“She did what?”
“Aaron is on the road, so I figured the best thing I could do was get away, bring Olive up here. But then Madison followed us, and Olive took off on me at the bridge.”
“At the bridge? She ran off on you twice?”
“She jumped into some woman’s van.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Olive told me the woman in the van was just some stranger, and she ran off because she wanted to go home to see her boyfriend. But I’ve seen that woman in the van before. She must have come up with Madison.”
“And—what? You think Olive is meeting up with Madison and this mysterious other woman at your father’s hunt camp, in the bush? Kira, that sounds crazy. More likely she’s just throwing a teenage tantrum over being away from her boyfriend, like she said.”
I ran a hand over my scalp, feeling a headache coming on. “I don’t know. But when I tried to find Olive at the camp, she ran from me.” At least, I’d thought it was Olive I was chasing through those woods. Now I wasn’t sure of anything. “She may be lost in the bush right now, terrified. If she’s not, I worry she might hitch a ride, like she did at the bridge. What if some stranger picks her up, some guy? Nathan, she’s only thirteen.”
Buddy whined and Nathan reached back to pat his head, to comfort him. But he didn’t take my hand to comfort me, as he would have in the past. “We’ll find her,” he said. “Buddy will find her.”
I was counting on it. Buddy was a smart dog with an educated nose. Nathan had trained him as a gun dog, a blood tracker, to find wounded deer during the fall hunt, but Buddy loved tracking so much that Nathan made a game of it at his parties, offering Buddy the scent on clothing belonging to friends who were hidden around his property or in the small patch of bush behind it. Buddy eagerly found Nathan’s tipsy, beer-swilling friends as they hid within outbuildings or behind logs or even up in trees.
“Have you got something of Olive’s that Buddy can catch her scent from?” he asked.
I nodded. “Her tote bag is in the back.”
He reached into the crew cab and unzipped Olive’s bag. “Something that hasn’t been freshly washed?”
“There’s a hoodie in a ziplock.” She had put it in there after spilling lemonade on it. It was her favorite pink cropped hoodie that she wore day after day, and often slept in.
Nathan dug out the plastic bag and tossed it to the console. “We’ll find her,” he said again.
We will find Olive, I reassured myself. But as I drove past a cemetery, I checked the rearview mirror compulsively to see if that minivan was following, and twisted the steering wheel with both hands as if I was wringing it out.
14
I parked the truck near the deer carcass and took a moment to tuck a blanket around Evie. Nathan grabbed Olive’s hoodie, still in the plastic bag, and clipped a leash on Buddy.
“I need to stay here, with Evie,” I said. I didn’t want to go back into that forest or meet the specters that waited for me there.
“We could bring her with us,” Nathan said.
A thunderhead boiled ominously overhead, throwing the forest into an early twilight. I shook my head as I stared into the bush, the swirling forms manifesting in the shadows, the memories there. “I would only slow you down.”
Nathan reined in Buddy to stop him from taking off, sniffing out the dead deer. “I’m just a stranger to Olive, Kira. If she doesn’t want to be found, I may well just push her even further into the forest.”
“I can’t—” I started. But how to explain? I wasn’t brave enough to face my own demons, even to find Olive. I was a coward. “We’ll just have to hope she’s ready to come out.”
“All right,” he said doubtfully. He pocketed his flashlight and offered Olive’s jacket to Buddy for him to smell. “Find it!” he said. Buddy was engaged by the blood of the deer I’d hit, but Nathan pulled him back to task, offering him another smell of the jacket.
“Olive went into the bush here.” I pointed at the newly cut path where she’d leapt the ditch and raced through roadside grass into the woods, the path I’d damped down further when I’d gone in after her.
Nathan nodded once. “Okay. Let’s go.” As Buddy tongued the trail, Nathan followed along behind him, repeatedly calling Olive’s name. The dog bounded all over.
“What’s he doing?” I called from the ditch.
