Before He Finds Her (6 page)

In the park was a shallow pond where kids threw balled-up bread to the turtles. He had forgotten to bring bread, but Meg was happy dropping woodchips and pebbles into the water. Then she ran over to the playground and tried the slides. Ramsey sat on the green metal bench at one of the picnic tables bordering the play area and watched. On this sunny afternoon, he found himself wanting time to slow just as it was picking up speed. His daughter was the result of Allie and himself, but she was neither of them. She was becoming herself, entirely.

When he looked at his watch, more than a half hour had passed. “Okay, Meg,” he said, “time to go.”

“No, Daddy!” she called, and raced toward the twisty yellow slide.

Another man was coming his way with two kids, boy and a girl, both a little older than Meg. The man’s hands were stuffed into the pockets of his khaki pants. He had on a loosened tie and sports coat. Seeing Ramsey, the man saluted. Nothing in the world was more depressing than other men at a playground, with their sad salutes and their “Mr. Mom” remarks and that look on their faces of having been snookered—like they’d thought they were headed to a Jets game with their buddies but somehow ended up here.

“We’re about to leave,” Ramsey said to this other man. “You have yourself a good weekend.”

The man shot Ramsey with an imaginary pistol and called over to his boy, Tino, to leave the baseball cap
ON
like he’d been told a thousand times.

“They’re all deaf at this age,” the man said to Ramsey, heading over to where his kid had flung his cap to the ground.

Ramsey was working on a plan to leave the playground without tears when Meg ran over to him, took his hand, and said, “Want to go home.” There was no figuring her out.

They were halfway to the car when, out of nowhere, she looked up at him and said, “Meg feed the turtles.”

“We did, baby,” Ramsey said. “We already—”

“Meg feed turtles now!” She yanked her hand away and repeated the demand, hysteria entering her voice.

So they walked over to the bridge and threw more woodchips into the water, until Meg said, “Want to see Mommy.” She walked cheerfully to the car and, amazingly, climbed into the seat without a fuss.

When they arrived home, Eric’s pickup and Paul’s El Camino were both facing the wrong way on the street. The pickup’s body was caked in dried mud. The El Camino was rusted and dented, with a black trash bag duct-taped into place where a rear window should have been. Ramsey imagined the neighbors looking out their front windows and shaking their heads.

He and Allie had moved to the Sandy Oaks neighborhood from across town back when they decided that Allie would go off the pill. The people living here worked in offices with secretaries of their own. If asked, they’d call themselves “comfortable,” which was horseshit. In the scheme of things, they were rich.
He
was rich. Anyone who didn’t go to bed fretting about money and wake up fretting about it all over again? Rich. And damn lucky to be living someplace where you were never woken up at 3 a.m. to drunken obscenities shouted down the street, to police sirens, to glass shattering in the road.

More than three years since they’d moved in, and whenever he drove up to his home he still felt, for an instant, as if he were visiting someone else—someone wealthy and temperate and respectable. Then he reminded himself that he had all those qualities now, more or less, and had worked damn hard for them.

“Down, Daddy!”

Meg insisted on walking to the door rather than be carried. On the way, she petted a hedge, got down on her hands and knees to examine an ant, and asked Ramsey repeatedly where the sorties (stories? shores?) were. The closer they got to the house, the more Ramsey could hear the low tones of the bass guitar. He felt it in his chest, vibrations like the engine in his truck before putting it into gear and driving off someplace. But he wasn’t going anywhere, not anymore.

“Can you feel that?” he asked.

Meg knocked on the red front door. “Home.”

“That’s right, sweetie pie.” He stroked her hair. “We’re home.”

4

September 22, 2006

Uncle Wayne and Aunt Kendra had never hidden from Melanie the fact that they were raising her because her mother and father could not. When she was five, they explained that her mother had died and her father had gone far away but that they, Kendra and Wayne, loved her very much and thought of her as their own daughter. This was one of her earliest memories, and what she remembered most clearly about it was that to stop her from crying, they had all climbed into bed and watched
The Little Mermaid
, her favorite movie, on videotape, and shared a large bowl of buttery popcorn.

