Stolen Grace (16 page)

Hi Sylvia,

It’s been an emotional rollercoaster with Jeff. He pulled out of the sperm thing, wouldn’t come out to see me, said it wasn’t fair on his daughter. I guess that was just an excuse. We’ve decided to split; or as he says, “taking a break.” But the truth is, he’s a recovering addict and he does not have the emotional resources to be supportive of my needs. His ability to be a fulfilling partner is negligible. I am just not willing to forego the kind of support I need. I want a healthy, satisfying relationship! Don’t we all?

I began to notice Jeff’s shortcomings whenever the baby subject came up. And the truth is, when I examine the situation, I see the reality of what the dynamic has always been in our relationship. I am the giver. He is the taker. Plus, we have such different backgrounds. He is a blue-collar worker. Me? I come from a different class altogether. I speak three languages, I’ve read Dickens, I have a college degree. Even the books we read speak volumes. (Get the pun??!!)

So I am going to continue the IVF on my own and get a sperm donor. I am grieving like a child who has lost its mother at the fairground but I believe it is the right direction for me to take.

Take care of your relationship with Tommy. I have to say, you really have it all, don’t you? Brains, talent, a sexy, gorgeous husband, a beautiful child. Lucky you. Nurture it.

When are you coming to join me? Come on, have an adventure – hurry up and get here!

Hugs R xxxxxxxxxx

Sylvia read and reread that telling line, “grieving like a child who has lost its mother at the fairground.”

And,” come on, have an adventure.” Now that Ruth had abandoned the IVF project, was that what Grace was to her? “An adventure?”

How did Ruth imagine Grace
felt
losing her family? Had that crossed this woman’s mind? A pair of sparkly Dorothy shoes wasn’t enough to win a little girl’s heart, however gullible. Grace must be beside herself with confusion. Desperate. What would Ruth have told her? “I’ve stolen you. I’ve kidnapped you.” Hardly.

Sylvia couldn’t even imagine what lies Ruth must have spun into her tapestry of deceipt.

She reread the most chilling paragraph of all: “Take care of your relationship with Tommy. I have to say, you really have it all, don’t you? Brains, beauty, talent, a sexy, gorgeous husband, a beautiful child. Lucky you. Nurture it.”

Jealousy? Sylvia wondered.

Tommy

T
ommy was sitting in the Saginaw dining room, his eyes closed, head buried beneath his hands, his insides jelly. Grace, Grace, Grace. He could think of nothing else. She was his life. His heart. He stared at the wall, tears stinging his eyes. There were no words to describe how he and Sylvia felt. Grief didn’t even begin to cover it. Horror?

He needed a plan so that their feelings could be supplanted by action.

They had to find Grace.

They
would
find Grace.

He let his gaze drift to the table. The Loretta letters were still spread out, his father-in-law’s silver-plated golf trophies placed strategically on the sideboard, glittering in the background—a dead man’s paradox.

A dark horse.

Wilbur Mason had lived a lie.

The sort of person, Tommy understood, who had been caught by circumstance, but had surrendered to his own fear and ego, letting it take over his life. He had perjured himself and those around him. His whole marriage to Sylvia’s mother had been a lie.

Tommy did not—he was clear about that now—want to be that sort of man.

He did not want to be a liar.

But there was no chance he could talk to Sylvia about how things had panned out in LA. Not now. Not after what had happened with Grace. His wife was barely holding it together, and he was all she had. He didn’t want to bring the subject up—just mentioning it could tip her scales.

He had to be strong for her.

For Grace.

Things could be worse, he told himself. At least Ruth wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t going to sexually abuse Grace and bury her in a ditch somewhere. At least, he sure as hell hoped not. No, she wanted Grace for herself, to fulfill her perverted, fantastical dreams of motherhood. All that frozen egg business proved it. It didn’t work out, so she stole Grace. What a sicko.

Every now and then, Sylvia asked him if there had been some mistake, that perhaps Ruth and Grace had
both
been abducted. Tommy understood that his wife just couldn’t fathom how a woman could do that to a child; to thieve a happy, well-adjusted little girl from her family to feed her own needs and ego. Perhaps, Sylvia reasoned, it was just a sort of holiday, and Ruth would bring Gracie home. His wife always did see the good in people. She was far too trusting. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Sylvia’s trust. Tommy didn’t blame her, though; it was her sweet nature. And he hadn’t suspected Ruth at any point, either. In fact, he blamed himself for not being more on the ball. Then again, how could anybody imagine a person like Ruth could be that crafty? That wicked?

