Someone's Watching

by Sharon Potts

  Should she call Jeremy? They’d told each other they would still be friends, but neither one had gotten in touch with the other in the months they’d been apart. She took out her cell phone and opened it. Just for dinner.

  But what if Jeremy misconstrued the call, thinking she wanted to get back together?

  She closed the phone. The mother and daughter shakers looked up at her stoically, as they had when she was a child.

  A knock on the door startled her. She sat up, alert.

  Through the sheer curtains in front of the kitchen window, she could see a hunched, gray-haired man. No one she knew. He wore a well-cut navy blazer, but hadn’t shaved in a day or so.

  She went to the front door. “Can I help you?” she asked through the door.

  “Roberta Brooks?” the man asked.

  Something crashed inside her. Roberta Brooks, a child’s voice in her head repeated. My name is Roberta Brooks and I live at—

  The walls shifted. Robbie leaned against the door, trying to catch her breath.

  “Are you there?” the man asked. “Roberta?”

  She knew the voice. She hadn’t heard it in eighteen years. Not since she was seven and he had kissed her goodbye.

  “Please let me in. I need to speak with you, Roberta.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  There was silence for almost a minute. An eternity as she remembered her tears and how she had clung to him.

  “I keep forgetting,” he said. “You’re Robbie now. Robbie Ivy. Please let me talk to you, just for a minute.”

  Why had he come here? Why after all these years?

  She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself, then opened the door.

  Blue eyes—so much like her own. They watered at the sight of her.

  He’s nothing to you, she told herself.

  The black hair had gone gray, and he was shorter than she remembered, only five eight or nine. How he used to tower over her and lift her high into the air. But this man seemed too unsteady to carry much of anything. And his face was wrong—deep wrinkles around his eyes and in his forehead, sagging cheeks that blurred his once-square jaw. A few wild white hairs protruded from his black eyebrows.

  “Roberta,” he said, “you’re all grown up.”

  Daddy, she wanted to say. Instead, she held herself straight. “What do you want?”

  “May I come in?” He seemed to be trying to peer around her. “Just for a minute?”

  She glanced behind her at her home, her sanctuary. “I’d rather we talk by the pool.”

  “I understand.”

  His voice touched a place deep inside her, but she wasn’t going to be taken in by him. Not after how he had treated her and her mother.

  They went down to the courtyard and sat on stone benches on opposite sides of a table with an umbrella sticking up through its center. He turned his wedding ring around and around on his finger. His fingers were long and slender and the nails covered the nail bed with almost no white. Just like Robbie’s.

  “You have your mother’s voice,” he said, “and the same Boston accent, but you look just like—”

  “Would you please tell me why you’re here?”

  “It’s just . . . You’re right.” He ran his fingers through his hair. The gesture so familiar. “I’m here because I need your help.”

  “My help? How dare you—”

  “Please. Let me finish. It’s about your sister.”

  “Sister? What are you talking about?”

  “Damn.” He looked down at the mildewed mosaic tabletop. “I guess your mother didn’t tell you.”

  Robbie’s heart hiccupped. “Tell me what? What are you talking about? I don’t have a sister.”

  “But you do. A half sister.”

  Not possible. Robbie was an only child. An only child with no mother, an absent father. No family at all.

  “Her name is Kaitlin. She just turned eighteen.”

  Half sister. Eighteen. Her father had left them eighteen years ago.

  Robbie got up and went to the edge of the pool. A palm frond had fallen into the deep end and shifted ever so slightly as the water burbled.

  He came over and stood beside her. “I thought you knew.”

  The sting of his words reminded her of when her mom put antiseptic on a cut. Just as then, she forced herself to hold back tears until the pain subsided. All these years she’d had a sister. A little sister named Kaitlin. And no one had told her.

  “Kaitlin’s a senior in high school. She came to Miami Beach with some friends a few days ago on her spring break.”

  Her sister was here? In Miami?

  “But she’s disappeared,” he said.

  “Disappeared? What are you talking about?”

  “She wasn’t answering her cell phone. Neither was her best friend, Joanne, so I drove here from home this morning. I spoke with the other girls they’d come down with. None of them have seen Kaitlin or Joanne since early Friday.”

  A bright green iguana emerged cautiously into the sunlight, then darted back into the bushes.

  “I’m sorry to lay this on you,” he said, “but I’m desperate. Kaitlin and her friend are good girls. They’re both going off to college in the fall. Maybe they got in with a bad crowd. I was hoping you’d know where I might begin to look for her.”

  “Me?” She turned to him suddenly. “How did you even know where I live?”

  He cocked his head, as though surprised by her question. “I’ve always kept an eye on you. I watched you going off to college, then when you took a job down here. I know about what you’ve been through.”

  “You know? You know all about me? How can you say you’ve been watching me my entire life and never tried to contact me?”

  “I never wanted to lose you. It wasn’t my choice.”

