Where I Lost Her (5 page)

The officer gets into the driver's side of the cruiser, slams his door shut, and turns his lights on. They paint the dark night red and blue.

Effie hugs me. I start to open the passenger door, and the officer rolls down the window. “In the back. Pretend it's one of your New York taxi cabs.”

I obey, but I can't get myself buckled in with the elaborate seat belts, and so he has to come around and latch me in. The seats are hard, plastic. As he leans over me and locks the belt into place I feel like a child. “You don't have any weapons on you, ma'am?” he asks then, and I feel like a criminal.

“It'll be okay,” Effie says, but her voice is unconvincing. “They'll find her.”

I nod and nod, trying to convince myself, and her both.

Effie reaches through the window and squeezes my hand, but he rolls up the window and she has to pull her hand away. I turn to look at him but see only the pixelated blur created by the wire mesh between us.

B
y the time we get back to the spot in the road, that dark bend where the trees swoon, making a cavern of leaves, the other officers have started to arrive. I can't help but wonder why it took Sergeant Strickland so long to get to Effie's, when these guys seemed to materialize out of thin air.

I see Jake speaking to one of them at the edge of the road. Devin is talking to another. Within only minutes, there are police dogs straining at their leashes and the crush of boots on damp leaves. The darkness is filled with red and blue lights, the bright beams of flashlights cutting through the darkness. And then a helicopter buzzes overhead. As I get out of the cruiser, I feel like I've stepped onto the set of a movie.

It is only June and so cold; I tremble thinking of her out there by herself.

The dogs bark, and their voices echo. When Effie and I were kids, we loved to holler our names out toward the water, listen as they bounced back to us. A magical call and response. I have watched Plum and Zu-Zu do the same.

Strickland goes over to another officer, who is standing outside his cruiser. The other cop towers over him. He could be a former Marine; he has that ex-military air about him. Strickland looks back at me and motions for me to come over.

“Ms. Waters, this is Lieutenant Andrews. He's the officer who'll be in command of the search.”

“This the RP?” the lieutenant asks Strickland.

“RP?” I say.

“
Reporting party,
” he says. “You the one who called it in?”

“Yes.” I nod. Finally, someone in charge around here. Someone taking this seriously.

“Problem is, ma'am,” he says, and clucks his tongue, “we haven't gotten any calls in about a little girl.”

I shake my head. I don't understand.
I
called in about a little girl.
I
called. “What do you mean?” I ask.

“You say you saw a girl out here, but nobody's called in to report a missing kid.”

“Maybe they don't know,” I say. “Her parents. Maybe they don't realize yet.”

I think about all those stories of girls who go missing from their beds, stolen away in the middle of the night while their parents are sleeping. Oblivious until morning when they go to their child's empty room.

I am shaking now from the cold. My whole body is trembling, my teeth are chattering. Bone hitting bone.

“Can't you put out some sort of Amber Alert or something?” I say.

“Not without a missing persons report,” the lieutenant says.

I am so confused.

“Wait. So I found a girl. But she's not
lost,
because no one has called in to say they lost her?” I look at him in disbelief. “She's four years old. She's bleeding. Somebody has to find her.” I spin on my heel to look for someone, anyone to back me up here. I feel crazy.

The helicopter is so loud overhead now, I can barely hear the lieutenant when he speaks again. The carnival lights and the sound of panting dogs are too much; this feels like a dream. A nightmarish, fever dream.

“We've got dogs out,” he says. “And there are heat sensors on the helicopter. If there's a girl out there, she'll be glowing.”

“Glowing?” I think of her standing in the yellow light of my headlights. I recall the blue rivers that ran under the surface of her paper-thin white flesh. The way she seemed somehow illuminated.

“Infrared. It picks up body heat. If she's out there we'll find her.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

 

Jake comes to me then and puts his arm across my shoulder. I realize I am still just wearing a T-shirt. I am freezing. Because I am cold, I forget for a minute that I don't want him touching me. About how strange this gesture of his feels. How forced.

“Hey, what did you guys do with my sweater?” I say. I can barely talk. I am so cold; my whole body is trembling.

“Your sweater?”

“Yeah, the gray one I put on the road to mark the spot.”

Jake shakes his head. “Oh, shit. I forgot about that. This is the place though, right?”

I nod, speechless. I do recall this bend in the road. I know it the same way I know, when I wake in the middle of the night (without even opening my eyes), what time it is. I know the nuances of darkness. It is no different here.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

I walk away from him, down the road, looking for the sweater I remember putting out here. Where the hell is it? And then it hits me.

She came back for it.

T
ime passes. How much time, I have no idea. The sky begins to soften with light, though it will be another hour or two before the sun comes up. The officers traipse through the woods. The dogs bark. The radios crackle, disembodied voices speaking a language I don't understand. A code of numbers. The secret language of emergency.

I sit with Devin and Jake at the edge of the road. Someone found a blanket and I wear it over my shoulders like a cape. Effie pulls up in Devin's truck, parking next to us. She jumps down out of the cab and passes Devin a Thermos.

“Coffee,” she says. “And muffins.” She hands me a warm paper bag. I unroll the top, and my face is hit with steam and the heady scent of wild blueberries.

