by Darcey Bell
“Can you hurry?” she says.
“My favorite words,” the driver says, and zooms off down the street.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Charlotte rushes into the cafeteria, hoping she looks as anxious and breathless as she feels so that the after-school teachers will know she’s made every effort—every painful, superhuman attempt—to get there on time.
There are at least ten kids still there, so Charlotte’s not the last, which is a relief. They’re all slurping something out of a paper cup, and when she passes, one of the kids says, “Microwave pizza!”
“Cool,” says Charlotte. “Delicious.”
She doesn’t see Daisy, but that happens. Sometimes her group stays behind in the classroom or goes to the library.
Charlotte’s anxious, but she always is. She never once comes to pick up Daisy—and she does it every day—without feeling that twinge of absurd, irrational fear that her daughter won’t be there. It only makes her happier to see her sweet little face.
Right away she can tell that something’s wrong. The supercompetent after-school teachers—Tanya, Edditha, and Michelle—are trying not to look confused. Clustered around the sign-out book, they scrutinize the final page.
“What’s going on?” Charlotte asks.
What she wants to hear is: Nothing. But she senses that’s not what she’s about to hear.
Tanya says, “I guess there’s been a little mix-up. She’s already been picked up.”
Maybe Eli changed his mind and left rehearsal—how grateful Charlotte will be! She feels guilty for having been annoyed with him. She’ll make it up to him somehow. She’ll be extra nice this evening, and then tonight, in bed . . .
“Her dad?” Charlotte says.
Tanya and Michelle look at each other.
“No,” says Michelle. “Her aunt.”
“Her aunt?” says Charlotte. “What aunt? She doesn’t have an aunt!”
Her anxiety has gone from zero to sixty in under five seconds. She tells herself: Calm down. It’s a mistake. They’ll figure this out and get Daisy from her classroom, and that will be that. Problem solved.
She reaches for the sign-out book.
“Can I see?” A jagged vibrato shakes her voice, though it’s too early for panic. Unless it isn’t. Before she can look at the list of names of the parents and caretakers happily going home with their children, the women gently repossess it and call the head of after-school, Mrs. Hernandez.
“Hello, Charlotte,” Mrs. Hernandez says, proving that, like her employees, she remembers everyone’s name. “There must be some misunderstanding. Your sister-in-law signed Daisy out at three—that’s over two hours ago.” She shows Charlotte the line on which it says:
3:00. Ruth Seagram
“She’s not my sister-in-law!” It’s not what Charlotte means to say. What she wants to say is: I need this to be fixed! I need this not to have happened! Why does Ruth have my daughter? Someone needs to make this right! Now!
Michelle says, “She was very nicely dressed, in a suit and little heels and this big fuzzy vest.”
What does Charlotte care what her daughter’s kidnapper was wearing?
Actually, she cares a lot. What Ruth’s wearing might be the most important fact in the world, second only to what Daisy has on.
What was Daisy wearing this morning? Why can’t Charlotte remember?
Maybe Rocco and Ruth came for Daisy. Maybe Eli reached Rocco.
“Was she alone?”
“No,” says Michelle. “There was a guy with her.”
So it was Rocco. Thank God.
“Big guy? Six four? Dark curly hair? Two-day stubble, probably? Three-day stubble, maybe.” Charlotte laughs. “My brother.”
Tanya and Michelle aren’t laughing.
“No . . . ,” Michelle says. “This guy was short. Kind of slight. Glasses. Graying hair.”
“Heavily gelled,” says Tanya. “I remember thinking that the guy used an awful lot of product.”
It sounds like someone Charlotte knows, but who? Where is Daisy? Why has Ruth taken her daughter? Who was Ruth with?
They wait several minutes for two school officials, a man and a woman Charlotte has never met. She doesn’t want to meet them, doesn’t want to know who they are or what their position is. She doesn’t want to watch them calmly and professionally dealing with the question of who might have taken her daughter by mistake. Mixed signals, confusion, whatever. Who has stolen Daisy?
With her permission is what these strangers seem to be saying. They show her Ruth’s name. On the pickup list. There it is. Right there.
