by Lisa Unger
Was it better to stay near the opening into which he’d fallen? Or feel his way deeper into the tunnel, hoping for a climb-out? He thought of the maps he’d looked at. There was a major mine head that Finley had circled, somewhere near the trail that he had been on. Had it been North? Rainer wasn’t great with directions.
“Finley,” he called, hearing his voice bounce around. “Finley, are you out there?”
His phone. Where was it? He patted at his pockets and found them empty. It must have fallen from his pocket when he fell. He reached around on the ground for it, finding only the damp and bumpy surfaces, not the slick, flat one he wanted.
“Come on,” he said. “Where are you?”
He kept feeling around. Please, please, please. Come on. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, the phone started to ring, just out of his reach to the right. It vibrated, filling the small space around him with its light. He reached, straining, and with effort and a nauseating wave of pain, he grabbed it. Finley’s face smiled out at him, a picture he’d snapped when she first loved him. Every time she called, he got to see the look that he didn’t get to see on her face in real time anymore.
He slid the answer bar. “Finley,” he said. “Hello?”
But there was only static and then the click of the line going dead. He had no signal bars at all. Then one flashed, tantalizingly, but then was gone. He tried to call back. “Calling Finley’s Mobile” it read, teasing him with an expectant line of ellipses. But it hung there. Call failed. He tried again, and again, and finally slumped back against the dirt wall.
He’d watched that movie about the kid who’d gone out in the desert, fallen into a gap between rocks, got pinned, and wound up cutting off his own foot to survive. Or was it his hand? Either way, Rainer knew that he was not that kind of guy, not that he had any call to cut off a limb at the moment. But if it came to that, he knew he was not going to be the guy who did “whatever it took to survive.” He just didn’t have that kind of energy, the “belly of fire,” as his father liked to call it. In fact, if Rainer had a light for the joint in his pocket, he’d be smoking right now to take the edge off his fear. Then he’d probably pass out, wake up too dopey to even think about how he might get out of this. Generally that’s what he liked about pot; it softened the sharp edges of anxiety and fear and worry. You didn’t forget about any of the things that nagged at you; you just stopped caring about them. When he was high, he was less angry, too. Yeah, but all of that energy? Finley countered during an argument about his pot smoking. That’s what keeps people from just lying around all day, eating Doritos and playing Call of Duty.
He dialed the phone again, lifting it high into the air, as high as he could to try to get the signal. Nothing. He let his arm drop to his belly.
He remembered thinking, too, what kind of an idiot went out into the desert alone to begin with, not telling anyone where he was going? That was just plain hubris. And what was so great about being “a survivor”? Why was that such an admirable quality? It wasn’t like that guy was risking his ass for someone else. He just didn’t want to die. What was so unique about that? No one wanted to die. At least Rainer had an excuse for being out here alone; he was taking care of Finley, which is the only thing that had ever gotten him off his ass to do anything. If it weren’t for Finley, he wouldn’t have graduated high school. He wouldn’t have driven across country. He wouldn’t have opened his own tattoo shop. He did all of those things just to be worthy of her. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have fallen down this hole either.
The phone rang again, sending an electric startle of hope through his body.
“Finley,” he said. “Christ.”
“Rainer?” She sounded young and panicked. “Rainer?”
“I fell down one of those mine tunnels. I’m down here. I’m okay, but I can’t get out.”
“Where are you?” she said before the line started to crackle and buzz.
“Fin?” he said. “Can you hear me? Finley!”
Silence was the only answer. He let out a cry of frustration, tried to call back. The call failed and he tried again. Nothing. Then he took a few more deep breaths, tried to calm himself down.
He used the light from the flashlight app to illuminate the area and realized he was sitting beside a narrow set of tracks. Looking up, he could just make out the place through which he’d fallen, a thin mouth where some ambient light stole in.
He rallied, using all his strength, pulling himself to his feet with a roar of pain. Then he was standing, looking around for one of those ladders, for a place where he could get a signal on his phone. He had to get out of here. He couldn’t die in an abandoned mineshaft while Finley was in trouble above.
He heard something then. Was it laughter? Or was it the sound of someone crying? It was too far, too faint, but when it sounded again he started moving toward it. Was it a birdsong? No, it was the voice of a girl—or was it? Something about it filled him with hope and gave him a new rush of energy, the pain in his leg fading. Maybe he had an instinct to survive, after all. It was a damn good thing he didn’t have a lighter.
He used the compass app to find his way north.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Merri pulled on the jeans she’d left over the chair and dug her sweater out of the bag, hastily getting dressed. She was pulling her coat on when she stopped and sank down onto the bed. The snow was falling heavily outside her window, and clouds above were glowing from the light of the hidden moon. Doubt whispered in her ear. This was crazy. What was she going to do? Plug those coordinates into her phone and drive there?
