Beth quickly disconnected the call. She rifled through the drawer where she kept her address book. She flipped the pages, searching through a long list of numbers next to Missy’s name. But Drew hadn’t filled in her current one.
She dialed Drew’s cell phone.
“Did you find her?” he asked.
“No. I called the police and they thought maybe Missy took her. Do you have her number?”
“If she did this, I’m gonna kill her.” He grumbled something under his breath before saying, “I don’t know her apartment number. Um, her cell is 555-1378. Try that. If you can’t get a hold of her, let me know.”
Beth dialed the number and let out a breath when Missy answered. “It’s Beth. Did you stop by here today to see Emma?”
“Yes. We’re going to McDonald’s since we didn’t get to the other night.”
Beth’s shoulders slackened. “Thank God. Why didn’t you tell me you were taking her? I’m out of my mind here. Drew is driving around looking for her. I called 911.”
“Shit. You called the cops on me?”
“I thought Emma had wandered off or something.”
“Does she do that often? Do you not even notice when my daughter is gone for half an hour? I can’t believe Drew trusts you to watch Emma.”
Guilt and anger collided inside her. It was Beth’s fault for not hearing the door open and for not knowing how long Emma had been gone. But she wasn’t going to take this—not from Missy. “You’re the one who stole her from my house! How could you just take her and not say something?”
“That’s Drew’s house and Emma’s my daughter. I don’t have to ask your permission for anything.”
“Yes you do. I’m in charge of Emma seven days a week because you’re too screwed up to raise your own daughter.”
“You can’t talk to me that way. Maybe I’ll take Emma home with me tonight and that will be that.”
In the background, Beth heard Emma clap and say, “Yippee!”
Beth bristled. “Don’t jerk Emma around. All I’m saying is please let me know before you take her next time.”
“Whatever.” Missy hung up.
She took a few breaths. Now she desperately wanted to hug Emma and see for herself that she was fine. Instead, Missy would keep Emma out of spite.
Immediately she dialed Drew’s cell to tell him the good news. Next, she called the police to let them know.
Ten minutes later, Drew walked in the house.
She grabbed him for a tight embrace. “I was so afraid. I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.”
He seemed to need a hug as badly as she did. “At least we know she’s safe. I don’t know why I didn’t think to call my sister first thing.”
She released her grip, but remained close. “Because everyone knows you don’t just go into someone else’s house and take a child. You have got to talk to Missy. I can’t keep living like this. And poor Emma. Missy threatened to keep her permanently and of course Emma thinks it’s true.”
He walked past her and grabbed a beer out of the fridge. “Want one?”
“No thanks.” If she was going to chase away her frustrations, it wasn’t going to be with a German beer. Ice cream would be perfect. But she knew the freezer only harbored veggies and skinless chicken breasts.
He popped the cap and drank from the brown bottle. “I’ll say something to Missy when she brings Emma back.”
“This is another example of why we can’t pretend that Emma is ours. Why we shouldn’t raise the child Missy’s pregnant with now. We should have our own baby.”
He sat on the antique couch that still needed reupholstered, punching at the cushion with the broken springs. Boom! Boom! “Today has been stressful enough without you pressuring me.” Sighing, he took a swig of his beer.
“That’s because we let Missy call all of the shots.” Still standing, she stared at him, suddenly wondering if they really were meant to be.
Would he ever get over the fact that his first wife had divorced him six months after they moved in together? Was living together now really a delay tactic rather than a transitional period?
She knew then that she had to see Hannah. She had to meet her daughter and somehow that would help her figure out the rest of her life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Holding her breath the next morning, Beth checked her in box. No reply. Her shoulders slumped as she released the trapped air. She suddenly regretted the e-mail she’d sent before bed. The one that said: “Hannah, You called me earlier with some questions. Would you be interested in meeting face-to-face?”
