Tear Me Apart

by J. T. Ellison

I don’t ever want to be back in there, but I miss you. When are they going to let you out?

  Love,

  Liesel

  Mindy sets the letter in her lap. Her mother does not have a tattoo. She cannot be this Liesel person. Mindy feels lighter already. Her mother is holding these letters for someone. A friend, perhaps someone she met in school—the boarding school Juliet said she attended. Mindy remembers when they had “the purge” and emptied out her mother’s old pre-Dad boxes, the ones with photos of her with other men, other boyfriends, and Lauren had given them a single glance, then thrown them into the massive black contractor’s bag with a mischievous grin. Lauren didn’t have a lot of attachments to her past, preferred the now. Holding something for someone else makes the most sense. Why it would make her cry is another question, one Mindy will puzzle out later.

  Wait. Maybe this is something to do with her birth mother?

  She turns the page to the next missive.

  January 1994

  Dearest Liesel,

  So proud of you standing up for yourself! Your mother is a witch. She wants you to be just like her, a perfect little china doll, and you don’t ever need to capitulate to her. If she was so perfect, she wouldn’t have chosen that dickhead to be your stepfather. Keep working on finding yourself. You’re smart, smart enough to get out of here, smart enough to be someone. You have talent, kid. You don’t have to get married and produce 2.3 children and own a slobbery dog and a house in the suburbs. You want a bigger life than that, I know you do. Don’t ever let her tell you otherwise.

  There’s big news here. Ratchet is knocked up. She refuses to say who the daddy is, but I think we all know it’s Dr. Freakazoid. She’s been mooning after him for months. Now she smells like vomit all the time. It’s disgusting. They’ve been making us eat in the dining room again, no more food in our rooms because the smell “offends her sensibilities.” Like we should be punished because she doesn’t know how to take her birth control pills? Fucking bitch. I hate her. I hate it here without you. It’s not worth it, you know? They’re never going to let me out. I will die in here. Sooner, rather than later.

  Sorry about the baby news. I wasn’t thinking.

  V

  March 1994

  V, where are you? I haven’t heard from you and, after your last letter, I have to admit I’m worried about you. You didn’t sound good. Please let me know you’re okay. Mother won’t let me visit, I begged and pleaded, but she refuses. I’m going to steal the car keys if I don’t hear from you soonest. You promised me you wouldn’t hurt yourself again. I’m holding you to it.

  Love, Liesel

  April 1994

  Liesel,

  I’m so sorry to have worried you. I know it’s been weeks since my last letter. Ratchet told me you called the ward, and I appreciate it. As you probably figured out, I had an episode. I got really down. Like, really, really down. I was just so tired. I had nothing to look forward to. Nothing to be happy about. So I tried to hang myself in the closet.

  It worked great, too, except Ratchet, with that fucking bizarre sixth sense she has, came by unannounced and found me. I was kept sedated for a few days while the swelling went down in my trachea, and I’m still a little hoarse. Ratchet says I sound sexy.

  The good news is, I am starting to feel better. They did shock therapy, and it helped. Sort of. You know how afraid I was to try it, and I know how against it you are, but it wasn’t any big deal, and after the first few treatments, I did start to feel better. I wouldn’t say I’m crapping bluebirds of happiness, but I want to try to get my shit together.

  Please don’t be disappointed in me. I’m trying very hard. Our plans are still a priority. I want to get out, and I want to run away with you someplace warm where we can wear bikinis every day and live by the water.

  And yes, I did say something nice about Ratchet. She has been really cool through all of this. She even said she knows how good you were for me, and she’s going to keep a special eye out for me to make up for your absence. She’s getting round as a basketball, it’s hysterical. We’ve been doing the GED program since there’s no way in hell I’m going back to school. If you can believe it, I will have my certificate by the end of the summer. They might let me out then, too.

  I wish you could visit me. I miss you.

  Love,

  V

  April 1994

  V,

  You could never disappoint me, not unless you weren’t here at all. I’m very glad Ratchet found you in time, and that you agreed to the shock treatment, and that it’s helping. The medication I’m on is helping, too. I’m actually down to only two antidepressants. Mother says my hormones are sorting themselves out–she still thinks my mood swings are just a phase that I’ll grow out of–but the meds are okay. Side effects aren’t too bad, and I am also pretty stable right now.

  And now it’s time to share my bit of bad news. We’re moving. She’s decided it would be better for me to be in a different environment. She hasn’t told me where we’re going, says she hasn’t settled on a job yet, but the house is on the market. Mother still refuses to let me visit, but I’m going to do everything I can to come see you before we go. I’m just so angry at her for doing all this behind my back, but I also feel a little relieved. Like maybe I’ll be able to put this whole chapter of my life behind me and start fresh with people who don’t know me as “the criminal who tried to kill herself.” You know?

  But that means I won’t be able to see you for a long time. And that’s not making me happy at all. If they let you out, will you come visit me?

  Love and stitches (or should we say belts?),

  Liesel

  May 1994

  Dearest Liesel,

  Oh, you make me laugh. Love and Belts! I actually did it with a sheet, which Ratchet tells me was the reason she came into the room. She thought she saw my blanket on the floor. Whoops!

