Hell no.
And parenting was the same thing.
But Arielle had been left with no alternative. She couldn’t rightly go back to see Martin, to try to explain herself perhaps better than she had in her letters. Mostly because that would be impossible; for one, she couldn’t remember much, if any, of her time in the house, much less explain it. The good news—or bad news, depending on what day it was—was that she had some experience with not being able to remember. And even if her amnesia suddenly lifted, there was no guarantee that Martin wanted her back. In fact, if his lack of response to her letters was any indication—and why wouldn’t it be?—he wanted nothing to do with her.
Maybe one day. But not today, because there was another reason for her not going back. One that was less tangible, but at the same time much more real.
She had to keep Hope safe. And Martin, too.
A voice suddenly echoed in her mind, a calming voice, one imbued with a strangely pleasant hoarseness.
‘There is one condition: when the child turns four, you must bring her back to me.’
Arielle swallowed hard and again located her daughter’s blond head bobbing up and down on the play set in front of her.
No fucking way.
“Stay where I can see you, Hope,” she repeated, her throat suddenly extremely dry.
Arielle reached down into her purse to grab a stick of gum, and when she sat up again, the woman was sitting beside her.
“Shit!” she yelped. “You scared me.”
The woman before her had a round nose, round chin, and round face that matched her round body. Short and squat, she looked nothing like her string bean of a son.
How does that happen?
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, making a pouty face.
Ah, so there’s the resemblance.
“I’m MacKenzie,” the woman continued, holding out her hand.
Arielle just stared at it.
Can I leave? Is that breaking some unwritten mother code? Will I be voted off the island?
“Hi,” the woman said again, all smiles.
Arielle considered smiling back, but spared the woman—this MacKenzie—what might have been the worst acting job ever.
“Hi,” she said simply, not bothering to shake hands. To her disappointment, the woman simply lowered her hand; her shit-smear smile remained plastered on her face.
The woman sat down right beside Arielle.
Typical. I bet she’ll want to chat about some mundane crap now.
MacKenzie didn’t disappoint.
“How old is your daughter? She’s beautiful.”
Arielle cleared her throat before answering.
“She’s four.”
Just saying that word—’four’—out loud made her cautious.
You’re safe. No one knows you are here—nobody.
“And beautiful blond hair. So long and shiny. The only one I know with hair like that is Petey. Ha, he might have hair long enough to braid by the time he’s four. Did she get it from her father?”
No, you dolt, she got it from me, Arielle almost said. Then she remembered that she had cut her hair short and dyed it a dark brown. At the time, it had felt very femme fatale, but it had quickly grown old. It felt fake, and she had grown to hate it.
Realizing that the woman’s doughy face was still aimed at her, she racked her mind for a response. Part of her felt badly for the woman, for the way she was treating her.
Did she have to be so cruel? If this was to be her life, shouldn’t she should try to form healthy relationships with others? Didn’t Hope deserve a stable, healthy environment to grow up in?
Still, no amount of self-denigration would make her feel like talking to this woman or anyone else at this moment.
Arielle cleared her throat and was about to answer—‘My husband is bald,’ she might have said—when there was a cry from her left.
MacKenzie immediately jumped to her feet and ran to her son who had, somewhat predictably, fallen from a swing and now lay on his back, crying his face off.
A swing, by himself, at two years old.
Arielle shook her head and turned her attention back to the slide.
“C’mon, Hope, it’s time to go home.”
‘When the child turns four, you must bring her back to me.’
Another shudder coursed through her. It was strange, the tiny tidbits that she remembered from her time at 1818 Coverfeld. They weren’t even the satisfying kind, the kind where she could place exactly who she was with and what time of day it had been, what they were doing. No, these bastardized memories had all blended together. Time had had little meaning at the house, that much Arielle was oddly certain about.
“Excuse me! Excuse me, can you help me? Petey’s nose is bleeding and it won’t stop.”
For a split second, Arielle took her eyes off Hope and turned to the boy who was still lying on his back with his mother hovering over her.
A split second, barely enough time to register the dual streams of blood streaming from each of the kid’s nostrils.
“Sorry, I don’t have any tissues,” she grumbled.
You shouldn’t let your kid play on the swings by himself when he’s two, dumbass.
When she turned back to the play set, she could no longer see Hope’s head peeking out from atop the faux-wooden fence.
“Hope? Hope!”
This time, however, the little girl didn’t pop up when she called.
Like MacKenzie a few moments ago, Arielle sprung to her feet. She bolted across the playground to the play structure, first peering between the wooden slats, then actually climbing onto the structure itself to get a better look.
Hope wasn’t there.
Arielle’s heart was racing, her body tingling with an adrenaline rush.
“Hope!” she screamed. Hey wide eyes scanned the entire park and playground. “Hoooope! Where are you? Hooooope!”
MacKenzie glanced up from her bleeding son who had thankfully stopped his wailing.
“Hope!”
