by N. M. Brown
‘Hi, Maria. Sorry I’m late. I hope she wasn’t acting up.’
‘It’s fine. She’s had a good afternoon,’ Maria said. ‘I think last week was just a blip. She just got herself worked up. Kids go through all sorts of worries, but most of them pass – it’s just part of growing up.’
‘I hope so,’ Leighton said with a nervous smile. ‘Thanks – Maria. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
As they drove along the bustling highway towards the supermarket, Leighton enjoyed listening to his daughter chatting incessantly about her day. She was recounting a story about how her school buddy – Dale – had brought a clear glass marble in his lunch box, but their teacher – Mrs Goudy – had taken it off him in case anybody put it in their mouth.
‘That’s just silly,’ Annie giggled at the idea, ‘nobody eats marbles.’
‘Well, sometimes people do silly things.’ Leighton said. ‘I think Mrs Goudy did the right thing.’
‘But it was Dale’s marble!’ Annie’s eyes widened in horror at the injustice.
‘I know, baby, but Mrs Goudy probably gave it back to Dale’s mom at the end of the day.’
This explanation seemed to satisfy Annie’s sense of injustice – at least temporarily and she got distracted by passing vehicles. At one point she gazed to the distant northern horizon.
‘Daddy, is that a storm heading our way?’
‘Where?’ Leighton peered in the rear-view mirror, trying to figure out where his daughter was looking.
‘In the sky, those clouds.’ Annie pointed her arm.
Following Annie’s finger, Leighton looked towards the northern corner of the blue sky where three huge columns of grey smoke stretched into the air like slowly turning tornadoes.
‘Don’t worry; it’s not a storm, baby,’ Leighton said in a reassuring voice.
Annie bit her bottom lip and continued to gaze at the sky.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Smoke,’ Leighton said, ‘most likely coming off wild fires up on the hills.
‘Who starts them – bad people?’
Leighton chuckled. ‘No, honey – not usually. It just gets awful hot up there under the sun, and there are dried old trees everywhere. Sometimes when the sun shines through an old piece of glass it makes the wood so hot that it catches fire, and then it just spreads from bush to bush and tree to tree.’
‘Wow,’ Annie’s eyes widened. ‘That’s real bad, right?’
Leighton realized that this could rapidly develop into one of her many current anxieties, so he thought it best to offer some reassurance.
‘Yeah, I guess, but we live down near the ocean, and there’s plenty of water there, right?’
‘Good,’ Annie said, ‘I hate fires.’
It wasn’t until he pulled his car into the busy parking lot of the Viva Market that Leighton realized how late it was – almost a quarter after six. That meant he had been almost an hour late picking up Annie. Dinner would have to be a quick and simple option. Annie would be both tired and hungry, which combined could make for an emotional evening.
‘What do you fancy for supper, kiddo?’
‘Anything,’ Annie said.
‘Well, how about we grab something to eat here?’ he suggested.
‘Like what?’
Leighton pulled a masterstroke. ‘How about pizza?’
‘Yay, pizza!’ Annie jumped up and down in her booster seat.
Leighton smiled as he watched his daughter gleefully devour triangles of margarita. He occasionally sipped his coffee and gazed around at the assortment of diners. They all appeared to be young families, busily sharing food and laughing together. Happy.
When they had finished eating, Leighton and Annie picked up some groceries – essentials mainly, but Annie had also picked up a brightly coloured book of fairy tales. She was an avid reader and Leighton wanted to encourage it as much as possible. Annie had asked if she could carry the book to the car, but Leighton refused, knowing that she would be unable to resist looking at it. He was trying to teach her road sense, and parking lots could be dangerous places – especially for distracted seven-year-olds.
Once they had returned to the car, Leighton put the keys in the ignition and made an almost subconscious decision. Instead of simply driving out of the parking lot and following his normal route home to carry on with his typical day, he retraced his earlier route back to Old Mill Way.
Pulling up at the edge of the road, he switched off the engine. It seemed like only a moment since Leighton had last been there.
‘Where are we?’ Annie asked as she glanced around at the dusty landscape.
‘Just at a section of road I wanted to see.’
‘For work?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ Leighton nodded, ‘for work. Clever girl.’
‘Okay,’ Annie shrugged happily. ‘Can I have my book please?’
‘Sure.’ Leighton reached into the grocery bag on the passenger seat, found the book and passed it back to his daughter.
While Annie became lost in turning the pages of fairy tales, Leighton got out of the car.
Old Mill Way was a quiet road, which snaked along the north-east side of the city. This was the point at which the city faded into wilderness. The occasional private housing developments, which were dotted around the fringes of the city, didn’t quite extend this far. The irregular landscape, which was scarred with gullies and creeks, would cost too much to flatten.
The natural chaos wasn’t just limited to the landscape. The road Leighton’s car was parked on was an old farm road and would require major upgrading for a couple of miles if it was ever going to carry more than a dozen or so cars each day. The combination of poor quality roads and the arid landscape meant there was nothing out here of any real interest or purpose – no shops, no houses, just dust and grass.
This was the fact that bothered Leighton the most.
