“Oh,” she said, remembering, “they’re with Isabelle.” She lay back against the pillows. “What are you doing home?”
“I got your messages about Polly not sleeping. I thought I’d duck home to see if I could settle her for you.”
Essie smiled. “How sweet.”
Ben didn’t smile back. Lines bracketed his mouth and he kept rubbing his left temple and wincing as though it was causing him pain. That was why he looked strange, she realized. He was worried. Ben was never worried.
“Why are the girls at Isabelle’s?” he asked.
“They’re not. Isabelle is watching them for me here.”
“There’s no one here, Essie.”
She faltered for a second. “Are you sure?”
“I checked every room. I didn’t think you were here either, until I came in here.”
“Well…” Essie’s brain was still fudgy from her sleep. “Maybe Isabelle did take them to her house? Maybe they were being noisy and she didn’t want them to wake me?”
In three huge paces Ben was gone, presumably to check Isabelle’s place. Essie decided to double-check the house. Ben wasn’t the most observant person in the world—it was entirely possible that they were playing hide-and-seek in the lounge and he hadn’t noticed. Still, it was hard not to absorb some of his panic.
Walking from room to room, Essie listened and looked, on alert for a giggle or a whisper, or a little foot poking out from behind a curtain. But after doing a quick lap of the house, she found that the house was indeed empty. She had to admit, it was odd.
The door crashed open and Essie looked at Ben’s giant form in the doorway.
“There’s no one at Isabelle’s.” Ben’s jaw was tight.
Essie shoved her panic aside in an attempt to think logically. This wasn’t a worrying situation, she reminded herself. She hadn’t misplaced the children, she’d left them with a perfectly capable adult. “There’ll be a good explanation, Ben. Maybe they’ve gone to the park? Was there a note anywhere?”
“Not on the kitchen counter. Not on the hall table. And the pram is still on the porch.”
“Well, I’m … sure they’ll turn up.”
“Jesus, Essie! What were you thinking, leaving them with a stranger? If you weren’t coping, you tell me. Or Barb.”
“I tried to get in touch with both of you but you weren’t available. Besides, Isabelle isn’t a stranger. She’s a neighbor and friend. And it’s not like I had a heap of other people offering to help me. You weren’t answering your phone, and Mum was at the movies!”
But Essie could see Ben wasn’t listening to her. “I’m calling the police,” he said.
“The police? For goodness’ sake!”
“Essie,” he said slowly and carefully: a teacher to a child who just wasn’t getting it, “our children are missing and so is the person who is supposed to be taking care of them. We don’t know anything about her and we have no idea how long they’ve been gone.”
Essie felt the first quiver of uneasiness. “Is Isabelle’s car in the driveway?”
“I’ll check.”
Ben headed for the front door, but before he got there, the back door flew open. Mia bounced inside first, followed by Isabelle who was holding Polly. Both girls had pink, flushed faces.
“Daddy!” Mia ran headlong into Ben’s legs. He fell to his knees, taking her little face in his hands.
“Oh … Oh, wow. There you are.”
“Is everything all right?” Isabelle frowned, casting her gaze from Essie to Ben and back again.
“No, everything is not all right.” Ben sat back on his haunches. “We were about to call the cops!”
“Why were you about to call the cops?” Isabelle asked, perplexed.
“Because I got home to find Essie asleep and the girls missing!”
“We were playing outside,” Isabelle said. “Mia needed to run around and I thought the fresh air might help Polly sleep.”
Right on cue, Polly let out a giant yawn and then rested her head on Isabelle’s shoulder. Ben stood and snatched Polly from her. His eyes closed as she snuggled into him. Essie wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Ben so rattled. “I thought they’d been…”
Isabelle’s face paled. “Kidnapped? Oh God, no … I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Essie said quickly. “It’s our fault. We should have checked outside.” Essie shot an irritated look at Ben. “Isabelle was helping me out because I was exhausted and needed a break. She was a lifesaver.”
“Well, Ben’s home now, so I’ll leave you guys to it. I’ll talk to you soon, Essie. And again … sorry.”
Stay, Essie thought, as Isabelle gathered up her bag. Stay!
It was a strange thought, given what had just happened. She should have wanted alone time with her husband so they could talk through what had happened. She should have wanted to hold her children close and thank the gods that they were, in fact, safe. There were a million things she should have wanted to do.
But all Essie wanted was Isabelle.
* * *
“What’s going on?” Ben asked Essie that night after the girls were in bed. Essie had just poured herself a glass of white wine and had put her feet up on the coffee table.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … talk to me. You promised you’d tell me if you ever felt yourself getting out of your depth again.”
“I’m not feeling out of my depth. I had a bad day and a friend helped me out. Why are you making such a big deal of this?”
Ben sat beside her. “It’s not just me. Your mum is worried too. She rang me at work the other day.”
Essie felt a shot of betrayal. “Well … Mum worries.”
“Yes, and I’m starting to think she has reason to. She said you’re giving Polly to her at every possible opportunity. And there were four hysterical messages on my machine today when I returned from my meeting.”
