Together Alone (12 page)

“All things considered, Emily seems surprisingly normal,” Brian remarked. “She must be a very strong woman. Either that, or a religious one.”

“She’s not religious. I don’t know if she was before, but after, well, what kind of God would do what He did to her?”

“Still, something is holding her together. Unless I’m missing the boat. Will she freak out if I mention Daniel?”

“No. She doesn’t freak out.”

Brian heard a catch. “Go on.”

John did so with clear reluctance, as though hating to betray a confidence but wanting Brian to know. “For months after Daniel disappeared, she would walk around town, up one street and down the next, looking, listening for a cry, like he might be hiding in the bushes. She stopped doing it when Jill was born, but I caught her at it again a couple of weeks ago. It was right after Jill left. The boy would have been twenty-one and at college, too. This must be a tough time for her.”

“Her husband’s no help.”

“Never was. I don’t think he ever understood what Emily was feeling. Maybe that would’a been too much to ask. He was suffering. Then he changed. Like he got tired of suffering.”

“After how long?”

“A few years. We kept the case active as long as we could, until there just wasn’t anything more to do. After that, Doug just wanted to forget. He made Emily put Daniel’s pictures away.”

“That’s very cold.”

“No,” John cautioned. “Think about it. Think about how you’d feel if he was yours, if you didn’t know if he was alive or dead, healthy or maimed, happy or sad. Think of grotesque things happening to him. Think of him crying and crying for you and not understanding why you won’t come. Then realize that you can’t do a fucking thing about it. It’s eating you alive, but you’re totally helpless.” He looked at Brian in a humbling way. “You might want to forget and start over, too.”

Brian thought of Julia. “I could never forget.”

“Wrong word. Try fill-your-life-with-other-things. Emily filled her life with Jill and her friends and their kids, and making a home for Doug. Doug filled his with work. That was when he got involved in the management and marketing end of his business, and started to travel. Awful to say, but he would never have built the farm to what it was when he sold it, or have the business he has now, if that little boy hadn’t disappeared.”

“Emily would have been better off without any of it,” Brian believed. “She lost the child, then the father.”

“He supports her financially. It’s more than some men do.”

It struck Brian that as a husband, he hadn’t been much different from Doug. Uncomfortable with that thought, he tried another. “Was Emily overprotective of Jill?”

“At times. But she knew she couldn’t smother Jill. Mind you, she never left that child alone in the car. She never left the child alone
anywhere
for the first few years of her life. She wasn’t risking it. And she struggled later on, too. When Jill got so she wanted to walk to a friend’s house, Emily was dying, but she knew Jill needed to do it, so she let her go. You have to respect her.”

Brian pushed himself out of the chair. “Yeah. Well, I do, but that doesn’t help her much, does it.”

“Sure does. She needs support.”

“She needs more than support. She needs a crystal ball to tell her what happened to the boy. She needs closure.” He ran a hand along the back of his neck.

“Got any ideas?” John asked.

He had a few, but they were longshots. The case had been cold for years. It wasn’t like new leads had suddenly popped up. Not now. Not before. Not even
bogus
leads. “Let me think about it. There may be a few things we can try. Can I hold on to the file for a while?”

“It’s yours. But do me a favor. Don’t say anything to her. Chances are pretty slim. Y’know?”

Emily was reading the morning paper when Brian arrived. She heard the Jeep pull into the driveway and started to rise, intent on hiding—making the bed, doing the laundry, dusting the living room—anything to avoid a conversation, should he stop by on his way to the garage. She was feeling foolish, having aired her dirty laundry in front of a stranger.

Well, he wasn’t exactly a stranger. At least, he didn’t feel like one.

With that thought in mind, she slowly sat herself back down. She looked at the paper. She waited. She didn’t look up, even when she heard him climbing the stairs, and when he knocked, a wave of renewed embarrassment held her still.

“I can see you,” he sang through the screen.

Slowly she set down the paper.

“I have buttercrunch donuts.”

She smiled at his shamelessness.

“And coffee. And time to talk, if you want.”

Did she want? No. Yes.

