by Anni Taylor
“I feel like I’ve been put through the wringer.”
“Are you okay to drive? It’s been quite a day for you.”
“I haven’t driven for three months now.”
“Okay, I didn’t realise you didn’t have a car. Well, I’ll take you home.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to take up your time.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” He grabbed a notebook and pen from his desk. “Forgot to ask. What time did you find the note at the shop? I need to know that for when I talk to the owners.”
“Around ten ’o’clock. I came straight here after I found it.”
He checked his watch and scribbled down the time. “Okay, we’ll see what we can come up with.”
12.
LUKE
Wednesday midday
A WORM OF WORRY BURROWED ITSELF into my gut. I still couldn’t get Phoebe on her mobile or the home phone.
She’d been different lately in a way I couldn’t put a finger on.
In the months directly after Tommy vanished, Phoebe had obsessed over what the police were doing to find him. She would be up until three or four in the morning, poring over missing child cases, taking notes on mistakes that were made by investigators and writing down if the child was ever found or not. At times she’d shrink back from the computer in horror, after finding out about a particularly bad case.
I didn’t see the point in knowing things like that. I’d told Phoebe to stop, for her sake as well as mine. It was bad enough that Tommy was gone, without trying to imagine every possible horrific scenario.
And she had stopped. But then she’d gone the opposite way, drifting along like an unanchored helium balloon.
Until maybe two months ago. Sometimes it seemed like there was nothing left inside her, other times like she was hiding something from me. Sometimes I got the impression that she was trying to placate me.
It scared me. I didn’t know if my wife was drawing close to the point of suicide. I didn’t know what people who were close to committing suicide acted like. Phoebe had packets of sleeping pills in her drawer. I knew people offed themselves using those.
I kept meaning to go and see her psych and ask about that, but I’d been so caught up with work I hadn’t made the appointment.
And now, someone had sent us a damned stupid letter. Something like that could be enough to tip Phoebe over the edge again. Maybe back to her OCD-like research of child abduction cases or maybe to something worse.
I had to get home and see for myself what was happening and put my mind at rest.
Telling Rob I was leaving for the day, I packed up and headed out of the office.
As I drove up our street, I spotted a police car sitting in our driveway. Phoebe and Detective Gilroy were just getting out of his car. I’d no idea why she was with him. She’d left the police station quite a while ago, hadn’t she?
I parked on the street and headed over to them, enveloping Phoebe in a hug. It killed me that she’d had to deal with this alone.
Gilroy shook my hand. “It’s good that you’re here, Luke. We’ve got some things to talk over.”
Gilroy and Phoebe sat on the stools at the kitchen bench while I made the three of us coffee. Phoebe was looking kind of dishevelled. No, actually really dishevelled. Phoebe didn’t make much effort with herself anymore, but she didn’t normally look quite that messy.
“Did something change?” I asked Gilroy. “You found out something about the letter after all?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yes and no. We didn’t find out anything different about the letter from this morning, but Phoebe found a second letter later today.”
I turned to Phoebe, gaping.
She nodded. “At the coffee shop. Southern Sails.”
I set the three cups of coffee down on the bench. “I don’t get how—”
“It was pinned to the noticeboard,” she told me.
“Where anyone could see it?”
“Yes.” She explained why she’d gone there and about the message on the front of the envelope.
“The message wouldn’t have stood out that much among all the missing pet messages,” Gilroy added, taking his cup in hand. “But the person who wrote it knew what it would mean to Phoebe. Someone’s targeting her for some reason.”
Nudging a stool out with my foot, I sat down heavily. “Fucking insane. What did the letter say?”
My wife turned to the detective, prompting him to tell me. I guessed that the content of the letter was bad. Gilroy cleared his throat and recited a rhyme. A crazy rhyme that didn’t say a lot, but I knew it would have hurt Phoebe.
I swallowed a mouthful of burning coffee. “But why now? It’s been six months since our son went missing.”
“Hard to say,” said Gilroy. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned on the job, it’s that there’s a lot of very strange people out there. They just don’t think like you and me.”
“That’s two notes now,” I said. “Doesn’t that give you something to go on?”
“It gives us a bit more,” he agreed. “But it’s not easy to track down a person who’s leaving notes around. Especially if they don’t leave them in the same place twice.”
“Will there be more?” My tone was almost demanding, but I failed to hold back. I was asking questions he couldn’t answer.
Gilroy frowned deeply. “I can’t predict that. The notes don’t follow any usual pattern. They’re not asking for money. Which is why my best guess is that this is some individual with a grudge against one or both of you, and it’s not the kidnapper. It could be someone who has something against you, Luke, and they’re trying to get back at you through Phoebe. We’re open to possibilities at this point.”
A cold hope rose in my chest. “But you don’t know for sure that this isn’t the person who’s got Tommy. I mean, could these letters be leading up to a ransom note?”
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he answered. “I’ve never personally dealt with a ransom note, but in all the cases I know about, the first note will be the one with the ransom demands in it. Ransom notes are very to the point. Give us what we want or else. But these letters aren’t like that. And they’re arriving a long time after the fact.”
