The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  The woman was on her feet and coming around her desk before Melissa could finish. She wasn’t quite sure how to react as she was pulled into a tight hug and told, “Don’t let the bastards get you down, honey.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Releasing her grip, the receptionist stepped back. “Brenna told me you’re having a rough time. Been there, so take it from me: What’s happening now doesn’t mean shit. It’s what you want to happen next that matters.”

  More wisdom from a twelve-stepper, Melissa thought. How come it’s the fuckups who think they know it all? “Me and my shadows. Sounds like Brenna’s really spread the word.”

  “She was out of the office the first part of the week, so she had to tell me why. And she’s been worried sick about you since she came back.”

  “Brenna has?”

  The woman retreated behind the reception desk. “Let me buzz her. She’s between things.”

  “Thanks.”

  Brenna stepped into the reception area a minute later. Her smile was sincere even if her hug was more cautious than that of the receptionist, a woman Melissa had met only twice before. She knew better than to expect more. She was well aware of her new stepmother’s professional reputation as a pit bull with an intellect; she also knew Brenna on a more personal level, though, and saw her mostly as a guided missile of ambition who only in the past few years had put any energy whatsoever into her relationship with Jim or even her own son, Taylor. Brenna had been “worried sick” about her since Sunday? Hard to believe.

  She followed Brenna into her office, a sun-filled corner with a panoramic due-west view. The 180-degree scene swept from the South Side, past PPG’s crystal tower and Point State Park, to the city’s two gleaming Downtown stadiums. If the planet had power vortexes, as the new agers claimed, surely Brenna’s law office was one.

  “Your dad won’t be happy that you’re out and about,” Brenna said. “You’re still supposed to be off your feet.”

  “What he doesn’t know … ”

  “He doesn’t know, then?”

  Melissa smiled. “He’s out and about. He didn’t say where.”

  Brenna knew—Melissa could tell by the look on her face. But she wasn’t telling. Something was up.

  “He went to Sewickley,” Brenna said.

  “To see Aunt Carole and Uncle Mike? Why?”

  Brenna pushed a stray strand of her coppery hair behind one ear. Backlit by the windows, she had a glow that seemed to defrost her a little. It wasn’t hard to understand her father’s attraction to the woman; she was beautiful on top of everything else.

  Melissa repeated her question: “Why?”

  “I know he’s trying to get you more information about the adoption,” Brenna said, “but I think it would be better if you talked to him about that.”

  Here was her opening. “Actually,” Melissa said, “I’m doing a little research on that, too. I was wondering if I could get your help on something.”

  Brenna’s eyes were wary even as she offered her assistance.

  “You understand how to find people and stuff, right?”

  “What kind of people?”

  “I mean, if all I have is a name, and maybe an educated guess about their background, could you help me figure out how to get in touch with them?”

  “Melissa—”

  “It’s important.”

  “Can’t you tell me what this is about?”

  Melissa found the question reasonable but annoying. “I was thinking about stalking the guy who knocked me up and then flaked. His wife and kids really need to know.”

  Brenna’s face froze into a stiff and uncomfortable smile until Melissa grinned and said, “Kidding.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Sorry.” Shit. Her stupid mouth again.

  “Tell me what this is really about, Melissa.”

  “Does my dad have to know we’re talking about this?”

  “I don’t know what this is. Let’s start with that.”

  Melissa walked to the windows and took in the sweep of city below. Straight ahead, two rivers converged into a third. She turned back to face her stepmother. “He’s told you about the situation with the baby, right? The gene test?”

  Brenna nodded.

  “And he’s told you about these dreams, or memories, or whatever?”

  “Cold water,” she said. “You’re sinking. And there’s a crying baby. And these voices you can’t understand.”

  Melissa waited a long moment before continuing. Brenna filled the silence.

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with finding out more about your birth par—”

  “It’s Spanish.”

  Brenna wasn’t a patient woman. Melissa could see frustration cloud her face. “What’s Spanish, Melissa? I’m not following this.”

  “The voices,” Melissa blurted. “They’re speaking Spanish really fast. I finally figured out why I can’t understand them.”

  “Argentina?” Brenna said. “Maybe it’s something from your time there, before Jim and Molly adopted you?”

  She shrugged. “That makes sense, even if nothing else does. I know I was there until I was five.”

  Melissa pulled a rectangle of folded paper from the back pocket of her jeans and handed it to Brenna. She watched her stepmother unfold the photocopy she’d made the day before after finding it in the adoption file in her dad’s desk.

  “A baptismal certificate?” Brenna said.

  “It must be mine.”

  Brenna read aloud the biggest name on the certificate. “Melissa Christensen.”

  “But look at the date. I was five years old. It was right before I was adopted, the day before I came to Jim and Molly.”

  Brenna nodded.

  “Somebody had me baptized right before I left.”

  Melissa watched as Brenna scanned the document for clues. She could almost see a lawyer’s mind at work.

  “Father Enrique Espinoza?”

  “Had to be the priest,” Melissa said.

  “Beatriz Vargas?”

  “The witness.”

