Don't Try To Find Me: A Novel

by Holly Brown

  Paul is calling lawyers. In the meantime, I’m supposed to give the appearance of cooperation. That was Candace’s legal advice, though she made the disclaimer that she isn’t a lawyer.

  Strickland lays out documents in front of me like he’s dealing cards in a casino. They’re from the pharmacies. “You could be in some real trouble,” he says. “Your doctor boyfriend is, for sure. He could lose his medical license. There might be charges.”

  “I have an anxiety disorder.”

  “Sure you do.”

  I stare down at the table. This all feels so disorientingly familiar, right down to Strickland’s barely concealed disdain for me. That must be what everyone thinks when they find themselves in a place like this. They’ve landed on the TNT network (is that the one with all the Law & Order marathons?). I would have preferred someplace classier, like AMC. I would have liked to step back in time and find myself communing with Don Draper on an episode of Mad Men.

  “You have a problem paying attention,” Strickland says. “I should have recognized the signs, but I used to think it was because you were so distraught about your daughter. Are you on something right now?”

  On something. That makes it sound like crack or heroin. “I have been distraught about my daughter. It’s been devastating.”

  He shakes his head like he doesn’t feel like listening to me and my big words. “Are you on something right now?”

  “I have an anxiety disorder.”

  “And to treat it, you take the medication prescribed by your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Let me rephrase then. You take the medication prescribed by Dr. Harrison.”

  “Paul is calling lawyers,” I say. “I’ll answer more fully when my attorney gets here.”

  He barks out a laugh. “No one answers more fully once their attorney shows up.”

  “So you’re trying to bully me before that?”

  “Let’s get something straight. I’ve never tried to bully you. I’ve tried to help you.” It’s all so ridiculous. He’s ridiculous, telling me that his version of the truth is what goes—I never tried to bully you, you got that?

  But he’s the one with the badge. Like he said, I could really be in trouble here.

  I stare at the receipts and pharmacy printouts. I tell myself that while it might look incriminating in terms of substance abuse, it doesn’t say a thing about Marley’s disappearance. Strickland’s got no evidence. How could he? I would never, ever harm my daughter.

  So that’s what I say. Strickland watches me for a long minute afterward.

  “You’ve lied to me, Mrs. Willits. That’s obstructing the investigation to find your daughter. That harms her.”

  Again, ridiculous. What’s he really done to find Marley? He’s acting like he would have her in custody by now if it wasn’t for me bogging him down. It’s possible he never even tried to get a court order for Trish’s cell phone records.

  “You don’t think that’s true?” he says. “You think I’m the one lying?”

  I have the right to remain silent. Not that he’s read me my rights. I’m not under arrest. Yet.

  That’s when I feel the panic attack starting. I haven’t had one in months, but at least I know what it is. I tell myself that even though my chest is tightening, there’s nothing wrong with my heart. As my breathing becomes fast and shallow, I remind myself that no one has ever died of a panic attack—something the doctor in the ER told Marley the day we brought her in. It’s unpleasant, yes, but it can’t kill me. I try to breathe through it, ride it out, picture waves lapping against the shore . . .

  Strickland is staring at me dispassionately. He thinks I’m acting: I tell him I have an anxiety disorder, and then I try to prove it.

  When I’m able to speak again, I say, “The only reason I’m talking to you before my lawyer gets here is because I want to answer any questions you have about Marley. I’ll answer anything that could bring her home.”

  “You want to appear cooperative. That’s why you’re talking to me.”

  “You think I don’t want to bring my daughter home?” If he’s going to arrest me, he can go ahead and do it. I won’t be his punching bag. If stress could kill me, I’d have been dead weeks ago.

  “I don’t know,” Strickland says. “I don’t know about you.”

  I meet his eyes. I’m surprised that they’ve softened. On TV, no cop ever admits to uncertainty. In every interrogation, the cop seems 100 percent convinced he’s got a guilty man (or woman) on his hands. Something passes between Strickland and me, something human. Then I remember his being in my bedroom. He was tricking me then, and he’s probably trying to trick me now.

