Something She's Not Telling Us

by Darcey Bell

  Charlotte says, “Find the book that Daisy made in Mexico. Our Mexican Adventure. There’s a photo of Daisy and Ruth that Daisy pasted in it. You can give that to the police.”

  “That might work against us,” Eli says. “A picture of them being happy together.”

  “Okay, forget it,” Charlotte says.

  “Probably the cops will want to know what Daisy was wearing.”

  There’s a long silence.

  “I’m pretty sure it was her purple jacket. But I don’t remember. I thought I did, but I don’t. How could I not remember? Oh, Eli, how could I not remember?”

  Another silence. Eli says, “I don’t remember, either. I think she was wearing the purple jacket. But I’m not sure, either. It’s the stress fogging our brains—that’s why we can’t remember. Okay, let’s talk again in a little while.”

  “I love you,” Charlotte says.

  But Eli’s already hung up, and Charlotte turns back to her brother.

  “Rocco . . . you need to think. Do you have any idea where Ruth might go? Where she goes when she feels threatened? Her fucking happy place.”

  “Her grandparents’. Obviously. Right? She’s always calling their house her reset button. Her spa, her yoga retreat, her . . .”

  Charlotte knew that. Of course.

  “She never took you there?”

  “Several times we almost went. But something always came up. She’s probably got her phone with her. But let me see if she’s got their address or phone number somewhere—”

  Rocco goes into the next room.

  “Don’t,” he says when Charlotte tries to follow, and she has to obey. She can’t go into Ruth’s bedroom—their bedroom—uninvited. Not unless Rocco asks. Even when her child’s been stolen, some boundaries still exist. She hears Rocco opening drawers. Something is knocked over and shatters.

  Rocco says, “Oops!” Charlotte checks her phone.

  The inhaler tracker app still isn’t working.

  When Rocco comes back into the living room, he sits down on the edge of the couch and buries his face in his hands.

  Charlotte can’t breathe. “What’s wrong?”

  “Good news. And bad news. I can’t tell which. She left her phone on the nightstand.”

  “What does that mean? She doesn’t want to get in touch with us. Or anyone. And she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “That’s the bad news. Speaking of being found, have you tried that app that lets you locate Daisy’s inhaler? Crazy as Ruth is, I’m positive that she’s taken the inhaler with them. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’m sure she won’t harm Daisy. She cares about Daisy, or anyway, as much as . . .”

  He can’t finish the sentence.

  “I just tried,” says Charlotte. “It’s not working. It keeps loading.”

  “Try again.” Charlotte does what Rocco says. As if the result will be different when he’s here with her.

  The same spinning wheel. The same Oops! The same urge to throw the phone at the wall. Charlotte shows the phone to Rocco.

  “She’s probably figured out some way to disable it. I always thought Ruth was extremely tech-savvy for such a flake. It was one—only one—of the many things that didn’t add up about her. Did you know she could speak Spanish?”

  “It didn’t seem like it, in Mexico.”

  “Well, she does. She hid it. Who knows what else she was hiding? I have no idea who she is, or how her mind works. That’s the shocking part.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Charlotte. “How can you live with someone and—”

  Charlotte’s ringtone sounds: It’s Eli. He says, “The cops are here now. I’ll call you when they leave.”

  She says, “Call me before they leave.”

  When she turns back to Rocco, he says, “Don’t you want to hear the good news?”

  “I really do,” says Charlotte. “I want to hear any good news you can think of.”

  “The strange thing is, it’s the same as the bad news. Her phone is here. Her contact list. We can call around and try to find her. I’ll bet we can find out where her grandparents live. Maybe she’s there, maybe they know where she is. That’s where I’d start.”

  Rocco turns Ruth’s phone on. He knows her passcode.

  “Jesus Christ. You may not want to look at this.”

  Charlotte forces herself to look. The wallpaper on Ruth’s phone is a photo of Ruth and Daisy, in an old-fashioned photo booth. It’s from the same series as the picture that Daisy pasted in her book.

