Gilly knew Julia’s story was true. Still it was hard to see the drunk Julia had been—who she’d described as worse than foolish, often combative, and militantly defensive of her right to drink—in the calm, intelligent, and elegant woman sitting across from her. But Julia had been sober a long time now, nearly ten years. Gilly couldn’t imagine that either. Ten years of one day at a time. It seemed impossible, a mountain she’d never summit.
“What happened today?” Julia asked gently.
Gilly started to answer, but her phone chimed, signaling a text. She made a face. “I’m sorry, but I’d better check it out.” She pulled her phone from her purse, telling Julia, “A friend and I were supposed to have dinner. We’ve been missing each other.”
“Go right ahead,” Julia said. “I’ll run to the restroom.”
Gilly switched on her screen. The text was from Liz. Gilly read it quickly. So sorry about Zoe. Wish I could help. Back in Dallas. Trouble with the ex. Dad helping me get a restraining order. The good news? Made an offer on that cute house we saw. Cross ur fingers we’ll b neighbors soon.
Gilly looked into the middle distance, worrying over it—the business about Liz’s ex, and happy at the same time that Liz might make living here permanent. Looking back at her phone, she typed: Sending u a hug. Stay safe. Call me!!! Soon as u can!
“Is your friend okay?”
Gilly looked up as Julia sat down across from her. “I think so.” She took a moment to stow her phone, collect herself, not wanting to say more. It was Liz’s personal business. Gilly wouldn’t feel right talking about Liz and her need for a restraining order. But there was the happier possibility she would move to Wyatt, too—buy a house, begin a new life—like Gilly. Maybe it was the answer for both of them, Gilly thought.
The waitress came, and Gilly and Julia ordered the same thing they always did when they came to Bo’s after a meeting. Coffee with extra cream.
“You heard about the little girl who’s missing,” Gilly said when the waitress had gone.
“Zoe Halstead. Yes. It’s been on the news. It’s awful. They said earlier her mother took her, but someone at the meeting said they heard the police have found evidence that indicates it was someone else.”
Gilly thought about the clothing, Zoe’s clothing, that had been found in the sack in the dumpster. It wasn’t information she could share with Julia. “It’s not her mom,” she said instead, and then she paused. While she was free to talk about the dream she’d had, she’d never done so with her sponsor. She’d never told Julia she was on probation. Gilly hadn’t wanted to test Julia that way, to burden her with so much.
“I hear Zoe’s mother is a drinker, bad enough she’s been in rehab a couple of times.”
Gilly said she’d heard that, too. She said, “I was at the school earlier, where they set up the search operation. I helped look for her. That’s when—when things started to unravel.”
The waitress brought their coffee in thick-walled mugs, setting them down, along with two small pitchers of cream. Real cream, not the fake nondairy stuff. It was the only thing that saved the coffee.
Julia added cream to her mug and picked up her spoon, keeping a questioning eye on Gilly.
“I saw it happen in a dream.” She spoke in a rush. “Wednesday night I saw a woman take Zoe, and I knew when I woke up on Thursday—and I’m just as certain now—it wasn’t her mother.”
“You’re psychic?”
Gilly’s heart sank. She dropped her glance. The way Julia asked—the high, flippy lilt of amazement and eagerness in her voice, her wide-eyed look—was the same reaction Gilly had gotten from April. Gilly braced herself, waiting for it—the inevitable request that Gilly look into Julia’s future. “I don’t think of myself that way,” she said.
“It must be difficult, seeing a terrible thing in a dream and then having it happen in real life.”
Gilly shifted her spoon.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
After a bit, she said, “The last time I saw Zoe and her dad, Jake, was on Wednesday. They came in for breakfast. It’s a ritual with them. Zoe was born on a Wednesday, and her dad—I think it must have been Jake who declared her Wednesday’s princess. It’s also Pancakes for Breakfast Day.”
Julia smiled.
“She’s so adorable,” Gilly said. “Just a little ray of sunshine.”