She looked up finally and gestured him in. He promptly set a bag on the table, removed and uncapped two coffees, and unwrapped the donuts.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said then.

“Why not?”

“I’ll get fat.”

He took the chair beside her and slid one of the coffees her way. “I doubt that.”

She wrapped her hands around the cup.

“But you’re right. I can’t keep doing it. I start work Monday morning.”

He was darling, striking a light note, but she couldn’t forget their last discussion, which hadn’t been a discussion at all, or a celebration, for that matter. She had run off in tears.

Awkward, she said, “You’re feeling sorry about last night. But you shouldn’t. I get down sometimes. It passes.”

“I know about Daniel,” he said softly.

Her eyes widened.

“I read the file,” he explained.

Oddly, she felt relieved. She wanted him to know. Daniel was part of who she was. “It happened a long time ago.”

“But it was never resolved. That has to be hell.”

“Only when I think,” she said with a crooked smile. “I try not to. It won’t get me anywhere. If he isn’t dead, he’s certainly gone. I accept that.” She studied her coffee cup. “I used to dream that someone who was desperate to have a baby walked by, saw him there in the car, snatched him up, and walked off, and that whoever it was, raised him well and loved him the way I did.” She couldn’t look at him. “Silly, huh?”

“No.”

“But not likely. What kind of person would take someone else’s baby? Not someone who knows right from wrong. How could that kind of person possibly raise my son the way I would?” She could feel the old panic rising inside her and took a steadying breath. “There was another dream. It had two possible endings. Daniel was taken by his kidnapper across the country to a remote part of Montana, where he was abandoned at a rest stop. The first ending had him being picked up and raised by a well-meaning soul who assumed he was abandoned by his parents.”

“What was the second ending?”

“He wandered away from the rest stop and was raised by a pack of wolves.” She looked up with a self-mocking smile.

But his eyes didn’t mock her. They were silver-soft and sympathetic. “I’d be dreaming the same things, if it was my child. What does Doug say?”

Emily felt a catch at the sound of his name. When she was thinking about Daniel, she wasn’t thinking about Doug. Two sources of pain and confusion. Room for only one at a time.

She considered lying. But only for a minute. Brian was her friend. She wanted him to know. “Doug says nothing. He deals with Daniel’s kidnapping by pretending he never existed.”

“How can he do that?”

Since they couldn’t discuss it, she could only guess. “Daniel was the first child, the son. He was handsome and responsive and quick, everything a father could ask. Doug can’t cope with the pain of what might have been.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Sometimes. On Daniel’s birthday.” Her voice cracked. She stared at her coffee for a minute before swallowing and continuing. “I can’t forget giving birth to Daniel. My body knows it happened. It remembers the contractions. It feels them again.”

“Was Doug in the delivery room with you?”

“Yes. But he’s never home on Daniel’s birthday.”

“Geez.”

“It’s okay. I mourn by myself.”

“Does Jill know about Daniel?”

“She does now. But for a long time I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want her fearing that the same thing might happen to her. I taught her the rules—tell us where she’s going, go with other kids, run fast and yell loud if someone threatens her in any way—but I tried to make it sound like a standard precaution.”

“Remarkable that you were able to be sane about it.”

“The alternative was to make her neurotic,” which Emily had refused to do. It was bad enough that she had left Daniel alone and unguarded in the car. To screw up Jill because of it would have compounded the error.

“How did she react when she learned about Daniel?”

“She kept saying there had to be something we could do to find him. I tried to explain that everything had been done, and that too much time had passed. She accepts it now, like I do. You can’t keep living with something like that, day in, day out. I go through periods when I don’t think of Daniel at all—like Doug, I guess—then something hits me, and I’m back there again, in that police station, reporting his disappearance, reliving the horror of it.” She was reliving it now, feeling the jangles that came with total panic. “I thought they would find him. Really, I did. I wasn’t in the post office for more than five minutes. He couldn’t have gone far in that time.”