Then she remembers: The circus. Rocco and Ruth took Daisy to the circus. She should have taken Ruth off the list. But it didn’t seem important. And she’d had so many more urgent things that she had to do.
Charlotte is going to wake up, and this will be a normal afternoon. Daisy will appear in the doorway and burst into smiles when she sees her mom, and she’ll run across the cafeteria, swinging her lunch box in circles.
Mrs. Hernandez says, “We have it on record . . . Ruth Seagram is right here on the list . . . We can only do what you tell us.”
Charlotte should have taken Ruth off the list. She had other things on her mind. She’d been focused on the Mexico trip. And now her daughter has been kidnapped by a woman claiming to be her sister-in-law. Rocco and Ruth aren’t married. Daisy doesn’t have an aunt!
Once more she thinks: Calm down. There’s probably some logical explanation. Maybe Ruth just wants to spend the afternoon with Daisy. Maybe Rocco got Charlotte’s text and asked Ruth to pick Daisy up, since he couldn’t or wouldn’t. Maybe this isn’t a problem. But why didn’t Ruth ask her—or tell her? Why didn’t anyone bother to inform her?
She knows in her heart and in the pit of her stomach that it is a problem. That something is not right. That something is very, very wrong. And this time—she doesn’t know how she knows, but she does—it’s not just her overactive imagination.
Who was the man with Ruth?
“Where is she?” Charlotte says. “Where the fuck is my daughter?”
The whole cafeteria goes quiet. Everyone is looking at them. Even the kids, especially the kids, know something’s going on. They stop playing and yelling and eating their microwave pizza—and stare. How lucky they are, how safe. None of those children have been kidnapped. Only Charlotte’s child. She has never felt so lonely than she does here, surrounded by teachers and kids.
“Please,” says Mrs. Hernandez. “We understand that you’re upset. But you’re upsetting the children. I’m sure we can figure this out. We’ll clear this up in no time.”
Charlotte looks at the clock. It’s five thirty.
Daisy’s been gone for two and a half hours.
She’s gasping. Someone brings her a paper cup of brackish water. She takes a sip.
Disgusting.
“Daisy’s asthmatic.”
Whatever warm, cooperative fellow feeling flowing between her and the others cools in an instant. They are not all in this together. She is in this alone.
“We do know she’s asthmatic,” says Michelle. “Believe me, we are fully aware of the children’s health issues.”
Just as Charlotte is growing enraged by the thought that the person she loves most in the world has become a “child with health issues,” Tanya says, “We know that Daisy’s inhaler is in her backpack.”
“Did she take her backpack?” Let the answer to that one question be yes, and Charlotte can cope with everything else.
“Yes,” says Tanya. “I remember. We’re careful . . . because of your daughter’s health issues . . .”
They look toward the corner where the backpacks are piled in a heap. Even from a distance Charlotte can tell that Daisy’s pack—a lurid purple, decorated with black and white piano keys—isn’t there.
Daisy was wearing her purple jacket.
Daisy’s inhaler! Charlotte has the GPS tracker on her phone that lets her locate the inhaler. If Daisy ha
s the inhaler, she can find out where Daisy is.
The app was a present from Ruth. Best not to think about that now.
Charlotte whips out her phone. “There’s an app. So we can find her inhaler . . . it’s a tracking device . . . it’s . . .”
She’s tapping her phone as she says this, trying, even in her panic, to show these strangers that she is a responsible mother. She’s figured out how never to lose her daughter’s rescue inhaler. Meanwhile they are the ones who have lost her child.
She finds the app and presses LOCATE. Her screen goes blue, and a brighter blue doughnut circles and circles and circles. The children in the cafeteria have lost interest in her and resumed making noise. Charlotte hopes someone is looking after those kids. The people around her are watching her phone.
In tiny yellow letters against the blue background, it reads:
Oops! Service interrupted, please try again later.
Oops. She’s gotten used to Oops! when online service breaks down. Oops! Her daughter has been kidnapped.