  I’m devastated you’re going to move. Devastated. Please don’t forget your friend, who loves you very much, and would like to come visit when she’s deemed safe to herself and others. I had a meeting with Dr. Freakazoid today, actually, to discuss a possible transition to a halfway house. Yes. I am doing that well. So don’t move before I get out!

  All my love,

  V

  PS: Almost forgot, Ratchet had her baby! I heard the nurses talking about it after group. It’s a boy. She’s going to be out for a few weeks on maternity leave, so things are going to be very slow and dull around here. Write soon!!!!

  August 1994

  Dear Liesel,

  My last few letters—

  “Mindy? Where are you, honey?”

  Shit, shit, shit. She turns on the water, shoves the letters under the sink.

  “I’m in here, Mom. Don’t worry, I’m just taking a shower.”

  “I got you a decadent tub of Dutch chocolate pudding. It’s ready when you finish your shower.”

  “Thanks, I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Mindy holds her breath. Her mom will hear her if she unlocks the door, wonder why it was locked in the first place. Lauren doesn’t like locked doors. It’s a thing with her. Closed is fine, and she always knocks, but locked is out of the question.

  But her mom leaves, and Mindy sighs in relief. She can’t return the letters, though, which is not good, but she will try later. After she’s read them all. There are many more in the stack. Several years’ worth of missives.

  She wraps her leg in a bag and steps under the water to wash off the grime of the hospital, thinking, Who are these girls?

  32

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Before Juliet can start her search, Cameron shows up at her door. He’s carrying a pizza, a bunch of files, and is buzzing with suppressed energy.

  “The dead doctor, Castillo? There’s more to the story. Way more. She got fired back
in 2000, and she committed suicide not long after.”

  “Come in. Suicide? What’s the story? Why did they fire her?”

  “Apparently, she was taking money under the table. Probably for illegal adoptions, like your sister’s.”

  This makes Juliet’s heart race. She shuts the door behind him carefully. “Illegal? Not closed?”

  “Any time you have the transfer of a child, there has to be paperwork. It’s illegal to give your kid away for money otherwise. Apparently, one of the services the doctor was providing was finding homes for her indigent patients’ babies. She took money from the family who was adopting the child, erased the bills for the hospital records for the birth mothers, and pocketed the rest. The hospital found out and booted her. Thing is, she’d managed to place a bunch of kids.”

  “Wow. On one hand, I guess you could say she was doing people a service. Those babies might not have stood a chance being brought into the world by indigent teen moms. On the other hand...”

  “Yeah. Baby farming. Not cool.”

  “Any way to find out who she worked with?”

  “The files identified a couple of young women, but the majority just disappeared. But catch this. One of the women identified was named Graciela Flores. She had a baby girl and gave her up for adoption, the works.”

  “My God. That could be our girl.”

  “Except...”

  “Of course it’s too good to be true. Except?”

  “The kid she gave up would be eighteen now, not seventeen. And you said that you saw Mindy when she was an infant—I hardly think you’d mistake an infant for a toddler.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Maybe she had another kid right afterward? Or they got the dates wrong.”

  “I don’t know, Juliet. Something about this feels weird. There’s more.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Castillo was fired in June 2000. Mindy was born in August.”

  “So she did the work behind the fence after they let her go.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, a full-blown OB/GYN who’d just lost her license, and some off the path kids having babies? She’d be the ultimate midwife. She probably had a few ready to pop when she was fired, and just let them know where she’d be when their time was nigh.”

  He runs a hand through his silver hair, looking doubtful. “You may want to ask your sister for some more details, is all I’m saying.”

  “Well, I can’t do that right now. They’re telling Mindy the truth about her parentage as we speak. We should try to find this Graciela woman, see if she remembers Lauren at all, and see if she’d be willing to take a test. Maybe the files were wrong. We can only hope, right?” She rubs her hand across her face.

  “Absolutely.” He parks himself at her desk. “You have any beer to go with that pizza? Since I’m playing hooky...”

  “I do. Be right back. Want a cold glass?”

  “No, I can rough it.”

  She grabs a bottle of Yuengling, makes herself a cup of tea. Throws some pretzels into a bowl. Brings everything back to the office to find Cameron scrolling through his phone.

  “What are you doing, swiping right?” Her smirk is unmistakable, but Cameron has stopped scrolling and is staring at her.

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “We have a match.”

  Her pulse kicks up. “In CODIS? Let me see.”

  “Just hold on a second. I need your computer.”

  “Sure. Of course.” She gestures toward the desktop. He opens Google, speaks quietly.

  “There’s a cold case, out of Nashville, Tennessee. I saw a case study of it a few years back. The man’s name is Zachary Armstrong. His child was kidnapped.”

  “Wait, that’s the same name Lauren was looking up. Jasper asked me to look into him.”

  He types Zachary Armstrong baby kidnapped into the search bar. “Look.”

  There are pages of hits. Her heart leaps to her throat.

  “No. No, no, no. There’s no way. What are you saying, that Lauren somehow bought a baby that had been stolen from a couple in Tennessee, and has raised her as her own this whole time?”

