Emma in the Night

by Wendy Walker

  “Bill and Lucy were there, with the baby. Rick was in the boat waiting with the motor running. I hugged them both. I thanked them for everything they’d done for us. Emma did the same. Bill took our bags and put them on the boat. Then he helped us step over the railing and into the boat. Lucy was standing right next to us, holding the baby. Emma reached her arms out to take her, but the boat started to move, to pull away.

  “‘Wait! Stop!’ Emma yelled at Rick. He shut the motor. We were ten feet from the dock, Emma’s arms stretched out as far as they could go, reaching for her daughter. ‘What’s wrong, love?’ Lucy asked her. She had the most evil look on her face. ‘My baby!’ Emma said. ‘Oh, no,’ Bill called out. ‘Julia’s not going with you. Why would you think that?’ Emma started yelling at them, screaming all sorts of terrible words. It was as if the whole eleven months of being deprived of her flesh and blood had infected her with poison that was now gushing out like an exploding volcano.

  “‘Give me my baby, you stupid old bitch!’ She was yelling things like that. Rick just stood there looking out at the ocean. The boat was drifting into the harbor, and I knew it would soon get pulled into that place on the west side of the island. It was quiet like the night I tried to leave, only the water lapping against the boat and the wood dock creaking as it rocked back and forth. I couldn’t believe what was happening, even though I knew what was happening.

  “Then Bill held up a piece of paper. ‘She’s not your baby, Emma. She’s our baby. “Certificate of Live Birth. Baby girl, born to Lucille Pratt and Bill Pratt.”’ He was reading from the document, a birth certificate he said he had made and filed with the town hall in Portland. That’s what he said. Rick started the boat. Emma screamed like I’ve never heard her scream before. I didn’t know until that moment how much she loved her baby. How hard she must have been suffering. ‘I’ll come back with the police! I’ll prove she’s not yours! I’ll prove it!’ She waited for a reaction but there was none. The boat just kept moving. And then I realized what they were going to do.

  “‘Emma!’ I screamed at her twice. The first time I screamed, ‘They won’t be here when we come back! They’ll be gone. With your baby! And with that piece of paper, they could go anywhere!’

  “Emma looked at me, horrified. Then she climbed onto the edge of the boat and jumped into that freezing-cold water. The thing about the cold water is that when you are in it, your heart starts to pound wildly, like out of control, and then you can’t breathe well. It feels like you have an elephant on your chest, and I could see Emma already struggling as she tried to swim.

  “I screamed the second time, this time just her name. ‘Emma!’ But she didn’t look back. She just kept swimming and gasping for air through her heavy chest and pounding heart. Rick steered the boat around. We weren’t more than twenty feet from the dock by then, but against the current, and Emma swam to it and climbed up the side of the dock. Bill and Lucy looked at her, at both of us, with this sort of smug expression. Like we were naughty children who deserved to be punished. Emma ran toward Lucy and her baby, soaking wet and shivering, but Bill grabbed her by both arms. She was like a wild animal, thrashing against him, her long wet hair sending pellets of icy water all over the dock. ‘Give me my baby!’ Lucy squeezed the baby tighter and tried to block the sight of Emma, of her own mother, from her eyes.

  “Bill started screaming back at Emma. ‘I’m so sick of you girls! You selfish girls who don’t know what’s right!’ There were more things—horrible, crude things—about girls and sex and babies, and I realized that tolerating us to keep Lucy happy with the baby had worn out his patience. He was sick of this world where ungrateful girls have babies all the time and his precious wife could not. He started to push Emma back toward the edge of the dock. She looked at me, and then the ocean, and then he just gave her a shove and she was back in that water! She came up from beneath the surface and swam again to the edge of the dock and tried to climb out. But Bill wouldn’t let her. He kicked at her fingers with the toe of his boot until she let go and went back in the water.