She feels her heart plummet in her chest. She feels like she’s swallowed an egg. She wants to sit down. She can’t sit down. She will get stuck there forever and never find Daisy.
She wants to throw her phone against the wall. But that’s the last thing she can do. She needs the phone now more than ever. She tries again, presses LOCATE again, and the same thing happens. Oops!
“Turn it off and on,” suggests Tanya.
“I will,” says Charlotte.
“The reception’s not great down here,” says Michelle.
It was always fine before.
Charlotte says, “Are you sure she didn’t leave her backpack here?” This makes no sense, she knows. If the inhaler was in her backpack, and if her backpack was in the gym, that familiar, comforting beep would be audible across the room.
“Yes,” says Tanya. “Your sister-in-law was clear about that.”
“Let me say this one more time, okay? I don’t have a sister-in-law.”
“Her name was on the list,” repeats Mrs. Hernandez, as if Charlotte is Daisy’s age. “And ‘sister-in-law’ was how she self-identified.” She looks to the others for confirmation, and all of them nod.
Michelle says, “She told us that she was Daisy’s aunt, and Daisy looked happy to see her Auntie Ruth.”
Tanya says, “That’s what we look for. The response of the child.”
“And the guy?” says Charlotte. “Did my daughter respond to this man . . . this stranger?”
Tanya and Michelle look at each other and shrug.
How safe these women used to make her feel. And now they’ve become her enemies. How could they let this happen? Charlotte let it happen. Nothing was ever safe.
“Legally,” says Mrs. Hernandez, “she was—”
“On the list,” says Charlotte. Oops again! She sounds curt and ungrateful. But don’t you get cut some etiquette slack when your child is missing? “Did they happen to say where they might be going?”
Tanya, Edditha, and Michelle—they all have photographic memories, but they’re having a hard time with this.
Charlotte is texting Rocco and talking to them at the same time.
CALL ME! NOW!!!!!!
There aren’t enough exclamation points for how urgent this is.
“Can you call the police?” Charlotte asks.
“You would have to make that call,” says Mrs. Hernandez. “Because nothing illegal has happened.”
“Call the police,” says Charlotte. “I’m begging you.”
“Let’s give it a few hours,” says Mrs. Hernandez. She smiles, as if to reassure Charlotte that this problem will be cleared up soon. They deal with these things all the time. Custodial parents, nannies, confusion. In fact this little problem is probably not a problem at all.
“We don’t have a few hours,” says Charlotte.
She runs outside with no idea where she’s going. She just needs air, light, space, and to be away from people who want to help her, who say they want to help her, but who can’t and won’t do one single thing to help her. She’d loved those women until now. Now she hates them all, even though she knows that this isn’t their fault.
Ruth was on the list.
Parents walk by, hand in hand with their children. Each loving, chattering pair is a knife in Charlotte’s heart.
She texts Rocco and Eli separately.
RUTH HAS DAISY. SHE TOOK HER FROM SCHOOL.
Rocco texts back right away. Jesus X.
A second text, moments later, also from Rocco: Ruth will come here. Soon. Trust me.
Trust me. At this point Charlotte will trust anyone who says trust me.
Bing bing. Eli texts: Rocco says meet him at Ruth’s. Wait there.
Seconds later Charlotte’s phone rings. Her ringtone is a spooky theremin woo woo woo she downloaded from the internet. She’s always been amused by its weird, ghostly sound, but now it terrifies her. It’s strange how your favorite jokes can turn into bad jokes. Warnings you should have heeded.
It’s Eli. Charlotte explains what’s happened, trying to speak slowly, comprehensibly, to not hyperventilate. For Eli’s sake. For Daisy’s. For her own. She can hear, in Eli’s voice, that he also is trying to stay calm. Charlotte loves Eli—she always has. She always will. No matter what.
“Should we meet at Ruth’s?” he asks.
“There was a man with her—”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. Not Rocco. That’s what scares me.”
“You want me to send a car to take you out to meet Rocco?”
“Subway’s faster,” Charlotte says. “I’ll call you from there.”
She calls Rocco, and miraculously, he picks up.