“Where are the girls?” I ask.

“Back at home,” she says. “They're still sleeping.”

“Alone?” I say, feeling my stomach flip.

“They're fine.”

“But what if there's someone bad out there? What if this little girl somehow got away from someone?” My mind is spinning. I think about Plum cartwheeling across the grass. About someone taking her.

“Tess, they're fine. The camp is locked. I'm headed back now, but you need to eat something.
Please,
eat a muffin.”

I reach into the bag and pull out a muffin, but by the time I get the paper peeled from the bottom, I can't remember feeling hungry.

After Effie leaves, a van with WCAX-TV emblazoned on the side shows up. They set up large bright lights, and the female reporter primps and preens in front of a mirror her assistant holds up for her. Her heels sink into the soft grass at the edge of the road. I notice a run in her stocking.

Someone directs them to me. Tells them I am the one who saw the girl. It happens so quickly. Before I can even think about saying no, the bright lights are in my face. The dreamy feeling of déjà vu rushes over me, disorienting. I have been here before.

But it is too late now, and before I can even think of what to say, how to appeal to everyone watching to keep an eye out for her, the cameraman takes aim at me, and the reporter says, “Just try to relax. Tell us what you saw.”

She turns to the camera then, juts her chin out and tilts her head.

“We're here with Tess Waters, who is visiting from New York. Earlier tonight, she says she was driving back to a camp on Lake Gormlaith where she's staying, when she found a young child in the road. According to Ms. Waters, the girl appeared to be wounded, but ran off into the woods before she had a chance to help her.”

The reporter, whose lipstick is smudged on her front tooth, turns to me then, as if I have suddenly appeared. Like I haven't been standing there the whole time.

“Can you tell us a little bit about the girl you saw?”

I repeat what I have been saying all night.
Pink tutu. Ladybug rain boots.

The reporter nods, holds the microphone to my face.

“She was scared,” I say. “She's just a baby.”

She nods again. Scowls. “You said she was hurt?”

“Yes, her hand. Her hand was bleeding.”

The reporter tilts her head again, smiles in some odd approximation of sympathy or pity, and then turns back to the camera. I can see every pore in her face. The orange line of her makeup at her jaw. I notice that one of her earrings is missing a back. It makes me anxious, reminds me of something, though I can't pinpoint what.

“Officers say that there have been no reports of a missing child and no other witnesses. But the search will continue. For this lost little girl.”

When the lights turn off, I say to her, “You're missing the back of your earring. You should take it out before you lose it.”

She looks confused and then fumbles with her earring. She nods. “Oh, thank you.”

And then she is climbing into the back of the news van, her dirty heels disappearing inside. The van stays put though. Someone says something about a press conference being scheduled, and then there are other vans pulling up. WPTZ, WVNY. I go through the same routine with three other broadcasters. I am seeing spots from the bright lights.

Other people seem to come out of the woods then. There is suddenly a crowd. Cars park at the edge of the road. It is like an impromptu parade. Part of me would not be surprised at all if a marching band arrived next. Majorettes. Balloons. I am delirious. Dizzy and exhausted. There's a terrifying sense of excitement buzzing and humming among the people who walk up and down the road, as if she might just wander out again and reveal herself. As if this is only some elaborate game of hide-and-seek.

When the sun fills the sky with light, my head starts to pound. The wine, I realize. The alcohol has run its course, metabolized into pure sugar, depleted my body, and now I will pay with the headache. Nausea. I am hungover. This is the part I usually sleep through. A bottle of ibuprofen on the nightstand, a glass of water.

I need water. I am overwhelmed with a terrible thirst.

“I need water,” I say to Jake, who is cracking his neck. He nods, and I stand up, cross the road, and go to where I saw someone passing out water bottles to the officers earlier. I drink as if I haven't had water in days. In years.

Sergeant Strickland and Lieutenant Andrews are standing just a few feet away, near the tree line. They are talking loudly enough for me to hear them. Strickland is being scolded.

“We've been out here for three hours now. The helicopter isn't picking up anything. The dogs aren't picking up anything. You think maybe you jumped the gun a bit, Sergeant?”

“She says she saw a naked little kid out here. What was I supposed to do, sir? It's SOP.”

“You're supposed to talk her off the ledge, is what you're supposed to do. And now she's talked to the media”—he gestures to the crowd—“we've got a full-blown circus on our hands.”

Strickland's face is red, his thick neck straining at his uniform collar. I feel something like rage growing in me.

I stand up and walk over to them. My legs feel weak, useless.

The lieutenant seems surprised to see me and reddens a bit. Then he stiffens his posture, pushes his chest out, and clears his throat.

“Ms. Waters . . .” he says.

“I'm not crazy. She's
real,
” I say, as calmly as I can. “I saw her.”

“Of course, ma'am,” the lieutenant says, smiling at me condescendingly. “And we're doing everything we can to locate the juvenile. But if you could please refrain from conducting any more interviews, we'd appreciate it. We'll hold a press conference in a few hours. In the meantime, how about we don't feed the lions?”

I nod, feel tears stinging my eyes.

