by Jenn Faulk
Three weeks ago, I determined that his story was just that—a story. He claimed when his phone had gone out of service that he’d spent several hours talking with customer service trying to get it working again. Once it was finally up and running, he used it to check his accounts and discovered that everything he’d worked so hard for as a travel consultant was gone. Absolutely gone. That’s what he’d told the police.
And I told the police that he was lying—that his phone was obviously working the entire time because it’s what was used to empty all of his accounts. I didn’t know where the money went—only that he’d taken it and put it somewhere else. The police didn’t want to know any more. He hadn’t actually been robbed, so they didn’t really care where the money went. And neither did I.
But that was three weeks ago, and now I suddenly care very much where the money went. Now I am going to find it. And Brandon. And Maggie’s little girl.
I begin studying the activity that took place on Brandon’s phone since all that money disappeared. Who has he called? What accounts has he accessed? What plans has he been making?
He has not used his phone since the day he disappeared with Emma. That, of course, makes sense: a man of any intelligence at all wouldn’t use his old phone when trying to disappear.
I concentrate on the time period after I turned my findings over to the police but before Brandon and Emma disappeared. It would be helpful to know what phone companies and plans he researched, and if he thinks I can’t dig into his phone’s browser history? He’s very wrong.
That’s why the police contacted me in the first place. Why I’m going to find Emma for Maggie and become her knight in shining armor. Because if it’s happened over the Internet, I’m going to be able to find it.
It might take me awhile. I may need to tweak my programs even more. But I will find out exactly what Brandon did, and—by default—find out where he is.
I scroll and peruse, needing to only look at about three days’ worth of data. What I find is somewhat surprising: there are no searches for plane tickets or passports or new phone plans or new bank accounts. And he was on the phone . . . almost constantly. If he did get a new phone and plan without using his old phone to do so, he certainly didn’t use it much. He was on his old one almost nonstop.
Most of Brandon’s calls were with clients. This, I can tell by accessing his businesses records—another thing he so freely shared with me when I initially investigated. The phone numbers match the customer service records associated with his travel firm’s business data. The few that don’t match are to and from the minions who work for him on commission—taking any calls Brandon can’t answer himself.
I tap my fingers on my desk and stare at the screen some more, and then I notice something . . .
Something disturbing.
Every spare second Brandon had that wasn’t directly related to his business was devoted to accessing his accounts. To apparently searching those accounts. He had spent hours looking at his missing funds. He’d gone into every portal available to him, doing nothing but searching.
Searching for what?
I continue studying his browser history for the better part of an hour, my stomach sinking steadily as the minutes ticked by, before turning to his business records. Then I study those, and after another two hours, I go down the hall to Andrew’s room. His door is now open, and the lights are off. I walk to his bed and sit down, shaking his shoulder gently. He has to work tomorrow morning, and he needs his sleep. I shake his shoulder a little less gently.
“Andrew?” I say, in a half whisper. Our dad is asleep in the room next door, and I don’t want to wake him.
Andrew turns and rubs his eyes. In the light from the hallway, I see him open them and peer at me.
“What?”
“I need your help,” I say.
“What?” he asks again.
I take a deep breath before I say out loud what’s in my head.
“I need you to help me practice telling Maggie that I screwed up big time.”
~Maggie~
Emma. He must have news about Emma. I can barely contain my emotions, wondering what Peter needs to tell me.
All of my hope is in him at this point. No one else can help me. I’ve resigned myself to this. I put all of my hope in Peter and his skills with the computer and now he’s called and wants to meet . . .
Surely he’s found my baby.
I drive to the coffee shop with my heart in my throat, looking into my rearview mirror at Emma’s car seat, daring to hope that I’ll be going home later with her there in the seat grinning up at me like she always did.
I remember those early days with Emma as a newborn, how I’d tucked her into her car seat so carefully, so tenderly, making sure the seat belt was just right, that Emma’s head, as she inevitably lolled over in her sleep, would rest on something comfortable. A blanket, a lovey, anything to keep her soft and delicate curves and edges as protected as possible.
Motherhood wasn’t expected, but it was welcomed. I marveled from that first day on at how nothing would ever be the same again. For the rest of my life, there was Emma. What a gift. What a responsibility. What a miracle.
Just like yesterday, Peter is waiting for me, fingering the sugar packets on the table, but this time there’s a pained, worried expression on his face and I can tell right away that he didn’t ask me to meet him to say that he’s found Emma.
Why did I even hope?
I sit down across from him and his hands stop fingering the sugar packets. I say hello and he manages to nod in reply, but then his eyes rest on my shoulder and he says nothing. Nothing. Just stares, for so long that I want to shout at him and ask him what he’s thinking.
Shouting at him is probably a bad idea, though.
“Peter?” I prompt instead, saying his name as gently as I can manage, hoping to get him to look at me, at least.
I go so far as to bend my neck so that my face is at my shoulder, forcing him into making eye contact.
