Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  “You had someone follow me?”

  “No. Peter Lyons phoned me after you left.”

  Oh.

  “We’re going to talk about this,” he says. “I’m coming over.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m going to check out.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You have nowhere to go,” he says, like it’s an obvious fact. And I can’t argue, because he’s right. My situation is even worse than he knows.

  “Where is she? Where’s Valerie? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  And then something unexpected, a silence. A heavy, tense silence that lasts for barely the space of a breath, but I feel it nonetheless.

  “Did she contact you? Today, yesterday?”

  “I thought you had everyone’s phone records at your fingertips. Where is she? You’re not going to keep hiding her from me. I’ll find her anyway, and she’ll answer my questions.”

  “Laine, I don’t know where she is. I swear.” I gulp, wary, trying to discern the notes of another manipulation, his dishonesty. “Not since last night.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She was at my place. But while I was away, she took all her things and left.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Where would you go if you were a relapsed addict with something to hide and lots of people to hide from? Even in a city like Seattle, there are only a handful of places.

  A couple of years ago, right before I took the job at the club, I had no place to live for a week or so and no friends to stay with—well, at least no one I’d trust to watch me sleep every night. Short of homeless shelters, which are permanently over capacity and filled with the kind of people you also don’t want to sleep in the same room with, I found myself with the last of my cash at a motel near the airport. The administration turned out to be a lot less exacting than the landlords at the apartment buildings I visited, who didn’t think I’d make a trustworthy tenant. In fact, the short, hirsute man behind the counter told me that for a little extra cost I wouldn’t have to present any ID at all. Not that it wasn’t already clear to me what kind of place this was.

  On the second day, the neon sign of Silver Bullet Gentlemen’s Club, with its phallic blinking bullet logo, was becoming more than an annoyance that glared even through closed blinds. I still couldn’t get an apartment without a giant deposit, and my deposit money wasn’t exactly growing with forty bucks per night draining away into the pockets of the hotel manager. A girl lived two doors from me, and she told me she was in from out of town to work over the long weekend—and to bring some work with her after hours, since the room was already paid for and all. She got me in as a shooter girl because the long weekend required extra staff at the last second. There I met Natalia, who taught me the basics of tending bar. I had my deposit within a couple of weeks.

  In spite of everything, I’d managed to sleep till noon, and by the time I get there, the club is already open for business. The sight of it makes my stomach twist, because there’s no going back to my old job now. The sign has been on since eleven thirty for the lunch shift, and in the light of day, the dusty neons have a sad look to them. The whole place looks permanently coated in dust, the burgundy-colored sheet paneling covering the windows, the early nineties pinup photos behind plastic, the kitschy font advertising lap dances (the price has stayed the same since the late eighties—apparently, strip joints are the one place that’s inflation-proof). I turn away from it and drive to the motel across the mostly empty parking lot.

  It’s one of the three or four similar places strewn across the concrete lots that stretch for miles, too close to the airport to build fancy overpriced condos, too close to the residential areas to build factories or refineries. Motels, a strip mall, and a smattering of semiabandoned buildings are scattered like LEGOs, squat and lonely. The door marked Administration is half-open, and some outdated pop music is playing on a scratchy radio station. There’s a new person behind the counter, a woman, and she barely spares me a glance until I come up to her counter and ask about a Sarah Lyons. My mother is probably not using her name, but I figure it’s worth a try. I figure wrong, because the woman doesn’t even attempt to look at the humidity-bloated logbook in front of her before telling me there’s no one by that name here.

  With a sigh, I slip a bill across the counter. She lowers her plastic-wrapped sandwich without taking a bite.

  “What’d you want with her?” she asks, pocketing the money.

  “She’s my mother,” I say bluntly, eliciting a throaty chuckle from her. I groan inwardly and describe her, at least as well as I remember. The woman gives me a pitying look.

  “She has a mark,” I add. This part I remember clearly. “Here.” I draw a short, broken line across my temple.

  The woman gives me a peculiar look. The only sound is the staticky Christina Aguilera song circa 2002 on the radio. “Where is she?” I ask. “It’s important.”

  “Look, sweetie,” the woman starts, but I’m not listening anymore. I storm out of the office, letting the door swing shut behind me.

  “Valerie?” I yell. Where the fuck are you, Valerie? Come here so I can gouge your eyes out, you bitch. I storm past the identical motel doors, pounding on each as I go. “Valerie, I know you’re here. Come out.”

  Behind the thin plywood doors, reluctant noises start to stir up, steps, muffled exclamations, impressive strings of swear words. A couple of doors open, faces peering out. But none of them are hers. I turn the corner around the U shape of the motel and only have time to glimpse a door shutting, slamming hard. Across from it is a car, and as soon as I see it, knowledge races through my veins like ice water.

  It’s out of place here. Too nice, even though it hasn’t been washed in ages, a thick coating of mud and Seattle black dust clinging to the once-shiny paint. A large black SUV, dark windshield, with a dent in the front bumper.

  Nausea and anger twist together in my guts. I cross the distance in a few bounds, raise my fist to pound on the motel door then, unexplainably, take the door handle instead. It turns without resistance.