Charlotte says, “Is Ruth there? Is she back yet? Where’s Daisy?”
“No . . . I don’t think . . . I was sleeping . . .”
There’s a funny rhythm in Rocco’s voice. A slight drag and the hint of a slur. It reminds her of . . . when he was drinking.
Oh, no, please no. Not that too.
Has Rocco gotten drunk and done or said something to Ruth that set her off? Or has Ruth gotten Rocco drunk so she could leave him passed out—and she could go steal Daisy?
“Don’t move,” she tells her brother. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
2
Six Months Earlier
Charlotte
Early Saturday morning, Eli and Charlotte lie in bed drinking coffee, enjoying what grainy sunlight the park allows into their window. Their silence is so companionable, each other’s presence so soothing, that they can listen, in perfect contentment, to the noises outside their loft. Traffic, car horns, parents packing to leave for the weekend, shouting at kids, slamming car trunks.
They talk about Daisy, who’s begun kindergarten at the local public school and seems happy. They talk a little about their work.
It’s only when they get to the question of what to have for dinner that Charlotte says what she’s avoided saying too soon after Eli wakes up.
“You do remember that Rocco’s bringing his new girlfriend for dinner?” How could Eli remember when she hasn’t told him?
She’s never sure why her brother always wants them to meet his girlfriends, most of whom have turned out to be seriously unbalanced. He wants to see if they approve, but it’s never clear how, or if, their feelings influence his.
Eli says, “Great. Hide the valuables and don’t cook anything too delicious.”
Charlotte laughs, a giggle she makes when someone (usually Eli) kills a hope that she knows is unrealistic. Each time Rocco brings over a girlfriend, Charlotte hopes she’s the one, though she hates the idea of the one. She wants her younger brother to be happy, to have someone to love him and help him, someone kind and decent and conscious. Or at least sane.
In therapy, Charlotte and Ted have discussed the possibility that Charlotte might be ever so slightly possessive and territorial about her brother—the way she is about her daughter
. And maybe that’s why she’s so critical—hypercritical—of Rocco’s women.
But Charlotte didn’t imagine what those women actually did. Mae-Lynn came to dinner with a bag of organic broccoli crowns and a beaker of distilled water in which she insisted they steam them. The girlfriend after that, Kathy, stole from them, never anything expensive, but always something treasured, which was the point. Daisy’s beloved stuffed giraffe, Eli’s favorite fountain pen, a business card from a man who told Charlotte he’d developed a solution that made cut flowers last longer. Each time there was a frantic search, especially for Raffi, the giraffe. Kathy is out of Rocco’s life, but Charlotte will never forgive her for pretending to look for the toy when she had it all along. Charlotte had been so afraid that the dust kicked up by their search would bring on one of Daisy’s asthma attacks.
Rocco has trouble breaking up with these women. Underneath his surface toughness is a good guy who can’t bear to hurt anyone and has that male terror of women’s tears. He refused to believe Charlotte when she suggested that Kathy was a kleptomaniac. He didn’t end the relationship until he found, in her tote bag, a framed photo of him and Charlotte, on the steps of their childhood farmhouse in the Hudson Valley. The photo must have been taken not long before their mother burned down the house and got sent away.
Rocco couldn’t look at Charlotte when he returned the photo. She didn’t need to see his face. She knew that his expression (detached or dreamy, depending on what you wanted to see) would be just like the look on twelve-year-old Rocco in the picture.
Before Klepto Kathy, he dated a woman who ripped out her hair in clumps, and before her the cutter, and before her the nudist, and before her the one who locked herself in their bathroom and swallowed a fistful of antibiotics from the medicine chest.
The stable ones never last long. Boring, Rocco says. He jokes about his love life. But he doesn’t learn from his mistakes.
Why should Charlotte feel responsible? If she wants someone to blame (and who doesn’t?), it should be their mother, who, acting on some selfish childish romantic impulse, named them after Charlotte Brontë and Mr. Rochester. Mom should have been a character in a nineteenth-century novel; that’s how she imagined her life until Dad took off and moved to the city to live with an intellectual property lawyer who consulted for his law firm.