  “She did it three times. I could see her lips turning blue, her fingers red with blood. She was hysterical, not thinking straight. She was screaming from the water. Bill was screaming from the dock. I was screaming from the boat. And then, Bill did the most horrible thing. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it with my own eyes. He went to Lucy and took that little girl, that baby, from her arms. She said nothing at first. I think she thought he was going to take her up to the house. But he didn’t! He walked to the other side of the dock and he held that baby over the side by one arm, dangling her in the air. And he said, ‘I swear to God, I’ll let her drown!’ Emma couldn’t say the words from her frozen mouth but she was shaking her head, thrashing it back and forth. She tried to swim toward them, but Bill then lowered the baby to the edge of the water. We all could see that she would sink beneath the black surface before Emma could get there.

  “When the boat came close enough, I jumped onto the dock and reached in for Emma. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the edge, and then back onto the platform. She was so heavy that she could barely help me. I pulled at her shirt, her pants, pulling her to the edge of the wood planks and then rolling her until she was out of the water. ‘We’ll stay,’ I said. ‘We’ll stay and we won’t cause any trouble. I promise! Please!’ Bill cradled the baby, who was screaming so loud by then, and walked away from the edge where he was standing. He gave the baby to Lucy, who stood silently, watching. Looking back, I think she knew Bill would never have dropped that baby, her baby, into the water and let her drown, because she had been silent. But it didn’t matter whether he would or he wouldn’t. All that mattered was that we had no way out. If we left without that baby, we would never see any of them ever again.

  “But it was more than that thought that made me say those things about staying. There were two thoughts. The second was this—when Bill was dangling that baby over the water, and when he was kicking Emma’s hands off the dock, making them bleed, I looked at Rick, at the expression on his face. It was something I had not seen in the year and a half since we’d been there. His face sort of flinched, and I imagined him on the deck of that boat in Alaska, watching those men attack that woman. And I knew then that I would be able to make it out of there.”

  Cass stopped speaking. That was it—the whole story—and she had nothing more to say about it. Abby clutched a pen in one hand, the notebook in the other. She could not remove her eyes from her subject. Cass had told this story start to finish without looking up once. Was she concentrating? Was she afraid to see the look of disbelief on her mother’s face?

  The room felt as though it were being swallowed by the silence.

  “Can I get something to drink?” Cass asked. She was eerily calm, given the story she had just told.

  No one moved. They were waiting for Abby to agree or disagree. She was thinking now about the way Cass had told it—and the ones before it. The counting of things. The precision. And today, the lack of emotion.

  “Abby?” Leo said, pulling her back into the silent room.

  “I’m sorry. Yes, let’s take a break.”

  Everyone started to rise from the sofas and chairs.

  Abby smiled and did the same, her eyes fixed on Cass. She had been so consumed with Judy Martin, the narcissistic mother who’d driven her children to run away—only now that was not the story being told. So, the narcissistic mother who’d done … what, exactly?

  She watched Cass stand and run her hand several times over the front of her shirt, smoothing the wrinkles. She noticed, too, how her eyes would look down and away like she wanted to hide. And the numbering of things, the affectation Abby had come across in her research years before, and had seen in her own sister.

  But there were some things, some moments in her story that were not counted or numbered, like how long she hid and waited in Emma’s car the night they disappeared. And how long Emma’s labor was before the baby finally came.
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br />   And how could she be so unemotional telling this most horrific story about watching a baby nearly dropped in that cold, black water?

  Abby tried to finish the sentence. Judy Martin, the narcissistic mother who wreaked havoc on her children, leaving one a pregnant teen and the other introverted and insecure, with abnormal social instincts and obsessive–compulsive disorder.

  Or maybe, something else. There were times when Cass would look into Abby’s eyes so intensely, it was like catching a glimpse of the sun. And each time it felt like she was sending Abby some kind of message in a secret code.

  Was she playing her? Was she playing all of them? The question remained, and was even stronger today.

  What if the sentence ended like this?

  Judy Martin, the narcissistic mother who created a narcissist.

  And not just Emma, but maybe Cass as well?

  Abby followed them all out of the room, just behind Leo. She wanted to grab hold of him, shake him until he could help her sort out her own mind, which was spinning now, round and round like a dog chasing his tail. So many thoughts.

