The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  “About eight years,” I replied, thinking back to the last sighting, the last Girl Who Might Have Been Maggie. It used to happen more often, when her disappearance was fresh. But after twenty years, nobody else was looking for her anymore. Nobody knew what to look for. “She’s got a tattoo on her thigh. A blue lizard, according to the coroner’s assistant.”

  I remember how Andrea’s hands flew to her face, pinkies meeting against her lips, the rest of her fingers splayed along her cheeks. Peering at me over her fingertips, lines appearing in her high forehead.

  I knew what she was thinking. That I also had a tattoo of a blue iguana, a tribute to my missing sister’s favorite toy, across the ribs of my right side. That surely, the world could not manufacture such a stunning coincidence. That it had to be her. Finally, my sister.

  * * *

  * * *

  WE RECORDED THE six episodes that became our podcast in the week that followed, starting with the muffled recording of our conversation in the bistro. First with the intention of pitching it as a follow-up to the older podcast episode we’d recorded about Maggie’s case, and then under our own steam, when the hours of material proved to be more than one episode could contain. We went through every detail of my sister’s case and gleaned what we could from Jane’s autopsy report. I spent hours on true-crime forums online, sharing details and soliciting advice from the other obsessed amateur detectives and retired policemen and bored college students who were all trying to solve unsolved cases. Andrea tracked down the hospital orderly who’d found the body and peppered him with questions while he ate his lunch at a little bakery across from Masonic. And I talked, just talked, for hours at a time. Speculated about why Maggie might have been lost for so long. About what it would mean if Jane Doe was really my sister. And what it would mean if she wasn’t.

  A lot of reviewers pointed to those discussions as the greatest strength of the podcast, after we released it. Listeners loved that it was my story as much as my sister’s, an honest portrait of childhood trauma, a detailed rendering of survivor’s guilt. I talked about the death of my father, my fractured relationship with my mother, my lingering nightmares. The years it had been since I’d allowed myself to hope for an answer to my sister’s disappearance, because hope could be a terrible thing, apt to turn leaden inside you and drag you down if you let it. When I listened to the podcast, after Andrea cut together our conversations into a coherent narrative, I couldn’t even remember saying some of it. I couldn’t imagine being willing to put into words the things that had been roiling inside me. I could hear it in my own voice, how desperate I was for an answer. Grappling for anything. I was still drowning, then.

  Of course, I didn’t tell them everything. There are things I couldn’t bring myself to admit, about what happens when your sister gets into a car with a man and is never seen again. I was so young when my sister went missing that I grew up convincing myself that maybe she was okay, out there in the world somewhere. I imagined all the lives she might have been living, instead of imagining all the things that might have been done to her, as others did. When I was eight, I thought she might have run off to Hollywood to become a movie star. I would ride my bike to our town’s little video store and search the faces on each VHS cover for my sister. Or there was the alien abduction. The amnesia, or the witness protection program, or the secret, star-crossed boyfriend. The vampire lover. The religious cult. An owl, stuffing our chimney with invitations to someplace magical. All the conceivable reasons a girl might disappear and never say goodbye to her sister. Never drop a line to her family. Never reassure them that she was okay, somewhere else.

  I would never admit out loud that, twenty years later, I was still letting myself believe those things. Numbing myself against the darker possibilities, cobbling together a normal life in the negative space between thoughts of Maggie. It’s what allowed me to finish high school, go to college, get married. To go through the motions of everyday life, pretending I wasn’t always pulling against a hook dug deep into my chest, its tether rooted always to that moment in my eighth year.

  And then there was the darker truth. That if Jane Doe #4568 was my sister, it would be the end of all that dreaming. It would cut short all the lives I had given her over the years. It would really be the end of her, in a way that she had ended for so many other people already.

