, beautiful, living absence.
She reached for the knob, turned it, and flung the door open wide. The riot of color sent a shock through her. Color and light and clutter. All of Korrie’s things were back—her bed, tumbled with her purple covers and fuzzy pillows, her turquoise curtains, her lamp revolving with lavender lambs, her clothes, her toys, her games, books, shoes, socks everywhere. The world—as it was supposed to be.
Who would do this? Who could have done it? No one had been in the house but her.
She let herself slide slightly forward into this new illusion. “Korrie?” she said. Nothing. She called down the hallway. “Korrie?”
No answer. Because you’re insane, she thought. Could I have done this? Walking in my sleep or something? She needed some kind of confirmation. She pulled herself from the enchantment of Korrie’s room, ran back down to the kitchen, and grabbed her now-blank phone. The school had hung up. The display read 9:35 AM, February 7, and showed snow showers and a temperature of twenty-eight degrees.
Specks of white tumbled down outside the window.
Erin’s hands shook. Her mind became a maze. But it’s June now. Not winter. February seventh? The seventh? But it’s summer, Erin. She powered off the phone, waited for the gear wheel to spin and go dark, and then she held down the button and turned it on again. The glass face bloomed with the background image of Korrie at Christmas and the date read February 7, 2020; the time, 9:35 AM. Snow showers and a temperature of twenty-eight degrees.
Chapter Four
The Day Of: Friday, February 7, 2020 | 371 Nysa Vale Road
Erin charged down the stairs at 8:25 AM, struggling into her new dressy coat, with her purse, phone, and keys in her hands, torturous high heels clacking against the wooden treads. According to her weather app, the high would be thirty-nine, and the snowstorm would last most of the day, but much as she’d love to, she couldn’t show up for her job interview in her old hiking boots.
Zac was on a work trip to the Hingoli lab in India, and his long flight home wouldn’t get in until that afternoon, so it was up to her to drop off Korrie, who stood near the front door, fortressed inside heaping layers of lavender outerwear. Hat, scarf, mittens, button-up sweater, thermal pants, parka; permission slip for Sledding Day poking out of her pocket. On her right foot, a furry white boot from the pair Erin’s parents had brought back from their trip to Iceland; on her left, a pink sock.
Erin stopped. “Where’s your other boot, Squid?”
“I don’t know.” Korrie looked down at her sock.
“Go find it,” Erin said. “We’ll be late.”
Korrie didn’t move. “I already looked.”
“Korrie.” Erin sharpened her tone. “We have to go. The roads are bad, and I can’t be late. You have to get to school, and I have to get to my interview. Please go find your other boot. Right now.”
Within that bounteous inventory of winter wear stood a delicate six-year-old so thin and small for her age that the pediatrician had recommended geriatric protein drinks for her. Her hair was dark chaos in need of a brush. Her cheeks were high pink, her other features eclipsed by the roundness and lucent gray of her eyes, but there was also something stormy on that face. Erin recognized the look. Noncooperation. And she looks exhausted, Erin thought; she’d have to check on her later, after the interview. “Go find your boot, please,” she said.
Korrie stayed planted in place. “I told you I already looked.”
“I don’t have time for this.” Erin flashed hot inside her coat.
“But I’m having a hard morning, Mommy,” Korrie said, the bad mood folding creases between her eyebrows.
“So am I, kiddo.” A petulant comeback, Erin knew, but the fact was she was battling against herself more than against her daughter. She would have loved nothing more than to strip off these horrible plasticky interview clothes, put on her sweats, and light a beautiful fire in the fireplace—she was sort of an artist when it came to building a lively, crackling fire. She’d sent away for a new fireplace set and had matchbooks printed with this winter’s Christmas picture of the three of them. She could make a cup of cocoa and work on the new recipes for her website. But that was the wrong Erin. Getting too late in the race for all that, as her father had said. He’d finally told her, after all this time, how deeply she’d disappointed him, never having managed to get a degree with all the money he and her mother had spent on her education. He’d pressed her to change, to finally get started on a substantial career, to stop all this wishful thinking. And so it seemed it was time to get rid of this Erin, to wake up and be someone else.