I reached for Phoebe’s hand when I noticed her face crumpling. I could almost physically witness the wounds opening inside her, both fresh and old.
“What do you think it means that these notes are coming now?” I didn’t want to ask that in front of Phoebe, but the words rushed out. “If it turns out that it’s just someone who wants to hurt us, why did they wait? I mean, why didn’t they send them straight away?”
“Well, one possibility is that they didn’t feel secure enough to do so. There was a heavy police presence in the early months. Maybe now they feel bold enough to send the letters.”
Phoebe pulled her mouth in. “Makes me feel sick to think that someone might have been out there planning this all along.”
I caught her eye. There was something fierce in her eyes, something I hadn’t seen for many months.
“It’s all speculation at this point,” Gilroy said, glancing at both of us. “For all we know, this person might have seen a story on the internet about Tommy, and for some reason, it provoked them into doing this. Some people would do it for the attention alone. Even if it landed them with criminal charges. For that reason, I’m not going to make this public. Not yet anyway. I’d ask you both not to go to the media either. Keeping it quiet might draw this person out.”
“So what now?” I said. “Could this person be dangerous?”
He took a moment to answer, as if weighing up his words. “I don’t think so. But take the normal precautions you’d take, living in the city as you do. Ensure all windows and doors are secure, even when you’re at home.”
Gilroy stayed a while longer, even though there was nothing more to be said. A bit of small talk, something to bring us back to normality. But from the distant expression on my wife’s face, t
here was no going back from this, not even back to how things were yesterday.
*
I jolted awake. Someone was knocking.
The clock’s illuminated display on my bedside table had the time at ten past two in the morning. Maybe I’d dreamed the sounds.
Rolling over, I turned to Phoebe, to check if she’d heard it too.
There was no Phoebe in the bed.
She wasn’t in the ensuite either. The door to our bathroom was open, the room empty.
The knocking sounds rattled through the house again.
Throwing off the covers, I jumped out and rushed down the hall. Did we have an intruder? Fuck, I should have run out and bought an alarm system last night.
Whoever the person was, they were in Tommy’s room. Banging things—maybe going through his set of drawers. I should have a baseball bat or something—why didn’t I own a baseball bat?—and where the hell was Phoebe? If they’ve hurt her—
From the doorframe of Tommy’s room, I got the answer to my last question. My wife was kneeling on the rug in the middle of the floor, rolling Tommy’s trains along his wooden train tracks. The carriages rolled down the hill, whacking into the carriages at the bottom, the magnet connectors making a loud metallic clatter. I hadn’t heard that sound in six months.
She was fully dressed, in jeans and a jacket and shoes.
“Feeb, what are you—?” I stopped mid-sentence. The expression on her face was so strangely content.
She didn’t turn around or even acknowledge my presence. I realised then that she couldn’t hear me. She was in some weird state between being asleep and awake. Leaning against the doorframe, I watched her, not wanting to disturb her.
Sleepwalking?
Was it possible for someone to dress themselves and then drag out a whole train set and put it together while they were sleepwalking? It seemed that it was.
Tommy’s toys had all been put away months ago. My mother had taken it upon herself to do the clean-up. She’d said that the way the toys had been left, all half set up and scattered on his floor, it looked like Tommy still occupied the room and was coming back any moment now. With a shake of her head, she’d called it morbid. She’d even washed Tommy’s sheets and made his bed. That had killed Phoebe. After Tommy vanished, Phoebe used to slip into Tommy’s bed and sleep there, just to breathe in the scent of him. My mother had apologised profusely for what she’d done when she saw the effect on Phoebe, but there’d been no way of fixing it.
Phoebe started humming.
Pain corkscrewed up from my stomach. I hadn’t seen Phoebe this happy, maybe ever. The back of my legs weakened, and I knelt to the floor. I couldn’t hold back the tears.
She turned her head, confused, and then she stretched a hand out to me. At first I thought she was trying to comfort me. Leaning towards her I reached to hold her hand. But she immediately pulled hers away, closing it into a fist. Slowly, she opened her hand and studied her palm.
She thought I’d given her something.
Her brow furrowed, and she tilted her hand, as if to gain a better look at the mysterious object. Her fingers and lower lip trembled.
What was she seeing?
Whipping around, she looked at the train tracks again. Crying out, she stood and fled from the room, knocking hard into my shoulder.
I followed. She was heading for the stairs. Terrified that she’d stumble and fall down the staircase, I raced up behind her and grasped her arms. “Phoebe . . . Phoebe . . .”
At first, she struggled. Then the stiffness in her body gave way.
Gently, I turned her around. She was awake now. Still a little dazed, but her eyes were focused. She touched my wet face, running her fingers from my temple to my jaw.
She gripped my shoulders then and cried. As I held her close, she sounded so damned mournful, like those birds you heard in the small hours. But more than that, in the angles of her thin body, I felt a burning rage.