  Of course, the Jane Doe was not Maggie. A DNA test proved that. Since the prevailing theory at the time was that Maggie was a runaway, the CPD had never seen fit to take DNA samples from our family home. So instead they tested Jane’s DNA against a swab they took from my cheek. Looking for a familial match. It took them three days to get the results, and we recorded the season’s last episode when Detective Kyle Olsen, the hotshot detective newly assigned to my sister’s case, called me with the results. I still haven’t been able to listen to that final episode, even all these months later, even after the podcast became one of the most popular of the year. Even after all my hope brought me to the ground.

  I don’t want to hear the thread of relief in my voice in that moment, the part that’s so obviously grateful that the mystery of my sister hasn’t yet been solved. I don’t want to hear what other people must hear—the gratitude of a woman who is still allowed to hope that her missing sister is alive. Because the truth is, I don’t hope she’s alive anymore. I don’t think I’ll see her again. My relief exists only in the part of me that would rather imagine her out there somewhere, living a life separate from mine, so I’m still allowed to hate her for it.

  * * *

  * * *

  I’M STILL A little drunk when I head to the airport. It’s early—barely six in the morning—and I made the mistake of attending both the award show’s after-party at the hotel bar as well as the after-after-party at a watering hole a few blocks away. I only had time to stop at my hotel and change out of Andrea’s dress—now rumpled and smelling of spilled vodka—before I had to catch a cab to the airport.

  The award is heavy in my carry-on bag on the flight home. It’s one of those pointy, engraved-glass affairs. The sort that looks like it could be used as a weapon, under the right circumstances. Like in the third act of a slasher film, to impale the killer in one last rally by the bloodied, willowy protagonist. I’m a little surprised they let me bring it on the plane.

  There’s no room for it in my apartment, of course. That place doesn’t even have enough bookshelf space to hold my books, much less an award. A far cry from my old condo, with its three bedrooms and its built-in shelving and its vintage-Chicago stained glass above the back door. No, I’m sure the award will go in Lane’s office; she’s the head of our production company. Andrea certainly won’t want it in her house, not when she’s about to have a toddler . . . well . . . toddling around.

  I sleep most of the flight, despite the man next to me, who is watching a superhero movie on his laptop with the volume all the way up, to the point where I can hear every explosion hiss out of his headphones. I take my phone out of airplane mode as soon as we touch down in Chicago, and a voicemail pops up on the screen. Eric. Saying something kind about my win, no doubt. Lane and Andrea and all the rest of the crew were on the phone the minute I was off the stage, but Eric has always been the sort to go to bed early, even on weekends. The sort to sleep in his running clothes and rise with the sun. He’s also very good at being the compassionate ex, still supportive, still wanting the best for me. Despite the things I’ve done.

  I’m too tired and far too nauseated to catch the Blue Line at O’Hare, so I opt for a cab instead. I figure my win has earned me at least one more ride expensed to our production company. After all, it’s my sister’s story that put them on the map.

  My apartment is a tiny one-bedroom in Uptown, above a head shop and across from one of the best pho places in the city. The sort of place you move into when you walk out of your marriage and take nothing with you except your BA in English literature and your extensive employme
nt history of tending bar. Eric offered me more, of course, because Eric has never been anything but incredibly decent. But I couldn’t imagine taking any of his money with me when I left, considering that he was the only one working a serious job in the five years we were married. Since we split up, I’ve been bartending most nights at a goth club in Avondale while pushing the podcast by day. The Best Debut Podcast of 2018, I think as I unlock my apartment door and drop my bag—award and all—onto my thrift-store couch.

