Where She Went (ARC)

by Kelly Simmons

  Two

  The mothers of the older children at the YMCA had noticed a man hanging around the previous summer, watching the kids burst through the doors after swim class. Sometimes he followed them the few blocks over to Starbucks afterward, eyeing the children’s seal-slick hair, their tiny bottoms popping out of their bright, squeaking suits.

  Ben was still a baby then, not quite two, so Carrie was always in the pool or locker room with him, but she still let him have some freedom, some space to run and explore. She didn’t hover, no; sometimes she was making a shopping list or chatting on Facebook with her few college friends—the only time they seemed to communicate anymore. Maybe if she had looked up from her phone or her son, she would have fixed on that man more clearly. She would have been alert! Wouldn’t she have? And been suspicious of someone who seemed to be watching the children and sometimes maybe the moms, yet who also looked like he may have been taking photos of the building, the paint job, almost like an inspector might, for a perfectly logical reason, on his phone.

  It had been a particularly hot and wet summer, and each time Carrie and Ben had returned for a lesson, the shrubs and plants flanking the entrance had appeared to have doubled in size; tendrils had turned into tentacles, brushing against their legs, casting longer and wider shadows with every passing day. If Carrie had had to guess—and she had guessed wildly under the microscope of police questioning—she would have said that the man might have been a landscape architect, there to trim, to uproot and replant, to right nature’s summer wrongs. Hadn’t she had that very conversation with another mother afterward? That she’d assumed the same thing?

  Oh, the mothers of the YMCA. The pool moms, the swim team moms. A little older, a little wiser than Carrie. They knew how to keep a child’s hair from turning green. They always had ziplock bags for wet Speedos. She’d noticed their competency as much as they’d noticed her rookie mistakes—forgetting a towel, bringing a large shampoo bottle instead of a small one. They didn’t know her at all, but they were nicer, so much nicer, than the mothers at preschool. Was it distance that allowed them to feel something? Was it the idea of Ben, not knowing him, that opened their hearts? Or was it just the lack of competition, since none of them had toddlers anymore?

  Carrie knew what it was like to feel judged—she’d spent all of high school feeling that way. She didn’t have the money, that wide, green safety net the other kids had, but she’d always felt she didn’t have something else, some indiscernible heft, a knowledgeable weight left out of her DNA. Her grandmother had always said Carrie was an old soul. And it did seem that people her own age never understood her. In college, Chelsea and Tracie were always defending her to other people on their floor who said she looked “ironed” and was “too quiet” and “not any fun.” You just have to get to know her, they’d say. She’s quick-witted. She loves to talk, once you know her.

  The moms at the Y never got to know Carrie, but they never blamed her either—they blamed themselves. They were so upset they hadn’t written down that suspicious man’s license plate number! Came up to her at the candlelight vigil on the grounds of the Y and told her so. Squeezed her hand with tears in their eyes as if they’d been buddies because they’d shared a bench at the locker room once, when Dolphins were leaving and Tadpoles were coming in. Some of them brought casseroles and flowers and balloons and stood in a semicircle around Carrie and John as if they’d been family or neighbors. Afterward, John’s mother said she was so glad that Carrie had the support of so many friends. Did you see all those candles, lighting up the night? And Carrie hadn’t corrected her. Sometimes people who don’t know you still know exactly what you need. The same group of women attended the second candlelight ceremony when Ben had been gone a year.

  Carrie had become more vigilant since then, more observant; maybe every swim mom had, owing to their guilt. No one could say whether the man’s car was an old Honda or a Toyota or a Ford. If under the road dust, it was dark blue or green or black. If his long, almost girlish hair was brown or blond. If he went into Starbucks or merely sat outside, watching as they left their children in their cars, unlocked, while they dug in their purses to pay the meter.

  As Ben grew and got heavier, Carrie moved him from the center to the seat behind her. Other boys unlatched themselves, got out of their seats. Not Ben. He was active, yes, but still cuddly, still obedient. Still loved to be carried. Easier, faster, for him to be near her own door. Except when there was a meter to be fed. The dark shadow of the parking attendant at the end of the block, the brass buckles of her uniform flashing in the sun, as if that was the person Carrie should be worried about. More money, surely, at the bottom of her purse. When the police asked her, over and over, to think back to that moment and whether there wasn’t something she saw—a blur, a color, a hint of the man’s hair or clothes—all she could conjure, contorting her face, begging her brain for more, was the dark leather cave of her purse. So big she could get lost in it. There was more at the edges of the frame, lost to time’s edit. There was more she couldn’t bear to tell them. But Carrie’s mind froze in the darkness, the silty suede bottom, of that bag.

  Three

  Carrie was more observant now. She stood outside her son’s room, the door open six inches. Wide open was too sad. Closed tight, even sadder. So she left it slightly ajar always, like an invitation. John had finally learned not to touch anything, not to change anything else, lest it alter his wife irreparably.

  No more babbling. Had she imagined it? No view of the crib through the opening. The Where the Wild Things Are poster on the wall. The pale-green rocking chair. The pastel wool alphabet rug that cost so much and never mattered to Ben, who never grew old enough to learn the ABCs, to spell, to put together sentences. Just handfuls of words, juxtaposed. Light me, he’d say when it got dark in his room. Light me.

  Those words could have become a touchstone for her and John, a catchphrase to illuminate their path back to each other. But when she held them out to John once, in the dark of their bedroom, he hadn’t said them back to her and hadn’t turned on the light. He had simply hugged her a little harder, almost grimly. And that wasn’t enough. No, not nearly enough. She was more observant now, but John was less.

  “Ben,” she whispered into the room from the safety of the hallway. Did she dare open the door wider?

  No response. She felt silly, her cheeks flushed. Probably heard a child out back, on the walking path to the pond below her house. The sound carried sometimes, depending on the wind. She turned to go back downstairs, and then she heard it.

  Squeaking. The sound of a small mattress when little feet bounce up and down.

  “Ben!” she cried as she opened the door.

  “Mama!”

  She would never forget the sight of him, the width of his smile, the sparkle of his green eyes, as he stood in his crib. The same delight whether she had presents in her hands, or food, or nothing. A smile for a smile, always. The equation that children bring, that adults forget. She didn’t need a snapshot to capture the way his golden hair stuck to his forehead on one side from being asleep. His cheeks were flushed because he was too hot in his clothes. She would never forget, because he looked precisely as she remembered him.

  The same smile.

  The same clothes.

  The same pair of yellow socks.

  Not one centimeter taller. Not one ounce heavier.

  Fifteen months later.

  About the Author

  Photo © Bill Ecklund

  Kelly Simmons is a former journalist and advertising creative director. She’s a member of WFWA, the Tall Poppy Writers, and The Liars Club, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mentoring fledgling novelists. She also co-hosts The Liars Club Oddcast, a weekly podcast interviewing top authors and discussing the craft and business of writing. Learn more at kellysimmonsbooks.com.

  nt (ARC)