Missing Daughter

by Rick Mofina

  “You told me something big was happening in your life that I couldn’t tell anyone. You seemed scared. Do you remember telling me that?”

  Maddie looked at her then shook her head. “I don’t. What could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Brooke said.

  “Hey!”

  A man with a ballcap and ponytail had joined them.

  “Hey, Bennie,” Brooke said. “Maddie, you remember Bennie, the pizza man?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt you ladies,” he said. “I was just making another delivery to the party, and I had to see for myself.”

  “See what?” Maddie said.

  “That it’s really you.” Bennie searched her eyes, then assessed her from head to toe, becoming lost in the wonder of what he was seeing. “How could this be? It just can’t be.”

  “What do you mean, Bennie?” Brooke said.

  “I just can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s the most amazing thing I ever saw.” Tears came to his eyes. “I just can’t believe it’s you standing here. It just can’t be.” He shook his head. “Okay, gotta go. Thanks.” He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat in a causal salute, turned and left the hall.

  “What was that all about?” Maddie asked.

  Brooke rolled her eyes. “That’s Bennie. He’s weird. That’s what happens when all you do in life is deliver pizzas.” Brooke looked around. “Think about what I said. I’m going to get a drink. Want anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  In the moment Maddie was alone, her cousin Dalton found her.

  “This is great, don’t you think?” he said.

  “It’s kinda overwhelming.”

  “I’m Dalton, your cousin.” He had a handsome smile.

  “I know. We already talked. I mean, I know who you are.”

  “Just teasing,” he said. “So, still having trouble remembering what exactly happened?”

  She rolled her eyes and groaned pleasantly.

  “That’s all anyone asks me. Yes, I’m still having trouble remembering.”

  “Is the shrink helping much?”

  “Yes, she’s very nice.”

  He thought for a moment, glanced around then back at her.

  “Maddie, I’m going to ask you something that I really need to know.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you remember anything at all about that night, anything specifically?”

  She swallowed, thinking for the longest time, staring at him, unable to answer as the music hammered into the night.

  58

  Alone here in my darkness...remembering what I want to forget...traveling back...years and years...always pulling me back to that night...

  Crystal came to watch us...we had pizza... Bennie delivered it... “Hi, Bennie”... Bennie winking, waving, saying, “Hey, beautiful”...

  We watch the movie... Jurassic Park...dinosaurs chasing people, gulping them down... Tyler loving it...then bed...the darkness...my secrets lit by the light of my phone...my secret desires.

  Mom knows nothing... I’m old enough to know what I’m doing...my pulse is racing...pretending to sleep when Mom checks on me...the secret messages keep coming...my heart is beating so fast...

  59

  “We just got these new images of Maddison.”

  Miami-Dade Detective Julia Castillo tapped on her keyboard, and the video played on the large flat screen in the boardroom.

  “It’s from the security cameras at a strip mall about three blocks from the shelter in the hours before Zeus hit full force.”

  Hopeful to unravel the mystery of Maddison Lane’s return, Asher and Zubik sipped coffee and studied the video clip of the mall’s parking lot.

  Street signs are dancing to and fro, vibrating. Palms are bending, a traffic light swings, debris skips off parked vehicles, flying like shrapnel as Maddison, wearing a polo shirt and tan shorts, runs alone through the lot, leaning into the wind-driven rain, holding her head.

  She’s visible for about four seconds.

  Castillo’s keyboard clicked.

  “Then, a few minutes later, we pick her up here in the shelter’s security camera.”

  Maddison arrives staggering in the wind holding her head, crouching behind a planter where she’s discovered by two women before they are all taken into the shelter.

  “How did she get to that strip mall?” Detective Chad Powers asked. “We’ve got nothing leading up to that point.”

  “And exactly how was she injured?” Asher asked.

  Zubik had made notes then said, “Julia, can you run the strip mall again but super slow this time?”

  The images appeared in a stop-start manner. Zubik leaned forward, looking at the vehicles and Maddison’s movements just as she entered the frame. After Castillo ran the clip a few times, even zooming in and out, Zubik shook his head in frustration.

  “All right,” Asher said. “She arrives at the shelter injured but with no phone, no wallet, no ID. Was she robbed? Was she fleeing from someone? Where did she come from?”

  It had been two days since Zubik and Asher had landed in Florida to search for answers to Maddison Lane’s disappearance and how she emerged. In that time they had followed Maddison’s known path, interviewing everyone who had contact with her before she’d returned to Syracuse.

  Lana Compton and Pearl, her mother, the women who’d found Maddison at the shelter, remembered little. “She was bleeding and drenched,” Lana said. Shelter officials, the medical team on duty there and at the hospital tried but couldn’t offer anything new. They went over the statements given by Anna Croll and Officer Penny Metcalf without uncovering anything they didn’t already know.