Arielle could feel panic begin to well up inside of her, usurping the adrenaline dump.
MacKenzie helped her son to his feet, and then began to call for Hope along with Arielle. Together, they hollered.
When Arielle stopped yelling to catch her breath, she realized that MacKenzie had made her way atop the play set with her son in her arms.
“Maybe she left with her friends?” the woman asked.
Arielle turned to face the woman, her eyes burning, partly from fear and partly from dread.
“Friends? What friends? What are you talking about?”
MacKenzie recoiled and instinctively switched her son to the arm opposite Arielle.
“Her friends,” she began hesitantly, her thin, dark eyebrows migrating up her pasty forehead. “You know, the ones she was playing with up here?”
Arielle’s eyes narrowed.
Friends? What the fuck is this crazy bitch talking about?
Hope had been up here by herself, playing with the steering wheel. Climbing the stairs and going down the slide. Up and down. Up and down. Alone.
Without thinking, Arielle grabbed the woman’s arm.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she hissed. “Did she send you? Did Mother send you?”
MacKenzie looked more than frightened now, she looked terrified. Her lower lip began to tremble like little Petey’s.
“Mother? I’m sorry, I don’t—”
Arielle shook the other woman.
“Don’t fuck with me,” she hissed.
The boy broke into a cry again, and the woman tried to pull away, but Arielle’s grip held fast.
“What friends?”
“The—the—the—”
All of a sudden, this woman who wanted to chat only a few minutes ago was at a loss for words.
“You’re hurting me,” she whimpered.
Arielle looked down at her hand and saw that her fingers were buried at least a half inch int
o the woman’s soft flesh. Her eyes darted up and she stared at the woman—really stared at her—burrowing holes into her pin point pupils.
Her grip loosened. This woman knew nothing.
“I’m sorry,” MacKenzie said, cowering, “I saw three blond girls… with braids. They were all up here playing, they…”
The words hit Arielle like a blow to the solar plexus and she staggered backward, finally releasing MacKenzie from her grip.
Three blond girls with braids.
The memory that followed was so powerful that she feared toppling over the side of play structure.
‘You have to drink your milk. All of it. Mother is watching.’
‘I don’t want to. It’s too sweet.’
She was being petulant, like a child. But she was also sleepy.
One of the blond girls, the oldest of the three, exchanged a look with the others, but Arielle was too tired to try to interpret it.
‘You need to drink the milk, Arielle. Mother said so. We will wait here until you do.’
Arielle snapped back into reality like the crack of a whip.
“You saw three girls? Up here with my Hope?”
MacKenzie nodded. She was already halfway down the stairs, her eyes trained on Arielle, her son tucked so far on her hip that he was nearly behind her, like a piggy-back ride.
“Did you see where they went?” Arielle was nearly in tears now.
Her Hope, gone. Vanished.
‘When the child turns four…’
“I’m sorry,” MacKenzie stammered. “I don’t know. Do you want me to call someone, or…?”
Arielle ignored the woman and turned her attention back to the park and the streets surrounding it.
“Hope!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Hooooope!”
Then she saw it; her drifting eyes fixed on the round object that lay abandoned in the sandbox.
Arielle started to weep.
There, lying in the sandbox, the sand around it undisturbed, pristine, was a bright orange Frisbee.
Chapter 37
Martin sat on the edge of the bleached church steps, his foot tapping impatiently on the hard ground.
He had been sitting for so long that his ass had started to go numb. Thankfully, like Friday, today was slightly overcast offering him a reprieve from the hot sun. Otherwise he would have been soaked in sweat.
It was Sunday, and he knew that she would be there.
She just had to be.
But despite his confidence, it was already nearly noon and the first service had already come and gone, while the second was trapped inside. Martin scanned every patrons’ face as they came and went, pretending that he was looking for someone that he knew.
And he supposed in a way he was.
Filia obcisor.
Maybe not someone he knew, per se, but someone that seemed to know Arielle, or in the very least something about her.
But now it seemed that maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had spooked her away when he had bumped into her on the street.
Maybe, like Arielle before her, she too had just vanished.
And maybe he should just let it all go.
The problem was, he had let it go, what with going for a date with Stacey, but then—
A church bell rang somewhere high above him, and his eyes darted up the steps. The large wooden doors to the church swung open, and a throng of people started migrating out, their faces a mixture of grimaces and smiles, the underlying personal reasons for each unknown.
Martin stood, once again trying to scan all of their faces for the angular features that had been etched in his brain ever since he had seen the woman through the taxi’s passenger window.
People were coming fast and furious now, spilling out of the doors at a rate that made it almost impossible for Martin to check them all.
C’mon, c’mon, you have to be here.
There were so many people around him now, that Martin was getting dizzy trying to look at all their faces.
His heart sank, and he started to sweat despite the cool air.
But then he saw something: a figure, dressed all in black, moving not away from the church, but toward it.
A hunched, bony figure.
Martin immediately started to move, pushing his way through the crowd.