“Babe,” I said softly, “are you okay? You were dreaming. I found you in Tommy’s room, playing with his train set. Were you dreaming about Tommy?” For a moment, I was envious. If I’d ever had any dreams of Tommy, I didn’t remember them.
“I must have been. I don’t remember.” Moving back, she smiled, but the smile seemed forced.
I led her back to our room and into bed. I wanted to protect her, to somehow make things better for her. Keeping her close, I rested my head on her chest. Maybe I needed comfort just as much as she did.
“I’m worried about you,” I said gently. “When’s your next appointment with Dr Moran? Maybe you can see her sooner. I’ll take time off work to take you.”
“I saw her just last week.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
In response, she wriggled down and kissed me. And she kept kissing me.
That was unusual. It’d been a long time since Phoebe kissed me like that.
She stopped kissing me to undress herself down to the skin.
My breathing and heart rate rose.
She kept kissing me, touching me.
I responded.
Sex had been very infrequent this year. I’d tried hard to understand, but sometimes it was difficult. I wasn’t in control of what my body wanted and needed to do. The year before, it had been her wanting more from me, and me backing off. The long hours at the office had left me trying to fire on one cylinder.
Even in this strange, half-dazed state, Phoebe was beautiful.
As her arousal grew, she closed her eyes.
She was always totally removed from me when she reached that stage—it was never shared.
13.
PHOEBE
Thursday morning
LUKE INSISTED ON STAYING HOME WITH me today. He didn’t dress for work.
I didn’t want him here. I needed time alone to think.
He brushed his teeth at the sink as I finished my shower. Tucking a towel around myself, I walked from the shower and kissed him on the cheek. “No, you need to go. I’m okay. I’ll call you if anything else happens.”
Looking at my reflection in the mirror, he shook his head then bent to rinse out the toothpaste. “I’m not going.” He dabbed his mouth with a towel. “Phoebe, you really worried me when I found you like that in Tommy’s room.”
“It was just a dream.”
“I know, but this whole thing with the letters is really getting to you.”
“Yeah, it is, and I didn’t sleep well. But I’ll have a long nap today. I’ll be fine.”
“Look, I’m staying. I’m getting another alarm system. The one we have never worked properly.”
“Okay,” I said softly, and I hugged him from behind. Luke had his mind made up, and I knew I couldn’t change it. We caught sight of each other again in the mirror. We smiled, but the smiles seemed obligatory. Did Luke see what I did? Sometimes, we were like strangers, just going through the motions of being a married couple. Were all couples like this? You realised that the person that had lit up your life was also the one throwing shadows on all your other possibilities.
I hated it when those thoughts slipped in. He was my husband, and he’d been my rock. I needed to remember that.
Luke stayed until the time was late enough for the hardware store to open, then he headed out. He’d insisted that he was going to buy an alarm system.
Alone in the house, I felt a shift inside myself, a recalibration.
Something important happened in my dream last night. What was it?
My head was so, so hazy. I had to remember.
I sat myself down on the edge of the sofa.
Yesterday, after Trent Gilroy left our house, I’d had the words to the second letter hanging in my mind like a dark cloud. Trent had spoken of different possibilities—of a random person wanting attention, of a grudge against Luke, of a stupid prank. It wasn’t any of those things. The letters were for me. Only for me. The person, whoever they were, knew me. Thos
e words, they were intended to wound. In the two years that I’d had Tommy, I’d never felt like a good mother. Sometimes, I hadn’t even wanted to be a mother. I used to see the mothers in the street and at my mothers’ group (with their doting voices and their full schedules of mother/baby activities) and think that Tommy would rather be with any one of those mothers than me. He’d run off and never look back.
Someone, somehow, knew all of that about me.
And if this person was someone who knew me, then I knew them.
Surely, some part of me must already know who they were.
I’d barely spoken to Bernice since I was sixteen. But Nan spoke about me to Bernice’s mother all the time. Just like Mrs Wick spoke about Bernice to Nan and Nan passed that information onto me. Bernice could know more about me than anyone, besides Luke and Nan.
But I needed some proof. And I had none.
But the dreams—the dreams were sending me clues.
The night before last, Tommy had taken me all the way back to the exact place he’d gone missing. And the wizard man had given me a moth (injured).
There was a thread running through everything. I just had to grab hold of the end and unspool it.
Last night I’d taken the sleeping tablets. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do that again, but the letters had changed everything. My dreams might show me what my conscious mind could not. Beforehand, I’d hidden the deadlock key to make sure I couldn’t get out of the house. In case I wandered.
In my dream, Tommy visited his bedroom, and he’d wanted to play trains. He always used to ask me to play trains with him, but I rarely did. Last night, while we were playing, he was laughing, excited. Then, somehow, the old homeless wizard man had found his way up into Tommy’s room. He’d handed me an object—an eyeball.
An eyeball.
I sat up straight on the sofa. That was what I’d forgotten. The eyeball. It had looked around wildly in the palm of my hand. Startled, I’d dropped it. It’d rolled away, disappearing through the floorboards. Tommy had run from the room then, and I’d desperately chased after him.