Authors: Joanne DeMaio
Behind him, in front of him, Amy is nowhere in sight. “Where are you?” he asks quietly. It doesn’t help that people are idling about: couples visiting neighboring blankets, families relaxing in lawn chairs, snacking, laughing. He drops at the waist, pressing his hands onto his knees and exhaling a long breath. The night does him no favors, every shadow mocking him. George heads back to their blanket knowing it is all over and feeling the weight of her pain. All he wants to do is take some of it from her, to try to explain. She doesn’t deserve any of this. He opens her handbag and is alarmed to see her cell phone. So there’s that now, too. She has no way of reaching help. He snatches their blanket off the ground before climbing up the dark hill to the pickup. Some of the band members return to the stage and snippets of music coil through the air. The crowd thins further back and it occurs to him that Amy could be waiting at the truck. “Just be there,” he whispers, knowing in his heart the last place she’ll be is waiting for him.
When he reaches the parking lot, there are no silhouettes standing near the truck, no Amy slowly approaching him, her head tipped in terrible sadness, wanting to talk, her eyes not understanding, searching for the mistake in all of this.
Her worst nightmare came true at his hands. He drops the blanket and basket into the truck bed and tosses her purse on the passenger seat. His eyes return once to the sloping lawn below. Couples dance again, leaning close, talking softly. Like he and Amy did, moments before, in some terrible prelude. But it was supposed to be a good prelude, the beginning, leading to the truth. With his hand on the door handle, he stops. Just stops. Is she still in the park, waiting for him to leave before emerging from the shadows? He yanks his door open. Not the Amy he knows. She would be running as far from him as possible, trying to get to only one place, safely back to her daughter.
* * *
Once out of the park, Amy slips off her slingback sandals and slowly runs, glancing over her shoulder often as sidewalk grit presses into her bare soles. All that matters is getting away. When headlights approach, she steps quickly off the sidewalk behind shrubs, thinking it is George looking for her. Her black wrap slips from her shoulders and drags behind her and so she pulls it into a soft bundle and presses it against her tears while waiting for the vehicle to pass. After catching her breath, she steps back out, unsure of which way to go. Home is miles away and she left her cell phone behind. “Damn you, George,” she says. “Damn you to hell.”
Ahead, the indistinct outline of the elementary school takes a low familiar shape in the night. Fear keeps her moving past it, hurrying as she makes out a realtor’s square For Sale sign a few houses away. “Oh God, yes, yes,” she cries. She stops in front of the ranch house Celia had shown her weeks ago, aware that its owners have since moved out. The house stands empty and dark. Thick shrubs and trees conceal it well. Amy hurries up the front flagstone walkway, squinting in the darkness to be sure it is unoccupied. George will never find her here.
The key is inside that lock box
. Celia’s words rush back to her.
Just punch my code into the keypad
.
Amy jiggles the lock box. The code, what is the God damn code? Has her capacity to even think been taken along with everything else? Her fingers trace over the keypad, her hand trembling while she tries to remember. “Right,” she whispers finally. “One-two-one-five, one-two-one-five.” She repeats Celia’s birth date over and over like a mantra while groping in the dark. The mere thought of safety on the other side of the door taunts her. She tugs the lock box and when it doesn’t give, shakes it harder. “Come on!” she cries, bent over in the dark and carefully hitting one single digit at a time with a breath between each. On the second try, it works. She carefully lifts out the key, unlocks the front door, steps inside and closes the door quickly. It’s automatic, the instinct then to stand stock-still in the vacant house to be sure no one came up the front step behind her, jiggling the doorknob, knocking, saying her name. In the silence, the sound of her trembling breath is amplified. Her eyes adjust to the darkness, squinting through it to the walls and doorways around her. And the way it sometimes will, sadness seeps into her then, too. A sensation that just keeps coming.
Amy turns the deadbolt cylinder and leans her back and her sadness against the heavy wooden door, sinking to the floor, her hands coming to rest over her face.