  The room is pitch-black in that first moment, and I hover on the threshold, expecting anything.

  “Close the door,” says her voice. I recognize it at once, the voice that answered Sean’s phone. Except now it has that smoker’s rasp in it again, like she’s coming down from a weeklong bender. Like in the good old days.

  I feel along the wall and flip the light switch. Only once the light of the ceiling lamp fills every corner of the small room do I shut the door behind me. I think about it and turn the lock. We’re going to want to talk in private.

  “Did you do it?” I ask. “Do you have her?”

  Valerie shakes her head.

  “Please don’t lie. Why would you do that? You never wanted her. You never wanted me, come to think of it.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she says. “Please, Ella, I’m a victim in all this just like you are.”

  “You have some nerve.”

  She gives a wry smile. The overhead light in the room is meant to be flattering, or at least to hide pockmarks and track marks, but I see that the mark on her temple is even more serious than I remember. It’s a little canyon in her skin, which is smoother than it should be, considering her former lifestyle. I guess the last decade has been good to her. She’s put on weight, but it suits her. She still has that wedge haircut with grown-out blond highlights. I notice with a certain amount of glee that the scar on her temple tugs the corner of her eye down just a little, throwing her face out of symmetry. So she actually looks like what she is.

  “What did you tell your husband about it?” I ask.

  “That I got mugged.” The wry smile widens. “Hear me out, please.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your face.”

  “And we’re not going to talk about it. Just tell me one thing.”

  “You’re not the one asking questions,” I say, bristling.

  “Just one thing, Ella. On
ce and for all. What do you remember?”

  ELLA

  She wakes up to a presence in her room but doesn’t have the time to be frightened.

  It’s the smell that sets off a chain reaction in her memory, familiar and yet new: cigarettes, a sour note of bad breath, but now there are other smells to mask it. Soap, shampoo, perfume. A too-strong, synthetic smell of flowers floats over it all. She opens her eyes, at last, and sees where it’s coming from, a large bouquet of carnations, and behind it, a familiar face emerges wearing a grin that frays at the edges. Valerie. Mom.

  “Hi, baby. How are you doing?”

  She busies herself pouring cloudy water into a mason jar and snipping the flower stems with a pair of scissors from her purse before plunking the blooms down into the container. She leaves the scissors lying next to the jar on the windowsill. All the while she talks, talks, talks, too much and too fast for Ella to follow.

  The flowers are the kind that you buy in a subway tunnel or a gas station, carnations dyed purple, their petals already edged in decay, with white flecks of baby’s breath and pointy green ferns, all wrapped in crinkly paper covered with red hearts.

  “Listen, baby, there’s no point trying to hide it from you: I’m going to jail. You won’t see me for a while. You know what that means?” Her mother’s voice drops to a scratchy whisper. “You’ll be a ward of the state. You won’t be able to keep her regardless.”

  It takes Ella a moment to understand, because this is the first time she learns that it’s a “her.” She watches expressions shift across her mother’s face.

  “And these are good people, Ella. Very good people. She’ll be better off with them.”

  Ella closes her eyes, hoping against hope that the woman will be gone when she opens them again, just another half daydream conjured up by her feverish mind. But even with her eyelids closed tight, she feels her presence on the other side, hears the rustle as she shuffles from one foot to the other.

  “Go on. Don’t just lie there. Say something. Jesus.”

  Reluctant, Ella opens her eyes to meet her mother’s demanding glare. She doesn’t say anything; her head is as empty of words as a clear glass jar.

  “You know what? Fine,” the woman says in a low growl. “Nobody needs your agreement anyway. You’re a minor, and you don’t get a say. I only came here to tell you, not to ask you. And because I wanted to see you before I went away. I don’t know when I’m getting out. Not that you care, by the look of it.”

  Ella dully wonders what she did to provoke the surge of anger that crackles underneath the woman’s thin skin. She knows that when someone’s angry, it’s because of something she said or did or because she made a wrong move at a wrong time. So the solution is to stay still and silent, which is exactly what she does.

  The woman runs her hands through her hair, which is a different color than Ella remembers. It used to be light brown, and now it’s brittle blond, with wispy bangs over her eyes.

  “Damn. Ella, I don’t know what to say. It has to be like this, okay? I can’t help it. There’s nothing I can do. I’m signing the papers, and that’s it. God knows you’ll have enough to worry about besides this.”

  She leans forward, drowning Ella in the perfume-and-smoke smell that’s familiar and unfamiliar at once. The scratchy wool of the scarf around her neck brushes Ella’s face as she leans closer and affixes a sticky kiss on her hairline. Ella takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the scent, then twists her neck to see the pair of dollar-store scissors with plastic handles still sitting on the windowsill next to the carnations.

  All she has to do is reach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I can’t do this.” Valerie throws up her hands in exasperation. “Do you know what this thing already did to me? Why would I take her, for God’s sake? She had wonderful parents.”