  The apartment isn’t so bad, really. It’s just in an area of town where no one has yet bothered to start remodeling old buildings and rebranding them as “vintage.” So the paint on the walls is yellowed and thick with a hundred years’ worth of fresh coats between tenants, the hardwood floors battered and discolored in sections from damp springs and the occasional leaky pipe and the scrape of a century’s worth of furniture. The windows are so heavy I can barely lift them and have to prop a block of wood under one to keep it open. The radiators popped and hissed and rattled all through winter, and now there’s nothing but humid, hot air in summer. But it feels honest in a way that the granite countertops and Sub-Zero refrigerator of my condo never did. Or, perhaps, it’s just that I’m more honest now than I ever was living in my pristine marital three-bedroom. That’s the thing about grief. It forces you out of your habit of lying.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket as I head to the kitchen, leaning over the sink and drinking water straight from the faucet, Brita filter be damned. The mixture of my hangover and the flight has left me feeling wrung out and achy with dehydration. My head feels like it’s full of grit, the tight pain in my skull shifting slightly with every movement. Twin notifications pulse from my phone, and I glance at the screen to see a voicemail from a number I don’t recognize and a text from Andrea: Heading over. Munchkin in tow.

  I cross the room and drop onto the couch, resting my feet on my carry-on. One of the great advantages of this apartment is its proximity to Andrea. She shares a place nearby in Andersonville with her wife, Trish, an interior designer who was overjoyed at the prospect of this apartment, despite my nonexistent decorating budget.

  “It just has so much potential,” she said the first time she stepped into the space, which still smelled of eggshell paint and drywall dust. “Any designer can make an amazing space in a brand-new rehab with a twenty-thousand-dollar budget. This is a challenge,” she said, her eyes gleaming. Already seeing what it could become, once she had her way with it.

  So, for the past six months, Trish has scoured Chicago’s secondhand stores and estate sales on my behalf, coming away with what has become a charming—if eclectic—collection of furniture. At first it seemed to be a ploy to get me out on weekends amid the fog of my crumbling marriage, but even since the podcast has taken off, Trish still texts me two or three times a month with pictures of pieces she’s found across the city. A lime-green rolltop desk we could “easily refinish” or a china cabinet I’m certain would never fit around the hairpin turns of my building’s staircase. And as much as I appreciate her help, I still wonder if she expects me to stay here, in this cheap, poorly maintained rental, for longer than I hope I will.

  I text Andrea a thumbs-up emoji and listen to the voicemail. The fuzz of static on the line sounds for a moment like a recording might kick in, telling me I’ve been selected for a Hawaiian vacation. Or worse, it could be one of the calls I’ve been getting since the podcast aired. Blocked numbers, dead air. The faint sense that someone is breathing on the other end of the line. But instead a low, careful voice begins to speak.

  “Hello, I’m trying to reach Marti Reese. I apologize for calling on your personal line, but your production company was hesitant to put me in contact with you, and I was able to get your number through a mutual friend. My name is Ava Vreeland, and I believe I have information about a crime that may be connected to your sister’s case.”

  This isn’t the first call I’ve received since the podcast began. At minimum, it’s probably the fifteenth. Plenty of people have been reaching out with tips or suggestions, to the point where Lane has been talking about hiring a private investigator to track down as many leads as possible, considering that Andrea and I are suddenly in way over our heads. But something about the coolness, the depth, of this woman’s voice sets her apart. She doesn’t try to be tantalizing like the rest, the barely covered excitement in their voices evident as they tell me they “know someone who might be involved” or “could break the case wide open.” She doesn’t sound like she knows she’s in competition for my attention with every other person who has a theory on what happened to Maggie. In fact, her diction sounds almost formal, like the overly professional cadence of an MBA on a job interview.

  “I would love to set up a time to speak with you, at your convenience,” she says. She leaves her number. I don’t write it down. Sleep presses inward, making my attention drift. The calls—Ava Vreeland’s and all the rest—can at least wait until I’ve gotten some rest. After all, Maggie isn’t going anywhere. Maggie isn’t anywhere at all.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  I wake to the sound of a key turning in the dead bolt of my front door.

  “Marti?” It’s Andrea’s voice. I raise my hand from where I lie on the couch. A moment later, two sets of eyes are peering down at me. Andrea’s, large and brown beneath a knot of curly hair atop her head, and Olive’s, round and pale hazel amid a face pudgy with baby fat. I raise both my arms, making an exaggerated grasping motion with my fingers, and I’m rewarded with my prize when Andrea pulls Olive from her front pack and deposits her in my hands.