  Zubik and Asher faced additional challenges arising from the fact that the fingerprints collected from Maddison at the time were lost because of an IT issue. And while her prints were run with no hits through county and state databases, they had not been submitted to the national databases, which may have provided leads had they surfaced for any reason in another jurisdiction.

  “Everyone was preoccupied with Zeus,” Powers said. “We were also dealing with reports of burglaries and looting.”

  “What about DNA? Did you do a cheek swab?” Asher asked.

  “No, we didn’t. Our hands were full, and we were comfortable with her identity being confirmed by her parents and by her birthmark with the understanding that any follow-up would be done in New York.”

  Asher exhaled her frustration.

  The Syracuse detectives had also reached out to Van Brophy, a private investigator with the Miami office of Cole Lane’s agency.

  “You can believe we did everything we could to help find her, and to find out what happened. From the get-go we’d circulated Maddison’s information to law enforcement, the press, missing children’s groups, child services, everyone down here,” Brophy had told them when they met him at a local Starbucks. “We also pushed every street source we could. Cole wants us to find out how she got here, too. We’re doing all we can to get answers.”

  Today, after viewing the new video, Zubik and Asher interviewed people at the strip mall with little luck. Then they ran down plates of the vehicles that were in the parking lot at the time Maddison passed through it. They’d interviewed the owners, a long shot that yielded nothing.

  Late that night, after dinner with Asher, Zubik relaxed on the bed of his motel room with his laptop on his stomach replaying the footage of Maddison in the strip mall lot.

  Again and again.

  From the beginning, he ran it stop-action, frame by frame, certain he caught the faint hint of a blurred image of a person near Maddison.

  Is she running from someone? Running for her life?

  60

  Everyone stared those first days as Maddie walked through the halls.

 
Going to school was unnerving.

  Most of the time she’d kept her head ducked down, holding her books close to her chest like a shield against her uncertainty, confusion and the reaction of the other students.

  Like when two girls gawked as she passed by them.

  “It’s really her,” one of them said to her sidekick. “The famous girl who disappeared.”

  Others were less like circus-goers and a bit more mature.

  “Hi, Maddie, I’m Hannah Merton. You likely don’t remember me. We were in sixth grade together.” Hannah jotted her number on a scrap of notepaper. “Let me know if you ever need any help with anything.”

  No matter how hard Maddie tried, she could not shake feeling like an alien in a foreign land. While many kids were welcoming and warm to her, others regarded her as a celebrity, an oddity, or something to be mocked.

  “Remember me, Maddie? Gwen?” A nervous freckle-faced girl giggled. “We had history together back in the day.”

  Another girl had swiped to a photo on her phone and showed it to Maddie: two girls wearing leotards, laughing in a gym. “It’s me, Sophie Verdes. That’s us when we were in gymnastics together, remember?”

  As the days passed, Maddie lost track of how many times people wanted to show her old photos or take selfies with her. Her teachers were understanding, but treated her like she was made of glass. They gave her special attention, in those first days when she sat in on classes, always asking, “Are you comfortable with this?” or, “Is there anything you need, Maddie?”

  Tyler was the ever protective big brother, the future soldier, always texting, needing to know where she was, how she was doing.

  “Where are you?” he’d ask. “Everything good?”

  “Geography. Yes, I’m okay.”

  And sometimes that was true, particularly when she was with the kids she knew, the ones she felt most comfortable with, like Amanda and Lily. They were nearly bursting when they’d showed her the draft of the page they were going to run in the yearbook for her.

  “It started out being a page of hope for you when you were still missing.” Amanda showed it to Maddie on her tablet, pictures of her when she was twelve and a nice one taken only days ago. “Now we’re turning it into a welcome home Maddie page, see, with fireworks, confetti and balloons!”

  But not everyone was enamored with Maddie’s return. It may have been juvenile envy, but some couldn’t hide their resentment at the attention she’d gotten. One girl touched her arm and said, “Gosh, Maddison, how are you going to get into college after missing all those years?”

  Another girl snickered. “You’ll probably end up working beside your mom. Better practice saying ‘Price check on canned peas!’”

  Then there were others, like the boy who said, “Did you get a movie and book deal yet? Some people think this is all fake news, that you faked the whole thing so you could cash in.”

  All Maddie could do was shake her head and walk away.

  But more kids grew curious about her and her ordeal. As time passed, their reluctance to press her on it melted, until one day in the cafeteria a group who’d seemed friendly beckoned her to join them. As they ate lunch things started off all normal, then one popular jock, Vin Dubner, shot a glance to the others before he stared at Maddie.

  “So what the hell happened to you?” Vin asked. “Where were you for four years and how’d you end up in Florida?”

  “I guess I was taken from my room, but I still don’t remember much.”

  “Still can’t remember?” Vin shook his head. “Man, I don’t know.”

  “You know, we think you look older,” Vin’s pal, Reed Lanski, said.

  “I am older. We’re all older—it’s been four years,” Maddie said.

  “Naw.” Vin crossed his arms. “We think you look older than sixteen.”

