Not Her Daughter

by Rea Frey

  I talk and talk while she listens. I can hear the little fists of her children banging on the door to be let in.

  “You need to come home. Come home, and we’ll sort all of this out.”

  There’s no way I can explain why I wouldn’t be able to come home—not yet. “I have some bigger news, actually. Just confirmed today.”

  “I was in labor with all of you for days! Give me one minute! Sixty seconds! I have earned that.”

  “Hey, I’ll let you go. I know you’ve got your brood.”

  “No, no, continue. What’s your big news?”

  “I’m selling.”

  “Selling what?”

  “The company.”

  “What? But that’s your whole life!”

  I sigh. “You know I’ve been getting offers, right? And this latest one … well, it’s a game changer. It could give me time to travel and relax. Take a break. Figure out my next venture.”

  “But you don’t like breaks.”

  “Well, I think I might be ready to take a break. Just for a little bit. I mean, Lees, it’s a lot of money.”

  “Like how much money?”

  “Like ten million dollars much.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Are you shitting me right now? You’re rich! What does the team think of—for the love of God, please stop banging on this door! I mean it!” Lisa fumbles with the lock, and then her kids are inside the laundry room, and one of them hijacks the phone—Jack—and barks, “Who is this?”

  “Who is this?” I play-shout back.

  “Sarah? Sarah! It’s Sarah! When are you coming back? Where have you been?” The kids all fight to get on the phone with me, and I take turns talking to them and tell them I’ve been on a huge research trip for work. I give them all loud kisses through the phone, tell Lisa goodbye, and then down my wine in a single swallow. I feel better and worse for having talked to her.

  “Sarah? Can you sing to me? I can’t sleep.” Emma is standing in the doorway, squinting through the low living room lights. I set down my glass and go to her, murmuring sweet words as I lead her back to her room. She loves my voice, this much I know. I cannot sing, have never been able to sing, but I can put Emma to sleep in three minutes, tops.

  I stroke her hair and feel the tears falling onto the sheets as I sing her favorite lullaby. I rub her back and kiss her sweet cheeks. Can I go through with this?

  I slip from her room—good night, my sweet girl—and wince as the door creaks and threatens to wake her. Our bags are packed. Her summer clothes are gone, left to a Goodwill a few hours outside of Chicago. I have wiped down the countertops and loaded the car. This is it. This is the last night in a rental.

  I’m antsy, restless to call someone else, to talk myself down. I want to call my father, to get to the bottom of the letters. Did he keep them from me on purpose? Did my mother really write? But I know how fragile my father is, how utterly selfish when it comes to Elaine, how any letter from her must have felt like a treasure written specifically to him, not me. I do not have the energy to ask him, and at this point, what does it really matter if she wrote to me or not? Seeing her has opened something in me much more than any letter ever could.

  I think about Ryan again, how easy it would be to just pick up the phone and hear his voice. Instead, I dial another number. My skin electrifies as the phone rings twice, then three times. I’m on the verge of hanging up when I hear an uncertain hello.

  I don’t say anything for a full beat, and then I clear my throat.

  “Sarah? Sarah, is that you?”

  I wait, I breathe, I swallow. “Hi, Mom.”

  amy

  now

  She stands in the center of Emma’s room and surveys the damage. She hasn’t set foot in here since the detectives tore it apart, months ago. She passes by daily, but has been too afraid to touch anything.

  Now, she dives in, a garbage bag in hand. There are pictures in scribbled crayon; hair clips and soft pink and purple rubber bands; diaper rash cream; skid-mark panties; hand-me-down leg warmers; children’s books; work from school, half finished, her letters bunched and mixed between capitals and lowercase; an old bottle of balled, hard earwax from an extraction when Emma turned four; crumpled construction paper; coins; pipe cleaners; stuffed animals; a snot sucker; Band-Aids.

