by David Bell
Erica stared him down. While she did, her eyes filled with tears. She bowed her head, an exaggerated gesture like she was praying. The movement took him right back to their college days, to times she was upset and times they fought. In both the past and the present, the gesture reached something in Michael, summoning empathy and concern for the person before him. Erica could look so vulnerable at times; she seemed always to feel more deeply than anyone else. It hurt to look at her when she was in pain or distress.
And then she glanced up again, the tear-filled eyes meeting his. Her chin quivered.
“You have to help me, Michael. You have no real choice.”
Her tone of voice had shifted. Gone was the manic edge, the revved-up energy. Erica sounded shaken, scared.
She spoke again, her voice just above a whisper.
“She’s yours, Michael. Felicity is your daughter, and I need your help getting her back.”
chapter
three
“That’s not possible—”
The door opened behind Michael. His hand still rested on the knob as it came open, so he let go. It was Angela. She took in the scene with her lips parted, struggling to find something to say just as Michael had moments earlier.
Finally, Angela said, “Is something wrong, Michael?”
Erica stood with her hands on her hips, her chin thrust forward in a defiant posture. But she still had tears in her eyes.
Michael looked between the two of them, feeling a strange surge of embarrassment. He and Angela once ran into his high school girlfriend, Kayla McKee, whom he dated all during senior year. Michael felt awkward then, fumbled through introductions in the middle of the grocery store, but Angela laughed about it on the way home, pointing out that Kayla had three kids in tow and another on the way. “She’s a breeder,” she said. “You could have had a whole litter with her by now.”
That was before all the troubles of having a child grew more desperate. But Angela always talked freely of her former boyfriends and lovers, mentioned them as casually as she mentioned a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes from her past.
But she didn’t laugh on the porch, not when she saw Erica.
“Angela,” Michael said, “this is . . . Erica. My . . . I don’t think you’ve ever met.”
“Hi,” Angela said, nodding at Erica, her voice clipped. “It’s nice to meet you. We thought it was kids selling something.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to talk to him,” Erica said. “It’s important.”
“Michael, is everything okay?” Angela asked, hands on hips in an unconscious imitation of Erica’s posture.
“Can you just go back inside for a minute?” Michael asked. “I’m going to figure this out, and then I’ll be right in. I promise.”
“It’s getting late,” Angela said. She took one more long look, running her eyes the length of Erica’s body. Then turned to go back through the still-open door.
Michael knew what Angela meant. She was ovulating. They needed to try. That night. And likely again the next morning. They had a plan.
“I know you don’t like me,” Erica said to Angela. “You’ve made that very clear.”
Angela kept going, closing the door as she went inside.
Erica’s words stood out. They sounded like they referred to something more than the moment on the porch or the predictable distrust between two women who had dated—and then married—the same man. Michael started to ask about her words but stopped himself. He had more important things to figure out.
He remembered what she’d said just before Angela came outside.
She’s yours, Michael. Felicity is your daughter.
“Erica,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about or why you’re saying it, but we don’t have any children together. You know that. I’m not sure why you’re showing up here, trying to throw my life into chaos.”
Erica maintained her defiant posture. “We were having sex up until the end, Michael. Up until you left me. We weren’t always careful. You’d reach for me in the middle of the night. I don’t think either one of us was fully aware of what we were doing.”
“She’s ten years old?”
“Nine.”
“And you never told me about her? Come on, Erica. That’s crazy.”
“Don’t do that, Michael. We’re not married, but you still can’t just act like I’m overreacting or hysterical. You’ve always done that, and it’s never been fair.”
Erica started fumbling in her pockets again. Michael thought she was reaching for another cigarette, but instead she brought out her shiny iPhone. She scrolled through, her finger swiping quickly, and then she turned the screen so Michael could see it.
A photo of a child. She was blond, like almost all the women in his family. Her cheeks were rosy, and in the photo, she stood in front of what looked like a barn, the red wooden boards cracked and peeling. A beautiful kid, yes.
But his?
“Don’t you see it, Michael?” Erica asked. “The resemblance.”
“She’s blond. Lots of people in the world are blond. They’re not all my kids. None of them are my kids.”
“Look closer. Zoom in.”
“Erica, I can’t even . . . I mean, we’ve been trying for two years, and the doctor says I may not be able to father a child. So how could this girl—”
“Look.”
Michael did as he was told. He remembered Erica’s determination, her iron will once something entered her mind. He used his thumb and forefinger to zoom in on the girl’s face, the picture clear even as the light faded from the day. The action didn’t reveal any more to his eyes. He still saw a cute blond girl on an outing to the country, her cheeks flushed from a long run or the cold wind.
“I don’t get it, Erica. A photo doesn’t prove anything.”