If there had been some nearby houses or an old ranch perhaps, he would have felt better. That would have meant that kid he had seen could perhaps have been running towards home – perhaps late for supper. Or if there had been a couple of residential homes nearby, it would have seemed possible that they were playing some game with friends. But there were no homes, no farms, not even a single building in sight.
It didn’t seem right.
He reluctantly climbed back into the car. Annie glanced up from the pages.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, kiddo,’ Leighton smiled. ‘We are just heading home.’
‘Before the fire reaches us?’ she asked with a smile that suggested she was teasing him.
‘Exactly,’ Leighton said with an approving nod of his head.
Chapter Fourteen
The valley through which Tina was walking was a long dusty channel lined with neat rows of gnarled trees. This dip in the landscape extended for a couple of miles in every direction, like a shallow canyon. Although it was only September, the strange trees reminded Tina of the fake black ones people would often put in their yards at Halloween. Their colourless branches seemed to twist and intertwine as if frustrated by the lack of moisture. She knew that she didn’t want to be out here among the trees when it got dark because Tina suspected that in darkness the branches would look very much like scrawny clawed hands reaching out of the ground in search of children. But Tina didn’t need to worry about that; she had no intention of remaining out in the open, she just had to keep moving and somehow she would find shelter.
At that point in her long day, Tina had been walking through the hot landscape for almost two hours, she felt hungry and thirsty, but she had no other option than to keep going. Her mind had slipped into some primitive self-preservation mode, in which she thought only in narrow little areas. She did not allow herself to think about her mom or home because she knew it would only end with her sobbing on the ground. Neither did she allow herself to think about her dad. The last time she had seen him was two years earlier, when he had left in a cab fo
r the airport. In the intervening years her memory of him had grown hazy, like the pictures on food wrappers left out in the sun too long.
She did, however, allow herself to think about school. That was safe because it was normal but didn’t have the deep emotional pain that thinking about her home had. Therefore, as she stepped between the rows of gnarled trees, Tina pictured each person in her class; what they looked like, how they spoke and what they usually brought in their lunch box. She didn’t like sitting with Sam Tuchi because he always had salami in his lunch and Tina didn’t like the smell, but she loved sitting with Hannah Turner because her grandpa made her lunch. He always gave her way too much and she would share her peanut butter cups with anyone nearby. Tina liked Hannah’s hair too – it was long and usually pleated in a braid that sat over her shoulder like a sleeping pet snake. Sometimes, Tina wished that she could have long hair like Hannah. But she knew that since her dad left them to go to Alaska, her mom had to do everything in the morning – getting showered, fixing breakfast and hurrying them both out into the car. That meant she would never have time to sit and twist Tina’s hair into braids. She had tried doing it herself, but her fingers were just too small to grip the separate strands of hair.
Tina’s meandering thoughts allowed her to traverse miles without being overly aware of it. They also kept her mind off her dry mouth and throbbing feet. But at least the temperature had gradually begun to ease. Above her head the Californian sky was starting to fade to orange. Soon the sun would be going down. This detail may have caused another child, like Suzy, to panic but Tina had already anticipated this and built it into her simple plan.
She figured if she could just find somewhere to hide for the night and rest, she could probably wait till morning and then go looking for help. Part of her didn’t want to think about being out here in the darkness all alone because that would be scary. But she knew that being alone in the darkness was still safer than being with the stranger. Plus, she just needed to get through the night. If she fell asleep, the time would pass by without her even noticing. Then maybe – when the sun came back up – Tina could climb to the highest place she could find to get a view of any nearby homes or shops. By that time, the stranger would probably have given up looking for her. At least that’s what she told herself.
Tina was, however, only seven years old and couldn’t yet understand that she was being pursued by somebody who was entirely consumed by twisted desires – somebody who would never give up.
Chapter Fifteen
Angela knew it was probably futile but she couldn’t stop herself from searching. The sick feeling in her stomach, which bordered on full helpless panic, would not subside. The most precious part of her life was missing, and yet she felt as if she was expected to sit at home and do nothing. Every part of her maternal instinct strained against this unnatural response. The ridiculously young-looking police officers who had stopped by three hours earlier had told Angela that she had to remain home just in case Tina returned, or if the police needed to contact her with any news.
When she looked horrified at the thought of simply waiting, the taller of the two officers tried to reassure Angela by stating that a dozen or so children were reported missing to Oceanside P.D. by panicking parents every week and almost all of them would turn up within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. However, he had then asked for a recent photograph of Tina and stated calmly that they would circulate a description of her to all units in the city. He added that there were over two hundred officers, so with that many eyes on the lookout, Tina would be found.
The words of the police officer were not sufficient to soothe Angela’s increasing sense of panic and frustration. She had spent an agonising hour sitting on her small front porch, watching the world grow dark whilst her daughter remained missing.
Thankfully, Jackie Bucowiz had recognised the desperation in Angela’s eyes, and kindly agreed to wait on her porch in place of her. This gesture meant Angela was free to climb into her battered old station wagon and drive slowly along the stretch of road on either side of her home. She had rolled both windows down and was crawling along the roadside calling her daughter’s name.