  “So where is it?” Andrea asks.

  “In my bag.” I hold Olive aloft above me for a moment, watching her beam down at me until a little droplet of drool collects on her bottom lip, and I sail her down onto my stomach before it has the chance to drop onto my face. Olive giggles and squirms as I wipe her chin with my sleeve. She smells of peach skin and baby powder.

  “May I?” Andrea asks, motioning to my feet, which I raise off my carry-on long enough so she can pull it from the couch and unzip it. She rustles in the tangle of my clothes and finds the award, in all its cut-glass glory. “I can’t believe I missed this. I’m going to kill Trish for having to work.” She pushes a stack of junk mail to the side on my coffee table and sits down. She’s wearing overalls, in a way that only Andrea could wear overalls. In a way that makes them look chic, cuffed above brown leather work boots, over a green cap-sleeve turtleneck. Like she’s come from a magazine shoot about motherhood, one whose aim is to sell denim. Or to make twentysomethings want babies.

  “So how was it?” she asks.

  “Stodgy,” I reply, scowling theatrically at Olive, who grins back at me.

  “Define ‘stodgy,’ ” she says, using the throw on my couch to rub an errant fingerprint from the award.

  “There wasn’t anyone there I wanted to fuck,” I reply, because I know the reaction I’ll get.

  “Please don’t say ‘fuck’ in front of the baby.” She whispers the word as she says it.

  “My sincere apologies,” I say to Olive, all seriousness. “There wasn’t anyone there I wanted to . . . play with.”

  “See, maybe that’s progress,” Andrea says. “I seem to recall a time when there wasn’t anyone you wouldn’t . . . play with.”

  “Ouch,” I reply. But it’s true. Studies show the best way to ruin a perfectly good marriage is to fuck everyone in sight. And, since the Jane Doe, I’ve done the research to back it up.

  “Have you eaten anything?” she asks.

  “Ever?” I reply, though Andrea’s mother-hen routine is one of my favorites.

  “God, it’s like I have two children,” she says, rolling her eyes and getting up, setting the award reverently on the coffee table as she heads to my little kitchenette. I can hear her rustling around in my fridge and do a mental inventory of what she must be finding. A bott
le of dry vermouth, a half-empty jar of Dijon mustard, a limp bunch of green onions, and about fifteen old takeout containers. Not exactly the makings of a gourmet meal.

  “Okay, fuck it,” she says, slamming the fridge. “Grab your coat, we’re going to Pick Me Up.”

  “Andrea,” I say with mock horror, clasping a string of imaginary pearls around my neck. “Don’t say ‘fuck’ in front of the baby.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “THE PROBLEM IS,” Andrea says as soon as the waiter drops off my tofu wings and Andrea’s omelet, “you know all Lane cares about is how to sustain this.” Olive clucks her agreement from her high chair. The table between us is covered with little cutouts of Star Wars characters beneath a coating of epoxy. The Pixies play over the murmur of conversation around us.

  “Where do we even start?” I ask, spearing a piece of tofu and dunking it in ranch. God, I’m hungry, I realize with a suddenness that’s actually surprising. “My phone has been ringing off the hook with people reaching out. Leads about Maggie’s case.”

  “Mine too,” Andrea replies. “But there’s only so far we can take a case that’s been cold for twenty years, and trying to craft a whole season out of these cranks is going to start feeling like squeezing water from a rock.”

  “So, what?” I ask. “We should pick an entirely different case?”

  “Maybe,” Andrea says. “This is Chicago. There are a lot of missing women out there. And a lot who aren’t getting the kind of attention they should be. A lot whose families don’t have the resources yours did.”

  “I know that,” I reply. It’s pure selfishness, I know, to ask Andrea to keep our focus on Maggie’s case. Still, I can’t stop thinking about last year, the prayer I offered up as I gave the DNA sample to Detective Olsen. Give me another chance. One more chance to find her.