  “I want to see your supervisor,” I say. I need someone who can view me with fresh eyes. An unbiased person can recognize an innocent mother being persecuted. Okay, sure, I have told lies. But those lies have nothing to do with Marley’s disappearance. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

  “My supervisor?” Strickland says. “That’s not how it works. This isn’t Walmart. You’re not trying to return something without a receipt. This is serious.”

  “I know it’s serious. My daughter is missing.”

  “She’s missing, or she ran away?”

  I sigh and look down at my hands. He’s never liked me. I want to deal with someone else. Hopefully, my lawyer has some pull and can get me a new officer. It’s a small town, but it’s not Mayberry. Strickland isn’t the only cop.

  “You don’t make the rules in here,” he says. He looks toward the glass. So someone really is behind there, like on TV. “I’ll be right back.” He walks out. If I’m lucky, there are limits to his authority. I don’t think I gave him anything he can use against me, but I can’t say for sure.

  I wonder if Paul really is making calls for a lawyer or if he’s just gone home and left me here. I wouldn’t entirely blame him if he had. The car ride home from San Francisco was excruciating for both of us, but Paul most of all. It was like I’d shanked him in the gut. He didn’t seem able to form words, the pain was that intense.

  “I didn’t think anyone would find out about the pills,” I told him.

  He kept shaking his head, shaking all over.

  “I know, that sounds bad. That I would only tell you the truth if I thought it was going to get out anyway. But you haven’t asked for the truth, Paul. Not really. You asked what I was going to say at the press conference, and that’s not the same thing.”

  His eyes were on the road, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel.

  “Okay, no more semantics. I’m sorry. I feel terrible. I know I blew it. People are going to write horrible things about me, and they’ll post links, and—”

  “And it’ll hurt the search for Marley. Do you get that?” he suddenly shouted. “Do you get that this isn’t a joke, Rachel? It’s not like any press is good press. We don’t want to be the news story. Do you get that?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “I get that. And I’m sorry.” I’m sorry most of all for hurting him, but he doesn’t want to admit the hurt. He has to hide behind FindMarley. I think of the draft e-mails. For weeks, I’ve craved certainty more than any drug, and I finally know one thing for sure: Paul, tough and unemotional as he can seem, is scared to share his true feelings with me.

  “This can’t be undone,” he says. “It’ll be everywhere. All over our sites, everywhere. I can’t answer back anymore. I can’t keep defending you.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.”

  “Of course I have to. What if Marley’s reading? I don’t want her thinking those things about you. What’ll she think now, that you’re some kind of drug addict? Are you a drug addict?”

  “The bottles were right there in the medicine cabinet,” I said. “Big bottles, with Dr. Harrison’s name on them. You never asked. Not once. You didn’t say, ‘Hey, how come you’re taking these pills?’” He might have written it in a draft e-mail; I didn’t have time to read them all. But h
e never did send them, and he never did ask. He was a silent bystander to all my crimes.

  It occurred to me that he might not even have known that Dr. Harrison was the name of Marley’s psychiatrist, until Twitter forcibly jogged his memory. He’d only gone to that one session and seemed intent on forgetting about it. He’d been humiliated then, too.

  “I’m sorry, Paul. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. When you first said we were going to be under scrutiny, I should have sat you down and told you everything. About Michael, and about the pills.” In my heart, I know now that Paul isn’t the one who can’t be trusted; I am.

  I kept going, expressing my contrition, pleading for forgiveness, and he went back to shaking his head, like he was in too much pain to even process it. I thought of Candace telling me how much he loves me, and I could finally see it, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  “I wanted to protect you,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. What’s Strickland going to do with that press conference? I’m scared for you.”

  It wasn’t something a narcissist would say. I almost wished Michael was there to hear it.

  As I sit waiting for Strickland to come back, I feel like I can see Paul more clearly than I have in years. Strickland is a bully. He gets off on harassing me, making me feel his power. Paul isn’t like that.