  You know too much. Maybe Meg was right. She was so tired now, it was hard to think. She needed sleep.

  You have to move forward. What did any of this matter? What Judy Martin’s narcissism did to Emma? What it did to Cass? They would find the island and find Emma, and then they would know and this would all be over.

  And then Witt’s words, which kept finding their way off the page of Abby’s notes, where she’d written them three years ago.

  She is evil.

  Abby knew what that meant. She knew this kind of evil inside and out. She knew what made it stronger and what made it weaker. And she knew how to get inside it, to become part of the splint that held it together.

  As they walked from the house to their cars, wrapping up the day and saying their good-byes, Abby could see the plan taking shape to do just that.

  ELEVEN

  Cass—Day Three of My Return

  On the third day of my return, I awoke to three surprises. The first was that I had actually slept for more than two hours in a row. After the visit with Hunter, I could feel the exhaustion in my stomach like a sickness. Like I wanted to vomit. It was in my head as well, throbbing like a headache, but also mixing up my thoughts so that the worst of them were able sneak past the better ones and start to seem real. I needed to reset my brain so that the bad thoughts could be contained. And I needed to remove the distractions of the headache and the vomit wanting to come. The only greater obstacle to thinking clearly than pain and vomit is fear.

  I took two of Dr. Nichols’s pills and had one glass of wine. I locked my door and slid the dresser in front of it. I should have done that first because I was nearly incapable of finishing the job after the pills and the wine. I lay down in the bed in the guest room and I slept for eight hours.

  I did not take any medicine on the island. And I did not intend to keep taking the pills Dr. Nichols gave me after Emma was found. But until then, I would do what I had to do. As I was swallowing them down with the wine on that second night of my return, I thought that it was ironic that it was now—safe at home—that I needed the pills just to sleep, and to reset my brain so I could think.

  Lucy used to say that, when she took her pills at night. I need a good night’s sleep so I can reset my brain. Sometimes your own thoughts can do you in if you don’t get rid of them.

  I could see her thoughts, the ones that might do her in. The way she would stare out at the ocean gave her away. The Universe had been so unfair to her and it made her angry. It made her want justice. It made her believe she was entitled to justice. And that justice came in the form of a child. She would smile and nod to herself. Yes. I could see her thought. I deserve a child. But then her face would grow conflicted until the sadness beat down the self-righteousness. Until she began to wonder if what she was doing was divine justice, or if it was just plain crazy. And she could not afford to have that thought and still hold another woman’s child in her arms.

  I knew about crazy thoughts from the island. You have no idea what it’s like to see land not that far away, to see lobster boats and yachts and motorboats just far enough that they can’t hear you or see you well enough to know what you’re doing if you were to jump up and down and make signals or fall to your knees in total despair. It makes you think that anything is better than this, even drowning in the current or freezing to death in the cold water. I had two parts inside me, like Lucy and Bill, with the one crazy part wanting something so bad, I was willing to do crazy things to try to get it, and the other part knowing it would kill me, actually physically kill me. That part of me was stronger than the crazy part. Otherwise, I think I might have died trying to leave that place.

  I had other crazy thoughts on the island. Thoughts about deserving what I’d gotten. Thoughts about being an ungrateful teenager who was worthy of the disgust I had seen on Bill’s face that day on the dock. They crept in when I wasn’t looking, alongside the image of Rick’s face and the plotting of how to use this to escape. And just like the fight between the crazy part that wanted to brave the frigid water and the sane part that stayed on the land, this part of me that felt I was so wretched, I deserved what I’d gotten waged war with the part that felt worthy of seeking revenge.

  When I returned home, those thoughts found their way back into my consciousness, mixing with thoughts from my childhood about my profound unworthiness. I don’t know how, but they are related, these thoughts. They must be because they felt familiar, like old friends I hadn’t seen for a while but when I saw them I remembered them well and even welcomed them in no matter how terrible they were and always had been.

  And they were terrible. They made me miss Emma so much. I don’t know why. Sometimes when I hear the stories leaving my own mouth, I realize that Emma was not always nice to me. But something happens when you hold someone or when they hold you. It makes you feel better. It takes away the bad feelings of being worthless.