She stopped. She did drink her coffee then, for the warmth, and when she set it down, Brian took her hand. She clung to it. “I shouldn’t have left him alone in the car. It was my fault. It wasn’t like I was in a strange town,” she reasoned. “If I’d been anywhere else, I never would have left him. But it was
Grannick.
” She held his hand tighter, caught up in dismay. “No one saw a thing. John and the others interviewed half the town, but no one saw
anything
. It’s bizarre. This is a provincial place. If you get a new car, people see it and spread the word. Same if you have a baby or get divorced. Gossip spreads fast. But no one was looking that day. No one saw
anything
.” She caught herself and took a breath. She sat straighter. She gave Brian an apologetic smile and reluctantly drew her fingers from his. She tucked them in her lap. “He would have been twenty-one.”

“Yes. John said that.”

“Things are different today. Today, there’s the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and networks like CJIS and NCIC. They circulate reports of kidnappings nationwide in no time flat. If Daniel disappeared today, the FBI would be crawling over the car picking up the tiniest traces of fingerprints and fibers. Photographs would be circulated by the millions. The story would be carried by the networks, talked up by Oprah, written about in
People
, plastered on milk cartons. None of that happened back then.”

She had been been driven wild by the frustration of it, wanting to do more when there simply wasn’t more to do. She had pushed and pushed, until the pain of hitting that brick wall again and again and again had finally numbed her. Only then had she ceased.

“Want to see his room?” she asked. When Brian’s eyes went wide, she stood. “I dust there, but I haven’t touched it otherwise.” Nor had she shown it to anyone else. But it seemed right that Brian should see.

Knowing that he would follow, she set off. She didn’t stop until she had climbed the stairs, and gone down the hall to the only door that was closed.

She opened it and stood aside to let him in, then leaned against the door frame staring back down the hall, and even then the pain hit her, a wound unbandaged, raw and inflamed, even after all this time. She didn’t have to look to see the lineup of tiny matchbox cars, the stuffed animals, the Lego blocks. She knew when Brian was looking at the picture books lined up along the bookshelf, and when he opened the closet door to see the little boy clothes that hung there, and when he lifted one after another of the many pictures that had graced the living room mantel before being banished by Doug. As she stood against the door frame, looking away, she was enveloped in the baby smell that had been Daniel nineteen years before, and though she knew that it couldn’t possibly still exist, her memory brought it back and made it real.

She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, determined not to cry, but the emotion rose in her and wouldn’t be quelled. Daniel had been so small, so helpless, so innocent. She had played with him when she dressed him, singing, laughing, hugging him afterward, all chubby little belly, arms and legs wrapped around her. Then he was gone.

She cried softly, unable to help herself, and when Brian drew her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her, she continued to weep. She couldn’t remember when she’d had the luxury of crying over Daniel in someone’s arms. So she indulged herself, until her tears slowed and she pulled back.

Leaving an arm around her shoulder, he guided her away from the room. She heard the door close and felt a weight lift from her chest. Freed, she drew in a long, shuddering breath.

He led her back down the stairs. At the bottom, she took an independent breath, wiped the tears from her face, and stepped clear. She threw him a self-conscious smile. “Now you know.”

He had his hands in his pockets. His eyes were silvery warm. “Now I know.” Voice and expression were both so gentle she nearly started crying again, not for Daniel, this time, but for everything she didn’t have with the one man she should.

She told herself there was still hope. But with Doug in England for another full week, she felt helpless.

So, later that morning, when the small apartment over the garage suddenly filled with the newly delivered furniture and the contents of Brian’s Jeep, she helped unpack. She loved arranging furniture. She loved hanging pictures on the walls, helping set up Julia’s crib, putting bright little toys on shelves in her room. She loved going with Brian to buy plants and lamps and food. She loved watching the apartment take on warmth with each little touch, and when he invited her to join Julia and him for a dinner to christen life there, she couldn’t turn him down.

E
MILY ARRIVED AT CELESTE’S ON SUNDAY MORNING
with her arms filled.

“What did you
bring?
” Celeste cried in dismay when she opened the door.

“I’m making brunch.”

“Not for me. I’m dieting. I need a thin body to go with my face.” She turned her head for Emily. “What do you think?”

Emily studied her face, one side to the other. She had liked the old Celeste. This one was still a little strange. “The swelling is definitely down.”

“Emily.”

