The Year of Fog

by Michelle Richmond

  “Who’s been taking care of you, honey?”

  “Teddy and Jane.”

  “Where are they?”

  She points to the ocean, to a group of surfers in the distance.

  “Have they been nice to you? Did they hurt you?” I ask the questions before thinking. I’m not sure I want to hear the answers, not yet. And besides, there’s no time.

  She shrugs, stretches her skinny brown legs out in front of her, and digs her toes into the sand. “We went to the butterfly farm,” she says. She raises one hand in the air, spreads the fingers wide. “I saw butterflies this big.” She drops her hands to her sides, sifts sand through her fingers, doesn’t look at me.

  There’s so much I want to know, so many questions. Where has she been living? Has she been hurt? What have they told her about us? And how did they take her? What did they say that day on Ocean Beach, how did they convince her to go with them? But these are questions for later. I must get her away from here.

  She brushes a strand of hair out of her face. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He’s waiting for you. It’s time to go.”

  She is silent, gazing out at the water. “Okay,” she says, and then the tears come, soundlessly.

  I stroke her hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m finally here.”

  She stretches her hand out to touch my arm. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick. She is wearing light blue nail polish that’s chipped around the edges. These long months, I’ve envisioned our reunion. I’ve rehearsed the things I would say to her. Now all the rehearsed things fall away, and it is just the two of us, looking out at the blue ocean where it meets the blue sky, the bright sun beating down. A drop of sweat trickles from the nape of her neck, down her spine, disappearing beneath her dress.

  The tiny hairs on her arms have turned blonde. I wrap my arms around her again, feeling the warmth of her skin. This time she hugs back—just the tiniest pressure, but I’m sure she’s hugging back. I can feel her small hands, pressing lightly.

  I am aware of the importance of time, aware that I must get her away from here. Along with the elation, there is a sense of panic, a knowledge that I must choose the proper course of action. I hold her face in my hands and look into her eyes. “Ready?”

  She wipes her nose on her arm. Something about that gesture—so childish, so unaware—sends a stab to the center of my heart, and I can’t see for the tears. I stand, reaching out to take her hand, and she allows me to pull her up. In one startling moment I realize she has grown by a good three inches. Her shoulders and legs have a muscular quality that wasn’t there before.

  “This way,” I say, pointing into the trees. She hesitates, standing still, our arms stretched taut between us.

  “What about Teddy and Jane?” she asks.

  I kneel down in front of her. “Your daddy and I have missed you so much.”

  “They told me to stay here. I’ll get in trouble.”

  “You won’t get in trouble,” I say. “I promise.”

  Kneeling before her, trying to convince her to sneak away with me, I feel almost criminal, and I think of the kidnappers, wondering if they felt the same way I’m feeling now—this sickening sense of urgency and impatience, the fear that something will go wrong, someone will thwart our escape. Latin music wafts from a restaurant down the beach, mingling with the happy shrieks of children. The sun is high and huge. My sunglasses are no match for the Costa Rican sun at noon, which bleaches everything to a whitish pastel and makes the air into a dizzying display of heat waves.

  I tug gently at Emma’s hand. She takes a step, then another, slowly. In front of us there is the line of trees, and escape. Behind us there is the ocean, and the danger of detection. What will I do if Teddy and Jane come up to me, screaming that I’m taking their child? Who will be believed?

  Walking past the crowds of sunbathers, my feet plowing into the sand, holding tightly to Emma’s damp hand, it feels as though everything has slipped into slow motion.

  And then, this is what we do: we simply disappear. The jungle takes us in. One moment we’re out in the open, on the beach, where anyone can see us. The next moment we’re standing on a narrow path scattered with pebbles and broken shells. Only then do I notice that Emma is barefoot, and her feet are scarred and blistered. For a moment I try to carry her, but she’s too big now, and I can’t move fast enough. “I’m sorry, baby,” I say, setting her down. “You’ll have to walk. We need to move quickly.” I give her my flip-flops, which are too big, but she doesn’t complain.

