I placed the negative strip in the slot, turned on the machine, and waited. Come on, come on. The red light buzzed above my head, and I breathed in the chemicals. Waiting for the images to develop on the paper was excruciating. One precious hour was already gone.
When there was enough deep contrast, I took the photo through the steps of stop, fix, water. Almost there. I prepared myself to be disappointed. Discoloration could have crept in or white spots speckling everything. The woman could be too blurry to be identifiable. There were a hundred ways to go wrong, and only one to go right.
I let myself look down at the eight-by-ten photo. The nanny was off to the right. Dark curly hair. A white uniform with a cardigan around her shoulders. Some blur when she realized my camera was focused on her? At least I had her profile. But I was shocked. She was so young and pretty. I had been imagining her as a caricature of a nanny, somewhere past middle age and using a falsely sweet voice to entice little children.
She looked barely forty. Had she been a desperate childless woman masquerading as a nanny to find a child of her own? I had heard of kidnappers dressing as nurses and stealing babies from hospitals, but what had happened in those cases was discovered almost at once. The disappearance of a child from a park with a river was open to interpretation.
I had captured only a corner of the stroller, only enough to see how high its plaid sides were.
Moving rapidly back to the machine, I enlarged her face further. I knew it would be grainy but I had no alternative.
A dryer in the corner of the darkroom, shaped like a pasta maker, looked newer than the other equipment. I knew it dried resin-coated photo paper more quickly than hanging the print up the old-fashioned way. I hesitated. I had never used one. Suppose I singed this picture? Yet time was an issue. If Annalisa Merck arrived early and was told I was waiting inside for her . . . I didn’t want to imagine the scene.
Holding my breath, I slipped the paper through the narrow slot and waited. It came out the other side clear and dry and gave a better sense of the woman. Her nose was sharp and distinct. There was a dark spot below her lip that could have been a beauty mark or a flaw in the film. But I was sure I was looking at the woman who I now believed had stolen my daughter. Jane’s arguments about the timing and the way a normal person would have reacted had finally persuaded me. The plaid stroller she was resting her hand against seemed to clinch it.
We’ve got you now.
Was there time to print up a photo of Hannah and Caitlin? Caitlin had been wearing red corduroy pants and a striped shirt with a smiling goldfish appliquéd on the front. If I’d let her, she would have worn the shirt every day. I wanted that photo.
But I heard voices in the hall outside the door. It could have been anyone, just students passing, but I felt a flare of panic. I had what I’d come for. I had to get out. Covering the two prints I had made with tissue paper and wrapping the negative strips quickly, I slipped everything into my woven bag. Then I pushed open the outside door.
As I did, a fair-haired woman close to my age, passed me and gave me a startled look. Was it Annalisa Merck? I smiled and walked quickly toward the stairs.
Chapter Fourteen
OUTSIDE IN THE early December air, I stopped and took several calming breaths, then started back toward the parking garage. I couldn’t wait to call Jane. Yet when I saw the brick social sciences building, I decided to see if Colin was in his office. I thought of Jane’s prediction, “Daddy will have to believe it now!”
Fingers crossed.
Colin’s division, archeology, was part of the larger anthropology department. I rode the elevator to the fifth floor and walked to the Institute for Long Island Archaeology, not stopping to look at the color photos of local excavations. I knew they would show mostly Native American sites. There was a race to discover them before they were lost forever under developers’ machinery.
Colin’s office was empty, so I sat down in a cushioned alcove to wait.
I had taken out my phone and was about to press the button to connect me to Jane when Colin came around the corner, accompanied by two worshipful young women. The student in red tights was asking him what appeared to be a life-or-death question.
He stopped abruptly, seeing me. “Delhi! What—is everything okay?”
I knew his first thought was always the children.
“It’s fine. I was on campus and thought I’d come by. We have to talk.” It felt good to be the one using that phrase for a change. When Colin said, “We have to talk,” it was never to find out what I wanted for my birthday.
He frowned, and the students melted away. “This isn’t a good time.”
“It won’t take long.”
“I have fifteen minutes before I’m meeting a grant representative.”
“That will work.”
“Not here. I’ll walk you to your van.” And make sure I get into it?
THE WINTER SUN played over the benches on the quad, the grass a pale, defeated green. There was a deep chill whenever you crossed into the shade. Students eddied around us on their way to the library or their next class.
“We’ll get coffee,” he decided.
“Is it private enough to talk?”
“Upstairs.”
We bought our coffee in the cafeteria. I looked longingly at the cupcakes, decorated with red and green holiday sprinkles, but I had already eaten a scone. I remembered Patience in her pin-striped pants and left the cupcakes on the wire shelf.
As Colin had predicted, we were the only people on the second floor. The long room was dedicated to musicians who had performed on campus, and we sat down underneath a Janis Joplin poster.
He glanced at his watch. “So what brings you to campus?”
“I needed to develop some film in the darkroom.”
“You’re taking photos again?”