  The contents of a five-year-old’s life sift through her fingers, and for an excruciating moment, she is wrecked with grief. She tosses the pictures, places the toiletries back into their proper drawers, and shoves the clothes in the hamper in her closet. She disposes of the rest, knots the bag, and takes it out to the trash, feeling the rain and cool wind against her cheeks.

  Everything is so confusing, but it also feels better. The police are off her back, the media on a new witch hunt now. It’s as if suddenly she is free. She can breathe. She has room to think, digest, and sleep. Richard is speaking to her again, though he has moved into an extended-stay hotel, and she is fine with that.

  She can’t explain it, but her life is changing, and this awful event has been the catalyst to push things into motion. It is tragic and unthinkable, but this is her new normal.

  She’s always heard that sometimes tragedies happen to wake people up. Her daughter’s disappearance has woken her up, and she isn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. As she hustles back inside, wiping the wet from her face and arms, the same consistent thought rattles her entire core: Emma isn’t coming back.

  She knows it—call it mother’s intuition, call it a hunch—but Emma is gone from their lives, hopefully very much alive, hopefully with someone better than these latest suspects. Emma has always been the odd one out—too pretty, too prideful, too full of life for what they have to offer. She deserves a different life.

  Frank has gone radio silent, and she has not forgiven him. The only person she can trust is Ronnie, who promises if this lead comes up empty, she still won’t be convicted because there is no body, no proof. They have nothing. She is stuck in this until something concrete surfaces, but she will do whatever it takes in order to prove she’s not a murderer. She will have to wait a little longer for the divorce, the house, and the custody arrangement, but she is happier than she’s ever been and wants to shout from the rooftops just how much clarity she has.

  She can never admit it to anyone, or she will be condemned. But it’s better; it’s all so much better, because now, they all have a chance to live. She wants to sell the house, receive her buyout, and move as far away from Washington as possible. She’s been to so few places in her life, she doesn’t even know where she wants to start.

  After much soul-searching, she has decided to grant Richard full custody of Robbie because Robbie is the only thing Richard has left to hold on to. He will fight her for him, and she doesn’t have any fight left in her.

  It is her ultimate sacrifice. She will still see her son, but she wants to be free from anything else tying her to this past life. Robbie makes her think of Emma. Emma makes her think of accusations, arguments, disappointments, and a version of herself she wants to shed like a second skin.

  She thinks of all the past lives she now knows about, where she’s been and what: the gay man who committed suicide in 1963 by shooting himself (her fear of loud noises); a French pastry chef in 1895 who died from a fever (her insatiable love of cheese); a prisoner in 1992 who was sentenced to death for murdering a ten-year-old boy (her disdain for children?).

  None of these were pleasant lives except for the French pastry chef, but they give her purpose. They give her insight into her current life and the issues she faces. She is ready to get on with it.

  No one understands her here. And that is finally okay. She is days away from receiving her final severance, cashing out the rest of her savings, getting gastric bypass surgery, and living out her life as someone else. She is tired of paying for past sins. She is tired of getting it wrong all the time. She is tired of monotony, disappointment, and so much grief.

  Her child has gone missing, and the entir
e police force—in numerous states—cannot bring her home again. Her husband hates her. Her son prefers his father, which is okay after all. The police might still think she hurt her daughter, but she did not kill her. Though they are chasing the new lead, she knows the investigation will inevitably circle back to her, as it has before, as it will again. However, she is ready this time. She has Ronnie. She has a defense.

  The sun keeps shining, the days keep going, and her body keeps moving, despite all her efforts to destroy it. Her daughter is gone, and it is sad, but Amy shares this same story with millions of other parents, whose daughters are raped, tortured, chopped, buried, sold, bought, and snatched. They are tragic, twisted, unthinkable truths, and now she is forever tied to this community of mourners by her own sordid tale.

  She is giving up her daughter—her red dress, her red shoes, her red bow, her silence, her defiance, her beauty, her memory, her grit—in order to embrace the second half of a damaged, unpredictable, very shaky life. She is giving up in order to move on.