When she was ten, they explained that a very dangerous man had ended her mother’s life and unfortunately had not yet been caught. He was still dangerous, which was why their lives had to be so private. Two years later, they explained that her father had been that man—something that by then Melanie had already suspected.

She sat beside Phillip now on his neatly made bed, the air conditioner straining to cool the room, and told him the essence of what she’d learned over the years: how her name used to be Meg Miller, and how when she was a little girl her father had thrown a big party and then, later that night, strangled her mother and dumped her body into the backyard fire pit. She told him about how she herself was believed to be dead, too, and how Wayne and Kendra were able to get her away, and how the U.S. Marshals, working with local law enforcement in two states, had successfully hidden her but utterly failed to apprehend her father.

“But he knows you’re alive,” Phillip finally said after several seconds of saying nothing.

“Of course,” Melanie said.

“Then why is it a secret?”

“If everyone else thinks I’m already dead,” she explained, “then we never have to worry about reporters or TV people or anyone trying to find me. No one can ever help my father, even accidentally.” Phillip was rubbing her hand with his thumb. “Anyway, it wasn’t my decision, and it had to get made really fast. And no one ever thought it would take this long to find him.”

“Are you still afraid of your father?” he asked.

“I’m terrified of him,” she said. “He’s a madman.”

“Can I ask why you’re telling me about it now?”

She decided not to mention the fractals. But come on—had he not noticed her larger breasts, her clearer skin? Did he not find it strange that suddenly she was saying
No, thanks
whenever he offered her a glass of wine? Why was she telling him now? Because it isn’t just me anymore, she wanted to say. But she needed to know how he would take the news of her strange past before going further. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while,” she said, “but I didn’t want to scare you away. Is this going to scare you away?”

His arm was around her now. “Of course it won’t,” he said. “But... ” He frowned.

“What?”

“It’s just that all of this happened so long ago. And you have a new identity, and obviously look a lot different from when you were a little kid.” He shrugged. “What makes you think your father’s still looking for you, anyway?”

She could have told him about the letters, hard evidence that Ramsey Miller was still out there causing trouble. She could have mentioned the feeling she would get sometimes that someone was out there watching her. She would catch something in her periphery, turn her head, and see nothing. But the chill would linger. Even out in her own yard, in bright daylight, sometimes she’d gaze into the hedges and swear she saw movement. But this was bogeyman stuff, more than likely, so she decided to answer Phillip’s question another way.

“When my father dragged my mother into the fire, they think she was still alive. He choked her and left her to burn.” She watched his eyes, hoping he would understand. “What I mean is, I don’t get to be optimistic.”

Phillip said nothing for a moment. Maybe he was imagining the murder scene, the charred flesh. “I wonder if it’s time for someone other than your aunt and uncle to look out for you,” he said. “They can’t do it forever—and I’m not afraid.”

“You’re not, huh?”

“Not really. Nope.” He chanced a smile. “Which is weird, because I’m actually afraid of a lot of stuff.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Oh, you name it. Flying. Heights.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“Not to me,” he said. “Also, tornadoes.”

“You don’t live in a trailer,” she said. “We had a couple of close calls when I was a kid.”

“And I’m afraid of having to use CPR on somebody at school and then doing it wrong. And being crushed in an avalanche.”

“Is that everything?”

She thought he might say yes. Instead: “Rabies.”

“Like getting bitten by a bat?”

“Sure—a raccoon, a bat...”

“But you’re not afraid of a murderer?”

“No—just everything else.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s because you mean more to me than bats or airplanes or whatever.” His smile was more confident. “You look very pretty right now.”

He kissed her mouth, her throat. She placed a hand on his arm. “Seriously, Phillip—I have to know if this is all too much for you.”

“Seriously, Melanie—it isn’t.”

“Don’t answer so fast,” she said. “I want you to really think about it.”

