by Katy Regnery
“Um...sure,” I say, darting a glance at Luke, who’s face is impassive.
“That was a surprise,” I say to him, grinning quickly at Gilly’s phone as she snaps at photo.
“You didn’t know that you were about to be ‘The Voice of Seattle,’?” he asks.
“I had no idea,” I tell him. “Honestly, I’m not even sure how I feel about it.”
“Daddy!” says Meghan, racing back to her father after peeking out at the carnival from the side of the tent. “People are here! The rides are going! It’s time!”
“Chad,” says Luke, handing his son twenty dollars, “why don’t you take your sisters on the Ferris wheel? Amanda and I will be over in a minute, okay?”
“Sure,” says Chad, taking Meghan’s hand in his and leading the way out of the tent.
Luke turns to me after his kids are gone.
“So...is this a promotion?”
“Um...I guess? I mean, I don’t know the details yet, but Steve said something about a raise. And I guess our column is going to be higher profile now.”
Luke grimaces for a split second, then nods. “Congratulations, Amanda.”
“I didn’t agree to anything,” I tell him. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”
“But it’s good for you,” he says, “isn’t it? Bigger job. Higher-profile writer. Promotion. More money.”
There’s an edge in his voice that makes me feel cold.
“To be clear, I didn’t ask for it,” I say.
He nods. “Can’t turn it down, though.”
“Why would I?”
He stares at me for a moment, then nods, dropping my eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“I—I can see that you’re upset, but—”
“I’m not upset,” he says. “My girlfriend’s face is suddenly going to be plastered onto every public area of Seattle, a city of which she is now the...the damned voice, when I can barely stand more than a couple of days here. What do I have to be upset about?”
I cross my arms over my chest and take a step back from Luke, feeling hurt. “This wasn’t my idea.”
“I know that,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“So why are you mad at me?”
“Because it sucks. I mean, it’s good for you, but it’s...I mean, I’d hoped... I wanted...”
“What did you want?”
“A future,” he blurts out, “with you.”
I know he’s angry and upset, but this revelation on the heels of my own is more welcome than he can possibly know. I can’t help the smile that blooms across my face. I feel it. I own it, because I love him, and he wants to be with me—not just now but long term.
“Wanted?” I ask. “Past tense?”
“Present tense,” he corrects me. “I want to be with you.”
I uncross my arms and reach for his hand. “I want that too.”
“You do?” He looks genuinely surprised.
I nod at him, loving the familiar warmth of his palm flush with mine. “Mm-hm. I do.”
“Well, how exactly do you see that happening? I don’t want to be in Seattle, and if anything, you’re getting more deeply entrenched here.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I tell him. “We just have to talk about it. Compromise. Come up with a plan.”
“I have kids,” he says, lifting his chin. “I can only compromise so much.”
“Well, I have a great job,” I say. “It’s important to me. So we’ll have to talk about it.”
He sighs heavily. “I just don’t see how—”
“Dad! Dad!”
Chad and Gilly rush into the tent, the pitch of their voices sending a shiver down my spine. They’re in distress, and it makes every cell in my body go on high alert.
“What?” asks Luke, dropping my hand and turning to face his kids. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Meghan!” sobs Gillian. “She’s missing!”
Chapter 14
Amanda
After racing to the Ferris wheel, where Chad says he lost Meghan in a thick crowd of carnival-goers, we split up into two groups: Luke and Chad go north toward the games, food trucks, and concessions, while Gilly and I comb through the rides area. We still have an hour of daylight, but the sun will set a little after nine o’clock, so we’ve got to work quickly.
We stop by the Sizzler, but it’s going so fast, we need to wait until the ride stops before we can look at the faces of the riders. No Meghan.
Next, on to the Flying Swings, where Gilly stares up at the riders for a long time before informing me that none of them are wearing silver sparkle sneakers. Whether she’s right or not, we’re losing time. I take her word for it. We have to move on.