  She is giving up to live.

  sarah

  now

  I shove the car into park and take a shuddering breath. This can’t be it, but it has to be. It is now or never, and we both know it.

  I hear the buckles of her car seat unsnap. The air is thick from the stalled night, the calmness of suburbia humming around us. I told Emma I will watch her until she rounds the corner. She promises she will run the rest of the way home. She’s done it a million times before and knows just where to go. I’ve seen her run. I know how fast she is.

  “Sarah?”

  Her voice makes my chin crumple and my body convulse with sobs. I drop my head into my hands, shaking it as salty tears drench my palms.

  Her small arms are around me—an awkward maneuver with the front seat bisecting us—but she squeezes me, and I let her. After too many minutes, we break apart and I shift in my seat to look at her.

  “This is the right thing to do, okay? You belong with your family, even though I would love to have you stay.” Whose voice is this? I don’t recognize the tremors in it; have never felt this emotional about anything, or anyone.

  How I love her.

  I dab my thumbs against her tears and wipe them away. “It’s time to go home, Emma. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She cries then, big, racking sobs, and I pull her to me, memorizing the smell of her hair, her soft, full skin, her crooked fingernails I could never quite cut on a horizontal line.

  We pull apart, our bodies sticky with tears. My eyes scan the street to make sure no one is watching, that no faces are peeking beyond parted curtains or upstairs windows. Yes, it is dark, but my new car is white. The license plate has been covered, but if anyone is looking hard enough, they could trace it to me and inevitably back to this night. To what I’ve done. I haven’t come this far to mess it all up.

  I press both hands to the sides of her face and squeeze. How can I live without this little person? My every day is designed around her, my every thought, my every action. But looking into these innocent eyes, I know ours would be a life on the run, a life of looking, watching, and worrying. She wouldn’t, but I would. This was always the only answer. This was always the only choice.

  She exits the car and clicks the door shut—quietly, like I showed her—and begins walking at a diagonal, sawing the street neatly with her timid walk. Though it is late, I still flinch at her walking in the middle of the street without me. I wipe the mascara smeared under my eyes and focus on Emma’s back, which is now frozen in the middle of the road.

  I grab the door handle and push it open. “Go,” I whisper. “You have to go home, Emma.” Somehow, my voice sounds massive in the absence of daylight. She alters her stance to look at me, her mouth open, her eyes sad. I can barely make out her features underneath the streetlamps, but I can still see her, feel her. Her left foot stands rooted toward home, but her right foot is poised to take off running back to me.

  I pause, one leg out of the car, the other inside, both of us stuck between split actions. I whisper the word again—go—but she continues wavering, and the panic makes its ascent at the possibility of a speeding car careening around the corner and striking her. “Emma, you have to go now. Get out of the street.”

  Come back. Don’t go. Please, we’ll figure this out. Just come back to me.

  Emma blinks and begins to come back to her body. Her eyes clear; her posture shifts. She shuffles her feet and wags her arms, as if shaking off excess water after a bath. Slowly, exquisitely, her lips pull up at the corners—a millimeter, maybe two—and she is taking small steps, then bigger ones. Left then right. Right then left. Movement.

  And then she is off, her dress ruffling in the moonlight, her hair bouncing above her shoulders, her fuller thighs, frosted white, slicing into a full run.

  Toward me. Away from me.

  Back to me?

  Back home.

  amy

  now

  The phone rings, her cell. No one ever calls her anymore except Ronnie. Could there be something new with the case? She looks at the caller—blocked—but answers it anyway. She says hello, a burp lodged in her throat. She pushes mute, releases it, then unmutes herself. “Who is this?” She is so sick of being harassed, hassled, cajoled, and bullied. All she wants is to disappear into her new life, marginally scathed, and begin again.