He blinks at me, as if startled, but it gets him to talk.
“Back when the police asked me for help,” he begins, “I didn’t look to see where the account transfers were originating from—I only determined that the requests were initiated from Brandon’s number. But . . .”
I still don’t understand. I try my best to hide the frustration I’m beginning to feel. Not toward Peter, who looks anguished as he talks, but toward myself. I should be able to think more clearly, but my emotions . . .
“If the transfers were coming from his phone, then wasn’t he responsible? Was he the one draining his accounts?”
It makes sense. Drain his accounts, run away with his daughter . . . leave his unhappy marriage.
Or not. What do I know? I’m not his wife.
“Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well,” he says hesitatingly. “That’s what I told the police, but . . .”
I wait for him to say it, for him to make it clear. I want to reach across the table and stop his hands that are once again relentlessly touching those sugar packets, but I stop myself.
And my words stop him.
“You lied to the police?”
~Peter~
I’d arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and found a seat. Just like yesterday, there were pink, yellow, and white sweetener packets in a little container on the table and—after I ordered my coffee—I put them in order so that the pink ones are now closest to me and the white ones are furthest away. Next I arranged them so that they’re all facing the same way—like book spines on a library shelf would be—and then I worked on straightening them up. This is never easy since the white packets are taller than the yellow and pink ones, but I was doing my best when suddenly, Maggie appeared. I didn’t even have a chance to stand up and spill my water before she pulled out a chair and sat down across from me.
She’s wearing faded jeans and pink flip flops again, but her top is very different today. It’s blue checkered
, like a tablecloth, and it’s not sleeveless, so—needless to say—the seams are a mess. With a pattern like that, the sleeves will never match up the way they should . . . they just won’t. But at least they get my mind off the sugar packets.
Sugar packets and seams. Much easier to think about than what I need to say.
Andrew helped me get ready. We roleplayed. He was Maggie and I was me and it went really well last night, but once I finally start talking to the real Maggie today . . . well, things go south pretty fast.
Because never once did pretend Maggie accuse me of lying. That’s the problem with practicing: things never actually go as planned. No matter how many scenarios Andrew helps me make up, neither one of us ever really knows what another person is going to say or do and then I’m stuck trying to figure out how to respond all by myself. That’s why I need a little receiver in my ear and a little brother sitting nearby with a mic.
Of course we never practiced what I’d do if Maggie accused me of lying because Andrew knows that I would never lie. I know that I would never lie. It never occurred to either one of us that Maggie might think otherwise.
It’s not that I’ve never done anything wrong before. I’ve done plenty of things wrong. Like the time I hacked into the school’s online gradebook and changed some scores. Not mine. Some friends. Well . . . some people I knew. I really didn’t think too much about it until I got caught. Dad made sure I thought a lot about it then.
I feel the exact same way right now. The same shame I would feel as if I really had lied. Funny how that happens. How being accused of something can make you feel guilty, even when you’re not.
Plus I feel guilty for messing up in the first place. Three weeks ago, if I’d told the police that Brandon might be telling the truth, who knows what would have happened? Possibly we would have discovered where the money went. Maybe he wouldn’t have disappeared with little Emma. Perhaps Maggie wouldn’t be sitting across the table from me, crying.
But I didn’t notice it back then . . . the fact that one minute Brandon’s phone was accessing data from a cellphone tower near Bald Eagle Drive on Marco Island, and that the next it was using one off Bonita Beach Road in Bonita Springs. Both in Southwest Florida, yes, but thirty miles apart from each other. Possible for a phone’s signal to bounce off two towers so far apart within a few seconds of one another? Yeah. It’s possible. But there are dozens of towers between Marco Island and Bonita Springs. It’s possible that it could happen . . . but there’s no way it would.
Somehow Brandon’s service got switched to a different phone for a few hours. Just long enough to drain all of his accounts. This meshes nicely with what he told police, but it doesn’t by any means prove that he’s innocent. How could someone switch Brandon’s number to a different phone without his consent? It’s still highly likely that he masterminded everything that happened. That he stole his own money. That tracking down all that money will find him. And find Emma.
If anyone can track down the money, it’s me. I just need to be more careful. More thorough. Not so quick to jump to conclusions. I need to not stop until I figure out where Brandon is. Where Emma is.
That’s what I want to do, and it’s not because (as Andrew would be quick to point out) Maggie is hot—
It’s because no child should ever be separated from their mother.
~Maggie~
“I didn’t lie,” he says, his voice suddenly clear and confident. “I just got it wrong.”
He’s not playing with the sugar or staring at my shoulder anymore at least. No, his eyes are now firmly fixed on mine.
“Wrong,” I manage. Then, as if it’s a question, “Wrong?”