“No. These were some old rolls.”
“I hope you didn’t use my name to get in.”
“No.” I took a sip of coffee and looked at him. “Why are you so against trying to find Caitlin?”
“Because it will only lead to more frustration.” He sighed. “I don’t have time to go through my reasons again. Is that why you brought me here?”
“No.” I cast about for the most persuasive way to tell him about last night. “Jane remembered what really happened that day,” I started. “Remember how she kept talking about a ‘bad lady’ who would get her too? Well, it turns out there was a woman, someone dressed up like a nanny who talked to the girls. She asked Jane to go pick a flower for her, then hid Caitlin in a carriage when Jane’s back was turned, and told her to tell me she had fallen into the water. That’s what she was trying to tell us that night!”
He flinched as if resisting being pulled back into that scene. “And she suddenly remembered it all? All those details?”
“Well,” I admitted, “she had some help.”
“Some help? Delhi, no! Please don’t tell me it was under hypnosis or some damn thing like that.” He gave me a disbelieving look. “Next thing you’ll tell me, she went to a séance.”
“It was nothing like that. This was a psychologist from Columbia University. He’s hardly some quack.”
Colin set his mug down hard on the table, making me jump. “I don’t care if it was Sigmund Freud resurrected from the dead. You let someone play with her mind?”
I leaned toward him. “It was perfectly safe. Really. You have no idea what hypnosis is like.”
He closed his eyes, exasperated. “Do you know how many false memories it generates? All those abuse allegations about the day care centers? You subjected Jane to that!”
“It wasn’t like that at all. Nobody coached her. He took her back to that day and she told us what she saw. That’s all.”
“What she wanted to see.” He was momentarily distracted by two students
who passed our table and spoke to him, then said, ”Speaking of memories, you have a short one. Don’t you remember what happened the last time you tried second-guessing the British police? You turned into their prime suspect. It’s a good thing I was down at Boxgate that day or they’d have accused me too.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Oh, really? They questioned the woman who ran the hostel to make sure you went out that day with all three girls. They asked her questions about whether or not you were abusive.” He picked up his cup, changed his mind, and set it down more softly. Apparently something in my face made him add, “You really don’t remember?”
I shook my head. I had spent hours at the police station, answering questions. There had been insinuations about how overwhelmed I must have felt, being so pregnant and with three young children. Far from home without any emotional support. But I had mistaken their comments for sympathy.
“They really thought I had done something to her?” I felt sucker-punched.
“I don’t know. No one actually thought you were abusive. They found people in the park who saw all three girls.”
“They actually thought I had done away with her and made up a story,” I said flatly. Against my resistance it was coming back.
“They had to check out everything when you insisted she hadn’t drowned. And you cost me my best friend,” Colin said suddenly.
“Who? You mean Ethan?”
Ethan Crosley and Colin had known each other since graduate school. “After it happened, he and Sheila never spoke to me again.”
“But why blame you? If anything they should have blamed me and sympathized with you. That doesn’t sound like much of a best friend to me.”
I remembered the Crosleys only vaguely. Ethan rangy and mocking with tight red curls, and a face that just missed being handsome. Sheila had been slender with Irish-black hair in spiky bangs around her porcelain face and large blue eyes, a woman so intense that I didn’t remember her ever laughing. A woman always on the verge of grievance.
“They were upset that we were so careless. They were trying to have a baby themselves and it outraged them that you could let something so dumb happen. Especially when you were pregnant and could easily replace one child with another.”
“What? That’s outrageous! As if any ‘baby’ could replace Caitlin! That’s insulting. It’s a good thing you didn’t tell me then. I would have punched them.”
He shrugged.
“No one else felt that way.”
Five American couples had been living at the residence while the husbands, archeological colleagues from around the country, visited nearby English sites. We socialized constantly, and the mothers exchanged toys and advice. Our children played together every day. When we lost Caitlin, they were quick to babysit and offer any support they could. It solidified my friendship with one of the other wives, Rebecca Deitz, who had lost a child to crib death. We were still in touch.
Should I try to contact Rebecca or the others now, to see if they remembered anything else? Unfortunately, none of them had been in the park with me that day.
“Delhi, I’m serious about not upending this girl’s life—if she is alive, which I doubt. Not to mention what it would do to our own lives. Suppose she’s psychologically damaged—we have no idea what she’s been through. We’d end up taking that on too.”
“But she’s our child!”
“She was our child. For two short years, a long time ago. You have this sentimental idea that genes trump everything. I don’t.”
I gripped my cup as if it were the only means of escape from his words and stared at him. It was the coldest thing I had ever heard him say.
“Anyway, Hannah is against it. How she feels is the most important thing.”
“No. It’s not.” Her fears of inconveniencing her life did not match my need for Caitlin. “I’m the one who gave birth to this child. I’m the one she was stolen from. And if I have any chance on earth of finding her, I will!”