A carousel is letting new riders on board, and while I explain to the ride operator what’s going on, Gilly sneaks by to run around the ride but comes back to tell me her sister isn’t jumping on any of the colorful horses.
The House of Mirrors takes on grotesque meaning as Gilly and I plough through the freakish, dismembered versions of ourselves, feeling our way around fake exits and trying to move as quickly as possible.
When we get to the catapult and Meghan’s not there, I see Gillian starting to break down. Her fists are clenched by her sides, and her shoulders are bunched like she’s carrying the weight of the world on them.
I know how she feels.
I’ve never experienced panic like this before.
We’ve got to find her. We’ve got to.
The Sentinel is expecting more than sixty thousand people to enjoy this carnival over the next three days, and tonight—which is cool and clear—the place is mobbed. No face is familiar despite the fact that my newspaper is sponsoring the event. Even though I had a chance to stroll the fairgrounds before the crowds arrived, I can barely find my way around now that it’s in full swing.
When we don’t find Meghan at the Spinning Teacups, I take out my phone and check the time. It’s been almost thirty minutes since Chad and Gilly lost their little sister, and I am becoming more terrified by the second.
Please, God, help us find Meghan.
I wrote an article on missing children last year, and I know the stats: the first three hours are the most critical. Over 75 percent of abducted children who are murdered are killed in the first three hours. It’s a horrible, heart-stopping fact, and it lurks in a dark, miserable corner of my brain telling me that time’s running out.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry, Amanda.
FIND HER.
“Let me just call your dad and see if he’s found her, okay?”
Gilly’s eyes are full of tears when she looks at me and nods.
“Did you find her?” he barks, his voice breathless.
“No,” I say. I don’t need to ask if he did. The fear I hear tells me everything. “Maybe we should call the police?”
“I stopped by the medic tent, and one of the EMTs there radioed it in. Any cops on duty here should be looking for her.”
“Gilly said she was wearing silver shoes.”
“Yep,” he says. “And a white sundress.”
A white sundress. I hadn’t noticed before. But that detail makes my breath catch because a little angel would wear silver and white, wouldn’t she?
God, please don’t make Meghan Kingston an angel tonight! Please let her stay with us!
“Keep looking,” says Luke. “The first three hours...”
His voice trails off, and I know he’s getting choked up and unable to speak. As a state trooper, he knows the statistics as well as I do. Probably better.
“We’ll find her,” I say, mustering strength I didn’t know I had. “I’ll call you back in a bit.”
“Let’s try the petting zoo,” says Gillian, taking my hand. “She loves animals.”
We pass by the giant slides and bumper cars, trying to look over the heads of parents at the children gleefully riding and speed-walking all the way to the farm menagerie in the far corner of the carnival.
A wo
man in a red-and-white-striped shirt stands at the entrance gate.
“Tickets, please?”
“We’re looking for a little girl,” I say. “She’s five years old, wearing silver shoes and a white sundress. Have you seen her?”
“I did see a little girl in a white dress...with her daddy,” says the woman, taking tickets from a mother and daughter who step behind us and enter the petting zoo.
“Did she have dark hair?” asks Gilly.
“Uh-huh. Yep. And she was wearing a silver headband. I told her she looked like a princess.”
“That’s her!” says Gilly, looking up at me with wide, frantic eyes. “She matched her headband to her sneakers!”
“They left about three minutes ago,” says the woman. “You just missed them.”
“Where’d they go?” I demand.
“Um...” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Think,” I insist. “What direction did they go in?”
“Hayrides!” she says with a bright smile. “I think the man said something about a hayride.”
“There are no hayrides!” I snap at her. “We don’t have any here!”
“Geez.” She gives me a hurt look. “I think that’s what they said. Maybe I’m wrong. Sorry.”
I take Gillian by the arm, and we step to the side to allow patrons to enter the petting area while I rack my brain. A hayride. A hayride. Where the heck would her “daddy” take her for a hayride? And then it occurs to me: this entire “fairground” is on the site of a once-functioning farm. I look just beyond the petting zoo and see the silhouette of an old barn sitting lonely on the far end of the property, backlit by the setting sun.