“Let’s go,” she said.
When Korrie still didn’t budge, Erin dumped her things on the chest by the door and took off through the living room. She rattled in her heels up the stairs and rummaged through Korrie’s room until she found two black snow boots in the closet. She rushed back down the stairs and set the boots in front of her daughter’s feet. “Put those on.”
“I hate those.”
“Come on, Korrie. Just put them on.”
Slowly, Korrie slid her white boot off and stepped into the black boots.
Erin picked up their things and opened the door. They plunged out into the bitter, bright gray, the wind gusting ice flakes against their cheeks. Korrie clomped down the walkway toward the garage as if they had all the time in the world. Erin yanked up the heavy old garage door and didn’t try to mask her exasperation as she opened the car door and tossed their stuff onto the back seat. “Today of all days,” she said.
Chapter Five
9:40 AM
Sunday, June 20, 2021 | 371 Nysa Vale Road
Erin shut her eyes and opened them again. Still February 7. 9:40. Still snowing. To her right, the refrigerator door was plastered with all of the photo magnets she and Korrie had made, pinning the calendar of school holidays for 2020 and Korrie’s drawings and paintings. Wistfulness twinged in Erin’s chest for those creations she loved.
She rushed to the living room. The scene stunned her. Everything was back the way it had been, before. The pictures, the art projects, the toys, the papers, the mess. She and Zac had fought about it. About how she wanted to leave things the way they had been on The Day Of, and he wanted to change everything. She’d accused him of moving on, and he’d yelled that he couldn’t live with all of it, that it was too much for him. And here it all was, everything that had since been stored away. Back again.
Erin ran to the front door and threw it open, and the icy wind swooped in with a curl of snow. February weather. She shut the door and turned back to the living room. In two steps, she was in front of the TV. She grabbed the remote and turned it on. The run-of-the-mill winter morning blather, channel after channel. She shut it off and crossed the room. On the sofa was the sweatshirt that belonged to Korrie’s friend Brennay, a zippered hoodie with monkey ears on the hood that she’d left behind when Erin took her home. Had anyone ever returned it? Erin couldn’t remember now. The coffee table was strewn with pieces of the unfinished puzzle the girls had been working. On Erin’s des
k, her computer glowed with the screensaver of Korrie’s summer swimming photos, one of her at the top of the slide, one laughing open-mouthed as she slid down, the splash as she hit the water. Then one in new school clothes—and Halloween, the Snow Queen. Erin let the photos cross-fade, one after another, a blissful pang of longing with each one. A close-up of Korrie and Zac wearing Thanksgiving turkey hats Erin had made out of felt for them; Winter Solstice, the lantern-lit sleigh ride with Abby and Brennay and Emma, the four girls bundled together under plaid wool.
Erin leaned over her keyboard and clicked into her email. Nothing after February 6, 2020.
What about Zac? she thought. What would he make of this if she described it all to him? She leveled her phone and touched the image of his face. After three rings, it went to his voicemail, and she heard the message he’d put on his old phone when he first got it: “No time like the present to leave a message.” She’d barely understood why he thought that was so funny. Something about how the edges of the past and present overlap because time runs faster the higher it gets in a gravitational field.
She disconnected the line and dashed, two stairs at a time, back up to Korrie’s room, phone in hand. On top of her purple comforter lay her pajamas. The pair that Erin had sewn by hand, the fabric patterned with pinecones, snowflakes, and tiny sleeping reindeer. She sat on the bed and picked up the pajamas. Cotton washed into buttery softness. She hugged the cloth against her chest. What have you done, Erin? Have you finally let it happen? Have you finally let yourself go over the edge?