  The expressions on Daisy’s and Ruth’s faces are goofier than in the photo in Our Mexican Adventure. Daisy’s grinning so hard that her face must hurt, and she’s bugging out her eyes. Charlotte has never seen that face before. The stabbing pain in her chest is so intense that she gasps.

  Rocco takes Ruth’s phone from Charlotte and scrolls through Ruth’s recent calls.

  “No.” His voice is hushed. “This makes no sense. I don’t get it. Unless she’s trying to get me fired—”

  “What? What is it?”

  “The last half dozen calls she made were to Andrew John’s office. Last night and early this morning. Maybe she wanted to lie about me.”

  “Maybe,” Charlotte murmurs.

  But somehow she knows that’s not the reason that Ruth is calling Andrew John.

  23

  Seven Years Before

  Charlotte

  It had been the most beautiful summer day, the kind of day you live the rest of the year for, the kind of day you remember all winter.

  This was before Daisy was born.

  Eli was in Panama for a month, visiting his family. Buddenbrooks and Gladiola hadn’t yet expanded. The business was still just the flower shop, and Alma was Charlotte’s only employee. How happy they felt to come to work every day! How simple everything was!

  Charlotte had no way of knowing that she would never again—or certainly not for a long time—feel so free, so unburdened.

  That day, her only worry was about Rocco, who was scheduled to get out of rehab in a few weeks. And she had no idea where he would live, where he would work, what he would do.

  She’d hoped that Matt and Holly, her friends who ran the flower farm where she bought most of her stock, might find work for him. It would be good for him to be in the country. He would be happier than he would be in the city. It would be harder for him to get into trouble. Not so many bars and girls, not so much temptation.

  Luckily, it was time for her annual trip to the farm. And during the wonderful annual lunch, Charlotte had asked Matt and Holly—she’d tried to sound casual and relaxed—if they knew of a job that Rocco might have. Maybe he could do something on their farm.

  Matt and Holly were sorry, they couldn’t. They themselves were just getting by.

  Then Matt said, “What about Andrew John? I hear he’s hiring. All the stuff he’s been doing to restore the soil and plant cover crops and make the farm organic is finally done. This year he’s planted his first market crops.”

  “Wouldn’t it be awkward for you?” Holly asked. “I mean, it was your family farm, and now—”

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “Rocco might be okay with it. All of that seems so far in the past. The old house is gone, so there wouldn’t be that—”

  Holly still looked dubious, but Matt said, “Think about it.”

  Charlotte did think about it. She thought about it so hard that she was distracted all through lunch.

  She didn’t really know Andrew John. In fact she didn’t know him at all. The only time she’d met him was at the office during the real estate closing.

  That day he’d been very gracious and smiled warmly when they were introduced. Then he’d sat more or less silently as his lawyer and Charlotte’s lawyer arranged the transfer of the farm. Charlotte remembers the words dazzlingly handsome occurring to her. She’d been embarrassed even to think a cliché like that.

  Now she had no idea how to get in touch with him. She could cal
l or email his Manhattan office, but what were the chances of getting through? If she left it up to Rocco, it would never happen. Rocco would give up when the first unfriendly receptionist blew him off, or the first out-of-office reply email bounced back and discouraged him from going further.

  Charlotte drank three glasses of wine at lunch with Matt and Holly. She probably shouldn’t have been driving, but she felt okay. In fact she felt an infusion of courage, as if she’d been dosed with some intense shot of bravery that didn’t feel like her natural state.

  The force of her need to help Rocco made her turn off the road just past where her childhood home used to be. She headed up the long driveway to where she knew Andrew John lived.

  She’d expected men with machine guns to come charging out of the bushes. But that didn’t happen. She assumed that at least there would be a locked gate where you had to speak into a box or press a code. But there wasn’t even that.

  There was one car—a Range Rover—parked in front of the impossibly stylish, rectangular glass structure.

