The Vanishing Girls

by Callie Browning

  Holden’s deep laugh echoed through the office. “He likes you more than he likes me anyway, so I doubt that will be a problem.” He grinned. “I’m glad you two get along so well. Clifford is cordial with everyone, but he never clicked with the other assistants the way he did with you.”

  Eileen smiled. “He’s like the father I never had.”

  Holden pursed his lips and tried to choose his words carefully. “I know it won’t make up for the fact that you didn’t know your parents, but we’ll have a beautiful family of our own some day.” His chest grew warm at the thought of having children with the woman in front of him.

  Eileen cleared her throat. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about my parents.” She tore her eyes away from his and fixed her stare on her fingers as she twisted them together. “I do know who they are.”

  Holden was confused. “Then why say you didn’t know them?”

  Eileen got up and started pacing, her breath coming in sharp gusts as she spoke. “I didn’t lie; I never met them. But I know who they are.”

  Holden stood up slowly. Something uncomfortable wormed its way into the pit of his stomach. “Eileen…what are you telling me?”

  She took his hands between hers and looked at him with pleading eyes. “I don’t want to keep this from you if we’ll spend our lives together. But…I didn’t want you —or anyone else — to judge me for what my parents did.”

  Eileen sank down into a chair, a deep frown on her pretty face. “I’ve heard the rumours,” she said bitterly. “I knew how I’d be treated if anyone found out the truth about who I really am.”

  Loving Eileen was easy, but Holden was suddenly worried for his future wife’s safety. Never before had he seen her so agitated. His palms grew sweaty. He wiped them on his pants, knelt in front of her and asked, “Who are you?”

  Her eyes met his and for a fleeting moment, Holden feared she would refuse to tell him. That she would run away and he’d be left nursing a broken heart.

  “My mother is the woman they call Pretty-Eyed Susan.”

  He tried to stop himself but couldn’t help the fact that his mouth fell open like a trap door. The corners of his mind summoned childhood memories of the biggest political scandal the island had ever seen. Pretty-Eyed Susan’s tell-all book had practically forced the country to its knees. For years no-one knew what had happened to her. Youthful indifference had caused him to forget most of the details, but Holden remembered the nickname that had persisted over the years. Not to mention the merciless taunts that accompanied the infamous nickname that all Caribbean people assigned to traitors.

  “You’re Susan Taylor’s daughter?”

  She nodded numbly.

  Holden stared at her, his mind pulling together the pieces of everything that had happened since he met Eileen. Everything now made since, coloured with the clarity of Eileen’s confession. “Well…it certainly explains why you didn’t tell me your name before.”

  Eileen bit her lip. “My real name is Cordelia Taylor. I go by Eileen because I just never wanted to be affiliated to my mother in any way.”

  Holden felt faint.

  She reached for his hands, her eyes pleading as she said, “I wanted to tell you before. But I didn’t want that stigma clinging to me and making life harder than it already is.”

  She looked him in the eye. “Would you have hired me if you knew?”

  In spite of himself, Holden took a moment too long to respond. “Well… I guess that maybe I still might have.”

  The young woman raised a brow. “There wasn’t a single affirming word in that sentence.” She sighed. “If you don’t want to marry me anymore, I understand.”

  Colour rose in his cheeks as he looked away. “Eileen — Cordelia — good heaven’s, what am I supposed to call you?”

  “I still like being called Eileen.”

  “Fine…Eileen. This doesn’t change how I feel about you. I’ve seen you for the woman you really are. You’re kind, smart and thoughtful.” Holden shrugged. “Truth be told, I was too young to know a lot about what happened but I do remember my father saying that he couldn’t understand why your mother was castigated just for telling the truth.”

  “Really?” her eyes were hopeful.

  “‘Son, it’s a dark day in hell when the truth doesn’t light the way.’ My father thought it was shameful how the country turned her out on her ear.

  “When Watergate happened, my father was quick to point out the parallels. He said the problem was that both Susan Taylor and Martha Mitchell knew too much. The key difference was that Martha was seen as a battered woman in the end while Susan was treated like a pariah.” Holden shook his head and looked pityingly at Susan’s daughter. “Sometimes people just need someone to focus their hatred on. I believe that’s all that happened to your mother.”

  “I guess so,” was all she could say. She glanced at him, her eyes hopeful. “And you’re sure it doesn’t bother you?”

  In his heart, Holden knew that nothing about their relationship was conventional. Everything from the way they’d met, to the work they did, to the serial killer they’d hunted down belied a unique connection that wouldn’t be easily broken by something as trivial as a parent who was spurned by society.

  “No,” he said firmly. “All that matters is that you love me.”

  “I do.” She said with a smile.

  Holden’s heart fluttered. Without a doubt, he believed her.

  EPILOGUE

  “Hurry, Clifford,” Holden said as the two of them raced through traffic. The empty stretcher in the back of the funeral van bumped and rattled against the sides of the vehicle as they sped through the narrow city streets.

  “Boss, no offence, but I ain’t accustomed to driving passengers that in a rush. You got me nervous,” Clifford replied as they turned into the hospital’s car park.

  Holden didn’t respond. His nerves were on edge and he threw open the door and jumped out of the van before Clifford could press the brakes in front of the Accident and Emergency bay. He hastened to the nurse at the front desk who stared back at him with disinterest as she chewed gum. “Nurse…it’s an urgent matter. My wife called and said she’d been admitted and I need to see her immediately.”

  The woman blinked at him. “Did she tell you which ward she was on?”

  “Yes…T8.”

  “Take the stairs to the fourth floor and then turn right. The ward will be three doors down.”

  Holden took the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding unsteadily as his mind whirred. Surely, he needn’t worry.