“Come on,” I say to Gilly, taking out my phone and dialing Luke’s number again.
Gillian runs behind me to the bright-orange vinyl fence at the perimeter of the carnival, and sure enough, I see an opening cut in the mesh, just big enough for a person to pass through.
“You have her?” pants Luke.
“No. But I think I know where she is! There’s an abandoned barn in the southwest corner near the petting zoo. I think she’s there. Come and find us!”
The barn, dark and spooky in the twilight, looms large on the outskirts of the carnival, and I make a quick decision. I can’t bring Gillian with me—first of all, it isn’t safe, and second of all, I have no idea what I’ll find once I get there. God forbid something has already happened to her sister. No. Gillian needs to stay here and wait for her father.
I reach down for my shoes, take them off, and hand them, with my purse, to Gillian. High heels will only be a hindrance running across a muddy field.
“Wait here. I’ll be back.”
“What are you doing?” squeaks Gilly. “I don’t want to be all by myse—”
“I need you to wait here!” I shout, widening the opening and stepping through with one foot. “Your dad will be here in a minute. I’m just going to go check out—”
“Hi, Gilly!” says a small voice from behind us. “Are you going to the haunted barn for a hayride too?”
My heart. Stops.
Whipping around from my awkward halfway-through-the-mesh position, I see Meghan Kingston approaching us with a balloon and cotton candy in one hand; a tall, bearded man, about my age, holds the other.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
And faster than I can scream “Help” or “Police,” he has dropped Meghan’s hand like it suddenly caught on fire and sprinted back into the crowd.
“Shit!” I yell. “Stop him! Someone! Stop him!”
Except we’re in the shadows of the fairgrounds at this point, and there’s really no one around to hear me.
“That’s a very bad word,” says Meghan, looking at me with wide eyes.
“Meghan!” yells Gillian, grabbing her sister’s shoulders. “Who was that?!”
“A friend of Mommy,” she says matter-of-factly, like this is something Gillian and I should already know. “He used to be Mommy’s best friend in high school. He said so. He was so glad to see me because I look just like her.”
“No!” I wail, pulling at the goddamned mesh, which scratches my leg and seems to hold onto me tighter the harder I struggle. “No, he wasn’t! He wasn’t a friend of your mommy’s!”
“Yes, he was. He said he was!”
“He wasn’t, Meg! He tricked you!” screams Gillian.
“No!” bellows Meghan, picking up on our frantic energy and starting to cry. “You’re being mean! He was nice to me! He was Mommy’s friend!”
Still tangled in the mesh, I extract myself with a yank, but my ankle gets caught, and I fall to the ground, which is still muddy from this morning’s rain. Wiggling my bleeding ankle from the mesh, I lean back, sitting on my ass in the mud. Looking up at the frightened faces of the Kingston sisters, I open my arms with a sob, and both girls fall into my lap. Hot tears slide down my cheeks as I hold them fiercely against me.
If we’d arrived here a moment later, she would have been gone.
“If anything had...Oh, my God, if anything had happened to you,” I pant, kissing each of the girls on the head in turn. First one, then the other. Meghan, then Gillian. Meg, then Gilly. “Thank God...Thank God...Thank God...”
“Gillian! Meghan!”
Luke’s voice precedes the feel of his body behind mine, and suddenly, blessedly, his strong arms are around all three of us. I open my eyes to find Chad squatting in front of me, tears rolling down his cheeks as he reaches out and puts a hand on Meghan’s trembling shoulder.
“Are you safe? Are you all safe?” asks Luke. “Are you hurt? Why are you on the ground?”
“Meghan went off with a stranger!” yells Gillian, raising her head from my shoulder, her eyes on fire. “He tricked her and said he was Mommy’s friend!”
“He w-was Mommy’s f-friend, Gilly! He w-was!”