* * *
George circles the blocks surrounding Riverdale Park. At each stop sign, he scans the side streets for any sign of her. Pools of lamplight and pockets of shadow come alive, tricking his eyes with suggestions of movement. His heart jumps when he spots someone, but it is only an elderly man walking his dog. And so the night turns into a game of decisions playing him a fool—which way, left or right, go back to the park, head home—until he slams his open palm on the steering wheel and stops at the curb. “Jesus, where are you?” Tears come to his eyes and he pulls his hand over his face, taking a long breath. “I’m sorry, Amy. Let me tell you I’m sorry.” Little traffic passes at this late hour. He wonders if she is walking home, or used someone’s cell phone to get help, or called a taxi from the grocery store. It’s open all night and only a few blocks further. He heads there first.
“Did you notice a woman come in to use the store phone?” he asks a cashier, glancing to the courtesy counter where Amy might do just that. The light inside is garish and he walks closer to the young cashier. “Pretty, black dress?”
“No. Sorry,” she shrugs.
George walks past her to the produce aisle, then hurries across the width of the store, stopping at the beginning of each aisle, grabbing large display racks to slow himself only briefly, swinging past before rushing to the next aisle looking for Amy. At the last aisle, he sprints down its length past yogurts and orange juice and frozen pizzas and walks back across the store via the rear aisle. Finally he pulls his cell phone from his jacket and gets the number for the local cab company.
“Have you dispatched a cab to Save-Rite?” he asks, walking past carrots and potatoes and raspberries toward the Exit. “Sometime in the past hour?” He drags a hand back through his hair while Dispatch checks the log. The passing moments infuriate him as they distance him further from Amy. Time is ticking, ticking. “No. You’re sure?” he asks. So she hadn’t phoned a cab.
She has to be home, somehow. George backs out of his parking space and drives to her farmhouse. It’s her own fortress with the acre of land surrounded by ancient stone walls. If she’d gotten a ride from someone, she’d be there already. Maybe she called Celia and her friend knows now, the story poured out in these minutes.
Soft light shines through the living room windows. The truck barely stops before he jumps out and runs up the front porch steps. His fist bangs the door insistently until the porch light comes on. Ellen cautiously opens the door. “George.” She pushes the door further, looking through the screen briefly past him. “What’s happened to Amy?”
George lets out a relieved breath. Amy may be distraught, but at least she’s home and now her mother is upset with him, too. “Can I see her please? Tell her it’s only for a minute.”
Ellen’s brow knits and she steps back. “What’s the matter with you? Are you drunk?” she asks. “And is that Amy’s purse?”
George looks at the straw handbag he’s been holding and sets it on the porch table beside a flowerpot of geraniums. “Drunk? No. No, I’m just relieved she’s here. Please, I have to see her.”
Ellen grips the door edge. “She’s not here. Hasn’t been for hours. Why? What’s happened?”
He realizes at that moment, first, that Amy has
not
come home, and second, that Ellen must think she is dead. Here he is alone at her doorstep, his suit disheveled, his tie loosened, his hair a mess. Perspiration lines his brow and he is visibly shaken. “Ellen,” he begins. “We had an argument. She hasn’t been here at all?”
“What do you mean,
here
? She’s supposed to be with you.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. We were at the bandshell, dancing. And there was a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” Ellen latches the screen door. “Well how would she get home without a car?” She looks past him to the street.
George leans closer. “Is there anywhere she might have gone that you know of? It’s important that I find her.”
Ellen frowns. “Well this is her home. She would come here.” Her expression changes, then. It blames him now. “Just how bad was this argument?”
“Very bad,” George admits, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m worried about her, Ellen. You haven’t heard from her? Not even a phone call?”
“Nothing.” Her voice turns suspicious. “Should I call the police?”
“No,” he insists, pulling his loosened tie from his collar. “Give her a little time.”
“Well where could she be?” Her eyes follow the dark shadows lining the farm lane.
George shakes his head and exhales deeply. “I don’t know. If she calls, if she needs help or a ride or anything, please have her call me.” He pulls his keys from his pocket and starts down the steps.
“I don’t think I like this, George,” Ellen calls out from the other side of the screen door.