  Brenna handed the photocopy back. Weird. Melissa couldn’t say why, or how, but damn if she didn’t feel a flutter in her belly when she touched it. Spanish voices. Spanish names. “I want to find them,” she said.

  Brenna’s face betrayed nothing. “Because?”

  “I’m not sure. These are real people, though. Maybe they know a part of my story.”

  “But finding them now, Melissa, it wouldn’t be easy. This is all you have to go on?”

  She felt a tear rise, brushed it away, and wiped her finger on her jeans. “Never mind. I just thought maybe there was a way.”

  Brenna reached for the photocopy again, and in the same motion brushed away the second tear Melissa felt spilling onto her cheek. This time, the hug lasted longer, until Brenna whispered: “Maybe there is.”

  Chapter 28

  Cricket Dawson called back at 8:20 as Brenna watched the summer sun drop behind the West End Bridge, a mile or so beyond the Point. She kicked her feet down from the ledge of her office window and picked up the line herself since everyone else was gone.

  “Flaherty & Kennedy,” she said.

  “Piece of cake.”

  He was the best PI she knew, certainly not cheap but fast and accurate and relatively honest. Plus, he’d slept with practically every useful clerk in the county. He was pretty good that way, too, she’d heard.

  “Already? Good thing you don’t charge by the hour,” she said. “You’d go broke.”

  “You said you wanted it fast. Tell you what, Kennedy. Half fee for this one.”

  He was setting her up for something. Cricket Dawson was always working some angle.

  “You in trouble again?” she asked.

  “You insult me.”

  “What then?”

  “Couple a calls is all it took. 1 should charge you full for that? C’mon, Kennedy. We’re friends.”

  “How about I pay the whole f
ee and don’t owe you anything?”

  “Suit yourself. Where you wanna start?”

  Brenna rolled her chair to her desk, folded back the top page of her legal pad, and picked up her Montblanc. “Espinoza.”

  She heard the investigator shuffling papers. “The priest. Right. Hope he wasn’t a personal friend.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s tits up.”

  Brenna tensed. “How dead?”

  “Ten years dead.”

  “I mean, how’d he die?”

  “I’d need another day to tell you for sure. You want my guess?”

  “Why not?”

  “Guy was ninety-one. Probably not shot by a jealous husband.”

  “Tell me how you know that so fast?”

  “Trade secrets, Kennedy.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me.”

  He sighed into the phone. “I know this lady at the Diocese.”

  Oh Christ, Brenna thought, he’s screwing the bishop’s secretary. “Espinoza was local?”

  “Buenos Aires, like you thought. Lived there his whole life, more or less.”

  “And the Diocese of Pittsburgh knew all that?”

  “Hardly.”

  “What then?”

  “My friend there, she knows somebody in Rome. You’re thinking ancient texts, right? Wrong. His order has a database, goes back to ’85. Type in the name, bada bing bada boom. Your priest’s name popped up on the first go, but it turns out he passed a decade ago.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “That’s it. You want more, I’ll get more. But the good Padre’s not exactly a player these days.”

  Brenna drew an inky box around the word “Dead” next to Espinoza’s name, then wrote the woman’s name underneath. “OK, Beatriz Vargas. What did you get on her?”

  More paper shuffling. “Damn, I’m good,” Dawson said.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Ready?”

  “Just give me what you’ve got. It’s late. I’d like to get home today.”

  “You’re gonna like this.”

  “Goddamn it, Cricket—”

  “833-5779.”

  No area code. A South Hills exchange. Brenna wrote the number beside the name and underlined it. “Tell me what that means. She’s local?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “And alive?”

  “Least as far as the DMV is concerned. Green card in 1983. Citizenship in 1988. Staff nurse at Magee until she took early retirement last year. Got a Bethel Park address.”

  He read it to her, and Brenna wrote it beside the phone number. Cricket Dawson was a marvel, she decided, worth every penny she paid him. She tore the page from the legal pad and put it in her briefcase as she checked her watch.

  “All that in five hours,” she said.

  “We aim to please.”

  “I’ll cut you a check for the full fee tomorrow.”

  “You sure you want to do that, Kennedy? I filled in a few blanks on Vargas, but finding her wasn’t as tough as you think.”

  Brenna knew what was coming. She’d made the same mistake before. “Google?”

  “Bingo.”

  Chapter 29

  Melissa moved as quietly as she could along the downstairs hall, fingering the folded sheet of legal paper in her robe pocket. Brenna had offered it without ceremony—and out of her dad’s earshot—just before they went upstairs to bed. That was an hour ago, and Melissa had spent every minute since thinking about Brenna’s odd parting question: “Will you tell me if there’s something I need to know?”

  Maybe it was the late and lonely hour, or the slow, percolating tension of the past few days, but suddenly the road she was traveling seemed longer and more dangerous with each step. She’d come this far with confidence, knowing, as always, that her dad was with her. Now, Brenna’s simple and unexpected question had brought her to a place where her perspective changed. This wasn’t just about exploring her past. She was exploring the pasts of three people—herself and the couple who adopted her, Jim and Molly. She’d come a long way as a five-year-old orphan, halfway around the world, and eventually came to them. How? Who were they back then, twenty-two years ago?

