Don't Look for Me

by Wendy Walker

  V shook her head.

  “You think our mother didn’t know exactly how many crackers were in each box?”

  Nic watched V tell this story of her sister, her mind spinning. There were girls like Daisy Hollander everywhere. Nic knew the type. Scrappy. Resourceful.

  “And she finally found a way to leave for good?” Nic asked.

  “Sure did. She told most people she was going to Boston to live with our sister. There were four siblings and my parents still here at the time. I knew she was going to disappear, at least for a while. She didn’t want to get dragged down.”

  “So she just never came back? Didn’t you worry about what had happened to her?”

  “I know what happened,” V said. “She texted me. She moved to New York. Begged me not to tell her poor boyfriend. That kid nearly lost his mind when she left.”

  “But that was ten years ago.”

  “Look—some of us are close. Talk every week. Others, a few years go by. Daisy texted once in a while. Stopped altogether a few years ago. But there’s nothing strange about that.”

  “And you’re sure they were from her—the messages?”

  “I know how she says things. How she talks. Why are you asking this?” V was now concerned. “Do you know something?”

  “No—it’s not that. I guess I’m just in that frame of mind, looking for my mother.”

  V placed her hand on top of Nic’s. “Oh, you poor thing. But Daisy—well, that’s not the same situation. She moved to the city. She wrote to her boyfriend, too. And thank God! That poor kid. Went to Boston. Harassed my sister there, demanding to search her house looking for Daisy. Put up flyers all over the city. Did the same in Hartford. Any place he thought she might have gone. You know, he even went up to this summer camp she used to go to.”

  “Summer camp?” Nic asked.

  “I told you she was resourceful. She got herself a scholarship. Up in Woodstock. Some camp for gifted kids. They read plays and poetry all summer—can you imagine? She came back full of herself. Quoting things from people we’d never heard of, making us feel stupid. But it was hard to blame her. Daisy wanted a better life and she was willing to work for it. She said some of the kids at that camp had more money than everyone in this town put together. She got a real taste of it.”

  Nic looked at the woods now, through the window. It was dirty, like everything in this room. This house. Piles of clothing. Piles of books. Piles of old magazines. Piles of canned food with bright orange value stickers. V was a hoarder, and Nic couldn’t blame her after the way she’d grown up. Still, there was nothing here that was going to help Nic find her mother.

  She took a moment to be respectful, but then got up to leave. Kurt followed.

  “Thanks for talking to me,” she said.

  “Yeah—thanks,” Kurt echoed.

  V got up as well. “My sister left ten years ago. Can’t see how it had anything to do with your mother.”

  They walked to the door. Said their goodbyes.

  Nic was about to leave, but then she stopped.

  “Is her boyfriend still around?” she asked.

  “Of course,” V said. She looked at Kurt curiously. “Everybody knows him.”

  Nic also looked at Kurt now.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  It was Kurt who answered. “Roger Booth.”

  15

  Day fourteen

  My mother used to say that you can only be as happy as your least happy child. She said there was no getting around this if you were a good and loving parent. She said that’s why she only had one child. Once she had me and came to understand this about being a parent, she didn’t want to further reduce her chances of having a happy life.

  My mother was a pessimist.

  She never got around to telling me what happens when a child dies. And when you are the one who killed her.

  I think about this while I lie in bed staring at the cracks of light that sneak in through the seams of the plywood. It covers the window from the outside. Sometimes I pull the draperies closed so I can pretend it’s just a window. Other times I don’t want to pretend.

  On the frame of the bedroom doorway, he has installed a metal grate—a second door with eight vertical bars and four horizontal ones. There is a small piece that can open at the bottom with a latch on the other side. Another panel is at the same height as the door handle and it, too, has a lock. A lock with a key.

  The bedroom is now a prison.

  “Sorry about all this,” he said on the day he let me out of the back room. “It’s my fault, really. I should have remembered to turn off the phone.”

  * * *

  It has been fourteen days since the night of the storm. Two days in the house, thinking I would go home. Five days locked in the dark room with the tile floor, knowing I wouldn’t. Seven days in this bedroom, wanting to die. But knowing I can’t.

  Everything now is about keeping this man away from my family. Away from Nicole.

  I stare at the streaks of light and assess the state of my mind. On each of these nine days since leaving that back room, it has surprised me and I have come to view it as a separate entity. Separate from my body. Out of my control in every way.

  Some mornings, I wake up not remembering where I am and I feel what I used to feel before the night of the storm—what had come to feel normal after five years, but which I now recognize as numb. It only lasts a moment before reality washes through me like a wave of nausea. That is how I feel today, on day fourteen. And I have the answer my mother never told me. What life is like when you have killed your own child. Numb. I see it now for what it is, because now it washes away with the horror of my captivity.