Emily smiled. “It’s an adorable nose.”

Celeste turned so that Emily could see behind her jaw. “The stitches came out yesterday. See how thin the scars are. They’ll fade to nothing. Same with the black eyes. Actually, the green eyes. Yellow’s next.” She rubbed her hands together. “Everything is going according to plan. By the time I’m looking human, I’ll be getting responses from my ad. The deadline’s tomorrow. I want you to help me with the wording.”

Emily was more inclined to try to talk her out of placing it, and was about to say so, when Kay pulled into the driveway.

Celeste grinned. “Ahh, good. Three heads are better than two.”

Leaving her at the door, Emily went back to the kitchen. She was making brunch whether Celeste ate it or not. It was an exercise that Emily needed to perform.

The two joined her moments later, Kay with an agenda of her own. “Emily, has Jill talked with Dawn?”

Emily removed fresh bagels from the bag. “Not for several days. She keeps getting the machine.”

“Same with Marilee. What’s she doing, Celeste?”

“Beats me,” Celeste said.

“Hasn’t she called?”

“Oh, yes.”

Emily set a melon on the counter. “And?”

“She says she’s fine. When I ask what’s happening, she says she’s really busy and that everything’s great. When I ask for details, she gives me the details of something totally irrelevant.”

“Wily child,” Kay remarked.

“She says I’m too controlling. Am I too controlling?”

Emily busied herself slicing the melon. She had never thought of Celeste as controlling. Fixated on grades, perhaps. But only because she wanted Dawn to succeed.

“Am I?” Celeste prodded when Kay, too, remained still.

“No more so than us,” Kay said with tact. “But you have more to control. Dawn’s wild streak is wilder than Marilee’s or Jill’s.”

“Well, Dawn will be fine. Trust me. If she doesn’t study, she’ll flunk out, and if she does that, she’s back home with me.” Celeste made a sound. “Don’t know who that would punish most, her or me.” She cleared her throat. “Moving on to important things.” She opened a folder. “How does this sound. ‘Sexy blond DWF—’”

“You aren’t blond,” Kay said.

“I will be. ‘Sexy blond DWF—’”

“Not ‘sexy.’ It’s too flagrant. You have to be more subtle. Think of the kind of man you’ll attract leading off with that word.”

“Precisely,” Celeste admitted. “I don’t want a eunuch. I want a red-blooded American male. Besides, if I’m subtle, my ad will just fade away. Trust me, bold is the way to go.”

“Use ‘intelligent.’ It’s more classy.”

Celeste sighed. “Okay. Intelligent. ‘Intelligent blond DWF.’” She made a face. “Doesn’t have the same ring.”

“Maybe you ought to tell more about yourself,” Emily suggested in a half-hearted attempt to join in. “You could say you’re slim and witty—”

“Let me finish. ‘Intelligent blond DWF whose second life is just starting is looking for tall knight in shining armor to share Montrachet, Harley, and Tanglewood.’”

“Harley?” Kay cried. “Celeste, you’ll get
bikers.
You’ll get leather and tattoos and group sex.”

“I will not. I’ll get someone like me who thinks young.”

Emily began cutting the cantaloupe. “You haven’t mentioned your age.”

“Should I?”

“Yes.”

“You certainly can’t hide it.”

“Kay,” Celeste protested.

“What she means,” Emily said, turning around, “is that unless you decide to hide Dawn, whoever you date will know you’re older than thirty. You wouldn’t have had her when you were twelve.”

“I could have. I might have been a child bride.”

“That’s John’s latest line of worry,” Kay said. “He asked how I’d feel if Marilee got pregnant. Like I haven’t taught her the facts of life. Like I haven’t
drummed
safe sex into her.”

“How would you feel?” Emily asked. She much preferred talking about the girls to talking about shopping for men, though either was preferable to thinking about Doug.

Kay considered the question. “I wouldn’t be thrilled. I like to think she’s saving herself.”

“Realistically.”

“Realistically? John would have the old shotgun out. Not that I think he’ll need it. Marilee wants an advanced degree. She knows she can’t get it if she does anything irresponsible. How about you? What if Jill had a baby this young? How would you feel?”

