Where I Lost Her (14 page)

E
ffie and Plum are in the kitchen slicing strawberries. Effie is showing Plum how to hold the paring knife, and Plum concentrates as she slices the berries into pale slivers.

I force a smile as I come into the kitchen, but I can tell Effie knows something is wrong.

“Plum, honey,” she says, wiping her stained hands on a dishtowel. “Can you go out to the laundry room and look for Mommy's apron? I'm getting strawberry juice all over my skirt.”

“Okay,” Plum says, setting down the knife.

As soon as she skips away, Effie reaches for my hand.

“What did the police say?”

God, the police; that was so long ago.

“Did they find her yet?” she asks. Her hand is small in mine, I can feel the architecture of her bones.

I shake my head.

“Then what's going on?”

I listen to make sure Plum isn't coming back. “Andrews is threatening to press charges against me for making a false report.”

“
What?
” she says. Too loudly. “That's insane. Are you kidding?”

I shake my head. Feel tears come to my eyes.

“It's fine. I just need to get a lawyer to help me deal with this,” I say.

“Mama, where is it?” Plum says from the other room.

“Not sure, honey. Look in the dryer. If it's not there, check the hamper?” Effie turns back to me. “I can find someone. We'll go into town first thing tomorrow morning. I'll see if Devin knows anybody.”

I shake my head. “There's more,” I say.

“What?”

“That guy, the one I told you about? The one in the woods who told me that fucked-up thing about the dragonflies?”

“Yeah?” she says.

“Mama, it's not
here,
” Plum says, and I can hear her feet padding around the laundry room.

I lower my voice and continue, “He lives in that messed-up house with all the trailers. That one we drove past?”

Her eyebrows rise up; her eyes widen.

“And he's a registered sex offender,” I whisper. “Lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under fourteen.”

Effie's hand flies to her mouth. “
What?
”

Plum stands in the doorway holding out an apron. “This one okay?” she asks.

And for just a moment we both turn to Plum, look at her bare feet, her skinny legs. At the drips of strawberry juice that run down her arms. I feel swollen, helpless.

“What's the matter?” Plum asks.

Effie motions for her to come and pulls her in close. “Nothing, baby. It's perfect, thank you.”

 

As the pie bakes, Plum disappears upstairs to play with her dolls. Now that Zu-Zu is gone, she has reverted back to being a ten-year-old again. No pressure to impress her older sister, to keep up.

Effie and I grab a bottle of wine and go outside and sit in the Adirondack chairs facing the water. It is early evening, but the sun is still bright. I realize that today is the solstice, the longest day of the year. It certainly feels like it.

I pick at the peeling purple paint on the arm of the chair. The violet scales drift onto the grass like petals.

“Did you hear from Devin yet?” I ask. Jake hasn't called, and even though I wouldn't know what to say to him, this stings.

“Oh, yeah. He called when you were still in town. They got to Brooklyn around lunchtime. Devin will take Zu-Zu into the city tomorrow to get her set up at the dorms. He said he'll be back here Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when he can get a meeting in at Gagosian.”

I study the dizzying pattern of daisies on Effie's skirt. At the few drips of strawberry juice that mar the pristine white cotton. I imagine her later, dabbing at the spots with a Q-tip and bleach.

“What are we going to do?” she says. “You need to tell the police about this. Doesn't it seem like this is something they should be looking into?”

“I
can't
go to the police,” I say. “They're seriously pissed at me. They're convinced I'm some sort of psychopath who made up this whole story for attention.”

“Is that what he said to you?”

“In so many words,” I say. “I think they saw the video.”

Effie sighs. “Shit.”

I shake my head, rub my temples.

“Wait, is that guy, Sharp, is he even allowed to live there?” she asks. “I mean, there have got to be kids living around there. Isn't there some sort of law about that?”

“I think it's just schools and day cares,” I say. I don't know the rules here in Vermont. In New York they can't live within one thousand feet of a school or day care center. I was so grateful that our brownstone was two doors down from a preschool.

“Wait,” I say. “There
is
a day care center. That place where you deliver the books.”

