Where I Lost Her (19 page)

“That's the best thing about this place,” Effie offers. “You don't need a suit. It's private.”

Plum looks skeptical. When she was a baby, she never wore clothes. She was a notorious nudist. It wasn't until she was about six or seven that she suddenly got modest. I remember Effie saying how sad it made her, how it signaled the end of something for her when Plum felt compelled to cover up.

“You can swim in your panties,” she says. “Here. I'll do it too.”

Plum looks back in the direction we came from.

“We're all alone,” I nod, reassuring her that no one has followed us here.

She cautiously peels off her T-shirt and slips out of her shorts. She's ten, but she still has the wonderful round belly of a little girl, a belly made for making raspberries, ticklish, evoking the best belly laughs in the whole world.

Effie strips down to her bra and panties too and reaches for Plum's hand. Together they slip into the glistening water.

“Can you come in?” Plum asks.

I hold up my bandaged hand and shake my head. “I'm going to look for fairy houses,” I say. “I'll holler if I find one.”

I walk around the perimeter of the pool, pretending to search under the brush and leaves. I study the trunks of trees, searching for evidence. And I think of how Effie and I used to do the same, even after we were too old to believe. Here, in this magical place, what we knew to be true didn't seem to matter. It was what we believed, what we dreamed, what we
wanted
that counted.

I remember being Plum's age, and searching just like this. I remember feeling a longing and yearning so deep it seemed like I could drown in it. I remember the urgency, like holding on to my childhood depended on it. That if we couldn't find some sort of proof fairies still existed, then we would lose something. That everything in the world hinged on this. I remember wishing, and studying the architecture of twigs, the placement of pebbles. Dreaming mossy roofs and knothole windows. And how Effie shared this same need. We weren't ready to be grown yet. And here was the last place where we were allowed to believe in magic.

I listen to the musical sound of Plum's laughter, the sound of her splashing in the water, and that same sense of urgency returns. I need to give her this. I'm not ready for her to stop believing yet. And so while she plays, I gather sticks and stones, soft patches of moss. I quickly assemble a primitive structure. In my pocket, I find a string, out of which I fashion a tiny swing for the fairy's front yard. I make a walkway of stones and a roof of dried leaves.

I come out of the woods just as Effie and Plum are climbing out of the water. Plum's arms are crossed and she's shivering, her teeth chattering.

“Lie down here,” Effie says, motioning to a long flat rock, which is bathed in sunlight. Plum obeys, and Effie lies down next to her.

I watch them lying together, and my heart swells and aches. I watch their fingers intertwine, the woven pattern of Plum's brown skin and Effie's paler flesh. Effie turns her head and kisses Plum on the temple. I wait until Plum sits up, too hot now in the sun, her skin already dry.

“I found something!” I say.

“A fairy house?” Plum says, scrambling to her feet.

I wink at Effie.

“Come see,” I say, and Plum scurries over to me.

“Where, where?” she asks, and I lead her by the hand to the place where the fairies live.

She marvels at the tiny swing, the little chairs I made from a couple of toadstools.

“Can we leave them a note?” she asks.

I reach into my pocket. “Shoot,” I say. “I don't have any paper.”

She frowns. “How will they know we were here?” she asks.

“Oh, wait,” I say, smiling as I discover the two little Reese's Cups I had intended to give the girls the other night. I pull them out of my pocket and hand them to her.

She gingerly sets them in front of the house.

“Can we come back tomorrow and see if they got them?” she asks.

“Absolutely,” I say.

 

At the library, while Effie catches up on scheduling her route and stocks the bookmobile with some new releases, I sit in a child-size chair at the long computer counter in the makeshift children's room they made in the annex because of the flooding, and go online.

Expert trackers say that when people get lost in the woods, they leave a couple thousand clues behind for every single mile they travel, though most are imperceptible to the eye: a snapped branch, a leaf imprinted with their sole, a crushed bit of moss. That searchers, if they are trained, can spot these clues. I think of our bumbling group in the woods. About our collective blindness.