Emily didn’t have to give it much thought. “Worried. I think eighteen, nineteen, whatever, is too young.”

“You were married at eighteen.”

Oh, yes, she had been indeed, and look where she was now. “Maybe it was wrong.”

“Wrong?” Celeste asked. “How?”

Emily wrapped her arms around her middle. “We were very young. We’ve grown up into different people.”

“Different from each other?” Kay asked.

Very different. Irrevocably different. Emily had pretended it wasn’t so for weeks, months, maybe longer—but it was too obvious to be ignored anymore. She ached when she thought of Doug, ached from the realization that her marriage wasn’t right and never would be.

She wanted her closest friends to tell her she was wrong. “Jill was our link. With her gone, there isn’t much else.”

“There must be.”

“You’re just feeling blue about Jill.”

“No,” Emily insisted. “I’ve made allowances for that.”

Celeste threw a hand in the air. “Well, damn it, you and Doug might have something if he was ever around!”

“I don’t think he wants to be.”

“Why do you say that?” Kay asked.

Emily smiled sadly. “I can fool myself all I want—I can let myself be fooled by what Doug says—but he doesn’t have to travel as much as he does. He has an office at home equipped with state-of-the-art electronics. He could cut the travel time in half and still pull down the same income.”

She paused, waiting. She looked from Kay to Celeste. “No one’s arguing.”

“Have you told him this?” Celeste asked.

“No. I haven’t admitted it to myself until now.”

“Will you tell him?” Kay asked.

“I guess. At some point. Unless things suddenly take a turn for the better.” When neither Kay nor Celeste said that they would, she made a pained sound. “It’s a lousy situation.”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you should confront him,” Celeste declared, and that was fine and dandy. Celeste was already divorced. She wouldn’t be threatened by a confrontation. She had nothing to lose.

Emily did. “I don’t know as I’m ready to face the consequences,” she admitted. “I’m barely able to
think
of them. Anyway, that’s why I don’t want Jill to get married so young. I want her to be older and wiser. Same with any potential husband.”

“Doug was older than you were.”

“Not old enough. We were kids then. We’ve grown into different people.”

“I feel so badly.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

She shook her head and managed a smile. “One of these weekends, Doug will be home for more than a day. We need time together. That’s all. One good talk could clear the air. I’m not throwing in the towel yet.” She cleared her throat, ready to change the subject, since she hadn’t heard any miracle cure for her woes. “In any case, I want more for Jill. Your turn, Celeste. How would you feel if Dawn had a baby so young?”

Celeste didn’t answer.

Emily could tell from the look on her face—from Kay’s, too—that they were reluctant to leave the subject of Emily’s marriage. “There’s not much more to say,” she told them softly. “I don’t know what’s happening, I just don’t, and it hurts to dwell on it. I need you guys to cheer me up. So answer me, Celeste. How would you feel?”

Celeste was another minute in putting the issue of Doug aside, and then she was subdued. “I’d hate it. I’m too young to be a grandmother.”

Kay pointed out, “At forty-three, you’re young enough to really enjoy a grandchild.”

Celeste shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Have you told Dawn that?”

“In no uncertain terms. I’ve also told her—God only knows how many times—that she has the brains to do great things in life, assuming she doesn’t mess up. She says she may not want to do great things in life.”

“What does she want to do?”

“She doesn’t say.”

“Doesn’t she want a career?”

“Who knows.”

“Haven’t you asked?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Kay,
enough
,” Celeste complained. “I can’t answer your questions. Good God, you’re starting to sound like John.”

Kay looked from Celeste to Emily. “Want to hear the latest? He suggested we fly down to Washington next weekend. To sightsee.” When Celeste barked out a laugh, she added, “He said we could stay at a nice place and make a romantic weekend of it.”

Emily felt a pang. She had been planning romantic weekends for Doug and her not so long ago. At the time, Kay had expressed envy. Now the tables were turned. “And you thought he wasn’t a romantic,” she chided, but she was distracted, wondering whether Doug was enjoying London, whether
he
was sightseeing, whether his client was pleased with his work and what that would mean for her marriage.