That home day care couldn't have been even a quarter mile from his house.

“Oh shit,” Effie says. “I bet Lisa has no idea.”

“I'll call Andrews tomorrow,” I say. I take a long, slow swallow of the wine, feel it warm my chest. “They may not believe me about the girl, but they can't ignore somebody who's breaking the law. And if they pay him a visit, then maybe they'll find something.”

“You mean find . . . her?” she asks.

I shake my head. “God, I hope not.”

 

I had promised to make mac 'n' cheese for supper, but when the pie comes out of the oven, we are tipsy on wine and don't want to bother going through the motions in order to eat dessert. And so we eat pie for dinner. With everyone gone, it feels like the rules have gone out the window. Effie lets Plum load up her steaming piece with vanilla ice cream. And I eat two pieces myself while we watch the DVD of Zu-Zu's performance as Swanhilda in
Coppélia
.

It is only nine o'clock when I make my way to the guest cottage; I am full and sleepy with wine and exhaustion. The sun has just now finally gone down, the last faint glow of this day, the longest day, has finally slipped away, and I too slip away.

I
n the morning, Effie and I go into town. She slows as we approach Sharp's, and I stare down that gravel driveway, at the collection of trailers in his yard.

“There?” Effie says softly. I nod.

The truck that was in the driveway yesterday is gone. I wonder if he has a job. How one even goes about getting a job after being convicted of something so vile.

She keeps driving slowly, and as we pass the search site, it looks abandoned. It's Monday. Everyone has gone back to work. The yellow police tape looks like tattered ribbons in the trees.

“Do you think we should talk to Lisa?” Effie says. “It kills me that this guy is living so close to her day care. That can't possibly be legal.”

What she doesn't say is that this guy is also
her
neighbor too. I think about Plum and Zu-Zu riding their bikes down this road alone.

“Let me talk to Andrews first,” I say, forcing a smile. “No need to sound the alarms until I get more details about this guy. Who knows, maybe he's just some sort of exhibitionist. Like a flasher or something. Remember that guy who used to hang out in the cemetery near the high school?”

“Oh my God, I totally forgot about him.”

In high school, there was a guy who lurked in the cemetery, smoking clove cigarettes. He was notorious for whipping out his penis every time the high school girls took a shortcut through the headstones. Back then, we just considered him a creep, didn't even think about going to the police about it. It seemed like there was something wrong with him, beyond the flashing. Some sort of mental delay; he probably had Tourette's or something, because he barked at us too. I used to feel a little sorry for him.

“
Lewd and lascivious
could mean lots of different things. I couldn't find anything in the newspaper archives. If it was a big crime, wouldn't people know about it?” I say.

Effie nods, but it's one of those nods that is meant to reassure herself. To convince herself. It is well intended but unconvincing.

“And seriously, why would he bother to volunteer for the search if he had anything to do with the girl?” I say, this time to reassure myself.

Effie has to work at the library this morning, covering for the children's librarian, who is out sick. Normally, Plum would stay home with Devin, or, if necessary, alone with Zu-Zu, but they are both gone, so she comes with us. Last night Effie filled Devin in on everything that transpired with Andrews, and he gave her the name of an attorney, a friend of a friend: a small-town lawyer who handles everything from DUIs to divorces. A sort of one-stop legal shop, is the way Devin described him. I also plan to pay Strickland a visit. I am hoping that if Andrews won't listen, Strickland might. Plum will hang out at the library while I'm running errands, and then I promised her I would take her to the public pool afterward for free swim.

In town, we park, and after Effie and Plum skip up the steps and disappear inside the library, I walk down the street with the address for the lawyer in hand. When I called earlier this morning, the receptionist was able to schedule me for a consultation right away. It makes me wonder though, how good this guy is if his schedule is so wide open.

The attorney's office is in one of the Victorian buildings on the park in the center of town. Some of these gingerbread-trimmed monstrosities have been converted into apartments; these are the more run-down of the houses that circle the park. But some of them have been maintained and lovingly restored; out-of-state folks came in when the market crashed and scooped them up. A few, like this one, now house an eclectic mix of small businesses: dentists, financial advisers, computer repairmen, a yarn shop.