“They weren’t hyst—”
“And this new friendship with Isabelle! You’ve never even left them with a babysitter besides your mother, and now you let Isabelle watch them straight off, before you even know her properly. Why?”
“I may not have known Isabelle for long but I feel like I’ve known her forever.” Essie knew she sounded a little petulant, but she couldn’t help it. “Anyway, why are you so upset about it? She didn’t kidnap our children, in case you hadn’t noticed. Or are you still worried she might?”
“Why not? You hear about it all the time. Single women approaching forty who take a shine to a neighbor’s children and suddenly they disappear.”
Essie rolled her eyes and took a sip of her wine.
“That’s another thing—you’ve been drinking a lot lately,” Ben said.
“Just because you don’t drink doesn’t mean no one else can.”
“Essie, how can I trust you with the girls if—”
“How can you trust the girls with me?”
Ben’s cheeks flushed red. “Listen, I’m sorry to bring this up, but you did, in fact, desert one of our children in a park once. How can I be sure that you won’t do something like that again? Or something worse?”
They stared at each other for several beats. Then Ben sighed, and the tension went out of him like the air from a balloon. “Listen I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just…”
Essie’s phone buzzed on the table beside her and she glanced at the screen. Ben paused, perhaps waiting for her to silence it.
Essie picked it up.
“You’re not going to answer it?” Ben looked at her incredulously. “Essie, we need to talk.”
She accepted the call. “Hi, Isabelle.”
“Sorry, is this a bad time to talk?” she said.
Ben stood before her, so shocked and dismayed. So worried.
“Not a bad time at all,” Essie said, curling up. “What’s up?”
29
ISABELLE
“Melbourne’s great,” Isabelle said into th
e phone.
Jules clicked his tongue. She could sense his skepticism, even over the phone.
“Really,” she insisted. “You should come down here sometime.”
She pictured him, stretched out in the window seat of his Sydney apartment, staring out over the waves. One of the few things his 1960s brown brick building had going for it was its killer view of Bondi Beach. It had always struck her as ironic, as he must have been the only guy in Bondi who didn’t surf, preferring leather over wet suits and motorbikes over surfboards. Isabelle was the same, really—she loved the gorgeous Sydney beaches, but she wasn’t one to lie around on the beach, sunbathing or swimming. In fact, it was fair to say that Isabelle and Jules resembled Melbourne people rather than Sydney people, with their love for the music scene, art galleries, and coffee. (Melbourne took its coffee seriously. The other day, Isabelle had noticed a “deconstructed coffee” on the menu at a local café, and deduced that it was a coffee served on a paddle in three separate cups—one with espresso, one with milk, and one with water. It was, perhaps, a little ridiculous, but she suspected Jules might actually like it.) She opened her mouth again, to try and convince him of this, but he got in first.
“I could come on the motorbike,” he said.
Isabelle smiled. “That would be nice.”
“So are you causing quite a stir down there in Melbourne?”
“Of course not,” she said, though Isabelle suspected that was exactly what she was doing. Her being there was obviously causing trouble between Ben and Essie, and Ange had discovered she wasn’t working for the Abigail Ferris Foundation. The truth was she’d never worked for the Abigail Ferris Foundation even though she’d had a lot to do with it. After Sophie was taken, they’d provided her with support as well as a few leads that didn’t pan out—the most interesting one about a young woman who had given birth to a stillborn the day Sophie was taken, but who had never filled out any paperwork as labor had come on to fast. Then, she’d disappeared from the hospital again and no one had any record of her. Isabelle had searched far and wide. She’d scrolled through birth announcements and tried to find the details of people in the area who’d had baby girls around that time. All roads had lead to nowhere. Until now.
“Listen, babe, I have to go, I’m actually in the middle of something. Can we talk more later?”
She hung up the phone and looked at the table in front of her, cautioning herself against excitement. She’d gotten to this point before, after all, only for it all to turn out to be a false alarm. That had been crueler, in a way, than losing Sophie in the first place. But this time would be different, she knew it. This time, instead of going in half-cocked, she was going to be thorough.
She took a deep breath. Go on, she told herself. Get on with it.
Her hands shook as she reached for a piece of white paper. She lay six or seven reddish-brown hairs across it. She’d managed to pluck them from Mia’s hair elastic while playing in the garden today. Hair wasn’t the most accurate DNA to test, but short of holding the child down and swabbing her cheek with a cotton tip, it was the best she could do. About four of the hairs contained the root, and Isabelle prayed it would be enough. In her drawer she had two envelopes, both of which had been provided by the DNA testing company. One should contain Mia’s DNA and the other, hers. She got out the instructions for her cheek swab and began to read. She wouldn’t make any mistakes. She couldn’t.
Once she’d mailed off the test, it would take seven days to get results. Seven days was so fast. Seven days was a lifetime.
In seven days, Isabelle would have her answer.
In seven days, she’d be taking back what she’d lost.
30
ANGE
Ange was making dinner, like she always did. An hour ago Will and Ollie had gotten home from their friends’ house and Ange relented when they begged for a milk shake, like she always did. Then she yelled at them for leaving their stuff all over the floor and told them she’d be telling their father when he got home. Like she always did. There had been no tears, or anger, or bargaining. She was doing everything as she always did, even though everything was different.
