by Lorena May
She works as a banker from home and has three cats that landed on her door-step, one at a time, and been taken in. Of course! That’s what she’s like! Diane comes from a happy, middle-class family of four; three brothers and herself, the youngest. At the age of forty she was beginning to lose hope of ever marrying again. Her greatest desire is to have a child. That’s given me much respite. She loves looking after Cassandra, and does so with such love and tenderness; a natural mother. As I said, we’re very different.
Our tenant, Kyle, contacted us about our basement suite before we’d even had a chance to advertise it. He’d heard from a friend that we had one, and since the friend had rented it from previous owners and the location was close to his office, it was perfect for him.
And he’s perfect for us. He’s thirty-five – just three years older than Ben, and a great friend. He and I have a lot in common. Both of us had loser parents. (He doesn’t even remember his.) Both of us we were raised through the foster system. Raised or shuffled, depending on how you look at it. Kyle likes the same movies that I do; Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction being amongst his favorites. He likes my kind of music; Metallica, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Megadeth. Most importantly, he’s non-judgemental. He’s witnessed my lack of caring for Cassandra, my freak-outs and break-downs. And he just comforts me. Tells me I’m okay. Who wouldn’t be totally stressed with a baby that screams like that? and he smiles his crooked smile.
But now I wish more than anything that I could hear her scream. I wish more than anything that she was here with us. I wish beyond everything I’ve ever wished for that she is alive and okay. And that they find her. And I fall to my knees by her crib and I pray my heart out. It’s not something I do usually, and I’m probably not very good at it. But the earnestness in my begging God is real. Please, God. I’ll do anything. Please bring her back to us.
I’m still on my knees when I hear the back door open and Diane’s voice calling out, “Shea? Shea, are you here?” I scramble to my feet and run down the hall, through the kitchen and there she is. Her face the picture of devastation. She hugs me tightly as I fall into to her, my sobs racking my body. And we just stand there crying, both of us, and rocking back and forth. Finally, we release each other and stand and stare.
“She’s gone?” Diane whispers, her forehead puckering.
I nod, and I’m weeping again. “Yesterday morning. It’s my fault …” And I pour out the whole story, except for the part where I swallowed some pills and can’t remember what happened. My shame is too great. I can’t even tell my best friend. She listens, nodding, making sympathetic sounds. But she feels helpless. I can tell by the slump of her shoulders. Her sagging face. Quivering chin. And suddenly I feel the need to be alone. I don’t have the energy to speak or be there for anyone. She senses that, and stands to leave.
“Shea, I’m so sorry. My brother was in an accident and I left the house without a thought. But he’s okay and I’m home now. I’ll be there. Just call or come over if you need anything at all.” She leaves and the kitchen is filled with emptiness.
I’m jolted into awareness by the ringing phone. It’s my sister, Alyssa.
“Shea, I’ve just heard the news. Ben called. I’m on my way over.” And she hangs up. I feel my heart thumping dully in my chest, and my head swims. I don’t think I can bear Alyssa right now. I stumble to the couch and curl into a ball. And that is where she finds me.
She shakes my shoulder softly. “Shea? Shea, I’m here for you.”
I stare up at her; standing above me. My big sister. She kneels down to hug me, though it’s foreign to her, and I just feel her sharp angles. But she means well, and I murmur, “Thanks, Sis.”
“What do you think happened?” she asks. “Were you here when she disappeared?” I can tell that she’s trying to cover the disapproval in her voice.
“I don’t know. I think I fell asleep. I couldn’t take her screaming, and I sat in the closet,” I mumbled, closing my eyes, willing her to leave me alone.
“In the closet?!” She is silent a moment, gathering her wits about her. And then, as if to herself, she murmurs, “Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it’s God’s way of looking after that little girl.”
I gasp. I feel like she’s stabbed me in the chest, and I’m speechless. But she’s right. My stomach churns, and I feel faint. She’s right. Wherever she is, Cassandra is better off away from me. I just hope I haven’t hurt her.
The back door opens. Tentative foot-steps enter the kitchen. “Shea?” It’s Kyle. Thank God! I open my eyes and watch him enter the living room where my sister now sits back in an arm chair – probably praying – and I lie curled on the couch. A shivering, whimpering mess. He comes and kneels beside me. I feel his strong hands rubbing my back.