Ever since The Day Of, she’d lived with the surreal sense that she was sitting ten rows back, watching herself on a screen, as if at some future point the horrific events of some other woman’s life would wrap up, the movie would be over, and Erin would walk out of the darkness and back into her real life, as her real self. But now, here in this room, it was not cinema; these things of Korrie’s existed as facts. Erin ran her hand over the fuzz of the pillows. See? Really here. She stood and touched the lampshade, then the nightstand, the dresser, the books on the shelf. She leaned out of the doorway and looked down the hall. Through the open bathroom door, she could see Disney towels and winter laundry in a pile on the floor: little sweatpants, a T-shirt, sweater, socks. You have, she thought, acquiescing to the idea. You have lost your mind.
Heading toward the bathroom, she pressed her phone awake again. Wait.
Now the face read 9:56 AM, June 20, 2021.
“No,” Erin said aloud. She looked up, and the laundry was gone. “No!”
She turned and ran back into Korrie’s room. Dark. Completely empty. Four blank walls. She crossed the room to the closet, and there in stiff white stacks were the boxes of Korrie’s things, labeled with magic marker in her mother’s blocky handwriting.
With horrible clarity, it all came rushing back down on her. The whole thing. From The Day Of to this five-hundredth day, from that one snowy morning to this awful summer day, the smothering weight of it all landed on her again. Erin backed up against the wall and let herself slide to the floor.
“What the hell was that?” she said aloud.
For these few strange minutes, she’d felt some restoration, as if she had finally escaped through the bars and flown free. Her old life, the only life that mattered, had reemerged and surrounded her, but now it was gone, and she could feel its warmth receding. What a malicious thing grief was, to let her have the only thing she wanted and then to snatch it away again.
After going through her steps of self-care—a stop, a cycle of deep breaths, a count of five, settling her pulse, and reordering her mind—she decided to pick herself up. Get herself straightened out. She lumbered down the stairs, went into the kitchen, retrieved the cup, and drank some water.
Outside the kitchen window, the sun shone in patches through the boughs of the trees, their shadows on the dry ground sharper now. The front of the refrigerator was bare. She stepped carefully toward the living room and looked past the staircase. The mess was gone, and the furniture sat arranged in its sterile order, as if no one lived here. She moved cautiously to the front door and opened it. The scent of morning dust and pine. A hummingbird at the feeder. Dry mountain soil, rangy plantings of an herb garden that needed water. The blues and greens of spruce, pine, and aspen.
She closed the door. Everything was as it had been, as it actually was.
Her phone read 10:00. Whatever that episode had been, whatever kind of hallucination, it had run for several minutes. Much longer than her usual flashbacks. Which could only be a bad sign, she decided, probably deserving a call to Dr. Tanner. But the last thing she wanted to do was talk this through with him. He would ruin it. He would ask her questions that felt somehow like commands. He would circle in tighter and tighter until she had to let go, and this thing that had happened just now would drift up and away like a dream dissipating until she couldn’t reach it anymore. She wanted to keep it for herself. No matter what it was.
Maybe she could write it down in her notebook. What a treat that would be for Group. Not only was she refusing to move forward; now she’d let herself fall backward off the cliff. Cluck. Concerned clucking all around. She ran her palms up her forehead.
“Damn.” She let all the breath out of her lungs. “What do I do now?”
What if she called her parents? She considered what time it was in California, what they might be doing on a summer Sunday morning. She touched her mother’s number on her phone and paused for a second to let it ring. But what kind of reaction would it cause if her parents found out she was getting worse? She quickly ended the call.
Her mother still couldn’t say Korrie’s name aloud; referred to the abduction as “the incident”; never said that her granddaughter had died, but that they’d “lost” her. She said it wasn’t Erin’s fault, again and again and again, until Erin wanted to ask when she would ever be able to convince herself.
It was probably better not to tell anyone about this episode she’d had. What good would it do to set off a bunch of alarms if she didn’t have to? She could deal with this by herself. Maybe it would unscramble her mind if she shut it down for a while. She decided to go back to sleep.