“Delhi.” He reached across the table and stroked my lower arm. “How can I make you stop picturing her as a two-year-old and realize she’s an adult who doesn’t know us at all? Who may hate you for blowing her world apart? I care just as much what happens to you.”
Blindsided by his unexpected tenderness, I couldn’t answer.
Chapter Fifteen
I WAITED UNTIL Colin had kissed me good-bye and left, then took out my phone and pressed Jane’s office number.
She answered right away.
“Janie, it’s her. It has to be. But she’s pretty!”
“I never said she wasn’t.”
“Oh.” I had been the one seeing the nanny as a fairy-tale witch. “She’s turning away from the camera, but I’ve got her in profile. I’m leaving the university now and I’ll e-mail the photo to you as soon as I get home.”
“She’s real,” Jane marveled. “I didn’t make her up.”
“Of course you didn’t. But what I need to do now is go back to Stratford.”
“Can I come? I’ll pay my own way.”
“Of course you can come. And I’m paying.”
An intake of laughter. “You don’t—”
“No, I mean it.”
Easy to be generous with Bruce’s money.
“I can go anytime, Mom. I never take vacations. My boss will just have to live without me for a week.”
I had never asked about her relationship with her supervisor. Jane dated a parade of Lances, Justins, and Bryans—men her age and younger, whom she called her “guys.” They went to clubs and sports bars, attended plays and art openings, and Jane exchanged them as often as she switched handbags. Though she was my daughter, I didn’t really know where she stashed her deepest emotions.
“I’ll make the travel arrangements,” I said. “We won’t need more than a week there.”
“What about Hannah?”
What about Hannah? “She’s still finishing up the semester. Besides . . .”
“Yeah, right. It’s just she’ll be upset that we’re doing something without her. Does Daddy know?”
“Not yet.” It was then I realized how pursuing Caitlin had the potential for splitting the family apart. Was looking for her worth creating bitterness that might never be resolved? I knew families who had not spoken to each other in years. Was I about to toss a hand grenade into the center of my own? How far could I go before realizing I had to abandon the quest?
“Mom?”
“I told him about your experience. He doesn’t believe in hypnosis. I don’t understand him. It’s as if Caitlin is someone he knew briefly in the past and has no interest in meeting up with again. The idea of blood means nothing to him.”
“Wow. He’s so involved with the rest of us. He texts me all the time.”
“He knows you. If he felt indifferent toward Jason, he wouldn’t be so furious with him. If only he knew Caitlin.” I stopped, choked up. It hadn’t been her fault, my poor little girl, that someone had broken our connection as surely as if they’d disconnected a cell phone and thrown it into the sea. “Let me go now so I can scan the photo for you.”
But sitting in the parking garage, I couldn’t resist dialing my sister Patience’s office number. I was excited to let her know everything we’d found out. Would she want to go to Stratford too? We hadn’t traveled together since we were teenagers.
Pat was available, though her assistant first answered the phone.
“Delhi?” Patience sounded surprised.
“Yes, hi. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to let you know what’s happening with Caitlin. We’re actually making progress.”
“Before you get into it, I’ve been thinking about the situation a lot. That, and talking to other people.” She paused as if waiting for an army of them to get in line behind her. “I think you should
just let things be.”
“What?”
“You need to get on with your life. Keep living in the present. You said the police in England were satisfied with what happened, you believed it yourself when you came home. Why stir it all up again only to get disappointed?”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“Just people. No one you know.”
“But now we know what happened that day. Jane remembers a woman telling her to tell me Caitlin had fallen into the river.”
“And?”
“Think about it.” I remembered what Jane had told me. “If you saw a baby fall into your pool, what would you do? Jump in and rescue her or at least raise the alarm. This woman just told her to tell me and left. Taking Caitlin.”
“You know for a fact?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. We even have a photo of the woman. I just developed it. All we need to do now is find her. Jane and I are going to Stratford.”
“Now? Before Christmas? Is Colin going?”
Ask him yourself. But maybe Colin hadn’t been the one to influence her. Ben had not seemed anxious to get involved. Besides, Patience was quite capable of changing her mind on her own, of turning oppositional just when I was feeling warm about having a sister. I’d had a lifetime of Patience in action, agreeing to do something with me, then getting a better offer and going with that instead.
“I thought you were on my side,” I pleaded. “You said we were in this together.”
“I am on your side. I’m telling you what I think is best for you.”
Thank God I had not approached her for money. Was that the subtext here, that she thought I would ask her to finance the search?
“Good luck,” she added, as if I were an acquaintance leaving for a new job.
That was all my twin was willing to give me.
Chapter Sixteen
I BOOKED A flight for Tuesday night, returning Sunday. It did not come cheaply. After looking at inns and bed-and-breakfasts online, I settled on the White Swan Hotel in the center of Stratford-upon-Avon. It was within walking distance of the river, the local newspaper archives, and the police station—a necessity since I didn’t want to rent a car.
A Photographic Death Page 7