She shuffled to her closet so she could select a pantsuit to wear to work. Navy, black, brown, pinstriped. Nothing seemed right. A yawn escaped her lips. She’d tossed and turned all night worrying about Hannah’s reaction to that e-mail and now her brain was foggy. Finally, she grabbed an outfit at random and got dressed.
As she stepped out of her closet, she realized something wasn’t right. The house was too. . . too. . . quiet. Emma wasn’t singing to her stuffed animals. She wasn’t opening and closing her dresser drawers in search of pink socks to match her Hello Kitty outfit. She wasn’t pouring Cheerios into a bowl, spilling half of them onto the table and floor. Just as Beth had predicted, Missy had kept Emma overnight out of spite. It was as if Beth had lost two daughters in less than twelve hours.
Her mind still hazy, she completed her morning routine and drove to work. When Beth arrived, Luke was waiting at her desk, a can of coconut water in his hand. “Apparently your spray vitamin idea is not as original as we thought. Nature Plus has a patent and several other companies are also working on the concept.”
She slouched in her chair. What more could go wrong?
“What else have you got? Any other ideas? Any other wacky customer complaints to build off of?”
She shrugged. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“Well, there’s a meeting early this afternoon. Get your ideas to me by then, so I can present them.”
This afternoon. That left what, five hours to do the equivalent of a month’s worth of work? Still, maybe she could use this to her advantage. After all, she wanted the big wigs to see her face. Associate fresh ideas with Bethany, not Luke.
She took a deep breath. “Let me know the time and I’ll be there with a new idea ready to go.” Was she crazy? No, desperate was more like it. She couldn’t let this slip through her fingers. Not like Hannah. Not like Emma or even her relationship with her parents. This time, she was going to fight.
“Two p.m. But you don’t need to attend. I promise I’ll give you credit.”
She stood up. “I’ll see you then.”
He seemed to hesitate, but recovered quickly. “Sounds great. Remember, what’s good for me is good for you. My promotion means your promotion.”
She nodded, a bubble of hope building within her. This was it. After all these years, this was her chance. She’d better not blow it.
The day moved quickly. Pages of notes littered her desk and her Internet browser had more than twenty tabs open. Every filed complaint from the past year had been printed from the company database and sat in a messy stack next to her chair. And in the midst of red-pen scribble and interactive graphs and charts, her personal e-mail account stayed open. Still, no message from Hannah.
At five ‘til two, she gathered up her notes and headed for the conference room. She had something. Well, she hoped she had something. It would be up to the brothers to decide.
The room was empty. For a moment Beth wondered if she had the location or the time wrong, but after a few minutes, people started showing up. The suits and ties behind Healthy Habits. And she hoped to soon become one of them.
Luke made his way over to her. “Well?” He kept his voice low, though the concern was evident in his tone. “Did you have a flash of genius?”
She told him her ideas: vitamins targeted toward different geographic locations or different seasons or different socio-economic classes,
but she felt her excitement dissipate with each suggestion. These wouldn’t work, and she could see on Luke’s face that he was thinking the same thing.
Scratching near the mole by his eye, he made a hmmm sound. “Maybe it’s better that you just listen this time. Don’t speak until you have something that will really impress them. They don’t like to waste time, so if you speak up, make it count.”
Nodding, she took a seat at the long rectangular table and set her mound of research findings on the floor beside her. Maybe Luke had been right all along. After all, she didn’t know a thing about these kinds of meetings. It probably was wise to just observe. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, of course. And yet…this was her chance.
Before she knew it, the chairs around the table were filled with men in suits. A few women sprinkled here and there added some variety, but the brothers’ favortism was clearer than ever. The four brothers had taken the spots near one end of the table, their family resemblance a give-away. Dark hair, pointy chins. Some had a few more lines across their foreheads than others. The one who looked the oldest had a bushy mustache. He cleared his throat. “As you know, sales have leveled out and we need something to set us apart from the competition. Luke, how are things with the spray idea coming?”