  “No. Stop it. It was your choice. And you can’t come here and act like the last eighteen years didn’t happen. You’re not my father anymore. You lost that right.”

  “Dear God, Roberta. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Please, go away. I’m sorry your daughter’s missing, but I can’t help you. Go to the police if you’re worried about her.”

  He looked down at the cracked pebbled deck beneath his feet. “I’ve been to the police. They were not encouraging.”

  This was not her problem. He was a stranger to her. Both he and his daughter.

  “I’m going inside now,” she said. “I hope you find her, but please don’t come to see me again.” She started walking through the hibiscus bushes and palm trees toward the stairs.

  “Roberta.” He took a few steps after her. “Please, take this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and held out a small manila envelope.

  She grabbed the envelope, then ran up the stairs to her apartment slamming the door behind her. She sank to the floor and began to cry. She cried and cried into Matilda’s soft warm fur until she was spent.

  The manila envelope lay beside her. Robbie picked it up. Inside was a piece of paper with typed information—names, addresses, date of birth, height, weight—but it was the picture that caused the breath to snag in her chest.

  It was a yearbook photo of a smiling girl with a heart-shaped face, long black hair, prominent dimples, and vivid blue eyes. Kaitlin Brooks, it said on the back.

  But Robbie could just as well have been staring at her own high school photo.

  Chapter 3

  This time she didn’t think twice as she punched Jeremy’s number into her cell phone.

  He answered on the first ring. “Robbie.”

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Can you meet me by the old fishing pier?”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “Thank you,” Robbie said.

  She ran down the stairs and unlocked her bicycle from the stand, afraid to look around. Afraid he may have lingered. That he’d try to talk to her again. But there was no sign of anyone.

 
; She biked through side streets of sun-bleached buildings, then around a crowd of teens in cutoffs and bikini tops crossing Ocean Drive, until she reached the very end of South Beach. It was late afternoon and the sun cast shadows from the low deco hotels over hot pavement the color of dirty bubblegum. People carrying beach chairs and towels were heading back toward their cars. A breeze came off the surf. Robbie stood next to her bike, momentarily disoriented. The smell of coconut oil and ocean air settled her. Jeremy would help her make sense of her feelings. Just like he used to. She locked her bike to a post and went down to South Pointe Park.

  This had been Jeremy’s and her favorite place when they’d first returned to Miami after spending last summer traveling cross-country. For the months they’d been away, it had just been the two of them and they hadn’t needed anyone else. But when they got back to reality in September, Jeremy was restless for a life of people and friends and having fun. It was as though he was trying to cram his entire youth into each day. And she’d remembered what her mother had always told her. There’s no such thing as forever. So Robbie had suggested they take a break. Jeremy had protested, but she knew deep inside it was what he needed, maybe even what he wanted. And perhaps on some level, it was what she wanted, too.

  Robbie walked down the narrow strip of riprap that jutted into the ocean like a road to nowhere. The packed-sand path ended and she balanced herself as she stepped from boulder to boulder. Several people were fishing from the rocks closest to the water. A short distance away, waves lapped at the barnacle-covered pilings of the old fishing pier, which was no longer accessible. It had been blocked off and looked like a strong wind could take it down.

  Robbie reached the end of the boulders. A gigantic cruise ship was gliding out through the blue-green waters of Government Cut. Passengers stood at the ship’s railings, waving.

  Waving goodbye.

  Her father was back. Why couldn’t he have just left things the way they’d been?

  She turned carefully, watching the shoreline until she spotted him. Jeremy, tall and lean, was running down the beach and onto the ledge of boulders. He was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt that said Personal Trainer, so he must have come straight from a session with a client. He reached the end of the path and sprang from rock to rock with the grace of a deer.

  His brown hair was long again, like when she’d first seen him at his parents’ funeral, and a short beard covered his prominent cleft chin and hollow cheeks. He slowed when he saw her. He was breathing hard and sweat glistened on his arms and forehead.

  Jeremy Stroeb. Why couldn’t it have been forever?

  “Hey.” He stepped onto a boulder next to hers and leaned toward her as though uncertain what to do.

  She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, wanting more. Knowing it wasn’t possible.

  Sweat was dripping down his broad forehead into his dark brown eyes. He wiped it off. His nose was flat and slightly off center. He’d once joked about using it to catch a hardball when he was a kid.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I guess.” She sat down on the flat rock surface and folded her arms around her knees, ignoring the spray from the crashing waves. Jeremy sank down beside her and stretched out his legs. They were tan and muscular and covered with golden hair.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  The cruise ship was now on the horizon. In the distance, it looked like a toy boat.

  “My father came to see me.”

  “Your father? I thought he was out of your life.”

  “So did I.”

  “What did he want?” Jeremy asked.

  “To ask me to help him find my sister.”

  “Shit! You have a sister?”

  She nodded.

  Jeremy reached out—she thought to touch her—but he took something out of her hair. A turquoise feather had come loose from one of her earrings. He twirled it between his fingers.

