Emma has finished the crackers and is working on the candy bar. She eats fast, without looking up, hardly pausing to chew. She has a spot of chocolate on her chin. I stare at her, the facts slowly sinking in: she’s here, she’s alive, she’s safe. Her hair is lighter now, her skin is browner, she is taller and too thin. But she is Emma. I go over to the chair. When I put my hand on her face, she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move toward me, just stops mid-chew.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She lifts a hand to her face, and her dress rises higher on her legs. She’s so thin.
I hug her carefully, and she leans into me. “You’re safe now. We’re taking you home.”
For a moment, it seems as if she’s going to cry again. But then she wriggles out of my arms and says, “Can I watch TV?”
“Of course.”
I turn on the TV and hand her the remote. She flips past The Road Runner, Sesame Street dubbed in Spanish, and finally settles on a Spanish-language soap opera. She watches it for fifteen minutes, mesmerized. I sit on the bed with the phone in my lap, waiting. Every now and then Emma mumbles something to the TV. She knows all the characters by name.
When the phone rings, both of us jump. I’m not sure I’m ready for everything that will happen now.
“Abby?”
It’s Jake. After all this time, he still has the ability to calm me with his voice, simply by saying my name. “Your message said it was urgent.”
I am aware of the fact that I’m about to step over a line, aware that my words will set a whole new chain of events in motion. “I have news, Jake.”
I can tell by the dead quiet on the other end of the line that Jake doesn’t believe me. He’s waiting to hear about some flimsy new clue, some unconvincing piece of evidence.
“She’s here,” I say.
Silence.
“What?”
“I’m sitting in a hotel room in Costa Rica. Emma’s here. In the room with me.” There’s a pause, a long moment of disbelief. “It’s true,” I say. “Emma really is here.”
A shriek and a sob, and, “Oh my God. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not possible,” he says. “Let me talk to her.” Even as he says it, I can tell he doesn’t believe that Emma will actually come on the line, doesn’t believe this phone call is real.
Emma’s still staring at the television, chewing her fingernails.
“Sweetheart?” I say.
She mutes the TV and looks at me. “Is it Daddy?”
“Yes. He wants to talk to you.”
We’re sitting knee to knee—her in the chair, me on the bed. I hand her the phone. “Hello,” she says quietly.
I’m leaning in close, and I can hear Jake on the other end. “Emma? Baby, is it you?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“I can’t believe it’s you.”
“Daddy?” she says again. “Why aren’t you here?”
“I’m coming to get you, baby. I missed you so much.”
“Hurry.”
She holds the phone out to me, as if it’s some alien object that might bite or blow up. She has that same stunned expression she had on the bus.
“Tell me she’s okay,” Jake says. He’s sobbing so loudly the words come out garbled.
“She is.”
“Oh God.” He’s laughing, crying, trying to catch his breath. “Where was she? How did you find her?”
“On a beach. I was just walking down the beach, and she was there.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. I won’t believe it until I see her.”
“You need to get on a plane,” I say. “Call back as soon as you have your ticket.”
He’s crying and laughing, breathing fast. “I don’t want to break the connection. I’m afraid I’ll wake up. This is a dream, right?”
“It’s not a dream. She’s really here.”
“Tell me what she looks like. Is she okay? Has she changed?”
Emma is sitting with her legs up in the chair, her arms around her knees, staring at me with those green eyes, her hair long and wild. Her shoulders are slightly pink, and she’s wearing an ankle bracelet—a thin silver chain with a tiny heart charm. I’ve never seen the bracelet before. Was it a gift from Lisbeth? I wonder. How many trips did she make to Costa Rica, bearing cheap gifts and complicated lies?
“She’s beautiful,” I say. “Totally beautiful.”
“Let me talk to her again. I can’t believe this is happening.”
I hand Emma the phone. She turns away from me and stares out the window, phone to her ear. She sits there, listening and nodding, occasionally saying yes or no. Once, she even utters something that comes close to a laugh. “I miss you,” she says at one point. “They said you were going to move here and we could live together. I kept waiting.”
This time, I can’t hear what Jake is saying on the other end. After about ten minutes, she hands the phone to me again.
“Abby?” Jake says.
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.” He pauses to catch his breath. “Where has she been? Who was she with?”
“She was with the couple from the van, that’s all I know.”
“You were right,” he says. “It’s incredible. All along, you were right. You’re sure she’s okay? No one hurt her?”
“Yes,” I say. “She’s really okay.”
The truth is, I don’t know for sure. Emma seems fine, but there’s no telling what happened to her in the past year. No telling what kind of life she had with Teddy and Jane, no calculating the long-term effects.
“Just let me say goodbye to her. I can’t believe this.”
I hand Emma the phone one more time. “Bye, Daddy,” she says then. And for a moment, just an instant, it is as if she was never gone. The way she says goodbye to him, as if we’re just away on vacation. As if this is an ordinary phone call on some ordinary day.
“There’s one thing,” I say, before hanging up.
“What?”
“Lisbeth. Don’t say anything to Lisbeth.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“She’s been here, Jake. I don’t have any details, but I know she’s been here.”