“He’s distracted,” Nathan said, his voice small in the wind. “I can’t see Olive—any human—bouncing all over like this.”
“There was a fawn with that doe I hit,” I said.
“Was it injured?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t think so. But it likely walked through its mother’s blood trying to get back to her. The road is covered in it.”
“Buddy’s more interested in that fawn than finding Olive.”
Nathan offered the dog Olive’s jacket again and called “Find it!” His flashlight swept the trees as Buddy picked up a more direct scent trail, one that swung deeper into the woods along the trajectory Olive must have taken, toward the hunt camp road. And then the light disappeared.
“Nathan?” I yelled after him. “Is Buddy on her scent? Nathan?” I listened and then called again. “Nathan, can you hear me?” But he was too deep in the bush, and the wind drowned my voice.
Shapes took form and dissipated in the forest in front of me. I hugged myself, shivering. After a time, I saw Nathan and Buddy swing up toward the road near the overgrown driveway to my father’s cabin. Then Nathan called, “Buddy found something!”
I checked once more on Evie and jogged down the shoulder, catching up with Nathan at the hunt camp road.
He held something out to me. “Is this hers?” he asked.
I took the hair scrunchie from him. It was Olive’s favorite, one she carried in her pocket. “That’s hers,” I said. “Nathan, I saw her—” At least, I thought I’d seen her. “I ran after her, into the forest down there, across from the barn.” I found myself tearing up. “I worry I just scared her off, that she got lost in the bush. I got disoriented myself.”
“Hey, hey.” Nathan put a hand on my arm. “It’s okay. We will find her. It will just take some time.”
“But it was my fault, Nathan. I left her in there. If I had just kept going, maybe I could have led her out.”
“She ran off on you. You had Evie to think about. And in this forest, you had little chance of finding Olive, not if she didn’t want to be found. Not without Buddy.” Hearing his name, the beagle looked up expectantly, tail wagging.
“I should have gone in there after—” I stopped. The figure was there again, on the old camp road by the barn, standing small and dark among the trees. Then it was suddenly closer. Then closer yet. Jumping, somehow, without moving. Beside one tree, then another, hazy, as if rapidly vibrating.
“What?” Nathan said, turning. “What do you see? Is it Olive?”
I shook my head slowly, stepping back. As the figure jumped closer still, my heart raced. Breathe, I thought, just breathe.
“What’s going on?” Nathan asked.
Agitated, I shuffled back and forth in my runners, tears stinging my eyes.
Nathan wrapped his arm around me. “You’re shaking,” he said. “Oh god, this is your first time back, isn’t it? Since your father’s death.”
I nodded miserably but kept my eyes on the shadowy form, which was now only yards away.
Nathan pulled me close. “I should have remembered,” he said, and I hid in his arms.
The hazy figure was almost on us now, right there, and then it came into focus. Her delicate features and pale, almost white hair were so at odds with the heavy, oversized camouflage pants and jacket she wore, the hunter-orange vest and cap, the rifle she carried, her heavy boots. A child dressing up as a soldier. The girl walked right by me as if she didn’t see me, and made her way up the road to wait for help, as she had countless times in my memory. It was a walk she never completed; she had been stuck in this forest for
fifteen years, replaying her father’s death over and over. Since the overcast November day when my father died, this part of me had never left.
“Does Aaron know?” Nathan asked. “What happened in this forest? Did you tell him?”
“What?” I asked, wiping my face with my sleeve. It felt like a test. It was a test. Who did I trust more? Who was I more intimate with, Nathan or Aaron? I hesitated before answering.
Buddy sat up, eyeing something in the bush that only he could see.
“No one knows the full story,” I said.
Even Nathan, my oldest, dearest friend, didn’t know the whole truth. I had never dared to tell him, for the same reason I had never told him how serious things were with Aaron—because I didn’t want to lose him. For so many years, he and Teresa had been the only real family I had. I craned my neck to kiss him on the cheek, hoping that would make it clear to him: whatever else happened, I didn’t want to lose him. Nathan kissed me back, full on the mouth, and there we were again, back in our old love.