I peer up at the sky then, at the helicopter, which circles and circles overhead. At the weak glow on the horizon that will eventually become the sun. At the last few stars pulsing like fireflies in the sky.

B
ack at the camp, Jake stretches, yawns. “I'm sorry, I need to go to bed. Just for a little bit.”

It is dawn. 5
A.M.
The sky is overcast, and mist hovers over the lake like ghosts. The surface of the water is still, though the air is not still at all. The loons are crying out, their wings beating against the water as they take flight. They seem disoriented by the helicopter that circles over the lake.

“Come to bed?” Jake says, motioning for me. “You need sleep too. Just an hour or two. Then we can figure out what to do.”

“What did the lieutenant guy say?” Effie asks softly. She is enclosed in Devin's arms. Like a nesting doll. “What's next?”

“He says they'll keep searching,” I say. “There are a lot of empty camps, abandoned buildings. Places where a little kid might hide.” This is what Andrews promised me before he told me to go home. I worry now he would have said anything to get me to leave. That he would have done anything, said anything to pacify me.
To talk me down off the ledge
.

“If she's little, I imagine she couldn't have gotten very far,” Effie says.

I nod. “He said the farthest a child her age could go in twenty-four hours would be less than two miles.”

I imagine the circumference of this invisible circle. Two miles, radiating out from that spot in the road where I found her.

“They didn't see anything with the helicopters? The dogs?”

I shake my head. “I don't think they believe me.”

“That's ridiculous,” Effie says. “Of course they believe you. Why would somebody make something like that up?”

I shake my head.

Devin says, “I spoke with some of our neighbors who came out when they saw what was going on. Folks are really shaken up about this. I don't think it'll be hard to organize some volunteers. I'm going to talk to Billy Moffett, see about using the back room at Hudson's to set up headquarters. People are going to want to help.”

“Does anybody have any idea who she might belong to?” Jake asks. “It's so weird nobody's reported her missing.”

Devin shakes his head. “No idea. Nobody I talked to seems to know of any local kids that fit that description. Could belong to one of the summer families, but it's still pretty early in the season. Most folks don't come up to the lake until the Fourth of July.”

Jake yawns again. “Sorry,” he says again and shakes his head. “Man, I am so tired. Come to bed,” he says to me. “Just for a little bit.”

“Go,” Effie says, reaching for my hand. “We should all get some sleep. There's nothing we can do right now. The police are still looking. If they find something, I'm sure they'll call.”

And because I am exhausted, delirious, I agree. I don't have the energy to argue with her. With anyone.

 

I follow Jake along the narrow wooded path to the guest cottage. He looks thinner lately, his clothes hanging just a bit looser on his already lean frame. He's been running more, eating better. The subtle changes in his appearance feel like glaring clues now. Something I should have noticed. How could I have been so inattentive? So stupid?

I study the familiar back of his head; he's grown his hair out a bit lately as well. It's more like it was when we first met now: softly curling over the back of his collar, framing his face. I remember I used to marvel at the color of his hair. It's brown, but the individual strands are a thousand colors: blond, auburn, and the occasional deep amber. Unlike many of his peers, there are no gray hairs in that spectrum. He still has the same boyish grin he's always had, though he wears a trimmed beard and mustache to hide the scars that remain from the cleft lip he was born with. The methotrexate his mother took for the crippling rheumatoid arthritis she suffers from is to blame. Though he never talks about it, I know he was teased as a kid; his mother told me one night not long after I met her. Her eyes filled with tears as she talked about the way he would come home from school crying. Sometimes, when I feel angry with him, I need only to focus on that scar, and all of a sudden, I feel an inexplicable tenderness toward him. There's a vulnerability there still, I know, a persistent wound that won't heal.

Birds flutter and sing in the trees. The sun burns through the mist. The dew is already evaporating from the grass.

Inside the cabin, it smells like cedar. There is a small desk, a bookcase stuffed with discarded library books. A record player and a collection of albums. Our suitcases sit waiting at the foot of the Hansel-and-Gretel-style cupboard bed, which is made up with clean white sheets and a heavy down comforter. I kick off my sneakers and peel off my socks before climbing up the built-in steps and into the bed. I don't bother to take off my clothes. I am too tired. And as wound up as I am, I cannot resist the pull of the feathers, the pillow that cradles my head.

Jake peels off his clothes except for his boxer shorts and climbs in next to me. He gets too hot for pajamas when he sleeps. At home, he sleeps naked. And even then, he throws all of the covers off in the middle of the night, his body like a steaming furnace.

Now, he curls around me, and it takes my breath away. First, because his body feels unfamiliar. He is
much
thinner, his muscles wiry and taut. Second, because I don't remember the last time he has enclosed me like this. I know it is because the bed is small, because there is no place for him to go. At home, in our king-size bed, I sometimes cannot find him in the middle of the night. My limbs search for the familiar sharp bone of his ankle, the hot spot of flesh of his hip. But now, we are forced together. And I try to take comfort in the way his chest rises and falls against my back. The way his fingers interlace with mine.

I am too tired to feel sadness. To feel anything but exhaustion.

And I fall instantly and deeply asleep.