“John isn’t a romantic,” Kay was saying. “Nor is he interested in sightseeing. Monuments and museums bore him to tears, and then there’s his back, which acts up whenever he has to do something he doesn’t like. No, he doesn’t want to sightsee.”

“He wants to visit Marilee,” Celeste suggested.

“
Spy
on Marilee,” Kay corrected. “He must be bored with work. Or going through a midlife crisis ten years late. In any case, Marilee told him she was worried about Dawn—knowing, I’m sure, that he would get on Dawn’s case—and he’s been grilling me ever since, so if I sound like him, indulge me. No doubt he’ll meet me at the door wanting to know what you know.”

Celeste sighed. “Dawn is eighteen years old. She says I’m controlling. Well, I’m done being controlling. She’s on her own, all of ten minutes away.”

Emily wished Jill were that close. Then again, maybe it was just as well that she wasn’t. Emily needed time before she saw Jill to figure out what was going on with Doug.

“You aren’t nervous at all?” Kay asked Celeste.

“Of course, I’m nervous, but she’s at a top school, with top kids, and she’s no longer a minor. She’s free to make her own mistakes.”

“But if you can help her avoid—”

“How?” Celeste cried. “I can’t
be
there. I
can’t.
”

In that instant Emily realized that Celeste wasn’t as ho-hum about Dawn as she acted. It was reassuring.

“So,” Celeste said in the same, frustrated voice. “Is the ad okay?”

Kay scowled at her, then snatched up the paper. “Take out the Harley part. It may discourage a great guy who drives a Porsche.”

It was a brilliant tactic, Emily thought.

Celeste crossed out the Harley part.

“Better still,” added Kay, “make it generic. Say fine wine, adventure, and song. And give your age.”

“Okay,” Celeste said in a mollifying way. “‘Sexy blond DWF—’”

“I thought you changed ‘sexy’ to ‘intelligent.’”

“Not if I’m cutting out ‘Harley.’ It’ll be too tame. ‘Sexy blond DWF, 40—’”

“You’re forty-three.”

“Why don’t I say forty-ish?”

“Because then they’ll think you’re forty-nine.”

“No, they won’t.”

Kay skimmed the personals Celeste had clipped from the paper. “Most of them list their ages. Here’s one who doesn’t. She says she’s looking for a doctor between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. How old would you guess
she
is?”

“Forty-five,” Emily said.

Celeste didn’t answer.

“Why not thirty-five or younger?” Kay asked Emily.

“She would have listed her age if she were younger.”

“Bingo. Without specifics, people assume the worst.”

Celeste threw up a hand. “Okay, okay. I’ll list my age, but it goes against my grain. My age shouldn’t matter. I may be forty-three in body, but I’m twenty-five in spirit.”

“Yes, well, that may be true,” Kay conceded, “but men don’t look at things that way. It’s the in-body figure they’re most concerned with.”

Emily thought of the weeks it had been since Doug had reached for her with anything remotely akin to passion. She had chosen to blame it on exhaustion, but many an exhausted guy wanted sex, and then there were the mornings when he wasn’t exhausted at all. It was like he had outgrown her physically, too.

She didn’t understand how that could be. She had turned him on once. Wasn’t chemistry a constant? She hadn’t gained weight. She wasn’t lined or gray or stooped. Okay, so everything hung a bit lower than it had twenty-two years ago, but she was still attractive.

Wasn’t she?

“Emily.”

She looked up to find Kay and Celeste standing before her.

Kay touched her arm. “You look tortured. Maybe you should spend a few days here with Celeste.”

“I’d love it,” Celeste coaxed. “I have room.”

But Emily wanted to be back in her house, in case Jill called, in case Doug called. Like the plates beneath the earth’s crust at the time of a quake, the underpinnings of her life were shifting. All she could do was to take shelter under the most stable structure she knew, and wait it out.

She drove home after brunch, with the best of intentions. Having spent all of Saturday with Brian and Julia, she was determined to leave them alone today. Julia needed to bond with Brian. Brian needed to grow more comfortable with Julia. They needed to make the new apartment theirs without Emily’s intrusive presence.