The Stolen (9 page)

There had been times over the past few months where I had wanted to call, where I’d gone so far as to pick up the phone and dial everything but the last number on her cell phone, nearly crying when I hung up before pushing the final key. Nights where the booze loosened up my inhibitions, and only that last vestige of clarity prevented me from calling. Like that terrible night six months ago, today there was only one choice to make.

Amanda worked for the New York Legal Aid Society. She would have access to Michelle Oliveira’s records. She could help the investigation. She could provide answers.

She could also throw it back in my face.

And I would deserve it.

Maybe this was the opening I needed, I wanted. A way to tell myself it wasn’t about her, even though deep down I couldn’t even fool myself. Maybe it was fate. Or maybe fate was a cruel son of a bitch.

Before I had a chance to think again, I picked up the phone and dialed.

Amanda picked up on the first ring.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”

T
he girl woke up with a slight headache. Her first thought was that she’d fallen, maybe hit her head on the sidewalk or bumped into the same tree she’d rammed her bike into the other day. But she didn’t remember putting on a helmet, didn’t remember actually falling. And she only rode her bike when her mommy was watching. And right away she felt the terror that she was alone.

She stood up warily. Her breathing was harsh, and she felt hot tears rush to her eyes. She reached out for her bed, the couch, some familiar sign. But she found nothing. She grew desperate and called out. There was no answer.

The room was pitch-black. Had her mommy just put her to bed, accidentally left the Bratz night-light unplugged? No, there was a smell in the room, something different, something rotted. She didn’t belong there. Yet when she cried, nobody came.

The girl smelled something that reminded her of her dad’s breath after he came home on Sunday evenings. Mommy said he was watching the football games at the bar with his friends. His breath had that sweet smell, and her mom never let her get too close to him when he was like that. There was a smell in the air that reminded her of that. Reminded her to be afraid of getting too close.

After a few minutes her eyes adjusted. The room was small, about the size of her baby brother’s bedroom. There was a small bench by the wall, and the floor was made of wood. A slit of light shone from a crack under the door, but other than that she couldn’t see a thing.

Her throat began to choke up. She didn’t know this place. She wanted to feel her mommy’s arms. Wanted to smell her daddy’s sweet breath.

Suddenly she remembered walking home from the park, remembered feeling a hand clamp over her mouth. She couldn’t remember anything past that.

The girl let out a cry of help, then ran toward the door. She gripped the knob and twisted as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge. She pushed and pulled and cried, but the door stayed shut.

Finally she collapsed onto the floor and began to cry.

She wiped the snot away from her nose. She needed a tissue. She could wipe it on her clothes, but she loved the sundress she was wearing. Bright pink with pretty sunflowers. Her mom had picked it out for her at the mall, the same day she’d bought that nice barrette in the shape of a butterfly that mommy wore to the park.

She began to cry again. She screamed for her mother. For her father. And nobody came.

Then she lay back down, curled into a ball, and hoped maybe somebody could hear her through the floor.

And that’s when she heard footsteps.

She sat back up. Looked at the door. Saw a shadow briefly block out that sliver of light. She wiped her eyes and nose. She held her breath as the doorknob turned. Then nearly screamed when it opened. She would have screamed. If she wasn’t too scared.

There was a man in the doorway. He was bald, with thinning hair and glasses that were too small for his head. He was wearing light jeans with a hole by one knee. On his hands were leather gloves. When she saw the gloves, she finally managed to scream.

The man flicked a switch on the outside of the door, and a lightbulb came on, bathing the room in harsh white. She closed her eyes, blinked through the glare, then opened them. The man was now barely a foot in front of her. He was staring at her. Not in a scary way, not like bad men on television did. In the way her daddy did when he tucked her in at night. He’d taken the gloves off. He held them out to her, then made a show of putting them in his pocket.

“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I would never hurt you.”

The man reached out, took her chin in his hands. They were callused, rough. She was too scared to move, felt her head pounding, mucus running down her nose and onto his hand.

When he noticed the snot on his fingers, the man reached into his pocket. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he’d taken out a handkerchief and was wiping her nose, her face.

“That’s better,” he said. He had a glass of water with him. He handed it to her. “Go on. Drink some.”

She took it, her hand trembling. She didn’t know what was in it, whether he’d poisoned it, whether he’d spit in it, but she was so thirsty she downed almost all of it in one gulp. When she was finished, he took the clean side of the handkerchief and wiped her mouth.

Then he handed her two small pills. She looked at him, looked at the pills.

“You must have a bad headache,” he said. “This will make you feel better.”

Then he smiled at her.

She didn’t know how he knew about her headache, but if the pills would help…

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Hurts,” she moaned.

“It won’t for long.”

She looked at him. He was wearing a wedding ring. It was polished and it gleamed something pretty.

He stood up. Motioned for her to do the same. The girl stood up reluctantly, then smelled the aroma of pancakes coming from somewhere. Her favorite.