  Andrew John answered the door. She explained who she was.

  He smiled and said, “Of course. I remember you from the closing.” He invited her in.

  From the moment she stepped into the house, they both knew what was going to happen. It was on. Just like that. Eli, Andrew John’s wife and children, their lives before and after this afternoon. None of that existed—or anyway, it had temporarily ceased to exist.

  She was painfully self-conscious, aware of him watching her as she moved through the sleek, transparent box in which he lived, as close to nature as you could be without actually being outdoors. He watched her admire the view. He came and stood beside her.

  It was as if she were observing herself from a distance—moving, speaking, listening, responding. Nothing she did was remotely like anything she would normally say or do. She wasn’t walking the way she normally walked. She couldn’t. He was watching.

  She was prowling the edges of his house. And Andrew John watched her prowl.

  The fact that she couldn’t look at him was a sign of . . . what? Of how tall he was, how handsome he was, and (she had to admit) how rich and powerful he was. She’d never cared about any of that before. Now she finally understood the appeal.

  She almost forgot why she was there—how desperately she wanted him to hire her brother.

  He asked if she wanted a glass of wine. She nodded. He filled her glass, which almost immediately seemed to be empty, though she couldn’t remember drinking it. He filled it again.

  After the second glass she blurted out, “My brother, Rocco, needs a job. He can do a lot of things. He’s very capable. He should work for you.”

  Andrew John said, “Sure. If it wouldn’t be awkward . . .”

  Charlotte said, “That would be up to you.”

  Just watching him think was exciting.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell my assistant. Tell your brother to call my office.”

  After a while he asked if she would like to see the rest of the house.

  He took her hand as they walked down the hall. Neither of them had any doubts about the fact that this wasn’t your neutral, ordinary house tour.

  HE WOULD HAVE hired Rocco even if she hadn’t slept with him. This wasn’t a quid pro quo business deal. The only thing exchanged between them was pleasure and how good it felt.

  They never mentioned Eli, or the Argentine wife and two children she’d seen on the internet. That would have spoiled everything. Neither wanted anything more. Neither wanted to see the other like this again; neither wanted whatever this was to go any further.

  In the morning they kissed goodbye. A friendly, affectionate kiss. Charlotte turned her phone back on. She hadn’t even realized that she’d turned it off.

  Eli called on her drive back to the city. She said she’d slept over at Matt and Holly’s farm. Sometimes she did that. He’d never check.

  She was good at repressing things. She had—she still has—a talent for not thinking about what she doesn’t want to think about.

  Driving back to the city from Andrew John’s, she wondered when she would stop thinking about him. Soon, she decided. What had happened in his glass house would begin to seem unreal, almost as if it never occurred.

  The memory was already beginning to fade by the time she got to the FDR Drive.

  She assumed that Andrew John wouldn’t think about her, either. He had a wife and kids and a mega-farm to run.

  And she would have forgotten about it. Well, maybe not forgotten, but chalked it up as one of those things that happen . . . except that three months later she found out that she was pregnant.

  Eli had been home from Panama for only two months. She waited another month to tell him.

  She’d never lied to Eli before or after. Only that one time. She began to have trouble sleeping, until the pregnancy hormones kicked in and she slept all the time.

  Eli never did the math. He had no reason to doubt her. Of course he thought the baby was his. Who else’s could it possibly be?

  It was lucky, in a way, that the one time she cheated on him had been with a man who looked a little like Eli. Not exactly. But close enough. Eli chose not to notice the differences between himself and Daisy. If he had, he might have said that some Panamanian great-grandma was showing up generations later.

  Did the truth occur to Andrew John when he and Rocco chatted about their families and Rocco mentioned his niece? Andrew John worked with numbers. But it was not in his interest to calculate precisely when his employee’s niece was born.

  Charlotte and Eli and Daisy were happy. Their lives were peaceful and loving. It wasn’t that she kept silent because she wanted to lie to Eli, or even to protect herself.