“Robyn,” Erica said. “Doesn’t she look a lot like Robyn?”
chapter
four
Michael stared at the image a moment longer, and then tried to hand the phone back to Erica. But she didn’t take it, and the two of them stood frozen like that, him holding the phone and her keeping her hands by her sides. A string of firecrackers popped up the street, followed by the laughter of children.
“Erica, I think you need to leave,” he said.
“I know you very well, almost as well as anyone else on the planet. I know who you are, Michael. It’s urgent when a little girl is missing like this. You would never turn your back on a child in danger. Your child. Your daughter.”
“She’s not—”
But how did he really know? Yes, they’d had sex near the end of their marriage. And, yes, the timing worked out with the age of the child. Felicity. But Erica was supposed to have been on the pill. And he and Angela had struggled so much with conceiving. . . .
But she did look like Robyn.
“You’re invoking Robyn to manipulate me,” Michael said.
And he had to give Erica credit—she had always been honest and forthright.
“Yes, I am,” Erica said.
* * *
• • •
Michael was the eldest of three children. His two younger sisters were Lynn, the middle child, and Robyn. When Michael was twelve and his sisters were nine and six, they lived in a house on the north side of Cottonsville, Kentucky, Michael’s hometown and where he still lived with Angela. The house was average, certainly not as large as the one his parents eventually moved to, the one they purchased as his father’s home health care company continued to grow and expand.
The first house on the north side of town sat on the edge of a subdivision that backed up to a seemingly endless cornfield. A swing set, one that had been in place before his parents even bought the house, provided hours of entertainment for the kids. But especially for Robyn, the most daring of the siblings.
It
happened in summer; Michael remembered that. July 19. They were currently about a month away from the twenty-third anniversary. He still dreamed about it from time to time. He still woke up with his heart pounding, his clothes soaked with sweat at least four or five times a year. . . .
The sun was bright that day, the sky blue and clear. Michael couldn’t even say why the three of them were playing in the yard together at that point. Michael was twelve, past the age when he could summon any patience or interest in the activities of his two younger sisters. His mom may have been on the phone or showering or tending to something in the house, which explained why the three of them were out in the yard together. Dad would have been at work. Back then and all the way to the day of his death, his dad always seemed to be at work.
Michael grew bored with the girls, with the silly songs Lynn sang and Robyn’s effervescent and seemingly endless chattering. He turned his back on them and started through the cornfield behind the house. He liked to walk up and down the rows, running his hands along the rough green leaves, listening to the way they rustled as he passed. He knew the sweet smell of the stalks, the rich odor of the earth. He could never get lost. The rows were so neat and orderly, the paths so straight and clear, he could always find his way back. He possessed an excellent sense of direction, and he never found himself turned around.
He couldn’t say how far he’d gone that day. Not very. He knew he was supposed to be in the yard, watching his sisters so they didn’t wander away or fight with each other. Even at that young age, he understood the unique place he occupied in their lives. They looked up to him. They worshipped him. They always listened to Michael, even more than they listened to or stood in awe of their own parents. Even Robyn, the baby, the one Lynn always called the favorite. Robyn, Daddy’s little girl . . .
Michael couldn’t say why he’d turned around when he did that day.
He didn’t worry about his sisters’ being alone. They were getting to be old enough that he felt he didn’t need to “watch” them all the time. He’d decided that summer that they both acted more like babies when he was around; when they were left alone, they functioned in a more mature manner.
But, still, his mom often asked him to keep an eye on them when she was busy with something else. He knew his mom worried the most about Robyn. Even at age six, she was a daredevil. She climbed on everything—tall trees and playground jungle gyms. She rode her bike as fast as she could, jumped into the deep end of the pool whether an adult was nearby to watch her or not. She made Michael as nervous as his mother. Michael hated heights, hated the sensation of going fast or out of control. But Robyn never flinched from anything, and their dad loved it.
He encouraged Robyn every time she took a risk. He cheered her on at her gymnastics practices when she flipped so high she fell, laughed a little even when he yelled at her for climbing too high in a tree.
It bothered Michael that his father acted that way. He thought his father’s behavior only encouraged more risky acts. And if Michael hated it, Lynn despised it. She always complained to Michael—and occasionally to their mom—about their father’s signs of favoritism toward Robyn. How he let her get away with anything, how he never punished her. Michael accepted that it was the way things went with the youngest child. He had friends at school with younger siblings, and they all shared the same complaint: The baby gets away with everything.
But Lynn never let it roll off her back. She never shrugged off Robyn’s or their dad’s behavior, never simply rolled her eyes and accepted the way things were. She fought against it. She balked at sharing things with Robyn, refused to let her anywhere nearby when her friends from school came over, even as those very friends told Lynn how adorable and funny her little sister was. Michael chalked it up to sisterly rivalry, the difficulty of having a younger sibling of the same gender who seemed to draw a lot of attention.