He turns to stare at my sister, who apparently finishes whatever she is doing and acknowledges him. “Hello, Kyle. Do you know what happened? Did someone just sneak in and steal a baby while her mother was in the closet?” She shakes her head, her brows drawn, face tight.
I sense his body stiffening. His face becomes a mask of fury and he leans toward her, lashing out. “You and your FUCKING religion. Your mother-fucking superiority. No wonder Shea has trouble coping sometimes. What have you ever done but condemn her? Put her down.”
Alyssa stands up, chin raised, red-faced. “That’s not fair …”
He rises up, threateningly. “Get the fuck out of this house you fucking poisonous hypocrite!” And he moves toward her, looking as if he’ll choke the life out of her. Alyssa swiftly circles around him, marches through the kitchen, down the steps and out the door, slamming it behind her.
He comes to sit beside me. I’m crying, and he softly strokes my cheek, lifting the soggy strands of hair from my face. He looks into my eyes, and I’m strangely mesmerized. His face is so filled with love. Then he speaks, soothingly. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I lost it. But every time you see her you feel bad about yourself. She’s toxic, Shea. She probably doesn’t mean to be, but she’s no good for you.”
I breathe deeply. He’s right, but, “She practically raised me. She loves me,” I mutter half-heartedly.
“She raised you to feel like a loser. She only loves the hold she has over you.” His voice is firm now, willing me to understand. And I do.
He lifts me to rest against his chest. I feel his big, strong heart pumping. His arms encircle me, and I feel protected and safe. He kisses my forehead, and his lips are soft and pliant. He kisses the tears from around my eyes.
Well, maybe he isn’t right about Alyssa. I should have stood up for her. He doesn’t know what she’s done for me.
Chapter 8
ALYSSA AND SHEA, 2010
Huddled against the head-board, Alyssa’s, brows furrowed in her effort to concentrate amidst the noise of foster-brothers fighting, a woman screaming and the television blaring. She grit her teeth and reread the sentence she was trying to drum into her head. “A republic is run by elected representatives and is ruled by set laws … ”.
Suddenly the bedroom door banged open.
“Shea!” Alyssa looked up from her books at her sister. Shea slunk into the room, shoulders hunched, arms bunched around a small bundle. “What are you doing?”
Shea looked at her through glazed, dilated eyes. “Don’t take him away from me,” she whimpered, holding her treasure tighter. It yipped, and a little head poked out of the jacket it was wrapped in. Dashing through the bedroom Shea carried it to the balcony outside.
Dropping her book onto the bed, Alyssa rose to run after her sister. She took a deep breath, stopping for a moment to gather her self-control. Shea was high again. And now she had a puppy. How on Earth did she think she’d sneak that by their foster-parents for any length of time? She
didn’t think. That was the problem. Gritting her teeth, Alyssa followed her younger sister to the upper deck that stood across the hall from their bedroom.
Shea held the puppy before her, head flung back in ecstasy, trilling nonsense t
o her new-found pet. As Alyssa watched, she became more and more high-spirited, holding the puppy aloft, swinging it, laughing and singing. And then she moved to hold the puppy high up over the deck railing. “We’ll flyyyyyyy!” she yelled.
“Shea! No!” Alyssa sprung, managing with one arm to grab the little fellow under his belly. With the other she pushed her sister back, away from the edge of the balcony.
Shea fell back onto the floor, legs sprawled, laughing. “Alyssa, my puppy and I want to fly!” and she laughed; a bone-chilling, raucous laugh. The puppy, a fluffy little brown and white animal, squealed at having been grabbed and thrown. Without a backward glance he ran through the door into the house.
It wasn’t the only time Alyssa had to save her sister and the innocents she harmed in her drug-addled path.
Chapter 9
MOIRA AND BEN, SEPTEMBER 14, 2018
“Ben, you shouldn’t be here.” Moira looked at Ben as he shuffled through files, his face ashen, shoulders curled over his chest. She could almost see the muscles jumping under his skin. “Go home and get some rest.” She rose to pull a chair up to his desk, sitting with her upper arms resting on it to lean forward.
