Now You See Her

by Lisa Leighton

  “Wait, what was the question?” I can’t help but mess with him a little.

  His face reddens and he flips open the screen of his laptop. I take a deep breath and prepare myself for whatever comes next.

  Ready or not, here I come.

  Twenty-Eight

  WHEN I PLOP DOWN NEXT TO LANDON ON THE COUCH MY HAND brushes his arm, sending a shiver of longing through my body. Focus. I need to focus.

  “I found something this morning at the house. Birth certificates for Amelia and Mae. Amelia’s birthday was right, but the names on the certificates were different.”

  He wrinkles his forehead a little. “Wait, you found birth certificates? How?”

  “Let’s just focus on the facts, okay. Birth certificates. Wrong names. Scary guy trying to kidnap Amelia. Something is going on.”

  “Uh, yeah. Have you told your parents? Gone to the police? I mean, you said you saw someone try to take this girl. And now you have birth certificates? Sophie . . .”

  “I tried to do all that,” I say, even though I haven’t gone to the police. Not sure my story would hold up there especially with all the breaking and entering of late. “But I’m one ‘episode’ away from another hospital stay. My parents are convinced that something is seriously wrong with me. I have to do this on my own.”

  He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but our eyes lock. I meet his gaze, unblinking, willing him to see the truth behind Sophie’s mismatched eyes. And then he nods and I know I’ve passed some sort of test.

  I open a new tab on his computer. My hand shakes, screwing up a few letters as I type the unfamiliar name.

  Jenna Elizabeth Dowling

  The first result is a Google image. Jenna Elizabeth Dowling looks about two years old. She smiles back at me on the computer screen, parallel to a picture of Haylee Morgan Dowling, who looks a little younger. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? headlines the top in big bold letters and the girls’ birthdays, heights, weights, eye colors, and hair colors are listed below. A paragraph explains that the children were last seen with their mother, April Nicole Dowling, fifteen years ago on September 4 in Baltimore, Maryland.

  Next to it is a blurry picture of a much younger version of my mom.

  I scribble April’s name down in my notebook without tearing my eyes off the pictures of the little girls. Identical sprays of freckles across their noses, those baby-fine curls you only ever see on little kids.

  Jenna and Haylee.

  Me and Mae.

  Same girls. Same faces.

  New names. New truth.

  “Holy shit,” Landon whispers.

  Twenty-Nine

  MY ENTIRE LIFE IS UNRAVELING RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES. I GUESS I always knew there were loose threads, things about my family that were strange, the stuff that made us different. The constant moving, my mom’s refusal to talk about my dad. It’s like your oldest, warmest sweater that’s itchy and tight and threadbare, but you never pull those threads because even though it’s uncomfortable sometimes, it’s still your sweater. And now the thread has been pulled and my entire life is unspooling before me. My trust for my mom, the endless stories Mae and I concocted about our dead father, the moving.

  On one hand, I hate myself for being dumb or dismissive or naïve enough to ignore all of it or think that it was normal. On the other hand, I want to go back to being that dumb, naïve girl. Because that girl isn’t sitting in a sunroom next to the cutest boy she’s ever kissed feeling like she might vomit all over his charming whitewashed floors.

  With shaking fingers I click on the link to read the story about our disappearance in the Baltimore Sun.

  Girls, 1 & 2, Abducted by Mother Wanted for Questioning in Stepfather’s Death

  According to investigators, April Nicole Dowling is suspected of abducting her two-year-old daughter, Jenna Elizabeth Dowling, and one-year-old daughter, Haylee Morgan Dowling, at three a.m. from their home in Deerfield while their father, Dr. Edward Dowling, was on call at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

  Dowling’s car was found abandoned near the harbor with the car seats still installed.

  “She was not of sound mind. I am worried for her safety and more importantly the safety of our children,” Dr. Edward Dowling said in a recent statement to the press asking for any information on the whereabouts of his children.

  Police say April Dowling, twenty-six, is also wanted for questioning in connection to her stepfather’s death six years ago.