  On other mornings, I wake up startled and I jump from the bed and stand with my back to the wall. I let out small gasps of air with cries of despair that I cover with my hand. I am alive with desperation. But I am alive.

  Sometimes I don’t sleep at all, and so there is no waking up. My mind reels through the night of the storm. Through the mistakes I made. I swim in a pool of self-loathing, for Annie’s death, for Nicole’s pain, and for what I have now done to my family by walking down that road, trying to escape my life. I bathe in the agony that I feel I deserve, and my suffering soothes the guilt. I cry and shake but then accept my penance as I stare into the darkness.

  But that is not the worst of the mornings. On the worst of the mornings, I wake up with Alice entangled in my arms because she is very good at sneaking. She likes to be locked in the room with me. And he allows this because somehow he knows I will not hurt another child. He is good at sneaking, too. At sneaking Alice into my room.

  On those mornings, he comes to collect her, opening the gate, closing it again. Locking it shut.

  I try to think that this invasion of my bed, my body, is helping me, giving me power. The more Alice needs me, the more power I will yield over her.

  And power is just what I need over this little girl, my little prison guard. As long as I am a good mommy to her, there is no talk of finding a new mommy. There is no talk of Nicole.

  * * *

  I have come to call the man Mick. It is the name Alice gave him that night in the truck. Mickey Mouse. And for that split second, I had let myself believe he was harmless like that, like a cartoon character. I let him lead me back into this house when I might have tried to run away, into the woods. I did not know that would be my last chance to escape.

  * * *

  In these seven days, I have learned a lot of things about Alice and her life in this house.

  She has lived here since before she can remember. She told me she was born here, in that dark laundry room with no windows, but I have no proof of that one way or another and I will not make any more assumptions.

  Her first mommy lived here until last spring. Alice has a calendar and knows how to keep track of time. She has books from a homeschool program, but there is no internet here so she does the work on paper. Mick collects her work at the end of each day
and tells her he sends it off to the program and they keep track of her progress.

  “Look!” she said to me one day, showing me a handwritten report. It was written by Mick, I was certain.

  I studied the report.

  “You did very well!” I said to Alice.

  The report said little more. Your work is complete and was very good.

  We pass things through the bottom panel of the prison grate. She brings me food and things to drink other than the water I can get from my bathroom sink.

  She is serious about her school work. She is almost at a middle school level, which tells me she is smart and that Mick, or someone else, has been guiding her through the material. The subject matter is easy for me to teach. Simple algebra. Grammar. Earth science. The challenge comes from her impatience when she gets stuck. She is quick to anger and I am learning how to manage her moods.

  When she is not doing schoolwork, she watches television shows on an iPad. Mick downloads new shows for her when he leaves the house and she watches them many times. She does not like the days when he takes her iPad with him. It makes her anxious.

  The shows are familiar to me, like Mickey Mouse. She also has movies, some of which are too mature for her, but I say nothing. It is not my job to be her mother.

  It is only my job to be her second mommy.

  “You’re a good second mommy,” she tells me. And when she tells me this, I feel a heat inside my body. Because on other days, she tells me different things that make my blood cold.

  “If you can’t be a good second mommy, we will have to get a new one.”

  It is in these moments that I question what I might be capable of doing.

  I have learned that the phone was never dead.

  There is no phone line connected. I asked Alice about this and she said she uses it all the time. I asked her how. She said she plays pretend with it. I asked her what kind of sound it makes.

  “There’s no sound on a phone unless someone calls you, silly. Didn’t you ever have a phone?”

  “I have a cell phone. And you’re right. If you just hold it to your ear it doesn’t make any sound. But a phone like the one in the kitchen is not a cell phone. It’s an older kind of phone and when you pick it up, it usually makes a sound.”

  This made her angry too. “There’s no sound! I told you that. Phones don’t make sounds.”

  That’s when I knew there was no landline.

  No internet. No phone line.

  Mick and Alice live off the grid. Except for the electricity and the gas. I wonder about this. I wonder who pays those bills and what name holds the accounts. I wonder who owns this property. And why no one came here to search it after I disappeared. The article he showed me said they went door to door.

  When Alice calmed down, she considered things.

  “You might be right about the phone,” she said, shaking her head. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper even though we were alone in the house.

  “But it’s only because he works in a secret job. No one can know where we are.”

  I also asked her then, and every chance I’ve had before, how they knew things about me and my family. How they knew I would be passing through, and that I had lost a child, that I had two other children. That I was so lost in my grief I might actually agree to live with them and be Alice’s new mommy.

  Or maybe that was just a belief held by this little girl who plays with her dolls.

  She never answers. Sometimes she shrugs. Sometimes she says things about how it’s important to know secrets about people to be prepared. I wonder now if she doesn’t know what he does or how he found out about me.