He turned and sat in his own chair, holding his head in his hands a moment before looking at her. “It’s worse there,” he muttered faintly. “Maybe here I can get my mind off things.”
“Wanna talk about it?” she asked, leaning closer, aware that a little cleavage was showing.
“No.” He shook his head, sullenly. “How could someone just come in and take a baby with her mother right there?” The muscles in his neck corded as he stared into Moira’s sympathetic eyes.
“Did she say what she was doing?” Moira asked.
Ben hesitated. “She took some pills, I think, and couldn’t take Cassandra’s screaming. She says she was hiding in the closet.”
Moira tilted her head, looking at him wide-eyed. “Really? Hiding in the closet?”
Ben exhaled slowly. “I know. It’s hard to fathom.”
Moira leaned closer yet. “Do you think maybe she did something to the baby? Could it have been her?”
“No.” Ben was quick to answer. “She suffers from post-partum depression. You know that. But she wouldn’t hurt Cassandra.”
Moira stood and strode to Ben’s side. She felt his head against her ample breast. Poor guy! Placing her hands on his shoulders, she kneaded the tight muscles. “Honey, you don’t know what she might do. Should she really be in charge of a tiny baby?”
She felt his shoulders shaking beneath her hands. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Oh, Ben.” Her voice dripped compassion. She leaned her face into his neck, her arms wrapped around his firm chest. Breathing in his lemony scent, she rubbed the taut muscles of his chest, sliding her hands downward to rest on his manly pelvic muscle for just a moment. “Things will work out,” she whispered.
Chapter 10
SHEA, SEPTEMBER 14, 2018
Kyle murmurs as he looks at me, his eyes filled with tears. “Shea, you are not the person your sister sees. Her opinion’s skewed by her holier-than-thou attitude. Don’t let her bring you down.”
Suddenly, we hear a knocking at the front door. “It’s Darby Greer, Mrs. Anderson. May I come in?”
With one final stroke of his hand on my cheek, Kyle gently lays me down again, and walks to the door. Darby greets him, giving him the once-over, and comes to crouch beside me. “Are you okay, Shea?” she asks. I like that she calls me by my first name.
I scramble to sit up. “Yes. Sorry. I have some bad times, but I’m okay.”
She looks at Kyle. “Can I speak to Shea alone?” she asks. He nods and leaves.
She looks at me with her big, dark eyes as if to see inside my head. “We haven’t found out a lot,” and she hesitates, as if hoping I’ll add something. But I don’t. “A neighbour saw a jogger with a blonde pony-tail and a big jacket running by your house yesterday morning. Any idea who that may have been?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Someone wearing a large, green trench coat, carrying a bundle walked by. Do you know of anyone with a coat like that?” Her eyes bore into me.
I think, hoping to conjure a picture of someone in my head. I can’t. “No.”
“And someone saw an old-style cream and burgundy Lincoln on the street. Does that sound at all familiar to you?”
I shake my head. I know I’ve never seen a car like that in the neighbourhood.
She moves to sit beside me. Strokes my arm. “I know you’re under a terrible amount of stress. Can you remember what Cassandra was wearing the last time you saw her?”
“She had on a pink velour sleeper,” I say, exhaling as I think of her little body plopping on the mattress where I heaved her. I see her tiny arms flung out to the sides. “And she wore a silver bracelet with Cassandra engraved on it.”
“That’s good.” Darby nodded approvingly. As if I’d done something really great. I feel a little rush of pleasure at her approval, I must admit.
“Can you remember back that morning? She was crying and colicky … You fed her … at what time?”
Is this a trap? I felt the old familiar wrenching of my gut. “I fed her at about 9:00, and she fell asleep for a little while. Then, when she woke up crying I tried to feed her again, but she wouldn’t take any more.”
Darby purses her lips in thought, her eyes narrowed. “So … was that when you went to sit in the closet?” Her voice is even, non-threatening.
I feel empty. I haven’t the energy for deception. I don’t care what happens to me. “Yes,” I say.
“Anything else happen to upset you?” she asks, looking at me through sympathetic eyes.