  Those days when I was home, I could close my eyes and feel Emma holding me in the middle of the night. I could also feel that sweet little baby wrapped around in my arms, so tight. I would stroke her hair, which was so soft, just like Emma would stroke mine when our mother was asleep. I longed for those things. I felt as though I would die without them, like not having food or water. Without those things, I was lost in the bad feelings and I began to worry that I would never find my way out.

  The second surprise that morning was a pile of new clothing outside my door when I finally woke up. They were my size and they were very nice. A pair of lightweight khaki pants, cropped at the ankle, and a button-down shirt that I could either wear long-sleeved or short-sleeved. The sleeves had a button and little tab thing that held them rolled up. There was some nice underwear from Victoria’s Secret and a pair of flip-flops.

  I brought them into the guest room and lay them on the bed. A question rushed into my brain and I knew then at that moment that the sleep had done its job and I was again thinking clearly. Very clearly.

  When, exactly, had my mother purchased the clothes? They were outside my door at eight o’clock. I had gone to bed at midnight. No stores are open then. No mail is delivered then. We had not had any visitors. All of which meant that my mother had purchased or somehow obtained the clothes the day before but had chosen not to give them to me. Instead, she left me to wear her fat clothes and Hunter’s old sneakers. Since the only thing that happened the afternoon before was the visit with Hunter and his girlfriend I arrived at the conclusion that my mother had not wanted me to look nice for Hunter. And this made me smile like before. I smiled the whole time I was putting on those clothes because I understood. Just like with Hunter’s long hug, there is something about understanding that comforts me, even if I don’t like what I understand.

  I found out about the third surprise when I got downstairs. Dr. Winter was waiting for me. So was Agent Strauss. They were waiting for the sketch artist to come again. My
father and Mrs. Martin had been asked to gather as many pictures of Emma as they could find from the time she was born. The sketch artist was going to do some kind of time lapse image of her in case the Pratts had started to run and Emma had gone with them. I didn’t like the sound of that because it meant they were still wondering why Emma hadn’t left with me—if she was staying voluntarily and if, by inference, I had not been held captive either.

  They were in the kitchen with the officer who watched the house from the street and kept the media trucks from coming down the driveway. They were having coffee. Mrs. Martin was there as well, taking something out of the oven. It smelled like bananas and cinnamon. I won’t lie. That sight, and the smell of Mrs. Martin’s banana bread—which she used to make on Sunday mornings with Emma—reached inside me and grabbed my heart. I almost looked around for Emma but I stopped myself. I was so grateful then for the sleep, for the pills and wine, for Dr. Nichols.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” Mrs. Martin said. “How did you sleep?”

  I told her I slept well. I thanked her for the clothes. She said we would go shopping later if I wanted, or maybe on the computer so I wouldn’t have to face the reporters. She said she didn’t get more than one outfit, because I might want to pick things out myself, from any place I wanted. She said it with a tilted head and a sweet, closed-mouth smile.

  I had told people many things in the two days I had been home. In between the formal interviews with Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss were dozens of questions about my life on the island. What did I do all day? What did I eat? Who cut my hair? How did we get clothing? Did we play games or listen to music? And how did we not go crazy without the Internet or any way to reach the outside world?

  It is probably hard to imagine that my life on the island after that day on the dock was anything but a constant state of urgency to escape. That every minute of every day was not spent plotting and worrying and mourning the loss of my freedom. The loss of my life. Or that the rest of it wasn’t filled with those thoughts of deserving what I’d gotten because I was so unworthy, and that I should feel grateful for the home I had been given. But human nature does not allow for that. No matter where we are and what we are subjected to, we will eventually settle into the new reality and try to find pleasure, even if it is nothing more than a warm shower or food or even a glass of water. I think if I had been kept in a cage in the darkness with nothing but one piece of bread and one glass of water a day, I would eventually have come to find happiness in that bread and that water. And so on the island, there was laughter and there was friendship and there were moments of pleasure in between the sorrow and the urgency and the self-loathing.