  “It’s so much worse than that, Juliet.”

  He clicks open the first of the stories. There is a photograph of a young Army officer and his very pretty wife, and at the headline, Juliet sags, her knees turning to jelly.

  Fort Campbell Soldier’s Baby Kidnapped,

  Wife Murdered

  PART TWO

  33

  NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

  AUGUST 2000

  The metal of the casket is the same color as the sky, murky gray with touches of glinting silver as the sun passes behind the clouds. The sound of sobbing, the cries of the justified, the flailing of my heart. Why did I choose such a big casket? She doesn’t fit. It’s the smallest adult coffin they have, but it’s still too large. She is lost inside. They should have handled this. The padding needed to be expanded so her body doesn’t jostle.

  The body. Her body.

  The words I’ve heard in the past few days are ones I never expected—new, untried, untested. Casket. Body. Funeral. Viewing. Embalming. Autopsy. Severed. Seven-inch non-corrosive steel blade.

  Homicide.

  The first responders were called in for my family. They came quickly. Only took them three minutes to arrive at the house. But it was already too late.

  They were both gone.

  I’ve forgotten where my life ends and the evening news begins. The story of my family’s demise plays over and over again. The city is shocked, horrified, on red alert. Everyone is looking for my daughter. For my wife’s murderer.

  The sun is completely hidden now, the rain beginning to mist in the hazy air. The people in attendance, the crowd overladen with cops, look at me sympathetically, eyes hooded, shadowed. I know what they see. A tall man, dark hair cut high and tight, ribs still bandaged from a month-old gunshot wound sustained in a double-cross in Afghanistan, eyes angry and sad. A man alone. This is my second funeral this week. In the past few days, I’ve lost my mother, my wife, and my child.

  I can’t look at the casket anymore. She’s wearing the blue dress I know she loves, the dark sapphire silk nearly the same color as her eyes. I had to bring her makeup bag to the funeral home intact; I didn’t know what color lipstick she would want. The mascara I had down pat; I always loved to watch her put it on. It came in a red tube, and she’d get so close to the mirror, leaning until she nearly touched her reflection, swooping the black onto her lashes again and again until they fringed her perfect violet eyes in soot. But the lipstick—she wore a different color every day. I let them make the choice. It was better that way.

  Umbrellas start to pop open. The priest nods and smiles sadly, a comfort to the bereaved. Arms on mine now, gentle squeezes, hugs. I don’t know who anyone is. They are assigned to protect me. To keep me safe. They couldn’t save my family, but by God, they will not let me die.

  I nod and mimic the same sad smile the priest is wearing. It seems appropriate.

  The cemetery empties. I’ve been left alone to grieve, to find it in my heart not to throw myself into the hole and die with her. There’s only one reason why I don’t. I must keep myself together in case my child is found.

  My daughter. A small, sturdy flower born too early, a week ago today. Before the violence on our tiled kitchen floor. She might as well have been wrenched from my wife’s womb, instead of torn from her breast.

  We talked about naming her Ellie, but we ultimately decided on Violet.

  V for her mother, and those violet eyes I’ll never see again. V for the valiant effort she made to live despite the odds against it. V, because she is the intersection of two lines cast askew by death, not sturdy right angles, but unbalanced, falling over, not quite down.

 
V, for Violet.

  I can only pray that she lives, and one day, I will see her again.

  34

  NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

  CURRENT DAY

  The bottle hits the edge of the glass, the liquid sloshing into the lowball. Zack Armstrong barely notices the too-heavy clink, nor that he’s missed the glass and hit the table with most of his pour. The bottle is half-empty, and he is well on his way to being trashed.

  He needs the buffer. He doesn’t like to make this phone call, and yet, he feels compelled. Every six months, like clockwork, he rings Detective Gorman to see where things stand with the case.

  It is a pointless endeavor. Vivian’s murder, Violet’s kidnapping, it’s old news. Seventeen-year-old cold cases aren’t front and center in anyone’s mind but the family left behind.

  Gorman isn’t even a detective anymore. He’s a sergeant, runs a squad, and the last time they talked, was about to hit his retirement age, take his twenty, and bolt for greener pastures. The last thing in the world he’d do is reopen a cold case on the eve of his departure.

  But Zack has to try. Every six months, he dials the number for the Nashville Metropolitan Police, asks for the homicide office, talks to Gorman, and then they both go on their way for the next six months. Fruitless, but something about it makes him function. He has Gorman’s home and mobile numbers, and in the beginning, he used them frequently, but as the case ages, as the pain grows hard and deep within him, he feels the niceties should be observed. He always gives Gorman the chance not to talk to him by calling the office directly.

  Not calling isn’t an option, but over the years, instead of hourly, daily, weekly, he’s backed it down to every six months, to show respect. Zack isn’t about to let the police forget. And Gorman is the only person he can talk to. The only other one who knows the gritty details, who saw the blackened blood, who understands what it’s like to have your life snatched away while your back is turned. Not only understands but sometimes even feels badly about it all.

  Zack knows the detective cares, in his way. But the man can shut off his emotions with the best of them.