“You’ve become attached to her.”
“Yes. I wasn’t aware—I really got into the whole pancakes-for-breakfast thing. I look forward to it. Somehow I got started telling her stories, fairy tales. Her favorite is ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses.’”
“Who danced their shoes to pieces.” Julia smiled.
“Yes. Sometimes I make up a story. I catch myself thinking I would do this for Sophie. I would tell her stories, make her special pancakes. I shouldn’t compare the girls, but it’s hard. Zoe is only a few months older than Sophie would have been. She has the personality I imagined Sophie would have.” Tears pressured Gilly’s throat, and she stopped. In the few short months she’d carried Sophie, Gilly had imagined so much more: first steps, kindergarten, the feel of Sophie’s hand in hers when they crossed the street. Fleetingly, her wedding gown . . .
“It’s transference. I know that,” Gilly said. “I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me.”
“I didn’t know you were under psychiatric care.”
“It was court-ordered, part of my probation agreement.”
The flare of surprise was there in Julia’s expression, but she didn’t immediately respond. She would give Gilly a chance to explain. That was Julia’s way.
Gilly looked out the window. She couldn’t see much—occasional headlights from the frontage road that gave access to the truck stop, running lights from a couple of eighteen-wheelers, idling in the parking lot adjacent to the gas pumps, her own pale reflection. She turned back to Julia. “I took a child, another woman’s baby girl, from the hospital. I thought—I wanted her to be mine—to be Sophie.”
13
Gone. More than thirty-six hours now since Jake had last seen her. It was night, Friday night, 9:12. The numerals glowed green from the clock on the truck’s dash. Was she scared? Injured? Crying for him? Mad? Jake hoped Zoe was mad, just pissed as hell. She’d read him the riot act when she saw him. He could see her in his mind’s eye, hands on her hips, little elbows jutting, the very image of righteous female indignation. “Daaadddyyy, where were you? I waited and waited . . .”
A sound came, clawing out of Jake’s chest, choking him. He bent forward over the steering wheel, coughing, dragging in air, eyes forward, trained on the dirty path of his headlights. The highway straightened; solid yellow lines were replaced by a broken white line. The land fell away from the road into crevasses and boulder-strewn canyons. It crossed creek beds and led through towering cliffs. In the distance, rows of moonlit hills were packed solid against the horizon, older than time, immutable, uncaring.
She could be anywhere by now. Anywhere . . .
His phone rang, jarring him. Jake grabbed it, not bothering to check the ID. “What?” The greeting a bark, truncated, hurt.
“Honey?”
His mom, worn out, shaken, working not to show how badly. He was instantly contrite, apologetic. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
In a corner of his mind he registered that neither one was asking the other whether there was any news, the way they had in those first raw hours when they had believed they would find Zoe with Stephanie. Looking back, those initial hours seemed like a walk in the park. Had he given up now? Had his mom? Had they recognized and accepted they were in for a longer haul? Who would break first? He wished to God his dad were here, that his parents were together. He’d been so self-absorbed as a kid, taken them and their deep, quiet love for him and each other for granted. He had assumed he’d have a marriage like theirs, first with Courtney, then with Stephanie. He’d never valued the gift he’d been given—a relatively drama-free,
stable childhood.
“I wish Dad was here,” he said.
“Yes.” A beat. “Where are you?” she asked. “Still at the school? Is the search still going on?”
“No. Folks wanted to keep on, but Clint called it. It’s too dangerous, people in the woods after dark. They’ll be back in the morning. You wouldn’t believe how many volunteers there were, Mom, all the places they came from. I met a guy and his wife from Wichita Falls, another woman was from Houma, Louisiana—”
“I didn’t find her trike, Jake.”
“Yeah, Clint said you’d called. It’s not at your place.”
“It’s not anywhere. I’ve checked with the neighbors, yours and mine.” Her voice rose precipitously. The silence fell like a warning that worked both ways: Don’t lose it. They might have said it out loud to each other.