  We pass over a little creek, then begin the steep descent toward the road. I never let go of her hand. At one point, I feel her fingers wiggling in mine, and I loosen my grip a little. I can’t stop looking at her, can’t stop marveling at the miracle of her presence. To have Emma here, with me, hand in hand. To see her face and hear her voice. Only now do I admit to myself that there were times when I believed I would never see her again, times when I believed, like Jake did, that she was dead. To think that I was going home. That I might have stepped onto a plane two days ago and never found her.

  There’s a rustling in the leaves above us. Emma stops, becomes very still, squeezes my fingers. “Look,” she whispers, pointing to a movement in the trees. “Spider monkeys.”

  There are about a dozen of them, swinging fast, moving through the canopy of trees. Their tiny bodies are gray and wiry. I look at Emma, her face turned up to the green growth, her eyes wide and bright. It’s not just her height, her hair, her weight. She has changed. And I’m struck, at last, by the full force of what has happened. She is here with me. We’re making our escape. Could I be dreaming? Have I entered some hallucinatory state? But the smell of the ocean, the sound of birds, the feel of her hand in mine—all of these things serve as proof that the moment is not merely my imagination. This is not a fairy tale, not a dream; this forest is real, this child is real.

  Minutes ago, she was lost. Now, she is found.

  My heart is beating painfully fast, and I’m out of breath, more from elation and fear than from physical exertion. I kneel down and look into her face, still trying to believe. “Emma?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is it really you?”

  “Yes. It’s me.” Something in the way she says “me,” something impetuous in the emphasis. Verging on sassiness—just as Emma always did. She looks over her shoulder, as if she, too, is now afraid of getting caught. “Let’s go,” she says, tugging at my hand.

  Five minutes later we emerge from the jungle onto a narrow, paved road lined with palatial houses. It’s another half mile to the main road. There, we stop and wait for a taxi or bus. I buy a big straw hat and dark sunglasses from a roadside stand. “Put these on,” I say. She doesn’t question me; it is as if she understands the necessity for disguise. The only time I let go of her hand is to take the money from my purse to pay the vendor.

  I peer down the road—just cars and motorcycles rounding the bend. Why is there no bus, no taxi? What’s taking so long?

  “Baby,” I say while we’re waiting, “how did you get from San Francisco to Costa Rica?”

  “We drove.” She frowns. “It took forever, and they don’t have air conditioning.”

  “What kind of car do Teddy and Jane drive?”

  “A van.”

  “What color?”

  “Yellow. It’s always breaking down. They made me hide under blankets in the back every time we saw the police. It was scary.”

  “You don’t have to be scared anymore, okay? We’re going home.”

  I think of that first day, the first clue, how the van seemed less like evidence, more like a misleading distraction, a question. I look for it now, as I did those months at Ocean Beach. I imagine the moment when Teddy and Jane return to the towels and find her absent. Will they feel that same sense of confusion that I felt eleven long months ago, and then the rising panic, the awareness that she is gone? Will they curse those minutes in the ocean when they had their eyes tu
rned toward the coming waves, those minutes when they forgot one crucial fact: Emma on the beach, alone?

  Surely they’ve noticed her missing by now. I imagine them running up and down the beach, shouting her name. Approaching strangers with the news, “We’ve lost our little girl.”

  No taxis come. It seems like forever before the bus to Quepos arrives, but when I look at my watch I realize that only nine minutes have passed. The glass doors open, and Emma steps on, pulling me behind her. “Buenos días,” she says to the bus driver.

  “Bueno,” he says.

  “Quepos?” I ask.

  “Sí.”

  I drop the coins into the box. We could be any mother and daughter, going home from a day at the beach. Emma takes the first open seat, halfway back, and I sit down beside her, my heart beating wildly as I try to solidify my plan. In Quepos we’ll catch a bus to San José. In San José we’ll get a hotel room, then call Jake. He won’t believe me, I’m sure. He’ll think it’s someone else calling, not me; he’ll think it’s some cruel prank.

