Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  A waitress shuffles to our table. She barely passes through the aisle. The tag on the distended chest of her uniform says Patricia. “If you’re gonna sit here, you gotta buy something,” she says in way of welcome.

  I decide that I like this place.

  “She’ll have the pancakes,” Sean says. “And I’ll have a coffee, black.”

  “I’ll have a coffee,” I snap.

  “You’ll have the pancakes.”

  I glower at him, but Patricia is already licking the tip of the pencil and jotting down the order. I watch her amble away, the ash from the tip of my cigarette tumbling right onto the Formica tabletop.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re practically shaking. When was the last time you ate anything?”

  I want to reply with something sarcastic except I genuinely can’t remember. Antidepressants really mess with your appetite.

  At the hospital, I started throwing up everything I ate to keep my stomach from growing. They force-fed me. And by the way, being fed with a tube through your nose really fucking hurts.

  The memory is like a live wire to the back of my neck. My upper lip breaks out in beads of sweat, and more of it slicks my chest and back under my T-shirt.

  “You should eat,” he says. “You’ll need the energy.”

  I loathe every part of that sentence with a fiery passion. Trying to assess possible escape routes, I throw a glance over my shoulder.

  Patricia comes back and plunks down two chipped mugs before sliding a heaping plate of pancakes in front of me. Steam billows above it, and the smell of grease and sugar is overpowering. The coffee is a black oil slick with some kind of thin film floating on top. My stomach clenches even as my mouth reflexively fills with saliva.

  I’m too aware of Sean’s eyes on me when I grab the fork and start to pick apart the closest pancake, chipping away tiny pieces that soak up the syrup at the bottom of the plate.

  If this shit touches my tongue, I’m going to puke.

  I notice he doesn’t drink his coffee.

  “Why did you go by yourself? You should have called me first.”

  I shrug. “Isn’t that what you told me to do?”

  “I didn’t think you’d go at all, to be honest. Not without being forced to.”

  “Why not?” I have a good guess why not. Truth is, he had no reason to think I would go, after all the horrible things I said last night.

  He gives a solemn nod. “So you do care.”

  I choke on the tiny bite of pancake I’d tried to force down. “I’m human, Sean. I can regret I gave birth to her, but it doesn’t mean…” My throat goes dry. I don’t know how I manage to push out the words. “It doesn’t mean she deserves…that.”

  He shakes his head. “No one deserves that.” His sad gaze is unflinching on mine.

  “I didn’t deserve it.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were a child. And so is she.”

  We sit in silence. The steam coming off the food gradually fades as the grease starts to congeal at the bottom of the plate.

  “Is it him?” I ask. “Just tell me the truth. Do you know something? Is it the same…person?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “I already told you. We have no leads whatsoever.”

  “There was never another girl,” I blurt. His eyes narrow, and something changes about his posture. The moment I see it, I fervently wish I could take it back, rewind just this one moment. But the words are already out, so I have no choice but to go on and say the rest of it while he sits there and looks at me like I’m about to confess to God knows what.

  “There wasn’t another girl. In ten years. No one of the right age or…type.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” He lowers his voice, and the raspy note in it scrapes against my eardrums.

  “I’ve…I’ve looked up all the AMBER Alerts, all the missing girls.” I gulp. “For the last…ten years or so. I…I haven’t always been able to keep up to date, but…”

  “Laine,” he exhales. “Jesus.”

  “She fits the description,” I say. Determined, it seems, to slam the last nail in that coffin lid. “She’s ten. And she’s…”

  “Don’t you think we have professionals working on this?”

  “And so far it’s doing wonders.”

  “That’s not how it works. It’s not the same MO.”

  “You don’t know how he kidnapped me. No one even knows when.”

  “I’m aware. Your mother got arrested, and only then social services found out you were missing.” He rubs his temples, and I notice him eyeing the pack of smokes I’d purposefully left halfway between us.

  “You were most likely chosen because you wouldn’t be missed for a while, if at all,” he says levelly. “Because you were an easy target.”

  “And Olivia, she was anything but.”

  He gives a slow nod. “He had to have known there would be a highly publicized search.”

  “It could have been impulsive. That’s how a lot of them tick, isn’t it? They just see their type of victim and—” I choke on my own words. She’s not a type and not a victim; she’s a person. She has a name and parents who miss her.

  “Not a chance,” Sean says grimly. “The school had security. Olivia didn’t just run amok all day. She had a stay-at-home mother, an aunt who watched her, and a nanny. She was never alone for longer than a few minutes. So whoever it was had spent a long time researching, scoping her out. He had to have studied the school, the blind spots of the surveillance cameras. Olivia’s schedule. He can’t not have known who she was or what would inevitably happen if she disappeared.”

  “So it could have been someone who knew the family.”

  “That was my first thought. Someone who wanted to cause them harm, or even a ransom situation—but we would have heard from the kidnappers by now. But none of the leads added up to anything substantial. Both parents have solid alibis—the father was in meetings from seven a.m. till late into the evening; the mother had an appointment with a landscape designer for their summer home. The aunt drove straight to the school from her last class at the university, like she always did when she picked up her niece. Except when she got there…”

  “But it’s not likely,” I say hoarsely. “It’s not likely that it was…the same man.”