  * * *

  I hear the knock on the inside wooden door. I know to open it without hesitation, even though there is no working lock on my side. She knocks as a courtesy. Alice stands before me on the other side of the metal grate. She is still in her pajamas, hair not brushed and tangled from the restless sleep of a child who still dreams.

  “I want to play a game. Pick one,” she demands.

  “Hannah and Suzannah,” I say. When we play with the dolls, I get to ask questions. The questions bring answers, which are giving me insight into her mind.

  “I’ll go get them,” she says.

  Mick is here now. He studies me longer than yesterday. Which was longer than the day before, which was longer than the day before that. In the mornings, I wear the first mommy’s pajamas and they cling to my breasts and the curves of my hips. He has been coming earlier so I don’t have time to change.

  I can’t decide if I should sleep in the other clothes he’s given me. Her baggy sweatshirts and pants. I can’t decide if I want him to look longer. He seems ambivalent about me, as though he is trying to see something in me that he needs, but he can’t find it yet. Maybe I’m too old and my body repulses him. Maybe I’m being too good and he wants me to fight so he can exert his strength over me. Maybe he needs me to be more of a victim. I study his face and try to understand. I need him to want me here, with him and with Alice, so he will stop looking beyond these walls.

  Pulling Alice close, even having her in my bed, will give me power over her. Of that, I am certain.

  But with Mick, I don’t know. And that terrifies me.

  “Step back,” he says. And I do.

  He unlocks the bottom panel of the grate and slides me some breakfast. Coffee, eggs, toast. It’s the same every morning.

  “Thank you,” I say. I wait for him to lock the grate again. Then, and only then, do I step forward and take the small tray which holds the food. I sit cross-legged on the floor while I eat because Alice will soon return and this is where I will stay for most of the day. On the floor. Playing with a child through prison bars.

  I draw from my work as a teacher years ago. And also as a mother, although those memories are locked away, behind that invisible line. The before and after of Annie’s death. They are provoked now by Alice and the things she makes me do. How we would play board games together, me and John and our three children. And how Annie hated to lose, just like Alice when we played Candy Land. Nicole and Evan would yell at her and she would cry. Not every time. It was just a stage. A normal stage that children go through. Learning to play nicely. Learning how to handle disappointment.

  I think I was good at this, at teaching them these lessons, because I know what to do with Alice. It comes to me without effort. With the ease of experience. And it comes to me with the pain these memories provoke.

  Alice returns with the dolls. She hands me Suzannah.

  I sip my coffee. Take a bite of my food.

  “What should we do today,” Hannah asks Suzannah.

  I swallow as I think through my data and what is still needed.

  “I’m very angry today,” Suzannah says.

  “How come?” asks Hannah.

  And then I adjust my voice so it is just right. So Alice will not see the path I am leading us down.

  “I had a fight with my mother.”

  Alice smiles, and tilts Hannah to the side so she can reach through the bars and give my doll a hug.

  And I think, that’s right, Alice.

  Keep reaching through these bars. And maybe one day soon they will open.

  16

  Day fourteen

  I didn’t think it mattered.

  That was the first excuse Kurt Kent made. Then, I felt bad for the guy.

  What did he think Nic was going to do? Laugh at Roger Booth because his girlfriend left him after high school? Torture him with bad memories from his adolescence?

  Finally, he gave an answer that rang true.

  “I thought you might accuse him of having something to do with your mother’s disappearance.”

  Nic watched the wall of trees pass as she fought to stay calm.

  “You’re the one who told me about Daisy Hollander,” Nic reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “So you must have known it would lead right back to him.”

  Kurt started
to say something but then stopped. A long sigh, a glance out the side window—

  “What?” Nic asked now.

  “I wasn’t thinking about Booth when I told you.”

  “Well, maybe you should have—he lied to me about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I asked him if he knew about Daisy Hollander and he said everybody knew, but then failed to mention she was his girlfriend—or that he spent all that time searching for her.”

  “That’s not really a lie.”

  “It’s an omission. Same thing.”

  Yes, Nic thought. Just like her father with the handwriting analysis. And what else? What other things were people not telling her, here and at home?

  Kurt fell silent.

  “What, then?” she asked. “What did you think it would lead me to?”

  The wall of trees opened to the river, then the turn onto Hastings Pass.

  “It’s probably nothing,” he said.

  They passed the police station, town hall, the auto body shop. They were at the inn when he finally said the name. A different name. The last name she’d been expecting to hear.

  “Chief Watkins.”

  “Watkins? What does he have to do with Daisy Hollander?”

  “The chief has this thing about kids.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  Kurt turned right, into the parking lot at the inn. He pulled to a stop.

  “He used to come to the school. Talk about opportunities—scholarships and sports recruiting. Ways to get out of here, get money for college.”

  “That sounds admirable.”

  “I guess.”

  “So did he help Daisy Hollander get the scholarship to that summer camp?”

  “Had to be. But it’s more than that.”