In her bedroom, she tried to make the space like night—closed the curtains, turned off the lamp, and crawled under the comforter. She closed her eyes, mulled for a moment.
“But I’m having a hard morning, Mommy.”
The voice in this memory sounded different than it had on the actual day. It sounded more distant. A barb of remorse tugged painfully in Erin’s chest. She whispered, “I know, Squid.”
Sleep came and went in shreds. She was aware of her breathing, of floating, of falling, of dreaming she was in bed with Zac. The bed was some expansive version of the one they’d shared in Berkeley. They were both young and naked and not quite the people they were really, and her body was like a teenager’s, but her belly was rounded in late pregnancy, though in reality Korrie was conceived here in Colorado. Zac spooned behind her, his hand reaching over her hip and cradling the bump. He asked her what it felt like, having a small human in there.
“Like a little squid wriggling inside a water balloon.” This was a memory, she understood in the dream, and when she turned to Zac to ask if he was remembering it too, he was gone. Her belly was flat and smooth, and the realization rushed over her that she’d misplaced the baby, forgotten about her. The baby had somehow fallen out. Trying not to lose control, Erin got on her knees and unfolded the wrinkles of bedding, searching for her, knowing that she was very small and hard to see.
Chapter Six
The Day Of: Friday, February 7, 2020 | Pearl Street Office Park
Erin arrived at 9:15 for her interview. Fifteen minutes late. She pushed through a revolving door that spilled into the reception area where a security officer told her to sign in, clip on a Visitor tag, and wait while he informed the interviewer.
After a monosyllabic phone exchange, which included a glance up at Erin, the man said to her, “Bethany
’s on a call now. She’ll come get you when she’s through.” Erin’s sense of the game theory behind this move was that she was receiving a penalty. She wondered if the wait would be an equivalent fifteen minutes. Equilibrium.
Erin crossed the stately marble lobby with what she hoped looked like confidence and settled herself in a chair. On a video wall monitor several yards to her right, a regimental-blue corporate logo loomed and then dissolved into a soundless scene with happy actors playing the parts of corporate entities in very nice suits. She compared herself to them, in her strictly rectangular polyester-blend separates, her weapons-grade pointy heels, no jewelry but her rings, no fragrance but soap, hair tamed into a tight bun. She thought her costume probably looked convincing enough.
The wait was fifteen minutes. Bethany strode across the lobby at 9:30 and reached out for a handshake but without conviction, with only a pincer grip of her fingers. Feeling chastised, Erin followed her into a conference room with a stone-surfaced table and concrete-colored chairs. The two of them sat in unison.
Bethany said, “Any trouble finding us?”
“No.” Erin smiled in a way that felt too bright, too phony. “Bad roads, dropping off my daughter at school. Not that I’m making excuses …” She laughed almost like a turkey gobbling and then tried to shut herself up. “Just the roads. Do you have kids?” Rapport-seeking behavior. She’d researched strategies to improve her odds. She was supposed to establish the rapport of a person-to-person connection before the interview began because theoretically that would influence what came next. Zac had once told her that people in close proximity share the weave of an electromagnetic interference pattern because the ion currents in human heartbeats generate energy fields of about eight feet in volume. But Erin could detect neither energy nor rapport.
“Nope. No kids,” Bethany said. She typed something on her small tablet.
Here sat Erin at the crux of the whole thing. The idea was that she should try to be a different Erin, one not so soft, not so dreamy, not so close to the bottom of the food chain. She and Zac had conferred with her father’s financial advisor, scoped the facts of their little future until they understood that they would need to become realists. Her half-finished culinary degree would never qualify her to open a restaurant of her own, and her website of original recipes continued to go unnoticed. And so here Erin was now, engaging in rapport-seeking behaviors, but wishing she were home in her favorite spot in front of the fireplace, with her daughter who was so tender-hearted and sincere that Erin wanted to keep her safe at home forever.
Once Again Page 3