  He was just about to push the double doors when they burst open. Two nurses ran past him pushing a gurney with his wife’s bloated form covered in blankets. “Holden,” she gasped in pain as she snatched at his hand. Her palms and forehead glistened with sweat, as she writhed in agony. Holden’s heart dropped. He couldn’t bear to see his wife in this much pain. He broke into a run, clutching his wife’s sweaty palm as he raced in tandem with the nurses down the corridor to the hospital theatre.

  “Sir, you’ll have to wait out here.”

  “But I…”

  “Sir,” the nurse said pointedly. “It’s policy. You can either go home or wait here.”

  Holden sank down on the long bench across from the theatre door. In his mind, he saw his father die again, lying next to him in the mangled car wreck. Reflexively, he yearned for his accounts ledgers, longed for a productive distraction that would help him to pass the time. He closed his eyes and imagined the smell of ink, summoned the feel of crisp pages beneath his fingers and heard the clacking of calculator keys as he reconciled the accounts. Holden exhaled and opened his eyes. His chest felt tight. He kept clasping and unclasping his hands.

  “Boss?” Clifford sat next to him on the bench. “Babies does born every day. Eileen and the baby gonna be alright.”

  Holden nodded numbly.

  Clifford nudged Holden’s foot. “I remember when my first was on the way. So many thoughts i
n my head but I couldn’t grab onto a single one.” He grinned and clapped Holden on the shoulder.

  Holden wasn’t sure why he could never admit it, but Clifford was always a steadying presence in his life and it was times like now when he felt certain that Clifford knew it too. “Yeah…it’s just that when you know how fragile we really are that it’s hard to automatically assume that everything will be okay.”

  “Pashaw!” Clifford exclaimed with a surprisingly elegant flick of his wrist. “Young Davis, you does always be reading something or the other. You should know we got a low mortality rate for mothers in Barbados.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Then the odds are in your favour,” interrupted Clifford. “Besides, that baby got a sturdy mother. You know full well you can’t knock down Eileen just so.”

  In spite of himself, Holden grinned. “You’re right about that.”

  “Baby looks like her too.”

  “How do you…” Holden glanced up, his eyes widening as he saw the nurse walking toward him with a swaddled bundle in her arms.

  Holden shot up out of his seat and took the tiny bundle when the nurse offered the baby to him. The smallness of the personage in his hands was jarring. The baby’s face mirrored Eileen’s with its delicate oval shape, but Holden recognized the cupid’s bow lips as his own. His heart fluttered. Seeing a hint of himself in the child stirred warmth in his chest, filling him with the most pride he had ever known. His and Eileen’s world had shifted in the past nine months to prioritize the life of someone neither of them had met but had developed an unconditional love for.

  “Boy or girl?” asked Clifford, his face aglow as he stared in awe at the baby.

  “A girl,” beamed the nurse.

  “She’s a pretty little thing, ain’t she?” said Clifford.

  The nurse nodded as though personally responsible for the child’s good looks, fussing with the blanket’s embroidered hem and stroking the child’s covered head.

  The baby’s eyes had been closed up until that point. As though sensing she were the centre of attention, her little eyelids opened slowly, her sensitive eyes testing the light before she finally fixed her gaze upon her father.

  Clifford peered at the child again. “What’s wrong with the eyes?”

  “Hmm…” the nurse glanced at the little girl. “Oh, they will settle in the first year, but when their eyes start off with that swampy colour, the babies might end up with green eyes.”

  “Green eyes?” said Clifford quizzically.

  “Uh huh.” The nurse nodded and then shrugged. “Or that kinda mixed-up gold colour that they call hazel.”

  Holden nodded, a knowing smile on his face. “They’ll probably be hazel…like her grandmother’s eyes.”

  Behind-the-scenes details

  This novel is loosely based on the still unsolved murders of five young women that rocked Barbados from 1973 to 1982. This spate of deaths became known as the Canefield Murders because most of the victims were found in cane fields. I invoked creative license and shifted the timeline in this novel and condensed that timeframe into a year, setting it in 1985.

  I’ve always found the 1980s to be fascinating in terms of Barbados’ culture and history. For that reason, I decided to move up the dates of the murder timelines to coincide with other critical historical moments in Barbados. The names and circumstances of all of the victims have been changed since they don’t accurately represent the events. Only two facts have maintained: the young women were found primarily in cane fields and the clue that cracked the case was a newspaper vacancy ad.

  Don’t forget to leave an Amazon review.

  Hi there,

  I hope you enjoyed ‘The Vanishing Girls”, the follow up to my first novel “The Girl with the Hazel Eyes’. I loved, loved, loved writing this book and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

  A huge part of the reason why I relished this experience so much is because all three of the main characters (Eileen, Holden and Clifford) resemble me so much in their own way. I’m somewhat rough around the edges like Eileen, I’m definitely that uppity friend who wouldn’t want to play scrabble without vowels like Holden and I’m snarky like Clifford. It’s been so much fun sharing bits of my personality with you in this way and I look forward to hearing what you think about “The Vanishing Girls”

  As a self-published author, nothing is more valuable to me than feedback and I hope you’ll be kind enough to leave an honest review on Amazon and Goodreads. Leaving feedback helps me to become better at writing and publishing so that I may enhance your reader experience. It also helps other readers make informed decisions about if they may enjoy this book.

  X,

  Callie

  Please tap here to leave a review.

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  About the Author

  Callie Browning was born and raised in Barbados. She is an avid reader and has been writing since 2009. She has won awards for her short stories and her first full length novel, The Girl with the Hazel Eyes, was a finalist in the JAAWP Caribbean Emerging Writer’s Prize. She lives in Barbados with her family.

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  Credits

  Cover design by Ebook Launch. Special thanks to Author Annabella for her assistance with information on the preservative preparation of human remains in the Caribbean.