  “Trust me, this was the last possibility I wanted to consider. But it’s been a week and I’ve ruled out everything else. Besides…it’s just too big of a coincidence.” He meets my gaze and holds it, waiting for me to flinch away, to betray something—as if I had anything to betray. “Don’t you think?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Silence crackles over our heads. All the sounds of the diner, the drunken giggling at the other table, the hum of heat lamps over immobile rows of French fries, all recede into the background.

  “Laine, they’re going to reopen your case.”

  The words are like a slap that knocks all the chaotic thoughts right out of my head. “What?”

  “Reexamine all the evidence. Maybe they missed something, something that could lead us to him. Give us a clue, no matter how remote.” For the first time, he voluntarily looks away. “I know what you must be thinking.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you do.” My mouth stretches in an ugly scowl. “My case has been cold for nearly a decade, and no one gave a shit.”

  “I know, okay?” He slams his hands down on the table, making the coffee cups jump. “I’ve been a cop for longer than that. You think I haven’t seen enough of this? I’ve seen it, and I know it, and I’m as frustrated about it as you are but I’m just one person. I can’t change anything.”

  “Frustrated?” I spit. “You’re frustrated? They locked me away and forced me to have my rapist’s child. And never really bothered to look for the guy, just waited for him to do it to someone else. Because what does another brown girl from a bad neighborhood matter anyway? And you’re frustrated. Well, that�
��s a comfort.”

  I collapse into my seat, utterly drained. Hearing my own words was like tearing off an old scab, almost healed, so I thought I wouldn’t feel anything, and now I’m sore and bleeding all over again.

  “Laine…I just want you to be ready in case they come to ask you more questions.”

  “I already told them everything I knew. Ten years ago.” I grab for my pack of smokes, shakily light another one, breathe it in till my vision swims with black splotches, let it out. Instead of helping, it only makes me more jittery. It’s not a smoke I need. “I haven’t remembered anything new since then. And believe me, I tried.”

  Without a word, he reaches for my pack, takes out a cigarette, and lights it. His eyelids flutter as he inhales. His shoulders droop in relief.

  I can’t even think of anything snarky to say. I just watch him exhale the smoke, take another drag, and then tap the ashes into the ashtray with a familiar, practiced movement.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to keep you out of this,” he says, “but you have to understand. There’s only so much I can do.”

  “What—”

  “I spoke to your former boss, Laine. To Charlene at the Bounty Basket.”

  My indignant exclamation gets stuck in my throat, and heat floods my face, painful, humiliating. My complexion may hide it from him, but I can’t hide it from myself. Like an animal caught in a trap, I tense up, spikes and spines at the ready, no matter how hopeless the situation. The words teem at the tip of my tongue. What did that bitch tell you? It’s all a bunch of lies. She’s just petty and jealous. She’s always on my case. Fuck her, seriously, fuck her and her shitty store and her so-called charity operation.

  “I know she fired you yesterday morning. After you left your cash register without telling anyone and didn’t come back…”

  “I did,” I interject. “I said I was going for a smoke. I asked the other girl to fill in for me. She must have—”

  “For two hours.” Sean’s gaze doesn’t waver from my face. “And when you did come back, you were, as Charlene put it, intoxicated. You smelled like alcohol and couldn’t walk straight.”

  “She just needed an excuse to get rid of me,” I mutter. “She always had it out for me, from the start.”

  “She said it was your third strike. She really wanted to give you a chance, like she does for all her kids…”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “And she hasn’t told your social worker yet. Because she doesn’t want you to get in trouble.”

  I’m the one who drops my gaze. I already know what’s coming.

  “You know what else she told me? Your strike two was just a week earlier, when you showed up for work late and drunk, at eight in the morning. It looked like you’d been out all night, she said. You know what day that was?”

  I say nothing, but I know the answer.

  “It was the day Olivia disappeared.”

  “Have you—”

  “I haven’t told anyone. Yet. But I’ll have to, you realize that, right?”

  I start to get out of my seat with the intention to leave, but he grabs my arm right above the wrist and forces me to sit back down.

  “I just want you to be ready for when they pick your entire life apart minute by minute. And if it keeps going as it is, they will. Not just the police, the press too. And if you tell me, right now, without lying or fibbing or omitting things, what they’re going to find when they do, maybe I can help you.”

  Looking into his eyes, I can almost believe it.

  “They’ll try to make you look, and sound, as guilty as possible. They’ll try to make you crack, behave as if you have something to hide. And then the truth will matter less and less.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I already got a preview.”

  “It’ll get much worse than that. So if you have anything to tell me, do it now.”

  The silence is punctuated only by the hiss of a deep fryer somewhere in the kitchen and the steady rush of running water.

  He looks so tired all of a sudden; I almost feel sorry for him, and maybe it’s the lighting, but he looks older than his age—very late thirties, early forties maybe. I never asked. With another deep sigh, he crushes his cigarette into the ashtray then does the same with mine that’s still idling on the edge, a barely there wisp of smoke rising from the ashen tip. I still haven’t said anything.