Angela Blanchette’s throat burned and her voice cracked from a combination of fatigue and fear as she threw her daughter’s name into the night. The urge to cry was strong, but she fought it. To slump would be easy, but it wouldn’t bring Tina home. So, Angela held her growing fear and guilt and pain to one side whilst she directed all of her energy into finding her lost baby.
The car rolled slowly forward in the failing light and Angela kept on calling.
At one point she realised that if Tina, hurt somewhere, heard her mother’s voice and called back, the groaning engine would drown out her small response. This was why she decided to stop the car and clamber frantically out of the driver’s seat. Stepping onto the warm road in her bare feet gave Angela a much-needed sense of stability. Gulping in the night air, she held on to the hood of the car and called once more.
‘Tina, it’s mom!’ she yelled. ‘Can you hear me, baby?’
When no response came, Angela walked weak-legged to the edge of the road and stared into the colourless abyss of the countryside. She called her daughter’s name again. From somewhere in the gloom there was a small scuttling sound as a lizard scuttled through the bone-dry debris. Angela felt a momentary flicker of hope, but this was soon followed by plummeting despair as she realised the noise had come from smaller creatures than her child. She took a deep breath and stepped into the wilderness – moving like someone under a spell. Perhaps, she thought, if she just went a little deeper then she would have a greater chance of finding her daughter.
Angela had always possessed a good imagination – even as a child – but now it was a curse filling her mind with vivid images of her child caught in a million different horrors. She had to fight the compulsion to roar into the dark night in despair. Her body trembled with a flood of unexpended adrenalin.
It was a warm evening, but the sun was sinking and Tina was only wearing her shorts and T-shirt. Her mother knew that she had never been a kid who tolerated cold very well. Even as a baby, she would never settle whilst the air con was running, and now she was out there in the dark. Although there remained a much more frightening possibility, Angela Blanchette refused to let her mind go there. Without any real cognitive processing, she had simply committed to believe that her daughter was alive, because the alternative was too absolute a horror to contemplate. Even the momentary consideration of such a thing would rob her of everything. Instead, Angela forced herself back from the hood of the car. Then continued calling her daughter’s name like a siren in the fading light.
Chapter Sixteen
Leighton and Annie were snuggled together on the couch with a soft blanket over their knees, watching cartoons on TV. Annie was already wearing her favourite yellow Dora the Explorer pyjamas, but had skilfully managed to delay bedtime by requesting to watch five more minutes of cartoons. But as he felt his daughter’s head lean increasingly on his shoulder, Leighton knew she was ready for bed. He had let her have this treat as he knew that later in the week her grandparents would arrive to take her to stay over with them for a few days. It was a gesture which they made every couple of months, mainly it was to spend some time with Annie, but it was partly to give Leighton a little break. He both welcomed and hated it.
Whilst the characters on the TV enjoyed a celebratory feast of pastrami and ice-cream triple decker sandwiches, Leighton carefully picked up the remote and turned down the volume. Annie only stirred slightly, so he sat up and tucked the blanket beneath her legs wrapping her up. When she was awake and wrapped like this, they would both refer to her as a ‘blanket burrito’. It was something he had done since she was a baby. Back then, wrapping his tiny daughter up had been a simpler process. It also helped her to sleep better knowing she was securely held.
Leighton eased himself away from his daughter and quietly stood up. Looking down at her curled
blissfully on the sofa, he felt like leaving her there to sleep, but knew that might result in her waking up later confused and scared. Instead he padded through to her bedroom and switched on the moon-shaped nightlight. As he gazed around the walls, plastered with posters of unicorns and hand drawn castles, Leighton smiled. He wished he could let her live in a world of castles and fairy tales, rather than growing up to face a complex and often cruel world. He often felt that was what he actually wanted for himself.
He rolled back the Peter Pan cover on Annie’s bed, then walked softly back to where she lay. As he scooped up his daughter in his arms, Leighton smiled after she groaned out a little sigh before instantly falling straight back into a heavy sleep.
He lay her down, kissed her forehead.
‘Goodnight, princess.’
Stepping quietly away from Annie’s bedroom door, Leighton faced another night on his own. He walked back to the sofa, picked up the remote and switched off the TV. He then padded into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, pulled out some items and began to methodically make the following day’s packed lunch for Annie.
Once all items were secured in his daughter’s strawberry-shaped lunch box, Leighton placed it in the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. After carrying it through to his own bedroom, he switched on the small bedside light on his nightstand. Leighton sat the beer next to his radio. Sitting on the bed, he switched on the radio and felt his muscles soften as the simple sound of Delta blues filled the room. The music reminded him of his father. As a younger man that had been enough to put Leighton off listening to such crackling old tunes, but now as he approached his fortieth birthday, he was beginning to grow more like his father in more ways than one.
After taking a shower Leighton dressed in crisp white boxer shorts and returned to his room. He then twisted the cap of his beer, took a sip and then lay back on the bed. Closing his eyes he let the sound of the music wash over him, and – for a little while – life was good.