by Haylen Beck
“Oh, baby,” Libby said as she slipped from Charles’s embrace and took Ethan from Gerry.
“Mommy,” Ethan huffed, “wan’ go bed.”
“Sure, honey,” she said, feeling a pang of regret. “Let’s go.”
As she went back to their table to fetch her purse, she admonished herself for the small sting of resentment she felt at the evening being cut short. This is my life now, she thought. I don’t get to stay out and drink and dance. That’s the deal I made with myself in return for this miracle.
“I’ll walk you over,” Charles said.
She didn’t argue as he put a hand around her waist and guided her back inside, through the reception area, past the bar, and toward the elevator bank. They paused there, and he kissed her cheek once more.
Libby lowered Ethan to the floor, made sure he was solidly on his feet, then took Charles in her arms.
“I’ve had a wonderful evening,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Believe me,” he said, “the pleasure was all mine.”
“You don’t know what it means to me,” she said, feeling her face redden. “It’s been so long, you know? So long on our own, just me and Ethan. I love him with all my heart, but just to get a little time to have fun, grown-up fun, it means a lot. So, thank you. Really.”
She kissed his cheek, but he pulled away.
Before she could ask what was wrong, he pointed over her shoulder and said, “Ethan.”
Libby turned and saw him inside the open elevator, laughing as he hit one button after another. The doors hissed and began to close.
She called after him as she ran. Her left heel snapped, and she stumbled, righted herself. She reached out. The doors came together, and she saw him turn to look at her before they sealed her out. She hammered them with her fist as she called her son’s name.
And then he was gone.
6
LIBBY SHOUTED HIS NAME AGAIN as she stabbed at the elevator call button. Too late, she heard the hum and rattle of pulleys and counterweights. She grabbed a fistful of hair in each hand and stood back, watched the floor indicator over the doors as it counted up, two, three, four.
It stopped.
“Stairs,” she said, turning in a circle. “Where are the stairs?”
Charles appeared by her side and pointed to the corner beyond the elevator bank. “Over there. You take them, I’ll get the next elevator.”
Libby kicked off her shoes, left them lying on the marble, and ran for the stairs. Two flights per floor, she took two steps at a time. Arms churning, thighs singing with the effort, she counted off. Second floor. Third floor. Lungs heaving now, air like fire. Fourth floor.
“Ethan!” she called as she rounded the corner to the elevator bank.
No one here, she ran to the farthest elevator, looked at the numbers above it. The car had risen to the fifth floor. She sprinted back to the stairs, up two more flights, around the corner.
No one.
She called his name again, ran to the far elevator. It said seventh now. The top floor. Her legs and arms trembled as she ran once more for the stairway, lungs straining as she climbed.
“Please, please, oh God, please…”
She found the elevator door open on the seventh floor, the car empty.
“Ethan?”
Libby turned in a circle, looked up and down the hall. No one there. Perfectly quiet.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember the layout at this end of the building. The central section of the hotel was bookended by two towers with courtyards at their centers. The rooms opened onto walkways that overlooked the courtyards. Her room was on the far side, on the sixth floor.
Libby walked past the elevator bank, her hand against the wall for support, and found the open arch leading out to the walkway. Soft lights glowed above each door, showing the room number. She went to the handrail and looked down into the courtyard seven stories below. At the bottom was a small garden filled with tall tropical plants, large broad leaves and fronds.
“Libby?”
She looked across, two stories down, and saw Charles looking back up at her.
“Did you find him?”
“No,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice resonating in the space. “He can’t have got far. I’ll keep looking.”
Charles disappeared from view, and Libby cast her gaze down, down into the drop that seemed to stretch in her vision, and she felt a sickly wave as her balance shifted. Could he have? Could he have climbed the barrier?
“Oh no…”
She ran back into the hallway, past the elevators, and into the stairwell once more. The stairs seemed to go on forever and she lost count of the flights, ignored the concerned looks from the few people she passed.
At last, she emerged onto the ground floor, the marble cool on her soles. Gerry stood there, by the elevator bank, confusion on his face.
“Libby, what’s going on?” he asked.
She did not answer, ran straight past him and through the series of archways that led to the courtyard she had gazed down upon just a minute before. Her toes snared on a sprinkler hose and she crashed onto warm, damp earth. She peered through the dimness and the tangle of stems and branches.
“Ethan? Ethan!”
Libby got to her feet, pushed her way through the plants, parted the leaves with her hands, looking for a flash of yellow T-shirt or pale skin in the dark. Gerry called her name from the edge of the square patch of earth, but she ignored him. She circled it three times and found nothing. Unsure whether she felt relief or regret, she paused and looked up.
“Ethan!” Her voice echoed between the walls. “Ethan!”
A hand closed on her shoulder, made her gasp. She spun around to see a tall man, black hair going gray.
“Ma’am, you can’t be in here.”