“Hey!” a man with a shaved head and dark sunglasses shouted at him.
Martin ignored him and continued to elbow toward the church.
He bumped into an elderly woman with a pearl necklace that seemed so large that it might be the sole cause of her stooped stature. Martin reached for her, grasping her arm before she fell into a man behind her.
“I’m sorry,” he grumbled, helping her straighten as best the pearls would allow.
“Watch where you’re going,” a young man in a navy suit chirped at him.
Like the bald man, Martin ignored him and squeezed by the pair, trying to locate the dark figure again.
It was too late, he was trapped in the crowd and she was gone.
“Damn it,” he swore, ignoring several people that stared at him with shocked expressions.
Eventually the crowd thinned, and Martin was able to make his way up the bleached steps and to the large wooden doors.
It was predictably dark inside, and he could make out very little in the poor lighting.
Where is she? He wondered, his eyes scanning the dim interior.
Martin took two steps inside the church and a sound from his right almost made his heart leap out of his chest.
“You don’t belong here,” a woman’s gravelly voice told him.
Martin turned and squinted in the poor light.
It was the hunched woman, the woman with the angular face, the one with the beady eyes.
The filia obcisor woman.
Martin wasn’t sure what to say now that he had finally found her.
“I—I—”
His right hand subconsciously made its way to his pocket, where his fingers began to fondle the small stone within.
“You don’t belong here,” the woman repeated.
Martin took a step back. Despite having two days to think about what he would say if he saw this woman again, he was unprepared.
Instead of speaking, he gaped.
“Where is your wife?” the woman whispered, her eyes peaking around and behind him.
The mention of Arielle’s name snapped Martin out of his stupor.
“She’s gone,” he said, and when the woman’s eyes went wide for the briefest of moments, he added, “She’s missing.”
Martin wasn’t sure why he had chosen those words to utter, as the idea of Arielle being ‘missing’ after four years seemed ludicrous, but they just seemed right.
The woman’s eyes, a moment ago big like large ball bearings, narrowed to slits as she inspected him.
“She’s gone,” Martin repeated, “disappeared. Can we talk?”
The woman reached out with surprising speed and grabbed his arm. Martin flinched and resisted the urge to pull away from her bony grasp.
“Not here… we can’t talk here.”
Then the woman leaned in close to Martin’s ear and whispered an address and instructions. Her breath reeked of sour milk.
“Ten o’clock,” she repeated, “don’t be late.”
Chapter 38
Arielle was a wreck by the time the police officer finally got her back to the station to provide a statement.
“Please, you need to help me,” she repeated over and over again. Tears were streaming down her face, making her cheeks red and raw. “They took my baby!”
The officer didn’t respond this time; instead, he got out of the car and helped Arielle out of the back.
“Are you listening? They took my baby!”
“Ma’am, my partner is already setting up a perimeter at the park. I just need to you to come inside and give an official statement. We’ll have a search party up within the hour.”
Those same words, repeated nearly a
s often as Arielle’s pleas for help finding Hope.
Fucking asshole! Is that all you can say?
Arielle bit her tongue and nodded. A moment later, the officer ushered her into the building and she was quickly passed off to another—Officer Jenkins—who led her toward the back of the station.
The police station was small, not much more than a glorified coffee shop, with only three desks, one of which was reserved for a blue-haired receptionist. They immediately headed toward the desk at the back, ignoring the other officer seated at the first desk.
Even before she sat down, Jenkins began typing away on his computer. The police officer was tall, tall and lean, with short-cropped brown hair, and when he typed, he hunched over his keyboard. He was young-looking, and when he crouched like that over his keyboard, he looked like a child who was trying to hide what he was doing from a nosy parent.
“Please,” Arielle pleaded, tugging on the officer’s sleeve. “Please, you need to help me find her.”
Office Jenkins turned to face her.
“Arielle, is it? Let’s start by you giving me your full name and we can go from there.”
My name? My name?
She shook her head.
“You need to help me find my daughter! We were at the park and—and—”
—and the woman, MacKenzie, that stupid fucking bitch, distracted me, and then they took her. The girls from Coverfeld Ave took her—
“—I was distracted and my daughter was taken, snatched up. I—oh God—I looked everywhere.”
The officer leaned forward and placed his hand on her shoulder in an attempt at comforting her. It was awkward, what with her hand on his right sleeve, and his left hand on her shoulder as if he were inaugurating her into some sort of secret club. Clearly, this young boy, this Officer Jenkins, was new at this.
And this did not instill Arielle with confidence.
We have to stop this ‘getting to know you’ bullshit and get out there and look for Hope.
Arielle pulled her arm back and shrugged the officer’s hand off of her shoulder.
Officer Jenkins cleared his throat.
“Okay, Arielle, tell me about your daughter—anything you can tell me will help. Do you have a picture? Do you know what she was wearing?”
Arielle quickly turned to the purse at her hip and began rummaging through it.
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