  She was protecting Daisy. The fallout from Charlotte’s confessing the truth would have been like a bomb blowing up their happy home, like an act of violence directed at the baby. Not that Eli would have been violent. But their lives would have exploded. And as the youngest and most vulnerable, Daisy would have suffered the most. Charlotte had often thought that Daisy’s asthma was Charlotte’s punishment for what she’d done. She knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t help it. And it was something she’d have to live with.

  Charlotte told no one but her therapist. And no one else ever knew.

  But now, it seems, Ruth knows. Somehow she guessed. Or found out. Ted said that disturbed, unhappy people often have superior powers of intuition. They pick up on signals.

  Was that why Ruth called Andrew John? To say that she has his daughter? That she is holding his daughter hostage? To blackmail him in some way? Unless it’s what Rocco suggested: that Ruth is planning to lie about Rocco as revenge for his breaking up with her.

  Ruth assaulted Reyna. She’s capable of violence.

  It’s too late for good manners. Charlotte pushes past Rocco into the bedroom. The room is girly in a hippie sort of way, with a Persian scarf over the lampshade casting everything in a red glow. But it stinks of whiskey and sweat and sleep. Charlotte holds her breath.

  In the corner is a small desk, and on it a stack of photos. Who prints out photos anymore? Everyone keeps them on their phone or on their Instagram accounts.

  Except for people who want other people to find a certain picture.

  Some gravity draws Charlotte over to the photos.

  And there on the top of the pile is a picture of her therapist.

  Ted.

  He’s sitting at a restaurant. He has a glass of wine in his hands. He’s toasting the person taking the picture. He looks besotted; his mouth is slack with desire. Charlotte has never seen that expression on his face. She has to look hard to be sure it’s him.

  How did Ruth find out his name? Then Charlotte remembers. That very first time, when Ruth showed up at the shop and they went out for coffee. Ruth claimed she used to date a therapist named Ted. She just had the tenses wrong. She was going to sleep with a therapist named Ted. She would hunt him down and seduce him to
find out about Charlotte and Rocco.

  Charlotte feels as if she’s been punched.

  She runs back into the living room and thrusts the picture at Rocco, like an accusation.

  “Who’s that?”

  He scrutinizes the photo.

  “Oh, that guy. He’s a friend of her grandma and grandpa’s. I think she slept with him a couple of times. She used to do kinky stuff like that. Sleep with old guys. Before we met.”

  “After you met,” says Charlotte. “While she was with you. That’s Ted. My therapist. That’s why she sought him out and fucked him. Because he’s my therapist. Because he knows things about us that she wanted to know.”

  “That Ted?”

  How did Ruth get to Ted? Seduce him, is how it looks. Plied him with wine and sex. How could Ted be so unprofessional? He’s been Charlotte’s therapist for nearly a decade. She trusted him more than anyone in the world. What did Ruth have? Some way to make an older man feel that he was still young and hot.

  Trust no one, Charlotte thinks now.

  She stole Ruth’s passport. Which means that she isn’t exactly trustworthy herself. Why should she expect it from others?

  Rocco sinks onto the couch. “That’s the thing with Ruth. Every second with her is like falling down the rabbit hole.”

  Charlotte thinks of those last phone conversations with Ted. Why did he bother telling her that a woman had called asking for information about her childhood? Was he trying to warn her about Ruth? Why did he say her name was Naomi? Was that the name Ruth gave him? Why did he tell Charlotte to be careful? Because he’d already slept with Ruth or Naomi or whoever she is and revealed Charlotte’s secret? How did Ruth get it out of him? Charlotte may never know. Doctors can be sued for doing things like this.

  First things first. She needs to find Daisy.

  She phones Ted. The calls goes to voice mail. Of course.

  “Call Andrew John,” she tells Rocco.

  “Why?”

  “Just because. Call him!”

  Rocco calls Andrew John’s office number and after a brief conversation tells Charlotte, “Actually, he’s in Argentina.”