Luke steepled his fingers. “I still think it’s a good concept, but unfortunately, the competition is already working on it. I’m afraid it won’t be enough.”
The older man twisted his mouth to the side in an uncomfortable gesture. “That’s too bad. What else have you got?”
Luke pushed air out of his mouth, and Beth saw him thinking. Weighing. And then his gaze flickered at her. He leaned forward. “Well, before we get started, I would like to introduce Bethany, the head of customer service. She was the one who came up with the spray concept.” He glanced over his shoulder at her as if he thought she’d be pleased.
Amidst mumbled hellos and welcomes, Beth shrank in her chair. So much for blending in. Now they all knew her as the brain behind the lackluster spray idea. She’d have to thank Luke later.
Mustache man suggested they officially start the brainstorming session, and Beth listened as people tossed out idea after idea for new products or product improvements. Each idea made it to the white board in sloppy handwriting, thanks to one of the younger brothers.
Nothing was golden. Nothing would turn the company around. As one person explained his idea for the equivalent of vitamin shots, Beth let her gaze move around the room. Posters on the walls showed off smiling models, holding their brown vitamin bottles. In the ads the models, dressed in bright, colorful clothes, contrasted with the plain bottles. Why were vitamins so ugly?
Beth wrinkled her brow, thinking about her own vitamins at home—the ones she kept hidden in the cabinet. Was anyone proud of the way their product looked? Of the image it produced? Beth looked around the room. No one had a Healthy Habits bottle with them; no one wore the logo (a green leaf) on their shirt. It was missed opportunity after missed opportunity.
The ideas proved to be endless. The board a mess of erasable ink and doomed suggestions. Should she mention something about the way the product looked? The lame logo. The boring brown bottle.
Her throat constricted.
Maybe Luke was right. He was better than she was at playing in the big leagues. He was the one to present her ideas. He could champion them, and the brothers would listen. Besides, the original founder had designed the green leaf logo. His four sons probably didn’t want to hear it criticized. Especially not from a female customer service rep.
When the meeting wrapped up, Beth grabbed her stack of worthless research and slipped out before Luke or anyone else could talk to her. As she walked back to the bustling call center, she hugged the notes to her chest. Luke had practically thrown her under the bus, and here she was, still thinking about a way to move up in a company that clearly favored men. She was good at her customer service job. Really good. Why want a change?
Settling in at her desk, she welcomed the onslaught of customer calls awaiting her. “Let me talk to your supervisor” had become the favorite line of grumpy, vitamin-deficient men and women all over the US, and her knack for apologizing and fixing was as strong as ever. When her shift ended, she eyed the stack of research. Customer service was her strength. It was time she found satisfaction in it. After all, satisfaction was a part of control and strength and happiness, right?
As per her usual end-of-day routine, she shut off her computer, said “good bye” to her call center reps and headed down the hall. The daycare center was as busy as ever, but it wasn’t until Luke’s girlfriend looked at her quizzically that Beth remembered Emma wasn’t there. Shaking her head, she muttered an apology and headed straight to her car and then home.
There was only one thing that could make this day better.
She ran upstairs to the computer. The brightness from the monitor seemed to illuminate everything: the space around Beth, her shaking fingers that hovered over the keyboard, and the ads that flashed across the top of the screen. But more than anything it illuminated Hannah’s one-word answer.
There it was. A response to the question Beth had posed: “Would you like to meet face-to-face?”
Hannah had replied, “No.”
Beth stopped breathing for a minute. The room tilted.
Her child didn’t want to see her. How was that possible?
She rolled the chair away from the desk and slid out of her seat, onto the floor, curling into the fetal position. Thoughts ricocheted inside her brain—so many thoughts—and she stared at the scuffed wooden planks that ran the length of the floor underneath her.