  Anyone with information is asked to contact Baltimore police.

  The picture that runs next to the story is of my mom, Mae, and me. There’s no question that it’s us. No possible mistake. This is my mother. This is my sister. This is my life. My stomach heaves and as much as I want to rush to the bathroom and be sick, I need to know more.

  “This is crazy, Sophie. Like we need to call the police and tell them immediately.” Landon’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a million miles away. I can’t even begin to formulate a response, I’m too focused on trying to process “not of sound mind” and “wanted for questioning in connection to her stepfather’s death.”

  With trembling fingers I type April Dowling into the search bar and hit enter. The hits are fast and furious. A stepfather who died in a house fire. His death was originally ruled an accident, but when April’s daughters went missing, Edward Dowling said she had confessed to killing her stepfather and threatened to take his daughters. He kicked her out of the house, but she took the children from a babysitter when he was at work one night.

  My mother stole me and Mae. She’s a kidnapper. A liar. A murderer.

  And that man. The man who tried to take me was my father. And he was actually here to save me. To save us. From our mother. The woman who stole us from our beds and moved from tiny town to tiny town, burying us in middle America like stolen treasure.

  A surreal sense of detachment washes over me, like I’m watching this from my coma in the hospital instead of living it in Landon Crane’s sunroom. I click and read and scroll. Memorizing every detail. Trying to connect this story, this woman, this man, to my actual life.

  It’s the quotes from my father that my eyes end up skimming for in every story.

  Devastating loss.

  Pray for my girls.

  I will not rest until I find my family.

  My fingers automatically reach for the coin in my pocket. Tony, Tony, please come down. Something’s lost that can’t be found.

  Up until Sophie and Mr. Graham and this moment, dads were like dinosaurs or unicorns—fascinating to view from a distance, disappointing in reality, but in my life, my real life, completely extinct. Mythical.

  But suddenly my dad is real. His name exists on a computer screen and he’s talking about me and Mae and how much he loves us. I can hardly look away from the screen long enough to write his name down beside April’s.

  When we were little, Mae and I learned about dads from TV shows. They were always around, wearing suits, eating breakfasts, teaching their kids how to play sports, and telling them to listen to their mothers. We were living outside Dallas when I started kindergarten and we finally stayed in one place long enough for me to wonder about our dad. I remember watching kids walk into school, hands gripped between two parents, fathers and mothers dressed for work. Not pretend dads. Real dads. Present. Alive. With their kids every single day.

  When I got home one afternoon, I asked my mom the obvious question.

  “Can we get a dad?” I said, like he was a puppy or something you opened on your birthday.

  She dropped a plate of cookies she was holding. I remember the white shards dancing across the floor, tiny painted blue-and-yellow flowers skirting the edges.

  She walked right over the broken plate, the thick-soled shoes she wore to her job crunching across the glass. Bending down to my level, she gripped both of my hands into her larger, warm ones and looked me right in the eye. “Your dad is in heaven.”

  We never talked about heaven, never went to church
or prayed, but I’d seen it in movies and TV shows too and there were clouds and angels and singing. I remember wondering if we could visit him there, jump from cloud to cloud and watch life continue below like I always imagined.

  As we got older, the heaven story wasn’t enough anymore. We’d ask questions. But my mom seemed to curl into herself and hide for days whenever we mentioned our dad. Eventually Mae and I stopped asking because it wasn’t worth it to lose our mom too.

  But now he’s here, alive on the computer screen, and I can’t stop poring over every word. Every time I click on a link, my stomach clenches, hoping for a picture of the man who is my dad and who has not died in some sort of mysterious accident that traumatized our mom, but there are only pictures of Mom and Mae and me. My eyes drink in every snapshot, every smile, every piece of the life that my mom destroyed when she stole us.

  Dr. Edward Dowling. I whisper the name as I type, and I brace myself when I hit enter. There’s a litany of websites listing doctors, but they don’t provide much information beyond the fact that he’s located in Baltimore, Maryland.