And yet every nerve ending in her body tingled with that intent. The instinct was powerful, compulsive. How many times had she ignored her instincts, done the opposite of what she knew was right? Like the day Abbey disappeared, wasn’t there something inside her that knew, just as Jackson had claimed, just like Abbey’s dreams, that she should go with them. The pills had quieted that voice, and all the other voices inside her. Not quieted exactly but muffled. She could hear the sound, but not make out the words—the worry, the self-criticism, the anxiety, the catalog of complaints and not-good-enoughs. Her mood had improved. Hell, her marriage had improved. In some ways, she was a better mother—less short-tempered and stressed. But she was not herself.
“Maybe that was a good thing,” she told one of her shrinks. “Maybe in some cases it’s not always such a great thing to ‘be yourself.’ ”
“Unfortunately, there aren’t any other options,” he’d said mildly. “We can only hide or anesthetize our true nature for so long. We can strive to alter negative thought patterns. But we can’t hide behind addiction and call that positive change.”
Merri didn’t buy it. Plenty of people were taking antidepressants, antianxiety meds. What made her self-medication so different?
“Antidepressants are prescribed to address chemical imbalance in the brain. Vicodin is prescribed for short-term pain relief,” her shrink informed her very cogently. “The way you’re taking it—in high doses, procured through illegitimate channels—is illegal.”
It sounded like shrink-speak to her. Anyway, she’d been off the pills since her breakdown. But she still thought about them every day, those little white keys that opened the door to the mental cloud, that silent, mellow place that she’d never once visited before or since. But it was true that she’d been less aware, less present—there but not there for her kids. If she hadn’t had three Vicodins that morning, she’d have gone on that hike or suggested that they go to the museum just outside of town. She was reasonably sure that nothing that happened would have happened, if she’d been herself.
Tonight, she was wide-awake, alert, so in tune, she was practically vibrating. She could listen to those other voices, as she often did, the ones that told her to stay put, let the police do their jobs, wait for the phone to ring. Or she could listen to that other voice, the voice that wasn’t a voice but something so deep, so indivisible from her own consciousness that it didn’t have s
ound. It told her to get dressed and go out there.
So she finished dressing and headed out the door as quietly as she could. She didn’t want to wake Miss Lovely and have to explain where she was going on a night when one should obviously not be going anywhere. She felt like a teenager sneaking out of the house, which was precisely why Wolf hated B and Bs.
When she stepped outside into the snow, she almost shrieked. A man, tall, just a dark shadow stood on the sidewalk by the low gate. She backed toward the door as he moved into the light. Wolf. At the sight of him, there was such a blast, a rush of emotion that she put her hand to her heart. Anger, happiness, annoyance, love.
“You’re here,” she said.
“I told you I was on my way,” he said. Snowflakes were gathering in his dark hair. He looked so young, so much like when she’d first loved him. “Where are you going?”
She walked up the path and unlatched the gate, stepping outside onto the sidewalk.
“Let me be here for you,” he said. His voice was thick, his eyes bruised with fatigue. “For Abbey.”
She moved into his arms and let him hold on tight, found herself clinging to him. A door that had been closed in her heart for him opened just a bit. She told him about her call to Blake, showed him the numbers she’d scribbled on the ivory stationery that read Miss Lovely’s Bed & Breakfast.
“You were going up there alone?” he asked.
“I have to go,” she said. “I know it’s crazy and it doesn’t make any sense. But I have to go up there.”
Was he going to try to talk her out of it, talk sense into her? Was he going to say her most hated phrase: I’m just trying to help you, Merri.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Relief and gratitude mingled as she let him take her hand. They shuffled through the slick snow in the lot and climbed into the Range Rover, plugged the coordinates into an app she’d downloaded on the phone.
“Merri,” he said.
“Don’t,” she stopped him. She didn’t want to prepare herself for what happened when Abbey wasn’t up there, or make promises about what she’d do when she realized that they were on a fool’s errand. She didn’t want to live inside of near-future failures. She wanted to live in the now, when hope was strong, when she was following the true voice of herself no matter how much she often didn’t want to hear it.
“No matter what happens,” he said. “I’m here for you, for our family. I swear to you. From now on, come what may, I’m here.”
His face was different, solemn, tired but set in some new way. He had been there, always, for the kids. And Merri always knew he loved her, even though she also knew he screwed around.
At first, she hadn’t cared so much about that for some reason. She knew what he was the first night they were together, a player, a boy always looking for the next thrill, the next piece of candy. I’ve never been faithful to anyone, he said the night he told her that he loved her. But I want to be faithful to you. She believed him, that it was what he wanted.
She also knew that he wouldn’t be faithful, that he couldn’t. Merri was a smart woman; she knew that people didn’t change. With Wolf, there would always be some girl when he was on assignment, some hookup after a press party, flirtations, one-night stands. Why didn’t she care? It was a bad habit he had, like smoking or drinking too much. It had almost nothing to do with her. She could live with it, or so she thought. But, silently, like so many other things, it gnawed at the cord that tethered them, fraying it so that when it was pulled tight in stress it nearly snapped. Nearly.
She didn’t even care about the mess with work. She understood him—his fears, his desires, that he was dishonest because he was afraid. She knew him in a way that you can only know someone you love totally. Daily, she forgave his flaws, just as she knew he forgave hers. Maybe that alone was the foundation of a good marriage, an endless willingness to forgive and to love in spite of ourselves, an ability to ride the highs and endure the lows, the decision to always go home.