“God,” he says. “I should have known.” I hear a thud on the other end of the line, like a fist hitting a wall. “I can’t believe she sat here in my goddamn house and I didn’t figure it out. I can’t believe I trusted her.”
“She put on a good act.”
“I’ll call Sherburne on my way to the airport,” he says.
There’s noise on his end of the line—a zipper, keys. I imagine him in his bedroom, packing his messenger bag for the trip—wallet, passport, cell phone charger.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much. Tell Emma I love her. Tell her I’ll be there very soon.”
Putting the phone down, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. As if every moment for the past year has been leading up to this one, singular event: the phone call to Jake, when I tell him everything’s okay.
“I’m still hungry,” Emma says.
“Then let’s eat.” I dial the front desk and order room service. Two hamburguesas with extra cheese, papas fritos, chocolate milk, and two Cokes.
Half an hour later the food arrives, and Emma tears into it as if she hasn’t eaten in days. She eats her entire hamburger and half of mine, plus most of the french fries. She eats for twenty minutes, not talking, then puts the meager leftovers in the trash and says, “May I have my bath now?”
“Of course.”
I go into the small bathroom and run the water for her. When I come out into the room, she’s already completely undressed, standing in front of the television with her hands on her hips, waiting.
“Your water’s ready,” I say, feeling strangely formal, as if Emma is a guest I don’t quite know how to please.
“Thank
you.”
As she brushes past me into the bathroom, I notice a purple bruise in the small of her back. My breath catches. Is this just an ordinary bruise, the kind children get every day, or did someone do this to her? She climbs into the tub and concentrates on tearing the paper off the tiny bar of soap. I sit on the edge of the tub and hand her a washcloth, searching her body for more bruises. Thank God, I don’t see any.
“Honey, how often do you take a bath?”
She dunks the washcloth in the water and begins to soap her arms. The dirt comes off in streaks. “Teddy says we don’t need to because we swim in the ocean every day.”
“You swim? You’re not afraid?”
“I was at first, but I’m not anymore. Teddy bought me a boogie board so I could learn how to surf. It was fun.”
“Do you like Teddy, sweetheart?”
“He’s okay. Jane is mean, though.”
“Mean how?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Just mean. She always fussed at me about every little thing. Sometimes she spanked me.”
The anger fills me up, and I try not to think about the thousands of ways they might have mistreated her. I try instead to concentrate on her beautiful face, the little soap bubbles gathering on her shoulders, her arms.
“Would you like for me to wash your hair?” I ask.
“Yes.”
She slides her feet down to the end of the tub, lies down, closes her eyes, and dunks her head underwater. She stays under for a few seconds too long—and I remember how she used to hate to put her face underwater, how she couldn’t stand to hold her breath. Just as I’m about to reach down and bring her up, she lifts her head, gasping. Water streams down her shoulders, and her hair is plastered to her back. I squirt shampoo into my palms, then place my hands on her head, so carefully. At the moment of contact she jerks her head away—an instinct, an unconscious response—then, just as quickly, she relaxes.
As Emma leans her head back into my hands, I’m struck by a memory from childhood: Annabel is an infant, and my mother is bathing her in a blue plastic tub. My mother takes my hand in her own and places it on Annabel’s soapy head. Annabel’s hair is fine beneath my fingers, her skin as soft as felt. I couldn’t have been more than three years old, and yet the memory is as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
The phone rings. It’s Jake, elated, calling with details of his flight. He makes me take the phone into the bathroom so he can talk to Emma again.
This is it. The end of the search. The end of the nightmare. I want to believe that it will also be a kind of beginning—for me and Jake, for Emma, for the family we once planned to be.
In the tub, Emma has her head underwater, blowing bubbles. I realize, watching her, that there are so many ways we’ll have to get to know her again.
“You’re turning into a prune,” I say. “Ready to get out?”
She stands and holds her arms up. I wrap the towel around her. “Are you sleepy?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“We don’t have a nightgown, so we’ll have to make do.”
I fashion my sarong into a dress for myself and give Emma my T-shirt to sleep in. It’s not exactly clean, but it will do. She holds her arms up in the air so I can slip the shirt over her head, then she climbs into the bed. I tuck her in and lie on top of the covers beside her, watching her sleep. Touching her hair, her shoulders, her beautiful face. Still not believing. Still trying to take it in. I’m so tired, but I don’t close my eyes; I can’t stop looking at her.
At two a.m., the phone rings. “Abby Mason?” an unfamiliar voice says.
“Yes.”
“Wiggins here. Just got your message. Sorry to call so late.”
“You don’t know how happy I am to hear from you.” I go over to the chair by the window and speak as quietly as possible.
“Don’t get too excited yet. I’m actually in Honduras right now, but I’ve made arrangements to come back to Costa Rica tomorrow morning. Nick told me the story a while back. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d find her. Weird things happen, huh? I just contacted our people in San Francisco and had them fax the forensic sketches to me. They’ve talked to Emma’s father and are bringing the ex-wife in now. What I need you to do is tell me how you found her. Did you see her kidnappers?”