  Even considering those questions seemed somehow disloyal. Jim and Molly were the only parents she’d known. They’d given her nothing but love and support. But questions she’d never asked and couldn’t answer were buzzing around her head like gnats. It had never occurred to her that Brenna, her new stepmother, might want answers, too.

  The only light in the downstairs office was the cold blue glow of her father’s computer screen. His screen saver was a scrolling quote: “Count your blessings, don’t compare them.” It wasn’t just dime-store philosophy to Jim, but an approach to daily life. On one level, the professional level, he was so sophisticated. On another he was the simplest man she’d ever known. He lived mostly in a state of profound gratitude, even in the worst of times.

  She snapped on the desk lamp and unfolded the lined yellow paper. Brenna’s handwriting was more cryptic than any doctor’s, but the word “Dead” next to the name Espinoza seemed clear enough. Just below that was the name Vargas and a phone number, no area code. She deciphered the scribbled address. Bethel Park? The woman who signed her Spanish-language baptismal certificate lived in Pittsburgh’s South suburbs?

  Melissa felt an unexpected surge, an adrenaline rush as strong as an electric current. The clock at the edge of Jim’s desk said 10:49—far too late to call a stranger. She restrained the impulse to pick up the phone as long as she could, but then she was dialing.

  She hung up before she finished, still committed but suddenly worried that she’d wake her father and have to explain. After closing the office door, she hurried back to the phone and dialed again and hoped the words would come when she needed them.

  The response was uncertain and frail, a question more than a greeting: “Hello?” A woman, for sure.

  “Beatriz Vargas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Um, I’m sorry to call, but—”

  The woman cleared her throat. “It is quite late.”

  Was that an accent? “I … I’m sorry, I know. So sorry. And I wouldn’t be bothering you except—”

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Don’t hang up. Please. I don’t mean to bother you.”

  “Who is this calling?”

  “Melissa Christensen,” she blurted. “You don’t know me.”

  “Then I—”

  The words came in a torrent. “I’m trying to find information about a five-year-old child who was adopted in Pittsburgh in 1983. A girl. She was brought here from South America. Your name is on a document, a baptismal certificate for this girl.”

  When she paused for breath, she heard only the hollowness of an open line. Beatriz Vargas was listening.

  “So, the reason I’m calling, see, is I’m the girl, and I’m trying to find out more about my birth parents, my medical history.”

  Melissa waited for what seemed forever before asking if the woman was still there. Vargas’s reply came in a voice as uncertain as her initial greeting.

  “I am still here.”

  “Is this making any sense? I’m—”

  “You should not have called me.”

  Melissa felt her chance slipping away. “It’s late, I know. I’m so sorry. Can I call back tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Please do not call me again. You have the wrong person.”

  A possibility, but Melissa gave no ground. “I don’t think so. I think you don’t want to talk to me for some reason.”

  No answer came, just the distinct and unmistakable sound of disconnection. Melissa waited for the dial tone and punched in the number again.

  “Stop this,” the woman said.

  “Please help me. It’s important. I need information.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m pregnant,” Melissa said. “I need to know
my medical history, and I think you might be able to help me.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t know anything about my birth parents, see? My past, it’s all a big blank. And my baby … I need information.”

  Across the phone line came a sound Melissa recognized as the wavering intake of a crying woman’s breath. “Leave it alone, child.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Those were difficult times.”

  A breakthrough. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning things happen. In times like that people do things that might be hard to understand now.”

  “Who? Times like what?”

  “Leave it.”

  “Who?”

  “Let it go. What is past is past.”

  “But what if it’s my past,” Melissa pleaded.

  Before hanging up again, Beatriz Vargas muttered something in Spanish. A curse? A prayer? The only thing Melissa understood were the words “—the pain of knowing.”

  Chapter 30

  Christensen pulled on his robe and headed for the stairs, following his oldest daughter’s muffled voice. No sense trying to be quiet about it—the stairs’ creaking wood risers would broadcast his approach through the dark house louder than if he’d announced it on an intercom. But it was late, and she was on his office phone. Something was up, and he wanted her to know he was available to talk.

  In the kitchen, he scooped coffee into the drip coffee maker, poured in enough water for six cups, and let the machine’s gurgle and wheeze lure Melissa from the office. They’d covered a lot of ground at this kitchen table—her regular violation of teenage ground rules, the numbing news of Molly’s accident, Molly’s slide into a persistent vegetative state, his decision to disconnect her respirator after barring the hospital door to the nurses who hammered and screamed as he let Molly quietly slip away. He’d waited too long to tell Melissa about that plan, and still wasn’t sure she’d forgiven him.

  Whatever conversation she’d been having behind his closed office door, she obviously wanted to make the call in private. Was she finally calling the ass she’d been seeing, letting him know about the pregnancy? Maybe. But if he was married, like Melissa said, would she really call him this late? Wouldn’t he be home now? Was Melissa vindictive enough to call him there, knowing his wife would wonder?