She looked down and saw his white shirt and black tie, the badge, the gun at his hip. His nametag read: R. VILLALOBOS.
“I’ve lost my son,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, gently guiding her back to the archways. “Come with me to reception and we’ll get this figured out, all right?”
She pulled away. “No, I need to look for him.”
He took her arm again. “And I’m going to help you do that, ma’am, but first we’re going to calm down and explain exactly what happened, okay?”
Libby allowed herself to be steered back into the light, through the arches, and past the elevator bank. She became conscious of the eyes on her, the other guests staring, and she felt a burning shame. The soles of her feet stung with cold and grazes, and she wondered for the smallest of moments if this was one of those dreams where she realizes she’s left home without her shoes and wonders if anyone will notice.
But no, this was reality, hard and glaring.
The man brought her to a cluster of couches, Gerry following, and sat her down.
“Please, I need to go look for him.”
“In a moment,” he said. “Ma’am, my name is Raymond Villalobos, I am deputy head of security at the resort. Now, I want you to be calm and tell me exactly what happened.”
Gerry came and stood over them both. Villalobos gave him a stern look, and Gerry took a step back.
“We were over by the elevator bank,” she said, pointing, her voice quivering.
“Who was?”
“Me and Ethan,” she said. “And my friend, Charles.”
Villalobos looked toward Gerry.
“My husband,” Gerry said.
“Then what happened?”
Libby wiped at her cheeks and her nose, tried to steady her breathing. Villalobos produced a clean tissue from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Since we got here yesterday, Ethan’s been doing this thing, running ahead of me to the elevator an
d hitting the buttons. I told him, no, stop, but he kept doing it. Then five, ten minutes ago, I was there talking with my friend, and I didn’t see him go in the elevator, and when I looked round, the doors were closing, and now he’s gone and I need to find him.”
Villalobos took her hand. “And I promise you we’re going to do that. First, give me a description. Name, age, height, build, what was he wearing, like that.”
She closed her eyes and pictured him. “Ethan. His name’s Ethan. He’s three and a half, light red hair like mine, not quite three feet tall, solid build. Pale. He’s wearing his yellow T-shirt with the crocodile on the front, and blue shorts.”
“Thank you. Just a minute.”
Villalobos stood, walked a few feet away, and unclipped a radio handset from his belt. He spoke softly, but Libby could still hear him.
“All details, listen up. We’ve got a lost child last seen getting into an elevator on the ground floor of the north-tower bank. Three and a half, male, red hair, about three feet, yellow T-shirt, blue shorts. I want anyone available over here right now. Jamal, you there?”
An unintelligible crackle in response.
“Usual procedure at the gates, and have any lifeguards that are still on-site do a quick check around the pools, all right?”
“Oh God,” Libby said, picturing all seven pools they’d seen today, all that water.
Gerry sat down beside her, put an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll find him.”
Villalobos spoke once more into his radio. “Alejandro, you copy?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Wind back the feeds on the north-tower elevator bank, all floors, say, about fifteen minutes. Start at the ground floor till you see the kid go in the elevator and take it from there.”
“Yes, boss.”
He came back to where Libby sat, and hunkered down in front of her.
“Ma’am, I want you to stay right here so I can bring your boy to you when I find him, okay?”
“But I want to look for him, I can’t just sit—”
“Ma’am, please, I promise you we will find your son and bring him here to you.” He gave her a smile, but his eyes remained hard. “I don’t want to spend five minutes looking for your son, then an hour looking for you, you know?”
Libby shook her head. “I can’t stay here.”
“I’ll wait with you,” Gerry said, and she thanked him.
“Good,” Villalobos said, as if Libby’s words meant nothing. “I’ll ask a waiter to bring you some water.”
He stood upright and strode away.
Gerry stroked her shoulder and held her close. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.
But she knew he was wrong.
7
“I CAN’T JUST SIT HERE,” LIBBY said. “I can’t.”
She got to her feet, and Gerry took her hand.
“He said to wait here,” he said. “I think you should do that.”
“No.”
Libby shook his hand away and strode back toward the elevator bank, where Villalobos huddled with three men in similar uniforms. She walked past them unnoticed and went for the stairs once more. Commanding herself to think, she worked through the possibilities. He could have stepped out of the elevator onto any of the floors from the third up. And where would he go from there?
Anywhere.
That was the only answer, and it made her sick to her stomach. So far, she had only searched the corridors and walkways adjacent to the elevator bank, but there were hallways leading back to the central block of the hotel, which in turn connected to the southern tower. And there were further wings beyond the northern and southern towers, with corridors and open doors connecting them all.
The terrible image of her son wandering lost and afraid entered her mind, and she stopped halfway up the first flight of stairs between the second and third floors. Fear threatened to overwhelm her, to bring her to her knees. But she straightened, willed herself to keep control. She kept climbing.