He’d scrutinized Ruth’s e-mails and Facebook posts. She was a selfish bitch with an inflated opinion of herself; clever yes, but a nasty piece of work. Someone who would obviously stop at nothing. She’d committed fraud—a serious offense. She’d stolen money. There was no way she’d turn back now. This Ruth bitch was in it for the long term. And the only thing he could possibly do . . .

Was hunt her down.

Sylvia

F
our days had passed since Grace’s abduction. They’d done everything to find a trace of Ruth. The FBI was treating this as top priority, obviously. A detective named Agent Russo was in charge of their case. She’d told Sylvia that they could access Ruth’s DNA with blood tests from the clinic. But what use would that be? The DNA of someone who didn’t figure on any database? Ruth had given the clinic a false name and had even paid for the treatments in cash. There were no credit cards in the name of Ruth Vargas, at least not
tha
t Ruth Vargas. There were twenty-seven women called Ruth Vargas on Facebook alone, but the police could find none to match
the
Ruth Vargas. Ruth Steel. Same difference. She didn’t exist. Her laptop had had its IP address hidden all along. Another “convenient” thing in her favor that made it impossible to trace any of her last movements, assuming she had even taken her laptop with her. She seemed too wily for that.

Sylvia went over it once more with Tommy, just to be sure.

“Explain this IP address thing again,” she said.

Tommy’s eyes were sharpened flints. “If she told you an ex of hers had tweaked her laptop, or bought a program to hide her address so she could watch American TV in Europe, then that must have been what happened. In order to get an American IP address you have to connect to a VPN server.”

“What’s VPN?”

“Virtual private network—it’s far less complicated than it sounds. When you connect to a VPN server it will act as a middleman between you and the website you want to connect to, and if the VPN server is located in the United States it will then look like you are there, too. There is even a provider called Hide My Ass Dot Com. Anyway, the woman’s no fool. She will have dumped her laptop by now, with all your money she could buy as many laptops as she wants.”

“
Our
daughter.
Our
money,” Sylvia mumbled.

Tommy continued in a monotone, “We know her last stop was Guatemala—where she went after is anyone’s guess. Two hundred and forty-seven thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollars, and eighteen cents. What cheek to use
your
passport, Sylvia.”

“They said the signatures on all the paperwork were identical to the signature they had on file. ‘A nice woman,’ the bank said. ‘She had her little girl with her,’ they said.”

“Evil bitch,” Tommy murmured, his mouth twisted with disgust. “Ruth must have spent hours practicing your signature. And mine, too. Nice touch, that parental consent I supposedly signed.”

They sat in silence, holding hands, Sylvia dissecting Ruth’s last known movements. There had been no traces of a “Sylvia Garland and her daughter” boarding any more planes. Ruth was no dummy, obviously. She knew that by the time she’d cleaned out the account and hadn’t turned up in Saginaw, the cops would be looking for her. But South America was her oyster. She spoke fluent Spanish and Portuguese. That part wasn’t made up. That part of Ruth Steel was a razor-sharp truth. Sylvia had heard her chat on her cell one time, while they were Skyping. Ruth really could navigate her way around languages. Not to mention her gift for mimicking people. She could go anywhere by bus, by car. She had cash. Just one country in Latin America alone would be a maze in itself, but the
whole
mass of it? There was the Amazon. Where could Sylvia and Tommy even begin? Sylvia’s greatest fear was that Grace, with her caramel-colored skin, would blend in with the locals. She could easily pass for a Brazilian or any Latin American child. And Ruth, trilingual as she was, could become invisible. Mother and child.

Sylvia observed Tommy as he navigated about his iPad, gathering ideas. She had never seen him so focused.