  I think about the man who tried to grab me. The sweatshirt hiding his face. The rain. The urgency in his voice. If I’m Jenna Dowling, the man who tried to take me (save me?) had to be Dr. Edward Dowling. He wore a necklace of St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Finally, the pieces snap into place.

  My hand is shaking when I click on the link to view images, but there are so many different faces and random pictures that come up in the search, I have no real way of knowing which face belongs to my dad. I’d like to think that some primal part of me would recognize his eyes or the set of his jaw, that I would see a ghost of myself hovering in front of my dad’s features, but all the photos I page through look like strangers.

  “They have a father. He’s not dead. I wonder if that’s the man . . .” My voice trails off because I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. Not yet.

  “We have to tell someone. . . .” Landon’s voice shakes a little. This is too much for him.

  “No!” The word comes out too fast, too loud. I’m not even sure why I’m saying it, but I know we can’t tell anyone about this. Despite the fact that I’m completely falling for this guy, I wish he wasn’t next to me. I need time to think. Time to process.

  A doorbell rings, but the sound is distant, like it’s at another house in another world. I lean in closer to the computer as though the words will make sense if I can only see them clearer. My mom hasn’t ever seemed crazy or unstable. She’s never tried to hurt us. The facts are all here in black and white, but somehow, as angry as I am with her, I can’t imagine turning her into the police. Not without an explanation for all she’s done. Anger pounds through my skull to the beat of clicking high heels, the death march of time slipping between my fingers once again. Voices drift beneath the paned glass doors of the sun-filled room.

  Landon’s mom asks someone if they’d like tea. I hear a clipped voice answer, “No, no. I’ve just been trying to get a hold of Sophie and we were worried, so . . .”

  Shit. Mrs. Graham.

  I’m the girl who kisses boys just because she feels like it, the not-Sophie, not-Amelia girl who does whatever the hell she wants and finds the truth at all costs, I remind myself. But when I see Mrs. Graham’s face through the glass doors, I want to scream. I need more time.

  “Sophie? Oh, thank God.”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Graham,” Landon says, closing the laptop with a click. I want to reach over and yank it out from under his fingers. I need more time with those names. I need to know more about April Dowling and her daughters. “We were just working on a government project. Sophie tried to call you, but the reception in here sucks.”

  Mrs. Graham is distracted by the graveyard out back for a second, but it doesn’t last long.

  “Okay, well, time to go.” Like I’m four and this is a play date and she’s exhausted by the number of warnings she’s had to give me.

  “Oh, Hillary, I wish you’d have some tea and a scone. I just made them, the kids can—” Mrs. Crane is silenced.

  “Sophie?” The word is made of sharp edges, and I realize that this is how Sophie’s parents must control her, all these tiny little humiliations. Landon is uncomfortable and embarrassed for me, but I hardly notice. My eyes are still trained on the closed laptop sitting on the coffee table, full of truths that I can’t quite process.

  Mrs. Graham turns to Mrs. Crane now with a wide smile as though she’s not about to lose her shit over her missing daughter who keeps having these inconvenient lapses. “Emily, thank you so much for your hospitality. I keep meaning to run that basket back over!”

  Mrs. Crane shakes her head. “Keep it,” she says with a strained smile.

  “See you later, I guess,” Landon mumbles.

  The entire day swirls in front of me. The light streaming into this magical space, our kiss, all the secrets, all the lies. I shake my head to clear it, and his face falls. None of this is real. It’s not fair to keep going, not fair for Landon or for Sophie. I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not who I think I am. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.

  I let Mrs. Graham guide me toward the door without another word. I shouldn’t have come. This was a mistake.

  As much as I want to look back, want to thank Mrs. Crane for baking scones that taste like heaven, thank Landon for giving me the hope that maybe I don’t have to do this alone, that maybe I don’t have to do anything alone—I can’t. Because I know that the hurt in Landon’s eyes will kill me. Because this is what he expected of Sophie Graham all along. And I hate that he was right.