She took Wolf’s hand now. She’d always loved his hands, how big and solid they were, how warm they were on her body, how strong. He folded his grip around her thin fingers easily. In that moment, she knew they were both there, deeply flawed but true.
“I know,” she said, her voice just a whisper. “I promise that, too. I’ll be here. All of me.”
The heat blew hot, warming them. Then Wolf pulled out of the lot and headed north out of town, following her directions. They turned onto Main Street and then onto the small road that led toward The Hollows Wood.
“That point looks like it’s in the trees,” she said, looking at the satellite map. “How close is it to the house we rented?”
She held it up to him and he glanced at it, then back at the road.
“Not far,” he said. “Ten miles maybe.”
He’d always been the navigator in their relationship, the one at the wheel, so sure of where they were headed. Without him, she’d never go where she couldn’t take the train, bus, or a taxi. He was the one who never minded going off road. It used to seem like a good thing.
“We’ll take the car as far as we can,” he said. “And then we’ll get out and walk if we have to. Are you wearing boots?”
She was. She wore her thick Merrells and her heavy coat, a sweater under that. She even had a pair of gloves. For once, she was properly outfitted for what lay before them. The snowfall was growing heavier, accumulating on the road as they wound out of town, leaving the lights behind them. A star field of flakes battered the windshield; they were driving into oblivion.
“She’s out there,” she said, peering through the black. She didn’t mean to say it. She’d learned not to say things like that to Wolf. He felt compelled to counter with something like: You don’t know that.
But it was true, one way or another. Their girl was out there, not with them, someplace they couldn’t reach. Were they headed toward her or away from her? Was she already beyond their reach?
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I failed her. I didn’t protect her.”
It was true in a sense; she knew that. But she had never blamed him, even though others had. He’d been careless, thoughtless. He’d been on the phone with his girlfriend and had let the kids go on ahead of him. But in another place and time, it wouldn’t have mattered. The consequences were not appropriate to his actions. Even with his mistakes, he didn’t deserve this pain.
“You didn’t do this,” she said. “Someone took her. That person is to blame and no one else.”
“I brought her to this place,” he said. He seemed to want to say more, but he didn’t.
“We both failed her,” she said. It felt good to acknowledge that out loud, not in some shrink’s office, but out in the world where it was real. “I wasn’t myself. If I had been, I would have gone with you, or we would have gone somewhere else—maybe. Maybe, maybe, things would have been different. All that matters is what we do now.”
The blue blip on the screen moved closer to the red, the thin purple line of the road snaked along the edge of a black space. Wolf glanced over at the screen.
“When the dots are parallel, we’ll stop the car and walk through the woods the rest of the way.”
But as they approached that point, they saw the flashing lights of a police cruiser parked along the side of the road. As they grew closer, Merri saw that there were several vehicles, two other prowlers and a car she recognized as Detective Ferrigno’s. Wolf pulled in front of it and got out, walking over to them as Merri climbed out after him.
“They’re empty,” he said. A scattering of footprints led from the cars into the woods.
They didn’t have to go far, walking as quickly as they could through the trees, tripping over roots and avoiding branches tugging at their coats. Her throat was thick and dry. Soon, they saw more lights, an eerie silent red-and-white flash, through trees. Merri broke into a run with Wolf right behind her.
When they came into the clearing, she
saw two police SUVs with lights flashing, a collection of uniformed officers. Apparently there was another way here, one in which vehicles could pass. In the center of the group, she saw Chuck Ferrigno. Wearing a thick black coat and hat, he somehow looked like a priest.
“Detective Ferrigno!” she called.
He looked up, his face registering surprise and annoyance.
“Mrs. Gleason,” he said. He moved toward her and held up her hand. “What are you doing up here? This is a crime scene.”
“Does this have something to do with Abbey?”
Something on his face. He didn’t say no, dismiss her, or act like she was a fool. He just looked confused.
“Mrs. Gleason,” he said. His voice was suddenly stern and unyielding. “You need to go back to Miss Lovely’s and we will call you if this has any connection to Abbey.”
She felt herself backing away, a rising creep of shame. She was becoming one of those people, like the ones they’d met in group, pushing themselves in where they didn’t belong, their desperation for answers making them a nuisance to the police who had moved on to other cases, cases that could be solved. She was a fool to let something so random give her hope. That’s how lost she was; she was listening to her grief-stricken, borderline OCD, teenage son. She was about to apologize.
“So you’re saying it might?” asked Wolf. He had come up behind her, and he was wearing his reporter’s attitude. The I-have-a-right-to-be-here-whether-you-like-it-or-not thing he did. Often she found it embarrassing and annoying. Not tonight. “Look, we just need to know if there’s even a remote possibility.”
Some of the hardness melted on Detective Ferrigno’s face; he lifted a placating palm.
“All we know at the moment is that the vehicle of a missing man has been located in the barn in this clearing,” he said. “That is all the information I have. How did you find out about this?”