  “Has,” I correct. “And believe me, I’d rather you had taken her, if it were up to me. But it isn’t. And you were too strung out to even report me missing on time so…”

  “And I’m sorry for that,” she says, on autopilot. I get the feeling she’s said these words a few too many times in the last week. “Believe me, if I could take it back, I would.”

  I imagine her showing up on Sean’s doorstep with that pitiful expression, begging him to help her. Still, for the life of me, I don’t know why he did. Nobody can be gullible enough to fall for this act.

  “You do realize this is probably the same person, don’t you?” I take a perverse pleasure in watching her cringe.

  “Oh? And so you think it’s somehow my fault?” She’s speaking without force or conviction, like this is what she thinks she’s expected to say. Something about her flat, resigned tone puts me on my guard. “Or better, that it wouldn’t have happened if I’d—”

  “If you didn’t leave us both in the care of the state. Yeah.”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “Do you even hear yourself? That’s complete bullshit.”

  “You’ll say just about anything, won’t you? As long as you don’t have to take any responsibility for what you did. You think I don’t know? Sean told me.” The lie is seamless, and I know I hit something when what little color there is drains out of her face. I wait, not saying a word, and the thrum of my own heartbeat is so loud I’m afraid she’ll hear it and know I’m bluffing. But the shadows fall away from her face, and her cheeks glisten with wet tear tracks. The church-mom look has become a grotesque mask.

  “Then it can’t have been the same person, okay?” she explodes. “You may have been my fault, but this wasn’t. Can’t have been. She was kidnapped. And you were—”

  She stumbles over the last syllable and goes silent. “It had nothing to do with me.”

  I take a small step forward. “Valerie.”

  “You have any idea how hard it is?” When she looks up, her eyes are bloodshot. “To try and get your shit together when you have a kid. Try getting a job when you can’t pay for a babysitter. No man ever sticks around.”

  “Yeah? Maybe your meth lesions had something to do with that.”

  She cringes. “You fucked up my life, Ella.”

  “I fucked up your life? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. Without you around, I had a chance in hell to pull myself together.” Her face twists in a grimace. “I was a different person back then. I just thought, about damn time you were earning your keep.”

  The words hang in the air between us as I struggle to understand. But my mind simply fails, coming up against the insurmountable wall I’ve built, a wall behind which I had to lock away everything that happened in the basement, everything that happened after. A wall that had allowed me to stay sane, more or less. Until now.

  “You have to understand,” she half sobs. “I had a problem, baby. A big problem. I wasn’t myself when I did it. It was the drugs talking. Try to understand.”

  And I try. I try my damn best. I try harder than I’ve ever tried for anything in my whole miserable life. But I just can’t.

  “What did you do, Valerie? What?” I’m supposed to know, but I can’t keep up the pretense. She stops sobbing like someone flipped a switch and lowers her chin. “The juice box,” she says in a soft, tinny voice.

  “What?”

  “The juice box. I gave you one. Every morning. It was grape that day, I remember; the grape ones are the cheapest, so they were almost all grape.”

  My gaze is still riveted on her, but the world around me melts away. I see the blinding sun pouring through the bare, curtainless windows of the kitchen back at the house. My mouth fills with the taste of cheap synthetic grape that I think is the best thing in the world because I’ve never tasted the real thing.

  “I ground up a pill and put it in through the hole for the straw. I hoped it was too sweet for you to notice anything.”

  A faint roar starts in the back of my mind. Steadily growing stronger. Closer.

  “I never thought this would happen! He was supposed to bring you back. You
wouldn’t even remember anything.”

  I am rooted to the floor, unable to move. The roar gets stronger, deafening.

  “I—they’d send me to jail forever, baby. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if I was in jail for the rest of your life. I—”

  I’m weightless. I leap at her, clawing, scratching. Screaming words I don’t even understand, I’ll kill you you fucking bitch I’ll kill you—

  She raises her hands to protect her face, so I sink my fingernails into the tender, wobbly flesh of her forearm, making her shriek. She trips and goes flying, crashing into a lamp that breaks. Pieces of glass and ceramic scatter all over the floor. But while I’m distracted, she rights herself and lunges at me with unexpected strength, hands wrapping around my throat, thumbs sinking into my neck. Deep. I lose my footing, and she’s on top of me—I have time to glimpse her face, completely distorted, bloodshot eyes savage, filled with the primal preservation instinct that got her this far. She sinks her fingers into my hair, taking hold of the roots, and slams my temple into the floor, once, twice.

  It feels like something bursts inside my skull, and all I can hear is the ringing in my ears as I lie there, struggling to breathe. I’m faintly aware of her hurried steps as she grabs something from the nightstand then frantically paces the room, looking around. As she steps over me, carelessly, like I am already a corpse, I try to make a grab for her ankle but I’m seeing double and my fingers curl around air.

  For a moment, her shape blocks the light of the lamp. I can’t see her face against the glare, only the flyaways around her head like a halo. I wonder if she’s actually thinking about killing me—she could, right now, if she wanted to. She could have back then, pressed a pillow over my face, and it would have been done. Slit my throat with those same scissors, put them in my hand. They’d have believed it, and her secret would have been buried forever, along with me, and with Olivia.