This building is silvery gray with a brick-colored roof and trim. There is a widow's walk at the top of what I believe is the third floor, turrets, as well as a wraparound porch that encircles the entire, enormous building, and is adorned with an American-flag bunting. The Fourth of July is still two weeks away, but the whole town is at the ready with an army of flags lining the main street, as well as a banner stretched across Main Street, reminding everyone of the scheduled parade and fireworks.

I open the heavy wooden door, step into the cool, dark foyer, and study the building directory hanging on a dark wood paneled wall. The offices of Hughes & Leighton, Attorneys at Law are on the third floor. There is no elevator here that I can see, and so I make my way up the winding mahogany staircase.

The door to the office is open, and I poke my head in, worried I am in the wrong place.

“You Waters?” a gruff voice says, and then there is a deep glugging sound. A man emerges from behind a water cooler, holding a paper cone of water. He's tall and thin and about my age, I guess. Prematurely gray, but handsome: a good, strong shadowed jaw and dark eyes. He's wearing blue jeans and a button-down white shirt. Kind of casual for a lawyer, I think, but it also puts me at ease.

“Yes,” I say, smiling and offering my hand. “Tess.”

“Ryan Hughes,” he says, and shakes my hand, and I worry for a moment that my bones will crumble in his grasp. I surreptitiously shake it out when he finally releases it.

“Wait a minute,” he says. “Were you Tess Mahoney?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Once upon a time.”

“I
knew
you looked familiar!” he says, and smiles a broad warm smile. “Did you go to White Mountains Arts Camp?”

“Um, yeah?” I say, surprised. I haven't thought about that summer camp in ages.

“I did too! Eighty-three through eighty-six. I remember you! You were the poet,” he says.

I grimace and then laugh. “Also once upon a time.”

“I was there for music,” he says. “Piano. I grew up in Putney.”

“You have an amazing memory,” I say.

“I remember you reading a poem about a chicken?”

“Oh my God,” I say, feeling my cheeks grow hot. “I was in a William Carlos Williams phase. Red wheelbarrows and plums in the icebox and all that.”

He smiles, and his eyes crinkle up at the corners. “Tess Mahoney,” he says, shaking his head.

I look around the room, feeling awkward.

“Oh, my receptionist's kid got sick at day care. She had to go pick him up,” he says, gesturing to the empty reception area. The Leighton of Hughes & Leighton is also apparently absent.

“You want coffee?” He motions to a pot sitting on a little console table in the waiting room.

I shake my head. I've already had enough coffee to make my hands a bit shaky, my stomach tight.

“Well, come on into my office then.”

He leads me down a long corridor and into an office that looks more befitting a college professor than an attorney. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with primarily fiction titles: ones I know well. I even note one I edited myself, though I don't mention this. His desk is beaten up, its raw wood surface patterned with cup rings, endlessly interlocking circles. He motions to an overstuffed chair facing his desk, and I sit. He plops down in a ratty office chair behind the desk and reaches for an empty manila folder. I can see that someone has typed up a label with my name. He plucks a pen from his desk and scratches it at the edge of a yellow legal pad, checking for ink.

“Why don't we start at the beginning,” he says, smiling, and it's the kind of smile that makes me feel like he's actually listening.

I begin by telling him everything that happened that night. I figure honesty is the best policy in this situation, and so I tell him about the wine. That I probably shouldn't have been driving and about how Strickland kept pushing the issue with me, how he kept insinuating that maybe I'd just imagined her because I'd been drinking. I tell him about stopping by Hudson's and then describe what happened on the drive home, when I looked up and saw the girl standing in the bright beam of my headlights. I blink hard and recall the details: tattered tutu, ladybug rain boots. I feel my throat grow thick as I recall the sway of her back, that round toddler belly and tangled hair.

“And then she was gone,” I say, the word
gone
catching in my throat.

He pushes a box of tissues from the corner of his desk toward me, and I pluck one out. My nose is running, my eyes full.