Her entire adult life had led her to this moment. She’d chosen college over her firstborn. For what? A job as a customer service rep? And now, after being so close to fixing the mistake she’d made sixteen years ago, it was clear that her choice to be a college grad wasn’t just a choice against Hannah. It was a choice against motherhood. Emma, Hannah, they weren’t hers. Never would be.
She was thirty-four years old, living with a man who didn’t want to get married. She’d run out of time. Her father was right: she’d made poor choices and this was her punishment.
Hearing the stairs creak, she felt someone approach her. Drew’s worried voice seemed to break through her thoughts. “What’s wrong?”
Words choked her as she shook her head. Concerned that she looked like a fool, she forced herself to sit up.
He sat next to her and caressed her hair with his hand. “Tell me.”
She imagined him stroking her hair like this while she would be in labor. No one had done that for her the last time, and she remembered another mom on the floor whose bangs were sticking straight up. The woman had beamed as she blamed her husband’s nervous petting for the crazy hair.
“Bad day at work.”
“I’m sorry.” He took her hand in his. “Come with me.” He led her to the bed where he wrapped his arms around her and spooned. His body fit so perfectly against hers.
Her baby didn’t want to know her. She felt hollow. Coming home to this big, empty house only compounded the feeling. “I miss Emma.”
“Missy is trying to make a point. To ensure that you know that she is Emma’s mother.”
“I know that. I can’t ever forget that.”
He hesitated. “She’s really mad at herself for not being able to raise Emma. You don’t know how torn up she is about that. And now she’s pregnant again. She wants to do better, I know she does.”
Could she tell Drew the truth? That she’d once found herself pregnant and unable to care for her infant? Would he comfort her or judge her? She swallowed the words, worried she couldn’t risk it. She already felt bad enough. “Drew, I can’t take this. I can’t pretend to be a mom to Emma and then have her ripped away.”
“How many times are we going to argue about this? You agreed that we’d take care of Emma until Missy could. Maybe Missy is ready now to do that. How can you not want that?”
“Because I don’t want my destiny determined by your sister. I want to create our own family. And I can’t wait any longer.” She turned toward him. “Do you want to marry me or not?”
He pulled away. “Oh, that’s a nice way of putting it. Is this an ultimatum?”
Unable to answer, she pinched the bridge of her nose. She hated herself for blurting that out.
He sat up, his back to her, his legs hanging over the edge of the bed. “I should’ve known you’re just like my ex. You say you’re content but deep down, you’re pretending. Putting on an act but secretly hoping I’ll change.”
“I hardly think I’ve been putting on an act.” She had her secrets, but wanting to settle down and make things legal certainly wasn’t one of them. “I want to marry you. Is that so terrible?”
“You don’t just want marriage, though. You want kids. That’s something I can’t agree to until I know what’s happening with Missy. I might be raising two kids this time next year. For me, that’s plenty.”
“But they’re not our kids. Don’t you want your own baby?”
Planting his feet on the hardwood floor, he rose and loosened the tie around his neck. “At this point…no.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gasping, Beth felt as if she’d just been thrown off a cliff. “You really don’t want kids?” She stood and walked around the bed so she could face him.
“Don’t be like this, Beth.” He dropped his tie and squeezed her tight shoulders.
“This is big.”
“I’m not saying we won’t ever have kids. Just not in the foreseeable future.”
Her head throbbed and for once, she wouldn’t let his massage distract her. “I need some time to think.”
Racing downstairs, she grabbed her coat and purse, then rushed out to her car. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she had to get away.
After driving around aimlessly for thirty minutes, she found herself parked in front of Sarah’s yellow house on a cul-de-sac across town. A child’s bike sat in the driveway and a homemade pinecone and peanut butter bird feeder swung in a nearby red-leafed maple tree. The only thing missing was a white picket fence. Beth checked herself in the rearview mirror. Her face was a little blotchy. She used her fingers to straighten her dishwater blonde hair and walked up to the front porch. A dog barked in the backyard as she rang the bell.
A Weekend Getaway Page 13