“
It isn’t
.” He looked into her eyes. “I can handle anything.”

She bit her lip. “How about one more surprise. Can you handle that?”

The box of condoms said 96% effective. But 96 percent effective, it turned out, was a world away from 100 percent, and now she was in her tenth week. Before telling Phillip, the only two people who knew were herself and the doctor at the college health center, who had confirmed those drug-store pregnancy tests with yet another test, then handed her several pamphlets (“Your Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy”; “Breastfeeding with Success”; “Labor, Delivery, and Postpartum Care”), all of which she skimmed late that first night before stowing them in the back of her closet behind a box of old clothes.

She’d been careful and responsible, yet the result was no different from that girl in high school last year whom Melanie had actually overheard saying,
We thought God would keep me from getting pregnant
. And her options—either an abortion or the prospect of introducing a baby into her hidden, fearful home—were too awful to think about. So for a few weeks, she didn’t. She went to class. She went to work. She read her Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. The pamphlets stayed stowed.

Which was why she felt glad, in a way, that her instructor had shown the class those fractals this afternoon. They made her see that she didn’t want to stay hidden at every scale any longer, and didn’t want her child to be hidden at all. And those two desires intertwined. If not for the child, there’d be no reason to stop being who she’d always been—the fearful, hidden girl.

When she actually said the words “I’m pregnant” to Phillip, at first the color drained from his face, his own version of morning sickness. “I intend to have the baby and raise it,” she said. “Just so you know.”

He said all the right things. He’d be there for her. He’d support her. He went so far as to say that he was “excited about this,” which she didn’t believe but appreciated hearing. Before long, his face regained its color. And gradually the two conversations—her past, their present—melded into one.

She knew he found their relationship odd. How could he not? They almost never went out in public other than for coffee or soda at the gas station or, a couple of times, for a very early dinner at the McDonald’s on the highway. She let him assume it was their age difference that made them reclusive, the fact that he was a teacher at the high school where she’d just graduated.

As she’d become more comfortable around him, she began to imply that there was more to the story. She’d wanted to tell him about it but saw Phillip’s invitation for her to reveal herself, to trust him, as coming from an earnest young man who viewed the universe as fundamentally benign. It wasn’t him she distrusted but rather his optimism.

But things were different now, and he had a right to know every-thing. So everything is what she told him. And as she shared her secrets with this person of her choosing, each disclosure lightened her, made her feel less alone. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Phillip held her long after she was done talking.

By then it was early evening. She knew she should call her aunt and uncle. She didn’t want them to worry. But there would be no reasoning with them. She imagined telling them the truth:
I’m at my boyfriend’s house. He’s twenty-three.
They’d demand she come home right away. And she could actually see herself obeying them, allowing herself to be yanked right back to the house on Notress Pass.

So maybe she did want them to worry, a little. Maybe that’s what they needed to finally begin to understand that she wasn’t a kid anymore. All she knew for sure was that she needed to prolong this moment with Phillip through dinner and beyond, and whether that was despite the potential repercussions with her aunt and uncle or because she wanted there to be repercussions, she wasn’t sure.

She stayed. She didn’t call home, and she slept in Phillip’s warm bed, and early Saturday morning, with the birds noisy outside but the room still dark, she awoke beside him feeling a little surprised that he wasn’t already long gone, having driven his Mazda as far as it would go or thumbed a ride back to Connecticut. Content, she fell back to sleep. When she woke up again it was to the sound of Phillip in the kitchen putting away last night’s dishes, whistling a few notes of something soft and tuneless—and these ordinary sounds filled her with gratitude and wonder. This was the permanent rupture, she could feel it, separating every day in her past from every day in her future.

The air conditioner blocked her view through the window, but she didn’t hear rain. No rain meant that their plan for today was on—a plan, made hastily before falling asleep last night, that to Melanie had seemed monumentally reckless. Yet she’d agreed to it.

The carnival at the Baptist church opened at eleven. There would be games and rides and food sold out of carts. The two of them would go there and spend the afternoon together like regular people.