“And you were alone?” he asks. And for some reason, the question is like a hook in my heart.

I nod. I was alone. I
am
alone. Jake is gone, and here I am dealing with all of this shit by myself.

I take a deep breath. “I don't know. There was a truck that passed me after she disappeared into the woods, after I went in looking for her. It was a white truck with landscaping equipment in the back. Massachusetts plates. I told the cops, but they don't seem to have done anything about it. They think I'm making it all up. That I'm just some sort of crackpot looking for attention.”

He nods, takes a moment. “Now, please don't take this the wrong way, but do you have anything in your background, in your history, that might lead them to think this?” And I wonder how much he knows. How much homework he's been able to do in the last two hours since I called. It doesn't feel like an accusation, but I know I need to tell him. If I want him to help me, he needs to know what sort of dirt they're likely to drag up. And he seems kind. Like someone I can trust.

And so I tell him about Guatemala. About what happened when we got back to New York. About the media frenzy that ensued. About the way I couldn't even leave my house for a month without some reporter shoving a camera in my face.

“Is that all?” he asks, and I consider nodding. Lying. But he needs to know. If he's going to be able to defend me, he needs to know what he's dealing with.

After a moment of hesitation, I take a deep breath and direct him to the video on YouTube. I continue to breathe deeply and slowly as he watches the worst two and a half minutes of my life.

When it's over, I half expect him to shake his head, send me away. Politely suggest I find someone else. This is what Oliver had done after. But instead he just scratches down some notes in an illegible script on the yellow page.

“So the police initiated a search, and it didn't turn anything up. And now they're putting the blame on you, because of your . . .” He pauses. “Your
history
.”

I nod.

“But they're ignoring a lead that might support your case. And they've publicly denounced your story, made you look like a liar in front of this entire community.”

“Yes,” I say. “I feel like a criminal. It's insane. It's like all of a sudden I'm in a Kafka novel or something.”

He smiles. “You haven't wavered in your story, have you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven't given them any indication that you, yourself, have doubts about what you saw?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Not at all. I
know
what I saw. She is not some figment of my imagination. She's real. And she's still out there somewhere.”

I remember then the second reason I've come into town.

“I'm actually on my way to the police station after this,” I say. “I did a little digging myself. It took about ten whole minutes. There's a registered sex offender living right near where I spotted her.”

His eyes widen. “Do you know what he was convicted of?”

“Lewd and lascivious acts with a child under fourteen,” I say, and I feel my skin crawl. “He showed up to help with the search, and I got a really bad feeling about him. And there's a day care center right down the road. Isn't that illegal?”

He shakes his head, grimaces. “Not in the state of Vermont. Unless he's still under the supervision of the Department of Corrections, there are no restrictions on where he lives or works. Likewise, if he's from out of state, after he registers, there aren't a lot of requirements.”

“So the neighbors weren't notified? And he can live within
walking distance
of a day care center?” I feel nauseated.

“Yep,” he says.

“I need to talk to Lieutenant Andrews,” I say, shaking my head. “This is crazy.”

“No,” he says, lifting his finger up. “I would advise you not to speak to the police at all. If they're seeking to press charges against you for making a false report, you don't want to give them any ammunition. And if they question you again, you notify them that you've hired an attorney. But the most important thing is that you stick to your story.”

“It's not a story,” I say. “It's the truth.”

“Then you keep telling them the truth. Without an admission, there's no way the DA will pursue charges.”

“What about the civil suit? To get back the money spent on the search?”

“That's a bridge we'll have to cross later,” he says. “Right now, let's focus on getting them to drop this.”

“Wouldn't finding the girl solve all of these problems?” I say. “I mean, God forbid, if that man . . .” My stomach turns, and I can't finish my sentence.

“You cannot go to the police. This guy, Sharp? He hasn't done anything illegal. There would be no grounds for a search of his property.” He is looking at me intently, his eyes warm and concerned. He is not going to budge, though.

“But what if he has her?” I ask. “What if something terrible is happening inside his house?”