“I should get back to Evie,” I said, pulling back. “I’ve left her too long.”
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded, looking a little hurt. “We’ll try picking up Olive’s trail again.” He offered Olive’s jacket to Buddy. “Find it!”
As Buddy sniffed back and forth, unable, it seemed, to pick up a scent, I pushed through the bush to the road and sprinted back to the truck. Evie wasn’t crying, thank god, so hopefully she was still asleep. I couldn’t bear the thought of her waking in the truck, in the twilight of this lonely rural road, to find I wasn’t there. My heart skipped a beat as I thought, again, of how I’d left Olive in the forest alone. My god, if she was still in those woods, she would be out of her mind with panic by now. I felt my own panic start to well up again.
When I opened the back door of the rental, it took me a fraction of a second too long to register what was wrong. Evie’s car seat wasn’t there. My baby wasn’t there.
I felt the adrenaline really kick in then, the thundering rush as it spilled into my bloodstream, the hot prickle of sweat. I gasped.
“Nathan!” I cried. “Nathan!” He didn’t hear me, but Buddy did. The dog ran through the bush onto the road to bark in my direction, and Nathan followed to see what he’d spotted. I waved both arms, calling out to Nathan again, and he quickly ran the length of road between us, with Buddy leading the way.
As he reached me, I cried, “Evie’s gone!” Sobbing now.
“What? What?” He looked into the back of the crew cab as if he didn’t believe me. The truck still smelled of Evie, her peachy baby scent. “Who—”
“Madison,” I said. “It has to be Madison.”
I hoped to god it was Madison, and not some stranger. But then, Madison had broken into our house, tried to steal Olive away, and had followed me all the way up here. Who knew what she was capable of?
Anything, Aaron had said. She was capable of anything.
15
I jumped into the truck. “We’ve got to get to the sweet spot,” I said, starting the engine. My hands shook.
“To phone Madison?” Nathan asked, ushering Buddy into the crew cab.
“If she doesn’t have Evie—” My throat caught. Oh god.
“And if she does?”
“Then she wants something. She wants Olive.”
“But we haven’t found Olive yet.” He buckled himself in.
I didn’t have even that bargaining chip, not that I would use it. At least, I didn’t think I would use it. Then again, in that moment, I would have done anything to get Evie back.
The forest fled by us as I sped down the road, and then the corridor of trees opened and we were once again in farmland, rows of fence line ticking by on either side of us. Something raced across the road. A cat, or a fox.
“You need to slow down,” Nathan said. “The deer—”
“You don’t need to tell me how to drive,” I said, my voice rising. “And you don’t need to tell me about the frickin’ deer.”
I took a turnoff down a gravel sideroad too fast, skidding toward the ditch, nearly losing control.
Nathan grabbed the handle again. “Slow down!” he said.
But I sped on down the dirt road, counting on cutting a few minutes of driving time with this shortcut to the sweet spot. I eased off on the gas only to make the turn back onto the paved road, then floored it again until I reached the crossroads, what had once been a bustling little hub servicing the old-time community. An empty and dilapidated general store slumped sadly to one side.
I parked the truck at the sweet spot, checking to see that I had bars. Then I tapped on Madison’s number. In the seat behind us, Buddy whined.
The call went to voice mail. “She’s not answering,” I said.
“She may still be out of range,” Nathan said.
I texted her. Do you have Evie?
When she didn’t immediately respond, I tried again. Please, let me know if you have Evie.
I stared at my message as the seconds ticked by at a painfully slow speed. My question seemed so innocent sitting there, so rational, so ridiculously polite. Then time snapped back into place as my phone finally rang. It was Madison.
“Do you have her?” I asked, before she had a chance to say anything.
“So, now you want to talk,” she said.
“Do you have Evie?” I yelled, punching each word.