People think you need to know all sorts of things about a missing person's personality, about their history, to figure out how to find them, to figure out the way they will behave if they are alone and lost in the woods. But one psychologist suggests that the key to finding someone in the woods is simply knowing one thing: their age. Most people lost in the woods are found within a one-to-two-mile radius from where they became lost. For children, this mileage is reduced to a range of two-thirds to one-and-two-thirds of a mile. Older children, between seven and twelve, tend to run, their legs informed by the impulse to flee, whereas smaller children, between three and six, simply burrow in somewhere.

If she is lost, not taken, that means that she is still close. That I could, if I was careful, find those clues. Find her.

I read the stories, one after another, of children found in the woods: nestled into caves and hollows. Found sleeping under piles of brush, inside formations of rock.

Adult humans can go weeks, even months, without food, but only three days without water. For a toddler, this is reduced to one week without food. And, depending on the conditions, dehydration could set in after only hours. I think of the rain the other night, of that vast lake across the road from where she disappeared. Pray that her instinct would be to drink if she found a puddle, a creek. And I even wonder, for a moment, if she'd be better off if she'd been stolen instead of lost, if she
had
been taken by someone; then at least maybe she'd still be alive. And then I think about what else this would mean, and it's too difficult to imagine.

 

When we get back to the camp after returning the bookmobile to the library, there are three messages on Effie's machine. The first is from Devin. He says he's decided to stay a few more days. The curator he's dealing with at Gagosian is out of town until Friday. Devin's family is all in Queens. He'll stay there, catch up with his nieces and nephews, and drive back home on Saturday.

The second message is from Jake asking if I've already paid the water bill. I am the one who manages our money: balances the checking account, makes sure the bills get paid on time. I worry about all the things that might get neglected without me there to take care, and part of me hopes he is lost without me.

When the third message starts to play, I pray that it's Ryan. That he'll have some news from the police department. But it's not. It's Effie's friend Mena, Sam Mason's wife.

“Hi, Effie! Just wanted to let you know we're flying into Burlington on a red-eye Thursday night. We'll be at the cottage sometime Friday. Can't wait to see you guys! Of course, we won't have the house set up yet, but if we can use your kitchen, I'll cook. Maybe Saturday night? Give me a call if you want. Otherwise, I'll call when we get there.”

Sam Mason. The author that Jake is dying to meet. If he had any idea we'd be having dinner with Sam and Mena Mason on Saturday, I bet he'd forget all about Charlie's tantrums, all about Jess, and fly right up here. The possibility of this pisses me off, the
truth
of this.

“Would you mind?” Effie asks. “I haven't seen them since last summer. But if you'd rather not have company . . .”

“No, not at all. Of course. Please, don't put anything on hold for me.”

“She's an amazing cook,” she says. “Unbelievable.”

“Tell her to make that soup I like! The lemon kind,” Plum says. “And baklava.”

Plum comes over to me in the kitchen nook and settles into my lap. She's too big for this, her legs long and skinny like a spider's. I lean down and sniff her hair. It smells like trees.

“End of new messages,” the robotic voice announces.

I'm not sure what I expected. I have no idea how long it takes to track down a license plate number. Or what will happen after they do. I wonder if I'll hear anything at all, or if I'll just have to keep biding my time. Ryan had said we needed to let the police feel like they're putting these puzzle pieces together. But we are still holding on to the most important one: the barrette.

I can't help but feel like this is a big mistake. This is not a game.

“You should change your bandage,” Effie says, motioning to my hand.

Even though I didn't go swimming, the bandage still looks dirty from our trek through the forest. I think of all of the cautions they offered at the clinic. I gather the stuff we picked up at the drugstore. I'd sat in the car this time, while Effie went in. No need to almost pass out at the Rite Aid again.