She said, “I haven’t gotten hold of the Hendersons yet.” She named a family that lived two streets over from Jake. Tulia Henderson was Zoe’s best friend, her BFF. Whenever Jake heard the two refer to each other that way he wondered at it. How did the concept of forever appear to almost-four-year-olds? “I left a note on their door to call as soon as they could.”
Jake didn’t answer. He dreaded going home. How would they get through another night? Walk the floor, he guessed. Lie down and pretend to sleep.
“I’m at your house,” his mom said as if he’d asked. “Making chicken soup.”
Jake had a sudden memory from when he was a kid, six or seven, in the first grade maybe. He’d been getting over a bout of tonsillitis, and his mom had come into his bedroom, carrying a bowl of chicken soup on a tray. Homemade. It had smelled delicious, made his stomach rumble. “This will be easy to get down,” she had said, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. “I promise,” she had added, dipping the spoon into the bowl. She’d blown on it before she’d offered it to him, and then held her free hand underneath in case of spills. He had thrust his head forward, opening his mouth to receive it as if he were a tiny bird. He remembered how their eyes had held; he remembered feeling safe.
“How long will you be?” she asked.
“Twenty minutes.” His phone beeped, and he checked the caller ID. “Mom, Clint’s calling me.”
“Go,” she said.
“Yeah?” He greeted Clint, steeling himself, his voice, his spine.
“No news about Zoe,” the police captain said right away.
Jake sagged, falling in on himself. He felt sweat break out along his hairline, under his arms. He didn’t know if it was from relief or terror. His foot backed off the accelerator. He couldn’t help it, but checking the rearview, there was no one behind him.
“Jake? We found Stephanie.”
14
Gilly held Julia’s gaze, but there was no judgment of her there, only compassion.
“You were drunk?” Julia asked.
“Out of my mind. I’d taken Oxy, too. To this day I can’t tell you how I managed it. Even hospital security can’t say for sure.”
“This was right after you lost Brian and Sophie?”
“It would have made more sense, but it was actually eight months ago, almost two years after their deaths. I went back to the hospital where Brian and Sophie died, and I went up to the maternity floor, went into the nursery—no one was around—and I picked up a baby, a tiny girl only hours old—” Gilly bent forward, clutching her elbows.
Julia patted her arm. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No,” Gilly said. “I want to.” She took a breath. “Her name was Anne Clementine Riley. She was wrapped in a pink blanket. I made sure it was tucked around her so she was snug, and I carried her to the elevator. A couple of nurses passed me, but they were talking, laughing. They never even looked. After I was caught, a woman who rode down in the elevator with me said I sang to the baby all the way down, a lullaby I remember my mom singing to me. ‘Baby’s Boat.’ Do you know it?”
Julia shook her head.
“Sail, baby, sail, upon the silver sea”—Gilly’s voice wavered over the notes—“only don’t forget to sail back again to me . . .”
A silence filled with the clatter of cutlery, the dissonance of chatter, a barked laugh.
Gilly made herself go on. “The woman thought it was odd, me holding a newborn, leaving the hospital with her, but not so odd she felt the need to notify anyone. She only realized the baby was stolen when she turned on her television and heard about it on the news. By then I’d been identified on hospital security footage and someone from the HPD had called my mom.”
“Where did you take the baby?”
“Home,” Gilly said. “I brought her into Sophie’s room, her nursery. The walls were the palest shade of pink, and the ceiling was silvery blue like the sky. I’d painted billowy white clouds there, and a weeping willow tree in one corner. There were tiny rabbits in the grass and flowers along the baseboard.” Gilly’s gaze turned inward.
She saw herself bent over the crib. She was watching little Anne Clementine sleep when she heard her mother speak her name softly—so softly—from the doorway.
“Gilly?”
“It’s all right now, Mama. See? I found her. I found Sophie. She’s not dead; she’s only sleeping.”
Her mother joined her.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
Her mother didn’t answer.