“Strawberry and chocolate chip. Fresh off the griddle,” he said, smiling. “Let’s get you fed, you can meet your new mommy and new brother, and then I’ll show you to your room.”

She took the man’s hand, his grip gentle, and followed him out of the darkness.

I
t would have been easy to say no. For years she’d grown accustomed to disappointments, to a life that never quite went the way she planned.

The wound still hurt terribly. Doing this could rub salt in deep. And who knows? Another few weeks, few months, and the pain might have begun to die down. And given a few years, she might have never thought about him again. Things would have gone back to the way they were before the day they met.

None of that mattered, though, because when Henry called, for the first time in months his voice coming over the phone, she agreed to meet him almost immediately.

Just a few years ago, Amanda had nothing, no friends, nobody to trust but herself. Her life had been a series of halfhearted relationships, embarked upon mainly because that’s what she assumed was normal. That’s what she was used to. Men who were more interested in their own success than how it could be used to make others happy. She’d grown weary of that scene, and at some point, like many other girls her age, Amanda Davies had simply given up.

The irony was when she’d met Henry, the very first thing he did was lie right to her face. Looking back, she knew he’d done it to save his own life without implicating her. And while back then she contemplated literally ditching him on the side of the road, she could look back at his brazen behavior fondly.

He’d tricked her into giving him a ride out of town when he was mistakenly wanted for murder. In the end Henry was able to clear his name, yet there was a moment, that moment when he’d come clean, admitting his lie, when she could have left him on the side of the road to die. But in that moment Amanda was able to look into Henry Parker’s eyes and tell one thing. This was more real than anyone she’d ever known.

Henry’s eyes gave away everything. The year they knew each other, he could never hide anything. She could read his language—words and body—like nobody else. And he offered himself in a way that was both selfless and confident, and utterly consuming.

That’s why when he ended their relationship, it wasn’t simply another thing to forget. Being with him was the first time Amanda felt a future. She couldn’t be the only one who thought that way, though, so when he decided to end it, for her own sake in his words, she didn’t fight. She didn’t want to be another one of those sad girls, trying to convince a guy to stay.

If she was meant to be happy, she would be. If not, that was life.

So when Henry called her out of the blue, after radio silence for nearly six months, the easy thing to do would have been to hang up. To tell him to go screw himself.

Instead she found herself sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park, waiting for him to arrive, looking at every boy that walked by, waiting to see if the months had been as cruel to him as they had to her.

The park was neutral ground. That was one condition she made him agree to. They had to meet far enough away from both their offices that they could sit, and talk, and see what was what, without any distractions.

Amanda folded her arms across her chest. The sun was bright over the trees. She sat and watched couples lounging on the green grass. The line snaking outside the Shake Shack, home of the best burgers in NYC. Her purse was splayed open slightly, and Amanda noticed the glint of her keychain. Attached to the silver loop that held her keys was a small red heart made of leather. Henry had brought it home one day. He’d attached it to the chain when she was in the shower. When she asked what it was for, he said it was because she had the keys to his heart. At first she laughed. It was a pretty cheesy gesture, something out of a bad romantic comedy, but that night they made love, and as Henry lay there, naked, staring at her, she knew that he’d meant it.

It would have been easy to throw the heart away. Looking at it now, she was glad she’d kept it.

She buttoned the purse and looked up to see Henry walking down the gated path. He stopped briefly beside the dog run to make faces at a small shih tzu that was trying to leap at him with its tiny legs. Henry was making bug-eyed faces at the dog, and Amanda couldn’t help but smile. He looked up, looking for her, saw her, and Amanda saw his cheeks flush red. He quickened his pace and walked over to her bench, sat down next to her. A foot separated them. It felt like a mile and a millimeter at the same time.

“Hey,” she said, offering a purposefully bland greeting.

“Hey, Amanda.” He half leaned in, unsure of whether to offer a hug, a kiss or nothing. She felt a brief flash of electricity when he did it, felt slightly disappointed when he pulled back, but glad at the same time. “What’s up?”

He looked good. Better that she’d hoped in some ways. Perhaps if he’d showed up thirty pounds heavier, with an unflattering beard and gut paunch, it’d be easier to move on. Yes, his eyes were bleary and red, probably from late-night deadlines, but it was still Henry. She’d gotten used to those eyes, his near-constant state of exhaustion. And despite that, every night she missed falling asleep next to him, Amanda remembered how proud it used to make her to see his name headline a terrific story. She looked at his shock of brown hair, an inch or so too long, and couldn’t help but smile.

“You need a haircut,” she said.

“Really?” He ran his hand through his hair. Amanda remembered doing that for him. “You think?”

“Yeah, you could use a trip to Supercuts.”

“So,” he said tentatively, “what’s up?”

“I don’t know. Work. Life. What’s usually up,” she replied. He nodded. She wanted to say
you called me,
but that was combative. “You know you called me.” Screw it, she had to say it. Henry nodded, chewed on his thumbnail for a moment.