Michael took his time walking back through the corn. He had baseball practice that night. He looked forward to being on the diamond, to seeing his friends and throwing the ball around despite the growing heat. He loved the feel of standing on the dirt, the cracking of the bat, the shouts of his teammates.
He heard someone screaming in the yard as he drew close.
He recognized the sounds. His sisters were fighting, arguing with each other over some perceived injustice committed by one of them, their voices always shrill and pointed. Someone took a longer turn on a swing. Someone called the other one a name. Someone took something that belonged to the other. . . .
When Michael emerged from the corn, though, everything grew silent.
A hot breeze blew, but the swings were still.
Robyn lay on the ground, beneath the swing set, her head turned at a funny angle.
He knew one of her favorite things to do was to walk across the top of the swing set, arms out to her side like she was on the balance beam. Except this beam stood eight feet off the ground.
She never fell, never even wavered as she walked, even though the very act made Michael’s stomach clench, made his own head spin like he was sick. The height terrified him.
She laughed as she walked, taunting her siblings. But Robyn never fell.
Until that day.
Lynn stood to the side, her mouth open, her face full of terror.
And then their mom was running from the house, her hands raised in fear and panic.
chapter
five
“You can’t compare those two things,” Michael said. “You can’t.”
“Felicity is just a few years older than Robyn was. And she looks so much like the pictures I’ve seen of her.” Erica took a step closer. Despite the smoking, Michael caught a whiff of something flowery, a shampoo or deodorant that smelled like lavender. But closer in, she looked even more wrung out and tired than he’d first realized. Her eyes were red, the whites filled with crisscrossing capillaries like a tiny map. “When we were married, hell, even when we were in college, you always told me you wanted to have children. And you always said you wanted to have a daughter, a little girl who . . . well, who might help the family move on in some way.” Her tired eyes looked pleading, still filmed by tears. “I remember the dreams you’d have, how you’d still see that day, that moment, in your worst nightmares. I know all about how this affected you. And your family. Your parents couldn’t even talk about her. I know it all, Michael.”
“Stop it, Erica.”
“You even said once you’d want to name your daughter ‘Robyn.’ Now, I know I didn’t do that, but I thought about it. I really did. If we’d still been together . . .”
“You didn’t ever tell me. You say this child is mine, but you didn’t tell me.”
“I was angry, Michael. I was hurt when you left me. Very hurt. The only thing I could do to get back at you was to keep the child away.” Erica heaved a long, shuddering sigh. “It’s getting late, and time is a-wasting. The police, they keep telling me the first forty-eight hours are the most important. Michael, she’s gone. Felicity is. If we don’t act now, if we don’t hurry . . . The police won’t say what they mean by that forty-eight-hour thing, but I know. They mean she’s going to be dead. Killed. Murdered. Maybe . . . Well, you can imagine all the other things that can happen to a girl. My daughter. Our daughter.”
Erica’s breathing grew frantic, spastic. Her shoulders and chest shook convulsively, so that Michael wanted to reach out and grab her just to stop the painful-looking movements.
“I don’t know what I can do that the police can’t do. And shouldn’t you be there? At your house?”
“I’ll go back. Soon. I needed a break. I needed help. You went to therapy when Robyn died, didn’t you? You told me. And so did Lynn.”
“Why are you bringing that up?”
“People need help. From others. We can’t just wallow. And sitting in that house was like being in a pressure cooker. And that’s the one place Felici
ty isn’t.”
Erica brought out the cigarettes again. Her hands shook so much, she dropped the pack.
Michael bent down and picked them up. Their fingers brushed when he handed them to her. She managed to get one into her mouth, and Michael took the lighter and held it while Erica inhaled. The first long puff seemed to calm her. She regained some control of her body and her movements.
Up the street, a lawn mower roared to life, cutting through the quiet suburban evening. Someone was trying to get a few last blades of grass cut before the light was gone.
“I told you there’s a man,” Erica said. “He teaches at Felicity’s school. I don’t know what it is about him, but he always acted really interested in Felicity. He talked to me about her, sent notes home about how smart she was. He used the word ‘amazing’ once. It just never seemed right to me, the way he acted. It didn’t seem healthy.”
“Did you tell the police about him?”
“I did.” She took another long drag and again blew the smoke away from Michael. “They questioned him this morning, not long after Felicity was gone. Taken. I thought we’d know something right then, that he would tell them where she was and why she was gone. But the cops let him go. It was so fast, Michael. So fast. They just let him go. I don’t think they even searched his house. What if she’s there? What if she’s been held there all day and we just need to go there?”
“And you want me to . . . what?”
“Talk to him. With a man like you there, he might respond. I’d feel safer going. Just go do this and then come back. That’s it, Michael. For me. I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.”
“Don’t you have someone else who can go with you?” Michael asked. “A friend . . . or a guy in your life?”
“I’m a single mom, Michael. A single, working mom. I don’t have a huge circle of friends. I don’t have guys knocking down my door, wanting to date me.”