“The more I looked at the files,” he explains, “and all the accounts, the clearer it became that Brandon might actually have been robbed. Like he said. His accounts were hacked, his phone was switched out, all the accounts were accessed by the same number, not the same phone, and—”
“Stop,” I say, even more frustrated and confused. “I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
“Someone might have taken the money,” Peter says patiently, looking at me in sympathy. “Took it all. If they did, they were clever about it. It’s not easy to trace what happened. Whoever it was, they knew their stuff.”
Is that appreciation in his voice?
“Well, good for them,” I say sarcastically before I can censor myself. “But what about Emma? Will any of your fancy computer skills find her?”
If the money isn’t with Brandon, then tracking down the money won’t find him. Finding the money won’t find Emma.
So what’s the point?
Peter chews on his lip for a minute, watching me.
He’s going to have a brilliant response. I’m praying for it even as I’m staring back at him, just waiting for it.
“Uhh . . .”
Well, so much for that.
“What am I going to do?” I cry, the tears coming yet again.
Peter, who obviously was already quite uncomfortable before, now looks like he wants to rip open the floor and fall into a bottomless pit.
“Oh, please don’t cry,” he says, shaking his head. He reaches out and puts his hand on mine, but then quickly pulls it away and smooths the paper placemat that’s in front of him.
“Can you find her anyway?” I plead, looking to him imploringly. “I mean, if there’s no hope, there’s just no hope, Peter. But I can tell you anything you everything I know. Maybe you could find Brandon anyway? Or, I don’t know, find the money and maybe it’ll tell us where Brandon is?”
If money could talk. If he can find the people who took it, find out why, and figure out what that meant for Brandon, why he’d run—
“I still think it’s possible that the money is with Brandon,” Peter says. “I’m not saying that he wasn’t involved. I’m saying I don’t know. I’m saying we need to find out.”
I can hardly think straight, trying to sort through all of this and what it means when it comes to Emma. “Do you think we’ll be able to find out? I mean, do you think we can figure out what happened?”
“We can try,” Peter says. Then he asks, “Why do you think Brandon left?”
Isn’t that the question?
There are so many possibilities. I don’t even know where to start.
“How much time have you got?”
~Peter~
The more I think and worry about what comes out of my mouth, the more likely I am to make a big mess of things. But no matter how nervous I am, I can listen with the best of them.
I learned how to listen really well when I was eight years old and got moved into a sixth grade class at my elementary school. The material was more challenging than what I’d encountered in second grade, but I still never really had to struggle with it. My new classmates, however, frequently did, and right from the beginning they didn’t appreciate the fact that my hand was always in the air even when theirs were not. They also didn’t like it when I corrected them—which was often—and it wasn’t long before the age difference wasn’t the only thing that made me a total outcast.
I desperately wanted their approval and their friendship, but the harder I tried, the more I seemed to drive them away. I didn’t understand a lot of the things they said to me and about me, but I knew I was being made fun of and I knew they hated having me in their class. I also knew that no matter what I said—no matter what I did—I always somehow managed to make things worse.
One day, when I couldn’t hold the tears in, I was sent to the school’s counselor. I knew the way to her office—could have found it with my eyes closed. She was always sympathetic. Always listened well. That day she listened as I told her that the kids teased me, no matter what I said. We talked for a long time. She never came right out and told me that I was likely coming across as obnoxious, but she did gently suggest that perhaps I should try staying quiet. Try listening. She explained that maybe I didn’t need to answer every single question just because I knew the answer
, and that it was okay if somebody got something wrong. It was the teacher’s job to point that out to them, not mine.
I dutifully reported back to class, tried out her advice, and quickly discovered that she was right. The quieter I was, the less I was teased. I stopped answering questions. I stopped correcting my classmates. I started reading books during recess. I became an expert at listening. I’d take everything in, keep quiet even when I didn’t want to, and learned to avoid all the repercussions that invariably occurred whenever I opened my mouth.
So now, when Maggie looks across the table at me and asks how much time I have to listen to her tell me about Brandon and why he might have left, I answer her truthfully.
“I’ve got all day.”
~Maggie~
“Brandon was married.”
I start there. The whole story has to start there. As much as I hate this part, I have to start there.
I look to Peter, thinking that he must surely know this already if he’s seen all of Brandon’s accounts, business and personal. Surely he already knows all about this part of my story and has drawn his own conclusions about me because of it.
But this isn’t about me. It’s about finding Emma.
Still, though. I find myself caring what he thinks, even this early into my confession of sorts.
“Peter,” I prompt, as he’s already gone back to his contemplative silence, which is unnerving in and of itself because I just can’t figure the guy out. “Did you get that?”
Peter purses his lips together and then looks at me. He starts to speak but then stops. Starts again, then stops again. Finally he manages to get out, “Uhhh. Why, uhhh . . .”
He looks down at the placemat as if he’s collecting his thoughts before looking back up and trying again, but he doesn’t do any better.
“So, why . . .”
“Why did I have a child with a married man?” I ask, just cutting through all that he’s too embarrassed to say.