And her words stop him. “Well neither do I,” he yells, spinning back toward her. He is tired of being blamed. If Amy had just stopped, if she’d just given him five lousy minutes, he could have eased some of this. He could have brought her safely home. “Do you hear me?” he asks before climbing the porch stairs two at a time. The rope has come to its end. He stands inches away from the screen and his voice is ragged. “We argued and she stormed off. I’ve looked everywhere for her.” His fist, with the necktie hanging from it, punches the doorframe in frustration. “I’ve driven up and down every damn street in this town worried sick. I don’t know where she went or what she’s doing and I pray to God she’s okay.” He turns and sinks onto the top step, sitting and facing the distant stretch of cornfields. Everything seems worse in the night: pain and danger and heartbreak. It all looms closer. They say darkness is a nightmare’s playground, and the woman he loves is in the throes of one. He drops his head into his hands and after a long moment, stands again. Ellen still waits silent at the door. “I’m sorry.” His voice drops. “I’m really sorry. Please. Just let me know if you hear from her.”
Ellen doesn’t answer as he walks down the wooden steps and leaves. He takes a right out of the driveway and slowly drives the length of the country lane, past Amy’s beloved cornfields and lone red barn, exhausting every avenue she might have taken. When he finally returns home, he picks up the cordless phone base with its empty, unblinking answering system and moves to throw it across the kitchen, wanting to smash it against Nate’s newly-tiled wall. Against Nate, for doing this to his life. But he stops himself, just in case he’ll hear her voice on it in the next few days. He sets it back down on the countertop with care, thinking of Amy trying to reach him, straightening the wires and checking the connections.
“Where did you go?” Not knowing will drive him either mad, or to drink. At least downing a drink will stop him from throwing answering machines or coffee mugs, stop him from calling Ellen again and again, stop him from driving through town slow enough to draw attention. Drunk is the only way to stay safe. He throws his suit jacket and tie on the sofa and moves to the dining room, looking out the sliding glass door onto the dark patio, remembering the other night when they lingered outside. Eventually he turns and faces the dining room chair on which Amy sat that evening.
If I lose you, George, if you stop loving me, or leave me, or die, I don’t think I would be able to breathe.
He pours himself a glass of Scotch knowing damn well that he has more to worry about; her stalker could very well be right behind Amy, cutting in on their dance. This could be the moment some lunatic has been waiting for. He tosses down a mouthful of the liquor. Everything he worked to prevent has come to pass.
The cordless phone sits quiet. “Ring, damn it.” He moves to his living room sofa, sets his glass and bottle of Scotch on the coffee table and drags both hands back through his hair. His hands itch to grab up the phone, his heart aches to hear Amy say his name. “Just fucking ring.”
* * *
“I’m okay, Mom.” Amy’s voice is empty when she calls Ellen an hour later.
“Amy. I’m about ready to call the police. What is going on with you two?”
“Please believe that I’m safe. I’ll get a ride home in the morning from Celia.” Amy had groped her way through the dark house, feeling her way along walls, bumping light switches, skimming wallpaper to the kitchen in the back, not visible from the street. It is only here that she dared try a light switch and the pendant lights illuminated the room, the stainless steel appliances softly shining silver. No one would notice a light on here. No one would see her pass in front of the rear window or pace alongside the concrete countertops, stepping around a few cabinet doors left open. Life was suspended, like her own. She found a rag beneath the sink and wiped off her dirty feet, leaning against the sink to keep her balance as she did. A vintage corded phone still hung on the wall at the breakfast bar. She rushed to it and picked up the receiver, crying when she heard a dial tone.
But several minutes passed before she could dial anyone, minutes when her hand rested still on the phone. What did you do in this type of situation? Should she call Detective Hayes? Turn George in? Run?
“He wants you to call him, Amy.”
“He was there?”
“Yes. And very upset. Call him, please.”
“I can’t. It’s complicated, Mom.”
“Do you want me to call him?”
“No.” Amy shakes her head quickly. “And don’t tell him I called if you hear from him. Please don’t.”
“But I don’t like not knowing what happened.” Her mother hesitates. “How do I really know you’re safe, Amy?”
Amy closes her eyes. Exhaustion slows every move, every thought. Except the thought that her mother is referring to the stalking. “Listen Mom. If I’m not home by morning, then you call the police, okay? But I’m fine. Please believe me. I need time to think right now, that’s all.”