  Maddie didn’t respond.

  “And different, look.” Katie O’Conner swiped through her tablet then turned it. “Here’s your picture when you were twelve before you disappeared.” Katie held the tablet next to Maddie’s face. “Look at your nose and eyes now. We think you look different.”

  Maddie swallowed and studied the older photo.

  “I know,” Maddie said. “The doctors told me that the stress of what I went through could do things to me.”

  “Really?” Vin was deciding to believe her.

  “Yes, it’s some kind of medical thing. You can look it up. I should go.”

  “Wait,” Vin said. “You really don’t remember anything?”

  “Only little bits.” Maddie was barely audible.

  “It’s all so weird,” Vin said.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go.” Maddie gathered her things and stood, fighting tears as she left.

  61

  Karen selected a serrated knife from the drawer.

  She was at the kitchen counter making Maddie’s favorite, an egg salad sandwich, while Maddie waited at the table. It was Saturday. Ryan had taken Tyler to help him clean up on a job, so for now it was just the girls.

  “Want to go to the mall, Maddie?” Karen drew the knife across the sandwich, cutting it in half. “There’s a sale on some cute outfits at—” She pivoted with the plate and froze.

  Her daughter’s chair was empty.

  “Maddie?”

  Karen set the sandwich down and checked the living room. Nothing. The hall. Nothing. The bathroom. Nothing.

  Karen’s pulse picked up when she entered Maddie’s bedroom. Relief and concern rolled over her when she saw her through the window, standing outside at the fence facing Lucifer’s Green.

  Karen went to her.

  Tears brimmed in Maddie’s eyes.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” Karen stroked her hair. “Want to talk?”

  She was silent. Birdsong floated from the woods. Butterflies flitted over the tall grass.

  “It’s been almost a month now, and I know it’s been hard,” Karen said. “I’m worried about you, honey. You’ve been so quiet and you’re not eating. I know we need to be patient, but I can’t help worrying.”

  Maddie brushed at her eyes and blinked back her tears.

  “Why can’t I remember anything?”

  “Maybe you’re suppressing things you don’t want to remember, like Dr. Hartley said.”

  Maddie ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head.

  “It’s more than that.”

  “What else? Tell me, sweetie.”

  “It’s the things people say, the way they look at me and it’s all the news stories I’ve read, the new ones, the old ones, about me, about Dad.” Maddie speared her with a look. “About you.”

  “About me?”

  “How when your mom died and your little sister died, you were there with them each time. Some articles kinda implied you were responsible for their deaths, and that just bothers me so much.”

  “It bothers me, too.” Karen stared at the sky for a moment. “Cassie drowned. It was an accident. My mother’s health was failing, and the stress of losing Cassie was a factor in her death. I nearly went crazy. Sometimes I felt like I was cursed to keep losing the people I love. It’s why I argued with you so much, because I was afraid I was losing you. And when we did lose you, when you vanished, my world shattered. I thought I was being punished for the things I’d done.”

  “What things did you do?”

  Karen looked at her.

  “I’m not perfect. I’m not a perfect mother, or a perfect person.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Maddie said.

  Fighting her own tears, Karen took Maddie in her arms.

  “It means God has given us a chance to start over, a chance to make everything right, the way it should be, and I’m never going to lose you again. We just need to be patient, okay?”

  Maddie look
ed at Karen for a long moment.

  * * *

  That afternoon after returning home, Ryan went to Maddie’s room where she was watching videos on her tablet.

  “Mom told me you were having a rough day.”

  Maddie tugged out her earbuds, stared at him, took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Since I’ve been back I’ve been trying to figure things out.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “I’ve looked at the family pictures and videos a million times, but it’s so hard for me to remember.”

  “I understand.”

  “I also read all the news stories I could find about me, my family. Some of the stuff I found is alarming, you know?”

  “Yes, I do. It was devastating when we lost you. We were hollowed out. Your mom and I went through our lives like the living dead. I drank way too much because we were in so much pain.”

  Maddie shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I get that.”

  “What then?”

  “This.” She tapped on her tablet, turned it to him so he could see the security footage of him dragging her into his truck in the rain four years ago. “This scares me.”

  “Oh,” he said, barely audible as it played. “I see.”

  When it ended, Maddie waited for him to respond.

  “Maddie, if I could turn back time and do things differently, I would.” He dragged his hands over his face. “Yes, I pulled you into my truck after you ran off. You mouthed off pretty bad about mom and I lost it. I struck you one time that day because I was angry. I was under so much pressure with my business. It’s no excuse for my behavior that day. It’s one of the regrettable things I’ve done that I’m not proud of.”

  “One? There are others?”

  Ryan scraped the back of his hand across his lips like a man who suddenly craved a drink. He had cut back since her return, but something was twisting his insides.

  “Look, honey, I think it’s best if we leave the bad things of the past in the past,” he said. “We’ve got a second chance here to be better people. Not everybody gets that.”

  * * *