Nathan pushed a hand down on air to tell me to cool it.
In the background of Madison’s call, I heard the rumble of the vehicle she was in and, behind her, Evie’s cries. Was she driving while talking on the phone? No, she would be in Sarah’s van; Sarah would be driving.
“Yes, I have her,” Madison said.
“Oh, thank god.” I tried to keep my voice calm and level, sane, though I felt anything but sane. “Evie’s crying. Is she okay?”
“Of course she’s okay! What? You think I would hurt her? You think I’m some kind of monster?”
I left that one unanswered.
Then she laughed, a little hysterically. “But of course, you would think I’m a monster, wouldn’t you? You believe all that bullshit Aaron tells you. Mad Madison, right? Aaron started calling me that during arguments almost as soon as we were married. Any time I disagreed with him or pointed out just what kind of asshole he was, he accused me of being hormonal and unbalanced and said I needed help.”
Hormonal. Aaron had called me that a time or two. But then, I was too sensitive and quick to take offense, wasn’t I? Pregnancy and then lactation hormones talking.
“For a while there, he convinced me I was crazy,” Madison went on. “Hear it enough and you come to believe it.”
Shut the fuck up, I thought. “I just want my baby back.”
On the other end, Evie’s cries had become eardrum-shattering howls. Madison had to raise her voice over them. “Believe me, I just want to give her back.”
Fuck. “Then why the hell did you take her in the first place?”
Nathan shook his head, warning me, again, to bring it down. I waved a hand in return. Stop distracting me.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Madison said. “You wouldn’t let me see my daughter.” She whined as if she was about to burst into tears herself. “I had to find a way to get to Olive.” Then her tone took on a sharper edge. “In any case, you were the one who left your baby all alone in a parked truck by the side of the road. Anyone could have taken her. It was unbelievably irresponsible.”
“I didn’t think—” I stopped there. I had done so much that day—in my life, really—without thinking things through, reckless things, dangerous things. But she was lecturing me about being irresponsible?
“I’ll tell the cops that, if you try to call them on me,” she said, speaking too fast, like she had been chewing on this worry. “I’ll tell them you left your baby in a parked truck and I was only taking her to safety.”
“I didn’t say anything about involving the police.” I closed my eyes and pinched
the bridge of my nose, as I had so often seen Aaron do when he talked to this woman on the phone. “Look, Madison, bring Evie back to me right now and I’ll forget the whole thing. It never happened.”
“What’s that?” she said. “You cut out there for a second.”
“Just bring Evie to me,” I repeated, louder.
“No!” she said shrilly, then she said it again, as if convincing herself. “No, I’ll only give Evie back if I get Olive in return.”
“Why are you doing this to us?”
“What would you do if you believed your child was in danger?” Her voice caught. “What would you do to save your child?”
I was there now, and we both already knew what I would say. What would any mother do to save her child? Anything.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
Madison’s voice ratcheted up a notch. “Bring Olive down to the beach in that village of yours,” she said. “When we were in town earlier, I saw they were going to have fireworks on the beach. The girls will like that. We can meet there.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” I said quickly. “Is that woman, Sarah, with you? I knew she must have something to do with you!”
“Not now, Kira!” Madison was using her preschool teacher voice on me. “I’ve been trying to explain everything to you, and to Olive. I’ll talk to you both when I see her, and you can take Evie back then.”
I glanced up at Nathan, who, sitting this close, was listening in to both sides of the conversation. He shrugged and shook his head. There was no easy way to tell Madison that I couldn’t bring Olive to her.
“You still there, Kira?” Madison asked. Her voice had gone strange, tinny, like a robot, as she started to lose bars. Evie’s cries behind her sounded vaguely like an ambulance siren.
“Look, Madison, we have a situation,” I said. “I hit a deer and had to stop, and Olive jumped out of the truck. She ran off into the bush. I tried to find her—”
The Almost Wife Page 9