  Thirty

  MRS. GRAHAM PULLS HER CAR UP THEIR LONG DRIVEWAY AND PUTS it into park, keeping her hands fixed on the steering wheel, her eyes trained forward. When I shift to unbuckle my seat belt, focused on rushing up the stairs two at a time, locking the door to Sophie’s room, alone with her phone, the notebook, Google, she puts her hand on my arm and stops me.

  There are fine lines etched into the thin skin around her eyes, unshed tears trembling over mascaraed lashes. It’s hard to look at her because I want to see a stranger, someone else’s mom, someone else’s problem, but instead I hear muffled cries behind closed bedroom doors, I see folded clothes in neat piles, I taste thoughtfully prepared meals, and I hear her supportive cheers. With every passing second she’s becoming less and less someone else’s mom, and more and more mine. “I’m worried about you,” she whispers.

  Her tears swirl with my reflection, my dark hair always such a shock to people when she’d take me out as a child. “She must look like her father!” Strangers just couldn’t help themselves. And if they bent down closer and saw my eyes—one green, one blue—they’d grow quiet because they’d already wasted a comment on my hair. Missed opportunity. Sophie’s memories no longer come as a shock. They’re just there.

  “I’m fine,” I whisper back. And maybe I really will be fine. Maybe Sophie’s life is easier. Maybe their secrets aren’t as toxic. Why am I fighting so hard to get back to a life that wasn’t even real in the first place?

  But then I remember Mae. I remember my sister. I remember my dad, the man I thought was trying to abduct me. And I remember my mom, the woman who actually did.

  Mrs. Graham swipes away the tears and shakes her head. “I know. I know.” She tries to convince herself. “I just want everyone to be okay.”

  She presses a button on her rearview mirror to open one of the garage doors and pulls forward. I see Sophie’s black BMW SUV parked in the garage as though it didn’t just mow an innocent girl down during a thunderstorm. Mrs. Graham slams on the brakes, just as shocked as I am. We idle for a second and then she reverses and repositions to pull in beside it. “Oh. Your car’s back,” she says finally. “Daddy must have picked it up today.” She turns to me and smiles. I guess this is Mr. Graham’s way of wanting everyone to be okay too. Moving right along. But Sophie’s fancy car looks way too much like freedom for me to do anything but return her smile.
If Mr. and Mrs. Graham want everyone to be okay, then I have to be okay. I lean over and kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Mom.” And then I unbuckle, hold on tight to my book bag, and head for the house.

  I could read the same articles all night. I could switch search terms to dig for pictures, obsess over details, and reread my notes until the words are carved into my vision and I see them hovering even when I look away. I could.

  But this isn’t only about Amelia. It’s about Mae, it’s about Haylee, that smiling one-year-old face on the missing children’s poster. She needs to know the truth.

  So I smile through dinner, linger over dessert, and suffer through the latest episode of some reality show that has celebrities competing to build furniture because I’m hoping that’s what Sophie would do. Lights out at ten and phone turned over to charge in your parents’ room in the Graham house, to ensure eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. If my plan works, I won’t even get a power nap.

  Instead, I focus on the ticking clock in the upstairs hallway, the leaves rustling outside the open window. I let the soft percussion of this household become a soundtrack. Sophie’s bedazzled flashlight is aimed at a new page of the notebook as I write, the words trailing across the page as if by magic.

  My eyes are heavy, the pen bobbing along with my head, sharp lines cutting through every couple words. I sit up in bed, rub away the heaviness, and swing my legs over to get a drink of water. As soon as my bare feet touch the cool wood, I hear a tiny scratch, ping, bounce on my window. I freeze. Silence. And then it comes again, this time, ping, scratch, ping, ping. My heart pumps furiously inside my chest and I don’t move or even breathe because I need to hear. One last time. Tap, tap, ping.

  And then I hear him say my name.

  “Sophie? Are you up?” The threat dissipates as fast as it appeared. I rush to the window, and there he is—Landon, partially illuminated by the dim streetlight.

  “I swear throwing rocks at your window was my last resort,” he says. I think of Jake scaling the house and know it could be worse.