On the third floor, she went once more to the elevator bank. There, she turned in a circle, took in all the possible routes Ethan could have chosen. So many, so many. How could she know where to start? She went to an open doorway that led to the central block, saw the hallway stretching away as far as she could see, doors on either side.
“Ethan?”
As she listened, a middle-aged couple emerged from one of the rooms. They both watched the barefoot woman as they approached. Libby stepped back to let them pass.
“Did you see a little boy?” she asked. “Red hair, yellow T-shirt.”
They shook their heads and went for the elevator. She ran past them, back to the stairs, and up to the fourth floor. Again, she went to the doorway leading to the central block, found a hallway exactly like the one below.
“Ethan? Ethan!”
Panic edged in, promising to reduce her to a shrieking mess. She pushed it back, refused to let it take her. Libby was stronger than that. She told herself so. Everything she’d been through these last few years had toughened her. Given her a suit of armor that she could use now.
Not here, she thought. Move on.
Back to the stairs once again. She paused at the bottom of the first flight, her thighs and lungs aching at the prospect of another climb. No matter. There was no choice. She took one step after another, breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth.
As she came eye-level to the flight’s top step, something made her stop. The marble steps were well lit, the surfaces glistening. The small landing between this flight and the next was the same. But there was a darkness underlying the sheen. She couldn’t quite see it from this angle, so she took another step.
Red.
The marble of the landing was coated with a pool of deep red. She smelled it then, like ripe meat, cloying at the back of her throat.
“Oh God,” she said.
Libby climbed the remaining few steps, already trembling. The pool of red glistened.
“Oh please God no,” she said.
She reached the top and looked around the bend. A cold and selfish relief flooded her when she saw Charles lying sprawled on the landing. The relief washed away as quickly when she saw one arm folded at an impossible angle beneath his body, his legs resting on the lower steps of the second flight, and the gash that ran in an arc from above his left eye to a couple of inches above his ear.
Libby said his name and kneeled by his side, ignoring the cold wetness of his blood on the marble. She placed a hand on his cheek.
“My God, Charles.”
His eyelids fluttered at the sound of his own name. His lips parted and his jaw worked as a deep grunt bubbled from his throat.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “Just lie still.”
Libby looked up and down the stairwell. Somewhere below, she heard men’s voices, the security guards searching for Ethan.
“Up here!” she called. “Come quick!”
Fast, heavy footsteps, growing louder, echoing up through the stairwells.
“Please, he needs help.”
One man, then another rounded the turn at the bottom and climbed toward her.
“Oh shit,” the first man said.
The second grabbed the radio from his belt and thumbed the button on the side. “Call 911. We’re going to need a paramedic up here, and an ambulance. Looks like a head injury and a broken arm. We’ll do what we can right now.”
The first man took Libby by the shoulders, helped her to her feet, guided her away.
“We’ll take care of him, ma’am,” he said. “What’s his name?”
At first, she could not answer. Her mind could hold no other thought than him falling, one arm shattered by the force of it, his head connecting with a step.
No, he didn’t
fall.
That idea rang clear in her mind, so hard and bright she could see nothing else.
“Ma’am, what’s his name?”
The guard’s hands tightened on her shoulders, brought her back to the now. She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Charles. His name is Charles.”
The second guard, now kneeling where Libby had been only seconds before, used his thumb to lift one of Charles’s eyelids, his other hand operating a flashlight, shining the beam into the pupil.
“Charles, can you hear me?”
Charles moaned, coughed.
“Hey, there you are. You had a fall. Don’t try to move.”
Libby backed away, thinking, He didn’t fall. She wanted to say it out loud, but she couldn’t. What if she was wrong? Probably she was. Charles had simply lost his footing at the top step, distracted by his search for Ethan. That was all. Surely, that was all, wasn’t it?
No, it wasn’t.
Even though logic and reason told her otherwise, she knew the moment that she’d been fearing for more than three years had finally come. As inevitably as morning follows night, the truth had found her. Perhaps the knowledge should have calmed her, but instead it sharpened her fear, brought panic back to the surface.
She stepped around the two men tending to Charles, ignoring the wetness at her soles even as she slipped on it, grabbing at the handrail to keep herself upright. Mounting the bottom step of the second flight, she called her son’s name.
As she climbed, her certainties shifted and changed, then changed and shifted back again. Charles did not fall; he was pushed. He wasn’t pushed; he fell. She became vaguely aware of one of the guards calling, Ma’am, where are you going? But she ignored the voice. Instead, she shouted her son’s name again, and again, and once more, as she reached the next floor.
A family, two parents, two children, all well dressed, reeking of money. They waited at the elevators, stared at her as she passed, shoeless and bloody. She didn’t care.
“Ethan? Ethan!”
The mother approached, her expression wary.
“Ma’am? Do you need help?”
Libby turned to her, unseeing. The woman took a step back.