  “I’ll do everything I can to keep you out of this. But I can’t protect you from it altogether, do you understand?”

  “I don’t think there’s a way to do that.” I eye my cigarette, crushed and twisted out of shape, a total loss. “I’m involved, one way or another.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “Yes, I do. It’s not because she’s…she’s mine. If she were any other ten-year-old girl, I’d still be involved.” I lean across the table and lower my voice. “That man broke me, Sean. He destroyed my life. If he does that to anyone else, I’m involved.”

  I follow him out of the diner, to his car. The world has a soft, cloudy quality. I barely notice that he’s got his arm around my shoulders, helping me keep upright. He holds the door open for me this time, no shoving me in like I’m a criminal. I flop on the seat gracelessly and pull my legs up.

  “I’m driving you home,” he says as he starts the engine.

  “You don’t know my address.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I stare at the ripped knees of my jeans—not fashionably distressed, but regular old worn-out ripped—and pick out little threads that I twist between my fingertips. “Of course you do. You probably have my entire life story in a neat little folder, don’t you?”

  “I’m a detective. So yeah.”

  He sounds sad. I look up, but his gaze is on the road.

  He pulls up to my building, and it’s not ten a.m. yet. My neighborhood is peacefully asleep after another night of debauchery. It’s about the safest time of day to be here, but he insists on walking me to my door.

  I don’t look at him as I fumble with my keys—only to realize the front door lock is broken again. I swing the door open with a creak and look at him quizzically.

  “I can walk up two floors by myself,” I say.

  “Hold on.” His hand brushes my upper arm. It only lasts a moment, and I don’t know why, but I stop.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I shouldn’t have vanished.”

  At first I don’t understand what he’s talking about. When he meets my blank gaze and I finally clue in, it’s like claws across my heart. Heat rises to my face.

  “I should have at least visited you. At the hospital. Sent you a teddy bear or something.”

  “I was too old for teddy bears.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Do I? “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I say in a toneless voice. “So don’t worry about it.”

  “Maybe not, but I acted like a coward.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I never thought of you much after that night.”

  Liar, liar.

  “You didn’t have anyone. I could have at least—”

  “Will you stop?” I snap, tearing the fragile fabric of the moment to shreds. “Please. It’s not necessary.”

  “Ella,” he says. My other name, not the one on my IDs or my hospital files or my criminal record. A shudder courses down between my shoulder blades.

  “That girl doesn’t exist anymore. I’m someone else now.”

  “Laine.”

  I manage to smile. “Yeah.”

  He’s disappointed, I can tell. He expected something more from me, but what? I didn’t cause this. It’s not my fault—the refrain I’d lived my life to for the last ten years, sung by a chorus of social workers and shrinks and cops. I was just a child. It wasn’t up to me. Someone else didn’t care enough; someone else didn’t do their job. And now here we are: me a completely fucked-up shell of a person and my daughter just…gone.

  People li
ke my kidnapper don’t stop until they’re stopped. And I never remembered a damn thing that could stop him. For the last ten years, I knew it was only a matter of time before he did it to someone else, and then, like it or not, it would be on me.

  But why? Why did it have to be her? She was supposed to have a good life. And now she’s going to turn out like me.

  “I’ll cooperate,” I say. “With the investigation, I mean, if you need me to. I’ll repeat everything I already told them, if it helps.”

  He’s so close, close enough to touch. All I’d have to do is reach out.

  “I appreciate it.” He lowers his head. His eyelashes cast spiky shadows down his cheekbones, like jagged stars. “I know it’s such a meaningless, empty thing to say, but it’s true. It means a lot. Not just to me.”

  His eyes are tired and a touch sad, but the corners of his mouth are smiling ever so subtly. “You still have my card, right?”

  I do. But I don’t nod, don’t say a word. My eyes are drinking in all the details, filling the gaps where memory and imagination failed: the pattern of stubble on his chin, the slant of his eyelids, the subtle lines already etched between his dark, full brows. Those lines deepen when he catches my gaze in his.

  “Yes,” I reply, wincing at the sound of my own voice that grounds this moment in harsh reality. “I have the card.”

  “Good. Call me if you need anything. I mean anything. Even if it’s four thirty a.m. on a Sunday and you just feel like talking.” The smile widens a little, without losing its sadness.

  With my gaze still lost in the intricacies of his face, I freeze, overcome with an inexplicable feeling. Out of instinct—that instinct normal girls have down to an art form—I lean forward, my chin tilted at just the right angle so his face is level with mine. In a split second, as my lips align with his, I know with absolute certainty that he’s about to lean in and kiss me.

  Nothing happens. I let my eyelids flutter closed, then open again, and he hasn’t moved an inch.

  “You sure you don’t want me to walk you up?”

  “Yeah.” My breath escapes in a rush. “I’m fine.”

  I turn around and race up the stairs. Flee is a better word. By the time I emerge onto the landing, my heart hammers like I just ran up ten floors, not two, and my face is on fire. What the hell was I thinking? Who am I to him anyway?