  A few more passengers climb on board, the door shuts, and then the bus is moving. The smell of the beach, of mangroves. And the smell of Emma, coconut lotion and childish sweat, salt in her hair, maybe a couple of days without bathing. She lets go of my hand, and I realize I’ve been holding on so hard my knuckles hurt. She stretches her fingers and stares out the window for a few seconds, then takes off the sunglasses and looks up at me.

  “Abby?”

  “Yes?”

  She bites her lower lip, thinking. It’s a gesture straight from her father, an exact imitation. I don’t remember her ever doing this before. And then she says, “Where were you?”

  Not an accusation, exactly, just a question, a thing she can’t understand. I try to come up with the answer. I want to tell her how desperately we wanted her back, how every minute was filled with the thought of her, but there are no words to explain.

  “I was looking for you everywhere,” I say, pulling her close. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I thought you and Daddy forgot me.”

  “Oh, baby, we never forgot. We were looking for you every minute.”

  We arrive at the bus station in Quepos just in time to buy our tickets for San José. No time to call Jake. All I can think about is getting her out of town. With each step we take, the search area widens for Teddy and Jane. With each passing minute, their chance of finding us decreases.

  We’re the last passengers to board, and the doors close loudly behind us. The bus is crowded, but fortunately two vacant seats remain in the back, across the aisle from one another. Even this small distance seems too great. I sit sideways, my legs in the aisle, my hands on Emma. Afraid she’ll get away somehow. Afraid that if I let go, even for a moment, she will disappear like the fog of a dream.

  “When can I talk to Daddy?” Emma says.

  “As soon as we get to San José.”

  “Where’s San José?”

  “Just a couple of hours from here.”

  “Will Daddy be in San José?”

  “No, he’s in San Francisco. We have to call him to come meet us.”

  She glances over to the seat beside her, where a teenage boy is snoring, then turns back to me.

  “What about Mommy?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Mommy. Will she be there?”

  “Sweetheart,” I say, “do you mean Jane?”

  “No,” she says impatiently. “Mommy.”

  “Have you seen your mommy?” I ask.

  She nods. “We went to see her at a motel.” Emma holds up her left hand and wiggles her index finger, showing off a glittery ring, the kind you can get for five dollars at Claire’s Boutique in the mall. “She gave me this.”

  I swallow hard, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “How do you know it was your mommy?”

  She reaches into her dress pocket and pulls out a faded Polaroid. “It was her,” she says, pointing to a slightly younger, slightly slimmer Lisbeth. In the photo, Lisbeth is standing in Golden Gate Park, Jake by her side. Jake holds a tiny baby in his arms. He’s smiling, Lisbeth isn’t. Both of them are squinting into the sun.

  I feel as though all the air has suddenly been let out of my lungs.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Mommy gave it to me.” She takes the photo from me and puts it back in her pocket.

  “When?”

  She shrugs, already growing bored of the conversation. “I don’t remember.”

  I’m trying to process the information, trying to make sense of this impossible new fact. I remember what Jake told me that night at his house, after Lisbeth made her dramatic appearance at the press conference and showed up at his door: She wanted to know what would happen if Emma was found—could we give it another go, try to make a family.

  “Did you see her more than once?” I ask.

  “Yes, but I haven’t seen her for a long time.” Emma bites her lip, as if she’s trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. “She said Daddy was going to come get me and we were all going to live together, but he never did.”

  So many questions: Was Lisbeth there the day of the kidnapping? How do Teddy and Jane fit into the picture? What were their plans? How did they treat her?

  “Do you remember the last time we were together?” I ask. “Do you remember looking for sand dollars on the beach?”

  “Sort of,” she says. She turns away from me and presses her forehead against the window.

  “Can you tell me what happened that day?”

  “Can I have a hamburguesa for lunch?” she says.

  “Of course you can.”