  There is a shuffle and then a voice, small and sure, that brings Amy to her knees. Everything she thought she knew unravels like a ball of kite string in a tornado. She hears the babble of young chatter, a rush of happy syllables and vowels interjected with giggling.

  Her daughter is alive.

  The line crackles and then there is a woman’s voice in place of her daughter’s. “I want you to know your daughter is safe. She’s more than safe. She’s happy.”

  There is silence, both women taking the other in. Testing. Baiting. Challenging. There are a million questions Amy could ask—is Emma okay? was she taken? did she run away? did this woman find her? what has she been doing all this time?—but she doesn’t. “So, she’s okay. She’s not hurt.” It is not a question, because she can tell from this woman’s voice—warm, eager, reassuring—that she wouldn’t hurt anyone. Though she has been wrong about so much, she knows she is not wrong about this.

  “Hurt? No, absolutely not. I could never hurt her. She ran away, and I found her … but she doesn’t want to come home.”

  The icy truth strangles her. Her daughter does not want to come home. The old Amy resurfaces, and her cheeks begin to steam and darken. Who does this woman think she is? What right does she have? “Why are you calling me, then?”

  She hears a sigh—and Emma somewhere in the background, squealing and laughing about something. Amy plays the last few months over in her head: the investigation against her that was finally dropped; the new lead they are still chasing, all these months later; the freedom that she now has. It all clicks into place. This woman. The phone call. The options. She is breathless.

  The woman again. “I need to ask you…”

  Something unknots itself inside Amy and slithers from her gut to her toes. She struggles to silence her body. Her ears hum. Her head throbs. She waits.

  “I want to keep Emma. I want to give her a good life.”

  The preposterousness of what this woman is suggesting threatens to unfurl all the anger she’s worked so hard to bind. “How can you ask me that? Who do you think you are?”

  “Because I brought her back home,” the woman says. “And she came right back to me.”

  The silence swells around her. “Oh.” It is all Amy can pull from the extensive vocabulary she owns. Two letters stuffed deep inside her throat: suffocation. This woman brought her daughter back. And her daughter chose a stranger over her own family.

  She chews on the truth and swills it around until she is forced to speak. Her voice cracks as she clears her throat. The woman. She’s waiting. Amy has a feeling she’d wait forever if she had
to.

  Amy falters and looks around her rental kitchen, at her quiet little apartment. Richard has custody of Robbie. He won’t even remember his sister, or this crazy time in their lives. He has a chance to live a normal life. The house is under contract. She will soon have enough money to start over. This is her moment, her chance. Her new life has already been set in motion. All she has to do is stick to the plan.

  She rustles around in the kitchen for a Hershey’s Kiss—a stash she found when cleaning Emma’s room—and brought with her, here. A memento. She plucks one from the glass bowl, unwraps the tiny foil, and pops the chocolate into her mouth. She sucks until the sugar and cocoa melt and stick to her teeth like mud.

  She has a decision to make, and quick. Take her back or let her go? Move on or seize the second chance to become the mother she should have always been?

  She stares at the phone in her hand, closes her eyes, opens them. The answer is startling in its swiftness, and there is an ease that settles into the flesh of her body, warm and restorative.

  She exhales, perhaps for the first time in months.

  She knows what she has to do.

  “Keep her.” She says it boldly, so much so that she can imagine the woman pulling the phone away from her ear, as if she’s just been screamed at.

  The woman’s voice trembles: “What did you say?”

  “I said you can keep her.” She closes her eyes, feels those last ugly words she said to her daughter, the slap, the five years before the slap, the decades before her daughter even existed.

  “Are you sure?”

  Is she sure? “Yes.”

  Amy hears the click of the line, and she is surprised by the greediness of this woman. She thought they would talk more about it, maybe make an arrangement so she could know how Emma was doing, maybe even see her one day. She drops the phone and with it, releases the last few months, the investigation, the uncertainty, the divorce, the painful few years with her daughter, the pregnancies, the unhappiness, her whole life, really.