I stare at her stony-faced. “I held her like this.” I indicate my arms stretched out before me. “And I felt like shaking her. She was screaming and screaming this high-pitched scream.” Darby says nothing, just continues looking at me. “But I didn’t shake her. I just kind of vibrated. And then I kind of threw her onto her mattress.” I gesture. “But it was only a little fling. A few inches.” My voice is breaking. I feel the tears coursing down my cheeks. Darby wraps her arms around me, and holds me for a moment.
“I don’t have a baby,” she says, “but I can only imagine. I don’t know how you do it.” She walks back to the chair where Alyssa sat not long before. She leans forward, hands propped on her thighs. She speaks in a low voice; one that makes me feel we’re in this together somehow. “Shea, what happened between shortly after 9:00 when you tried to feed Cassandra and shortly after noon when you called your husband?”
I take a deep breath and feel my insides shaking. I look her in the eye. “I don’t know.”
“Did you take anything to help with the stress?” she asks.
“Yes. I took some of the pills the doctor gave me.”
“Do you know what kind of pills they were?”
“Prozac,” I say, dully.
“Do you think, then, that you passed out?”
I nod. I hope that’s all I did. She doesn’t know ….
The front door flings open and Moira bursts into the room followed by my husband, Ben. “Oh, honey!” she cries, running to me and enveloping me in her arms, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you!” She kind of twists back and forth, still holding me. Finally, she lets go and turns to face Darby. “I’m sorry! I didn’t see you for all my worry about Shea here!” She holds her hand out to shake. “I’m Moira Findley, Ben’s partner. This is just so awful! You must be the police?”
Darby stands, shakes Moira’s hand. “I’m Detective Darby Greer,” she says. “We’ve been trying to get hold of you, actually. Would you mind coming to the station for finger-printing? It’s just routine. We need to determine if there are any foreign finger-prints or DNA in the house. The abductor’s, that is.”
She speaks, now, to Ben who has come to sit beside me. In a matter of hours his face has become more lined. Dark circles have begun to appear under his eyes. �
��We’d like you two to appear on television, entreating whoever has taken Cassandra to return her to you. As soon as possible. Here’s a card with the name and contact number.”
When she turns to leave I see a “look” – barely discernable – pass between Ben and Moira. A look of collusion? Of common understanding? Did Darby see it? What does it mean? Is there something here that I’m not seeing?
Chapter 11
SHEA, JUNE, 2005
I’ve always felt I was in the dark. As though I didn’t really know what was going on around me. That loved ones either didn’t trust me enough to confide in me, or that they couldn’t.
OUR MOTHER CAME BACK, as she always did, after a few days. But this time she brought two more people to share our miserable little shack. Her sister, Linda, and Linda’s daughter, Julie, were now living with us. They stuck a little cot in the corner of the room Alyssa and I shared for Julie, and Mom and Linda shared Mom’s bed when they didn’t have a “friend” sleeping over. They had an agreement. Often it meant one or the other slept on the couch.
She was my cousin, but until then I hadn’t met Julie. Mom and Linda had had a falling out years before, and somehow during the few days she was “away” they reconnected. Two sadly addicted, messed-up women.
They arrived late one summer afternoon. “Alyssa! Shea! Come meet your aunt and cousin!” and our mother swooped through the door as if she’d never left. My sister and I were kneeling at the coffee table where Alyssa helped me with the geometry I was befuddled by.
There stood a skinny, worn-looking woman with long, stringy blond hair. She wore a tight, low-cut t-shirt with “Born to be Free” emblazoned in dulled grey letters on the front, and hot pink jeggings slung below a saggy midriff. Linda made a big deal of meeting her nieces for the first time, hugging and kissing us as we rose to greet her. Her breath smelled of stale booze. Behind her stood a little waif, all eyes – deep blue. Snot ran from her nose, crusting on her cheek, and she sported a mass of tangled mousy-brown hair. Her face, her clothes … everything about her screamed neglect. She just stood there, gawping into space. Her mother took her arm and pushed her forward, toward us. “This is Julie, your cousin!” Julie looked down at our faded gold carpet, her little body stiff. I loved her immediately.