“No, but I got their first names, Teddy and Jane.”
I tell him the whole story. It comes out in a rush, a jumble of breathless sentences. “They’re driving a yellow van,” I say.
“Where do you think I might find it?”
“They were at Playa Espadilla earlier today, but that was hours ago.”
“I’ll send some people out to Manuel Antonio right away. Can you be reached at this number tomorrow?”
“I’m taking Emma to the airport at seven a.m. to meet her father. I haven’t thought beyond that.”
“I’ll send somebody over to escort you to the airport in the morning. He’ll deal with any issues you run into there. Emma can go home, but you’re going to need to stay in the country for a few days, maybe longer. When we find these two, you’ll have to make an ID.”
Not if, but when. His confidence is reassuring. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much.”
78
AN INHUMAN shriek awakes me, followed by other shrieks, a cacophony of them, just outside our window.
“The howler monkeys,” Emma says, opening her eyes and stretching. Her brown skin is damp from sweat. Despite the noisy air conditioner, the heat is stifling. Last night, I lay awake for hours, staring at the miracle of her. At some point I fell asleep. Now, once again, I am struck by the beautiful impossibility of her presence.
The clock says 6:15. “Time to get up,” I say. “We’re going to the airport.”
“Now?” she asks.
“Very soon.”
“And Daddy will be there?”
“Yes.”
She looks at me warily, as if she isn’t sure she can believe me.
Twenty minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. I peek out the curtain to see a young guy, striking Italian features, no more than twenty-seven.
“Who is it?” I ask through the door.
“Wiggins sent me.”
I open the door.
“Name’s Panico,” the guy says, reaching out to shake my hand. “Mike Panico.” He looks over my shoulder into the room, where Emma stands barefoot, wearing the same dirty yellow dress she had on yesterday. “You must be Emma.”
She nods.
He smiles at her. “I understand a lot of people have been looking for you.”
At the airport, I buy Emma a new dress and sandals. The dress is slightly too big, the sandals slightly too small, but Emma does a little twirl, modeling the ensemble as if it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever worn.
Afterward, Panico takes us to a small room on the second floor. The room contains only a table and four chairs, all of which are bolted to the floor. Two of the chairs have circular metal bands on the sides, with keyholes for locks, and I realize that the bands are for locking down criminals. Beige paint is peeling from the walls.
Panico shuts the door and kneels down so that he’s eye level with Emma. “Looks like you’re going home. What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get there?”
“I want a hamburger and chocolate shake from Cable Car Joe’s.”
“I don’t blame you,” he says. “It’s impossible to get a good burger in this country.”
Emma smiles, and I feel myself relaxing. Panico reaches into his jacket and pulls out a coloring book and crayons, which he sets on the table. “Do you like to color?”
She nods shyly.
“I used to love to color when I was a kid,” he says. “But I never had much talent for it.”
Emma sits down and begins flipping through the coloring book. I sit across from her. “El gato,” she says, pointing to a drawing of a cat. She selects a yellow crayon from the pack and begins to color. “Do you know Spanish?” s
he asks me.
“A little.”
She turns to Panico. “Do you?”
“Sí, señorita.” They exchange a few sentences in rapid Spanish, and he says something that makes her laugh. I can only make out the word pie, but even that may be a faulty translation.
Emma inserts Indigo into the sharpener on the back of the box and turns the crayon. Then she blows on the pointed tip, bows her head over her book, and sets to work on el gato’s water bowl. The waxy scent of crayons mixes with something else. The odor is coming from Emma; even though she bathed last night, she has taken on the slightly feral, salty-sweet smell of kids who aren’t properly cared for.
Panico moves his chair closer to her. “Can I ask you some questions, Emma?”
“I guess.”
“Where have you been staying?”
“Sometimes on the beach, sometimes in the van. Sometimes we go stay with Teddy and Jane’s friends.”
“Do you know where their friends live?”
“Different places.”
“Did they tell you how they know your mom?”
“Teddy is Mommy’s cousin,” Emma says. “Can I color now?”
Emma tugs at her ear, and I feel grateful for this small, recognizable gesture, this nervous habit she’s had as long as I’ve known her. She looks up at me, then Panico, and says, “Are Teddy and Jane in trouble?”
“We just need to find them to ask them some questions,” Panico says.
Emma returns to her coloring. Sitting here with her, I feel both elated and nervous. Gone is the easy camaraderie that had developed between us in the weeks before she went missing, and I’m still trying to discover what essential thing in her nature has changed. How much of this new Emma is simply the natural process of growing up, and how much of it is the result of spending so many months with her kidnappers?
A voice booms over the intercom, announcing arrivals and departures. Each time the speaker in the corner crackles to life, I hold my breath. Let the flight be late. Let Jake be delayed in customs. Just a little more time with her, a couple more hours, a few more minutes. Of course, I want Emma to see Jake. Of course, I’m excited about the reunion. But I’m dreading that moment when they step onto the plane, beginning the trip away from me.
The Year of Fog Page 33