“Brian and I don’t even care who took her from us. You don’t either, do you?”
A sound, awful in its torment, something between a sob and a groan, had caused Gilly to look at her mom, and in that instant, seeing her mother’s grief, the spell—or whatever it was that had Gilly in its grip—broke. She had looked back at the baby in the crib in horrified astonishment.
“My mom found me before the police did,” Gilly said to Julia now. “One minute I was telling her how beautiful my baby was and the next I was shocked out of my mind at what I’d done. Shocked sober. I haven’t had a drink since.”
“Well, something good came out of it then. Right?”
Gilly grimaced. “What I did was unforgiveable. The baby’s parents were so scared. I felt—still feel—so awful for what I put them through.”
“Oh, Gilly, you weren’t yourself. You went through hell, lost so much. What you did was wrong, I’m not saying it wasn’t, but—”
“There was a lot of talk about the extenuating circumstances. It’s what kept me out of prison, that and I had a good lawyer, a friend of the detective who’s working Brian’s murder case. Mark Riley, Anne Clementine’s dad, was not happy, but her mom, Jessica—” Gilly stopped to clear her throat. She didn’t want to cry. “Jessica wrote a letter to the judge, asking him for leniency on my behalf.”
“How long is your probation?” Julia asked.
“Five years. I’m banned from ever going near the parents, or the hospital, and I was fined, too. Ten thousand dollars. I was lucky I had it.”
“I’m surprised you were allowed to move from Houston.”
Gilly pressed her fingertips to her eyes, swiped under her nose, gathering her composure. “You can transfer your probation if you have a good reason. The judge agreed when I explained it would help if I could get away from the city, the neighborhood. The store where Brian was murdered—it’s only three blocks from our house, what used to be Brian’s and my house. And then I wanted to get away from the crowd I was drinking and doing drugs with, too.”
“You were smart to move. I’m glad it worked out. But, honey, what a rough time you’ve had.”
“I feel as if I got off too easy.”
“That’s a matter of perspective. What I see is you’re still punishing yourself when it seems everyone else who’s concerned has forgiven you.”
“Everyone except Mark Riley. He’d like to see me behind bars, or possibly dead.”
“Are you serious? Has he threatened you?”
“He said if he ever caught me near his family . . .” I’ll put a bullet in your brain. Gilly couldn’t say it aloud,
that he had wished her dead. She understood his rancor, but it unnerved her. “I don’t blame him,” Gilly said. “You might feel the same way if someone took your child.”
“I would hope to be more like the man’s wife and show mercy.” Julia drank her coffee.
Gilly folded her napkin, addressing it. “Jake thinks I can find Zoe.” She looked up when Julia didn’t respond. “I ended up telling him I’d had the dream, but it’s what happened before that—” She broke off, and when she spoke again, she explained how she’d located Jake’s wallet through a vision that had come into her head. “I saw it as clearly as I see you. I could smell the oil and sawdust in the garage. It was unreal.”
“You’ve not had visions like that before?”
Gilly started to answer no, but then she was caught by a fragment of memory. When she was around twelve, the Jameses’ neighbors who lived down the block, had lost their dog, a collie named Timmy. “I saw the poster,” she said, more to herself than to Julia. “In the window at King’s.” She named the corner grocery, where she’d ridden her bike on summer afternoons to buy comic books, bubble gum, her beloved ice cream sandwiches. The image on the sign floated behind Gilly’s eyes, a fuzzy black-and-white photo of a happy dog, sitting on his haunches, looking eagerly into the camera, topped a small placard with the details laid out in three lines: LOST BROWN AND WHITE COLLIE. ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF TIMMY. LAST SEEN TUESDAY. There was a final fourth line with the Jameses’ phone number. Gilly looked up at Julia. “I found a neighbor’s dog. I saw him in here”—Gilly tapped her temples—“where he was. Some kids had penned him up in their fort, four streets over. I’d almost forgotten.”
“So dreams aren’t the only way you—”
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 14