Lucas had another family.
The words had pinballed around in her head all afternoon, yet she still couldn’t make sense of them. It was as though someone had told her she lived on Mars rather than Earth—it was curious, mind-blowing even, but the ramifications remained unclear. For now, she was merely hunkering down, waiting for more information.
Lucas had another family.
Ange turned on the oven and caught at her reflection in the glass. Her mother’s reflection stared back at her. Bitter, detached, and a little crazy. Ange had a sudden, sharp yearning for her. Her mother had been dead almost twenty years, and for the ten years before that she’d been virtually dead, just sitting on the couch watching Oprah and ranting at Ange that she must never let a man have control over her happiness. Now, she heard her mother’s voice in her head: They’re all the same. Ange longed to fall into the recliner beside her mother and say, “I should have listened to you, you bitter old goat. As it turns out, you were quite right.”
Keys jangled in the door.
“Hey,” Lucas called. He rounded the corner, winking at her. Winking had always been their thing. Over the years she’d never seen a greeting she liked as much. Some husbands planted a perfunctory kiss on their wife’s cheek, others merely grunted as they walked in. But Lucas’s wink always seemed so genuine, so full of affection. It was like a little secret they shared.
One of many secrets they shared.
“Something smells good,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”
It was such an ordinary question. It was absurd given the magnitude of their situation but also, surprisingly comforting. Ange glanced back at the kitchen, taking in the onion, ground beef, eggs, and bread crumbs that were out on the kitchen counter.
“Burgers?”
Lucas laughed. “Is that a question?”
It was. The truth was, Ange had no recollection of what she’d made, no idea at all beyond the ingredients she could see on the counter. Maybe she was in shock? The idea wasn’t unappealing. If she were in shock, someone would wrap her in a warm blanket and give her some sweet tea, and watch over her until they were sure she was “out of the woods.” She’d seen paramedics do that on TV, after people had been involved in car accidents and such. Surely there was a service like that for women who’d found out their husbands were philanderers. And if there was … where the HECK was her blanket and sweet tea?
“Ah, meatballs,” Lucas said, peering into a pot on the stove.
“Yes,” she said. “Meatballs.”
Of course, she thought. Meatballs. Most women, Ange imagined, screamed and threw things when they found out their husbands had alternate families.
Ange made her husband’s favorite dinner.
Lucas wandered over to the boys who were playing Xbox and, miraculously, they grunted a hello to their father.
They’d become a family, Ange realized. Her boys, Lucas, Erin, and their little half-sister, Charlie. One day, at their weddings, they’d thank “Dad and Erin for all they’d done over the years.” Then they’d smile over at the table, where Ange was sitting, dateless, trying to look happy so she didn’t ruin the special day.
Ange went to the fridge and got out a half-full bottle of wine and two glasses. She very nearly laughed. Two glasses! In ten years, when Lucas was married to Erin, would she still get out two glasses when she opened a bottle of wine? Would she still make minestrone without celery because Lucas hated celery? Would she still tell the boys to “just wait until their father got home”?
“I’m starving,” Ollie called out dramatically.
Ange was about to tell him dinner would be ready soon, but Lucas intervened. “You’re not starving. Children in Africa are starving. You’re simply hungry.”
Oh, fuck off, Ange thought.
Usually, when Lucas said something like that, Ange f
elt proud. What a good husband she had. What a lovely role model for her sons. Often she took it one step further, into self-flagellation. Why didn’t she think to say something like that? Thank goodness they had Lucas, she’d think, to give them a moral compass.
Now it felt laughable. Lucas’s moral compass!
Ange filled one glass and walked over to the lounge. Lucas was perched on one arm of Ollie’s chair. Ange slid onto the other. He glanced at her wineglass, perhaps wondering why she hadn’t offered him one, but not mentioning it. Guilt, maybe? Well, I do have a girlfriend and an illegitimate child, so I’d better not give my wife a hard time about not offering me a glass of wine.
Maybe he did have a moral compass after all?
“You’re not in your gym clothes,” Ange said casually.
He hesitated only for the slightest second. “No,” he said. “I went into the studio for a few hours.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “It came up at the last minute.”
“Oh yeah?” She took a large gulp of wine. “Who did you shoot?”
The thought had occurred to her that she had no proof of anything. Not a shred. She imagined standing up in front of a judge and saying: Yeah, well, the little girl moved her arm in exactly the same way my older son does. Uh huh. And also, my intuition. A woman’s intuition is never wrong. Sentence him to death, Judge! Or at least, some hard labor.
The judge would laugh in her face. Maybe that was why she was pushing him now. She wanted her theory disproven.
“Is there any more of that wine?” he said.
“In the kitchen,” she told him, then she stood and followed him. “Who was the client?” she asked him again.
“A repeat client with her three-year-old,” he said, filling his glass to the top.
Ange took another large swig of her drink. “A three-year-old,” she said, after forcing herself to swallow. “That must have been fun.”
“I’m starving!” Ollie cried again, from the other room.
“Tough,” Ange yelled at the same time Lucas said: “You’re not starving!”
The Family Next Door Page 14