  There are so many things I want to know, so many connections I’m trying to piece together. But Emma has had enough of this conversation. Something about the casual way she disregards my questions actually gives me hope. Research has shown how well children adapt, their amazing ability to recover from trauma. Despite her long absence, she seems so much like herself, the stubborn girl who was never shy about saying what she wanted. She swings her legs back and forth, tapping her feet against the floor. Her hands are in her lap and now she’s looking straight ahead, a slightly stunned expression on her face. The bus rumbles to a start and lurches forward. There is the rattle of glass as passengers begin lowering the windows, trying to get some relief from the heat.

  “I’m thirsty,” Emma says after a few minutes.

  I give her a bottle of water from my purse. The water is warm, but she downs the whole bottle in less than a minute.

  “I have to go,” she says a few minutes later.

  The bathroom is only a couple of feet away, but I get up with her and stand outside until she’s finished. She comes out grimacing, holding her fingers to her nose. It’s a nothing gesture, universal among children, and yet I’m strangled with emotion just to see her doing this thing, this normal thing. Alive.

  77

  WE ARRIVE in San José at four in the afternoon. I find a taxi just outside the station and ask the driver to take us to the nicest hotel. He must have his own version of “nice,” because he drops us off at a less-than-impressive motel ten minutes from the bus station. The guy behind the desk, a teenager in a black button-down, chats with Emma in Spanish while I fill out the registration form. I have one hand on the pen, one hand on her shoulder. As I’m paying for the room, I realize that I left my bag and my Leica at the hotel in Quepos. In the urgency of the moment, I completely forgot they were there. No matter—I have my money and passport. I’ll have the other things sent to me.

  Outside our room, I fumble with the big wooden key chain. Inside, I draw the curtains. The room smells like cigarette smoke. There’s a tiny TV, tile floors, a chair, a couple of lamps. A cheap painting of the Wild West hanging above the full-size bed. Emma sits in the chair by the window and plays with the controls on the air conditioner. It’s an effort to keep my distance, an effort not to take her in my arms and hold on to her with all my strength.


  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “I’m about to call him.”

  My hands are shaking so much I can barely hold on to the phone. I remember that afternoon at the Beach Chalet so many months ago, when the Russian woman pressed the phone into my hand. I hesitated for a moment before dialing Jake’s number. I knew I had to call him; I knew he had to be told. And yet I understood that, once I made the phone call, there would be no way to turn back the clock.

  Now, the situation is reversed. And still I have this hesitation, this desire to hold on to the moment. I lost her, I found her, she is in this room with me. It is a moment of near-perfect happiness, and part of me doesn’t want to disturb it. In a single moment on the beach, I destroyed Jake’s life; in the months that followed, I watched it fall apart. Minutes from now, possibly seconds, I will begin to put it back together.

  I dial his home number. No answer. Then I try his cell phone. Again, nothing. “Call me,” I say each time. “It’s urgent.”

  I’m ashamed of the relief I feel when he doesn’t answer, ashamed to be grateful for the time this gives me. A few more minutes alone with Emma. She sits quietly in the chair, staring at her feet. There’s a ketchup stain on her dress.

  It occurs to me that I haven’t fed her. How could I have overlooked this simple, basic need? “You must be hungry,” I say.

  She nods vehemently.

  In my purse I find cheese crackers, a Snickers bar, and a banana. I arrange these things on the little table in front of her, then pour bottled water into a plastic cup. “We’ll get you some real food soon. Cross my heart.”

  I dump the contents of my wallet onto the bed, rifle through colorful paper money, receipts, and business cards, and find the phone number Nick Eliot gave me.

  “U.S. Embassy,” a genderless voice says.

  “I’m looking for Wiggins.”

  “One moment.”

  When the line clicks over, I get voice mail. “Wiggins here,” the voice says. “Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”

  “My name is Abby Mason,” I say. “I’m a friend of Nick Eliot. He said he was going to explain my situation to you. Please call as soon as you can. It’s urgent. It’s about Emma Balfour. I found her. She’s right here with me. We’re staying at Villa Grande in San José, room 212.” I read off the number taped to the phone, then add once again, “It’s extremely urgent.”