In the bathroom, I unwrap the gauze from my hand, toss it in the trash can, and study the wound, which doesn't even look real. My flesh is pale, and the black stitches that are holding my skin together seem almost primitive, barbaric. I use the special soap the nurse gave me, and the sting of it brings tears to my eyes. “Motherfucker,” I mutter under my breath and grit my teeth. I apply the antibiotic cream next and then try to rewrap the wound. It's impossible to do with one hand. I grab the gauze and go out to the kitchen.

“Can you help?” I ask Effie.

“Sure,” she says, setting down the knife she's using to cut an apple for Plum.

The phone rings, and I drop the gauze as I'm handing it to her. I am so accustomed to muted cell phone rings or vibrations, the loud, jangling sound of the landline startles me, reminding me again just how on edge I am.

Effie picks up and cradles the receiver between her chin and shoulder as she opens the fridge door. “Hello?”

I watch, not wanting to give away how anxious I am. How disappointed I'll be if it's not Ryan calling with some news.

“Yes, she is. Hold on,” she says, and nods at me. She mouths, “Ryan.”

I take the phone with my good hand. Plum gets up from the kitchen nook, and I touch the top of her head as she squeezes past me through the doorway.

“Did they find out who the truck belongs to?” I ask, trying not to sound too eager, too demanding.

Ryan pauses on the other end of the line. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and wait.

“The owner of the truck is a guy named Vince Alfieri. He's from Holyoke, Mass.”

“The
college?
” I ask. I'd known some girls when I lived in Boston who'd gone to Mount Holyoke. Athletic, smart girls with big white teeth.
Moneyed
. When I think of Mount Holyoke, I think ivy-strangled bricks, sprawling grassy quads. Clean notebooks and golden retrievers. Polo shirts and leather deck shoes and tanned ankles. Lacrosse sticks and tiny pearl necklaces on pastel sweaters. Jake grew up in South Hadley; we'd gone to the Mount Holyoke campus a few times when we were visiting his parents.

“No. Holyoke the city. Industrial sort of place. Depressed economy. Lots of drugs there in the last few years. Drug-related crime.”

“Oh,” I say, all those visions of collegiate affluence slipping away. “Does he own property up here? At Gormlaith? Has anybody talked to him?”

“Not yet,” he says. “But listen, here's the interesting thing. I had my friend dig a little into that guy Sharp's background too. To try to get some more information about who he is, what the lewd-and-lascivious conviction was for.”

I can feel my heart beating in my hand.

“And?” I say, both wanting and not wanting to know.

“Well, he spent three years in jail for exposing himself to a neighbor.”

“How old?” I ask, as if this can somehow keep her safe. If his previous victim was twelve or thirteen, then maybe that would somehow protect her. This little three-year-old girl.

“Five,” he says.

“Oh God,” I say, my hand flying to my mouth. I have to sit down.

“But that's not all,” he says. I'm not sure I want to hear more. That I can handle hearing any more.

“That wasn't his most recent visit to prison,” Ryan says.

I shake my head. What else could this monster have done? Images flood my mind, and I shake my head as if I can jar them loose. Blur the focus.

“He was actually in for trafficking,” he says.

“Human trafficking?” I ask, horrified, thinking of a
60 Minutes
episode I saw recently about children being kidnapped from the streets in third world countries and thrown into the sex trade. Little girls.

“No, no,” he says. “
Drug
trafficking. He just got out a couple years ago after a five-year stint at Norfolk.”

“What's Norfolk?”

“State prison,” he says. “In
Massachusetts
. It appears our friend Sharp's last known residence was in Springfield, Mass.”

“Springfield?” I repeat.

“Just about ten minutes down I-91 from Holyoke. He discharged parole six months ago. After that he was clear to leave the state.”

 

I struggle to make sense of what any of this means. Sharp is a convicted sex offender and drug trafficker. He's from Springfield, Massachusetts, but he's been living out here in the backwoods of Vermont for the last couple of years or so. The guy in the truck is also from Massachusetts. Could they be related? Just friends? Partners in crime, maybe? But what sort of crime? And what does Lisa have to do with any of this? I can't help but think of that house full of children. And those thoughts are more horrifying than I can handle.