“He wasn’t, baby,” says Luke to his youngest daughter. He pulls Meghan from my arms and stands up with her. When I look up, she’s like a little monkey, clinging to her father, crying into his neck.
“Where is he?” Luke asks me, a murderous expression on his face.
“He ran into the crowd,” I say, still holding Gilly on my lap. “He got away.”
“Could you describe him?”
“I think so,” I say. Beard. Tall. My age.
“We’ll have to file a police report,” says Luke, clenching his jaw as he squeezes Meghan. “God damn it, I hate the city!”
Chad is still kneeling in front of me. He casts a brief look at his dad, gives me a look that would sour milk, then stands up slowly.
“You were distracted, Dad. You were distracted by her, and that’s why Meg went missing,” he says gravely, giving me a disgusted look before facing his father.
“Chad,” says Luke, his voice dust and gravel as he clutches his baby, “not now, son.”
“Yes, Dad,” says Chad, holding his ground. “Right now.”
Luke stares back at his son but doesn’t say anything.
“You were distracted, talking with Amanda in the tent. You sent me into a crowd of hundreds of people to take two little girls on a carnival ride, even though I’ve never been to a carnival in my whole life.”
“I thought you could handle it.”
“I’m...” Chad looks at the ground, gulping softly, before looking up at his father. “I’m thirteen, sir. I’ve never been to a big city like this.”
“You’re the most responsible thirteen-year-old I know,” says Luke. “And the Ferris wheel was right next door to the tent where Amanda and I were talking.” When Chad doesn’t say anything, Luke adds, “You three walk home alone from school at home, for heaven’s sake!”
“This isn’t Sitka,” Chad says angrily. “This is not our home.”
“I know that,” says Luke, his voice gentler. “I know that, son.”
“You made a bad choice, Dad. You should have been with us,” says Chad, his manly facade slipping away as anger gives way to fear.
“I was s-scared. I w-was s-so s-scared, Dad.”
Luke opens his arm, and Chad slams himself into his father’s body, sobbing against his chest as Luke holds two of his children close. Gilly takes a deep breath and whimpers, burrowing closer to me. I hold her tightly, but I’m looking up at Luke, and he’s looking down at me, and never has he seemed further away from me than he is right this minute.
“Let’s go back to Amanda’s place,” he finally says, placing Meghan on the ground and offering me a hand.
With Luke’s help, I stand up, and I slide my filthy feet into muddy shoes. My leg and ankle are covered in bloody scratches and grime, and suddenly this carnival seems so vast and anonymous, so quietly menacing, I want to be as far away from it as possible.
As we walk back toward the front gates, Meghan and Gillian hold their father’s hands, and Chad walks beside his younger sister like a sentry.
I stay behind them, unable to process the roller coaster of emotions I’ve experienced tonight with the Kingstons: love, shock, terror, relief, sorrow, and now, uncertainty. From the moment I picked them up at the airport, today’s been an unmitigated disaster, and I don’t have the brain power to sort through it all right now.
But sorrow and uncertainty linger as we make our way out to the parking lot.
Maybe Luke and I aren’t meant to be.
Maybe our lives are too different to mesh.
Maybe loving someone simply isn’t enough.
But these thoughts are so painful, I force myself to let them go for now. I let it all go. With a resignation born of mental and physical exhaustion, I put one foot in front of the other until we’re at my car and then drive us silently home.
***
Luke
My son is right.
Not totally right, but partially right.
I am distracted by Amanda, and Seattle is not our home.
Although I trust Chad to babysit the girls at home, I should have used better judgment about putting him in charge tonight, even for a brief amount of time. They’ve never been to a carnival, let alone a large carnival in a major city. I knew how excited Meghan was. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine she might slip out of Chad’s grasp and wander off.
But I wasn’t really thinking about my kids in that moment. Instead, I was so damned disappointed about Amanda’s job getting bigger and better, I focused on her—on the challenges between us—instead of my children’s safety. I let them down.