“Just want to start by saying I’m sorry about what happened. You know, between us. I didn’t…”

“Stop,” she said, her face growing warm, slight anger bubbling up. “You said your apologies a long time ago. If I wanted to hear them again, I’ve got a good memory and a lot of sad songs on my iPod.”

“That’s not why I called you,” Henry said. “I just…You know, I don’t really know how to start it.”

“Why do you need to in the first place?” she asked. Her heart was beating fast, frustration building. She’d begun to wish she’d stayed at the office, hung up the phone, let everything heal the way maybe it was meant to. Seeing him was maddening and invigorating at the same time. And she wasn’t ready to open back up.

“I need your help,” Henry said. “It’s not for me. It’s for a kid.”

“A kid?” she asked, surprised.

“Daniel Linwood, have you heard about him?”

“Of course. My office is handling the paperwork. You know, I never realized bringing someone back from the dead was as easy as filling out a bunch of paperwork. Scary to think there’s enough precedent that we have the forms on file. I’m actually thinking I might do the same thing with my aunt Rose, freak the hell out of Lawrence and Harriet. That’d make a pretty neat headline. ‘Girl brings dead, smelly aunt back to life, scares the hell out of her adoptive parents.’”

“It’s been a while since I wrote obituaries,” Henry said. “But I bet it’s like riding a bike.”

“Think of it as an anti-obituary.”

“Now, those I don’t have a lot of experience with.”

“So Daniel Linwood. The boy who came back after five years. I saw your story in the paper. What do you need to know about him?”

“Well, long story short, there’s a lot about his disappearance and reappearance that doesn’t sit well with me. For one thing, there haven’t been any suspects arrested in his kidnapping or disappearance, and from my talks with the detectives in Hobbs County they’re looking as hard for him as O.J. is for the real killer.”

“I’m waiting to hear what this has to do with me.”

“I’m getting to that. So I interviewed Danny for that story…”

“Danny?”

“Yeah, that’s what he likes to be called now. Anyway, during the interview, he said something kind of strange. He used the word
brothers.
As in more than one. And he used it several times, even when I corrected him, like his brain was hardwired to do it. But Danny’s only got one brother. It might have been a slip of the tongue, but there’s also a chance he retained something from his disappearance, something about his kidnappers or where he was. Maybe he remembers somebody else, somebody his own age, being wherever he’s been the past five years.”

Amanda sat, listened intently. She felt the familiar rush Henry got when he was excited about a story, the same sense of pride she felt
(used to feel)
when she was proud of her man.

“I did some digging,” he continued, “and it turns out a girl named Michelle Oliveira went missing several years before Danny. Similar circumstances, both children disappearing without a trace, then suddenly reappearing out of nowhere, remembering nothing about their disappearance. No suspects ever arrested. Nobody ever found out how or why she went missing.”

“I think I get where this is going.”

Henry nodded. “Michelle Oliveira’s records are sealed,” he said. Henry waited, knowing she would respond.

“But you know I have access to them at the legal aid society.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s why you called me.”

Henry stayed silent, looked at Amanda, his eyes full of remorse. It was genuine. “I’ve been an asshole. I’m not apologizing again, we both know that’s over and done with. But this is important. It’s a boy’s life, Amanda, and I didn’t know who else I could turn to or trust. I still trust you.”

“I don’t know if I trust you.”

“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to help me for the sake of someone else.”

Amanda was struck by the tone of his voice, the sense of coldness. But she knew it wasn’t meant to hurt her. In a way it was meant to protect her.

“I’m not asking you to take me back, or anything like that. I know you don’t want to. I’m asking you to help because you’re the only person I know who can do this, who has access to those records. The only person who
would
do this. Something is wrong with this story, and I need to know what.” He added, “For Danny Linwood’s sake.”

Amanda sat for a moment. A cool breeze whipped through the park. She watched a smiling couple holding hands, eating sandwiches just a few feet from them, as though their whole lives existed in this small world where problems were as light as the leaves. She thought about her life, what it was like before and after Henry. How there didn’t seem to be enough of it lived.

“I can get you those records,” she said. “But that’s all I’ll do. I’ll help you with whatever information you need in regard to this Oliveira girl, but I’m not going to ask for anything in return. And I don’t even want you to offer.”

“I won’t,” he said, though the words seemed hard for him to say.

Amanda stood up. Smoothed out her skirt. Henry stood as well.

“Michelle Oliveira?” Henry nodded. Amanda clutched her purse, felt the sharp edges of her keys. “I’ll call you later when I get the files. One thing, I’ll only give them to you in person. I could get in deep doo-doo if my supervisor knows I’m doing this, so I’ll contact you discreetly. Don’t send me any e-mails, don’t call or text message. I don’t even want to see a carrier pigeon. You might trust me, but I sure as hell don’t trust Verizon.”

“That’s a deal.”

“Then I’ll call you,” she said. Amanda turned around to leave.

“Hey, Amanda,” Henry said.

“Yeah?”

“It was good to see you.”

“I’ll call you,” she said, glad the smile on her face couldn’t be seen as she walked away.