  “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

  “Which beginning? When he left or when he came back?”

  “I remember you told me he divorced your mom to marry someone else when you were a kid. That’s when you moved to Boston.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought you never saw him or heard from him again.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “How did he know where you were?”

  “He said he’s been following my life.”

  “Following your life? You mean stalking you?”

  “No. I don’t think it was like that.”

  An old man with weathered brown skin and a ratty straw hat wedged a bucket of flopping fish into the nearby rocks.

  “So why didn’t he ever try to talk to you before today?”

  “He didn’t say. He just acted like the last eighteen years never happened.”

  “That’s screwed up.”

  “Tell me about it.” Robbie turned her emerald ring around her finger, then stopped. It was the same nervous mannerism her father had.

  “Do you know where he’s been all these years?”

  “I guess he stayed in central Florida—in Deland. That’s the address on the contact info he gave me. It looks like he still has his medical practice.”

  “He’s a doctor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t tell me—the woman he married when he left your mom was his nurse?”

  “You know the funny thing about stereotypes is they don’t feel like stereotypes when they’re happening to you.”

  “Sorry.”

  The old man baited his fishing hook and cast into the churning waves.

  “He left me some information about my sister,” Robbie said. “From her date of birth, he would have known that he had another kid on the way when he ditched my mother.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. My poor mom. I guess I sensed how hurt she was because I never asked about my dad, about what happened. And it was probably better that way. If I’d known he’d chosen his new kid over me, it would have been even tougher.”

  The old man hooked something. Several people gathered on the nearby rocks to watch him pull the gyrating fish out of the water, remove the hook, then drop the fish in his bucket.

  “I haven’t thought about my dad in years,” Robbie said. “At the beginning, I cried myself to sleep every night. But eventually, he started fading away and I could hardly remember what he looked like. Then, when I was older and thought about how he treated my mom, I told myself I’d spit in his face if he ever came back.”

  “And did you?”

  Robbie looked at the water creeping in between the rocks and shook her head.

  “Come here.” Jeremy slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. She buried her face in the familiar scent of his sweat.

  A seagull perched on the railing of the abandoned fishing pier. It was just like it used to be—the two of them, no words necessary. She wanted to ask how he was doing, to make sure he was okay without her.

  “Tell me about your sister,” he said.

  “Her name’s Kaitlin. She’s eighteen and she’s a senior in high school.”

  “Just like Elise.”

  “That’s right. It seems we both have kid sisters. Anyway, my father said she came to South Beach with some friends, but Kaitlin and another girl have been missing since Friday.”

  “Two days. Not so long.” Jeremy ran his finger across the smooth surface of the rock he was sitting on. “Maybe they wanted to disappear.”

  “Maybe. I told my father I couldn’t help him and to go to the police. And I really didn’t want to help him. I was so mad at him. And also at this daughter of his who took him from me. Who had him her whole life. And I’m thinking, this girl’s nothing to me. I feel no connection or responsibility for her.”

  Jeremy frowned.

  “Then, I looked at her photo. And Jeremy, it was so strange. Instead of her being some random person, it was like looking at myself at her age. An
d I thought, dear God, I have a sister that I don’t even know. I have to find her.”

  “Then you should.”

  She watched the waves break against the pier pilings. “I know this sounds stupid, but I’m afraid.”

  “Of?”

  “What if she doesn’t want to know me? She’s eighteen. She’s grown up without me. She’s had a father and a mother and her own life. Maybe she’s not interested in complicating it with a half sister.”

  He touched her chin with the tip of his finger and turned her face toward his. “You know, Robbie, you can’t keep avoiding relationships because you’re afraid the people you care about will push you away.”

  There was something in his eyes that made her wonder who he was talking about.

  He shifted toward her, so close she could see the short brown and gold hairs of his moustache touching the edge of his lips.

  So close. So close. The sound of crashing waves and screeching seagulls surrounded them. At first, she didn’t realize her phone was ringing inside her satchel.

  Jeremy pulled away. “Answer it.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Go ahead.”

  The moment was lost. She reached inside her bag and pulled out the cell. Brett’s name flashed on the screen.

  “Take your call,” Jeremy said.

  Before she could object, Jeremy strode across the boulders and stood a few feet away. Robbie flipped open her phone. “Hi.”

  “Hey baby. It’s been a bitch of a day.” Brett sounded cheerful. “Can’t believe I had to work on a Sunday, but in the PR world, there’s no rest for the weary.”

  She studied Jeremy in profile against the backdrop of waves spilling against the coastline, towering condos and hotels fading into purple.

  “Robbie?” Brett was saying. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “How about meeting me at Segafredo? We can get a drink. Maybe have some dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Hadn’t she been thinking about calling him for dinner?

  “Sure. I’ve got all night.”

  “Actually, something’s come up,” she said, watching Jeremy massage his hand.

  “And maybe we can see a movie later.”