They’d made two videos and posted them on YouTube. Appeals to find Grace. They showed footage of her playing and talking to the camera—on a trip they made to Yellowstone one time—mixed with a compilation of photos and their own personal pleas to help them find their daughter. They’d already had 97,000 hits in two days. But they didn’t posses one photo of Ruth to show anyone. Her Facebook page was the generic blue and white outline of a non-person. Her Skype account had disappeared. So had her e-mail account. Sylvia had not taken one photo of her in Wyoming. She had nothing. And the only thing the CCT cameras showed evidence of (at the airports and the bank in Guatemala), was a blonde woman in heels and a dress (Sylvia’s dress), wearing a straw cowboy hat that hid her face. A blonde who could have been Sylvia herself.

Tommy also had the idea to put advertisements in all the papers, notably the
Herald Tribune
which ex-pats read. He put posts on Internet forums on the
Lonely Planet
and
Fodor’s
—anywhere where backpackers and travelers might wander. He set up a Facebook and Twitter page with Grace’s photo. A picture of her with Pidgey O Dollars. He sent out regular tweets, and although he’d had several replies, he and Sylvia were no closer to finding Grace’s whereabouts.

THE MORNING LIGHT was warming the great hallway of Sylvia’s childhood home. An orange glow shone on one of her grandmother’s paintings, bringing the characters to life; naive stick-men in a swirl of abstract colors. Sylvia felt it was foolish, but she prayed to them anyway.

Tommy’s backpack sat bulging on the terracotta floor, a pair of Territorial Army boots tied to a ring by their laces, and a lightweight sleeping bag, neatly rolled, was attached to its sides.

“It won’t be too cumbersome, then?” Sylvia asked. She observed him standing in the hallway, his legs astride, his stance erect. He looked tough. She had seldom seen him this way. His jaw looked more angular, his sandy hair darker, his chest muscles more prominent. He’d been working out the last couple of days. He’d found some old 1960s weights in the garage and had been pumping iron in between organizing the Grace alerts. Everything about him looked resilient, determined. In the past, he’d shared stories about his Territorial Army days in Britain, but Sylvia had just assumed it was a way for him to help fund his university expenses, and that the part-time activity hadn’t meant that much to him. She hadn’t seen the tough side of him before. Now he looked like he’d stepped into another persona altogether.

He was on a mission.

“It won’t be too bulky, then, too heavy?” she repeated.

“The rucksack? No, it’s nothing. I’ve carried heavier.”

She made a mental list of the essentials inside and wondered if he’d forgotten anything. Compass, micro-flashlight, mosquito net. He’d be taking his iPhone: it had God-knows-what fancy apps—compass included—but neither knew how much network would be available down there. Who knew where Ruth was headed? With all the newspapers and Internet noise the couple had made, she might be hiding out in a rainforest somewhere.

Sylvia slipped some baby wipes in one of the backpack pockets, handy, she thought, for a quick cleanup. She’d heard from friends and from Tommy about the hardships of traveling in third world countries but it was something she’d never dared do herself. She had read about the prehistoric-looking iguanas of the Galapagos Islands, the wonder of Machu Picchu with its Inca trails, and the UNESCO towns like Cuzco, boasting colonial churches and old world charm, yet she had never had the courage to pick up a backpack and go herself. She’d always supposed that she couldn’t take the time off because of her job, but she knew, deep down inside, that the challenge of traveling on a budget was too much for her.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” she asked for the fifth time.

“Positive.”

She chewed her lip. “I could help. I’ll feel so useless here alone.”

“Look, darling, we’ve already been through this. You need to stay behind in case the FBI gets any leads. Two of us stuck in a jungle somewhere getting eaten by mosquitoes with no way of being contacted, isn’t going to help. Besides, you’re not feeling strong enough for this sort of traveling—dirty tuk-tuks belching out two-stroke, stinking fumes in your face, or schlepping about on filthy chicken buses with sticky plastic seats, driven by devil-may-care Catholics with the Virgin Mary dangling from the rear-view mirror, overtaking on hairpin bends above precipices, hurtling along pot-holed roads at eighty miles an hour, beeping at stray dogs on the road” –he stopped for breath—“which they wouldn’t hesitate to mow down by the way.”

Sylvia’s stomach dipped with a feeling of hopelessness. “I guess it’s true what you say about being here for the FBI. But I want to be
with
you. Grace is my daughter too.”