  I think about domestic violence and how it’s not just about physical abuse. It’s about the cycle of control and coercion that many women get caught up in. Yes, that’s existed to a certain extent in my relationship with Paul, but I’ve been complicit. I’ve allowed him to have his way without speaking up, without being aware enough to even name what was happening. When Michael pointed it out, I didn’t go back to Paul and say, “Things need to change.” I took more pills. I started eyeing other men on the train.

  I’ve held myself far away from the women at the domestic violence agency not because I’m so different, but because I want to be different. Subconsciously, I’ve accentuated that; I’ve let them feel my incomprehension. No wonder some of them might have taken joy in my downfall.

  Now that I can see Paul more clearly, I can see myself, too. The truth is, I’ve always been pliable with men. I give them control so that they’ll like me, love me even, and then I wind up with no voice. With Michael—how suggestible I must have seemed. He tells me that my husband is an abusive control freak and I take it in without much question. I let men addle my brain; I abdicate my power.

  I need to be my own person if I want that for my daughter. And I do want it for her, more than she might ever know.

  Still Day_24 . . .

  I NEVER HAD SUCH a long day in my life. It was exhausting, speaking in opposites, and it didn’t even work. Brandon said he wants to believe me but can’t, not really. He sounded sorrowful about it. He was pacing a lot.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he kept repeating. “I didn’t think this far ahead. I didn’t think it would turn out like this.” It was like he was the caged animal. That felt scariest of all, that he doesn’t feel in control either.

  “I want to leave,” he said tonight, “just for a little while. I need to get out, get some air, so I can think. But if I go, you’ll go. You’ll tell the police. Then I’ll get arrested, and you’ll go back home to your parents, like this was all some joke.” He looked pained when he said the word “joke.” How is it possible that I can feel sorry for him, that I can feel anything but pure hate after what he did to me, what he’s still doing?

  I feel a lot of things, too many. Inside my head, it’s like a thousand birds are taking flight, their wings flapping, feathers circulating. So what I feel most is that I’m going nuts. I don’t have it in me to keep trying to convince him. And if I don’t convince him he can trust me, he’ll never go back to work. I won’t make it out of here.

  “I’d never go to the police,” I said, but it came out all mechanical. Even I wouldn’t have believed me.

  I was sitting on the futon, and it was hard to keep my eyes open. I haven’t slept in days. He came and sat next to me. It was almost like we were in it together, both of us trapped.

  “You’re lying,” he said, sounding more weary than mad.

  “Let me go, Brandon.”

  “Go where? Home to your parents?” He said it with such contempt, like I’ve turned out to be just the kind of spoiled rich kid he hates, the kind who goes off to have an adventure and then runs home to Mommy when it gets too hard.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to go back to my parents. Let me go on Disappeared.com, and I’ll make plans to go somewhere new.”

  “Then I’ll be alone.”

  “So will I.”

  Was this actually my first breakup conversation? I felt like laughing, and crying.

  His face tensed. He was getting a jolt of anger. “You’ve been telling me you love me and don’t want to go anywhere. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”

  I flinched. He was like a volcano and the lava was rising.

  “That’s right,” he spat out. “You should be scared, Marley. Because I haven’t decided what I’m going to do.” He stood up and ran a hand through his hair. It jutted in manic spikes. “You know I went to prison before, right?”

  “Yes.” My voice came out small.

  “Those guys came at me. THEY attacked ME. I was just defending myself. I’ve never hurt anyone on purpose before.”

  But he was considering it now?

  “People have hurt me, Marley. And now you’re one of them. I didn’t think you would be. That’s why I picked you, to never hurt me. To stand by me. And I was going to stand by you. But now . . .” He wasn’t looking at me and seemed to be thinking out loud. Rehearsing his dominant narrative, or his story in case he got caught. “It was your idea to come out here. I mean, I was hoping you’d want to. But it was your idea. You did this. I have your texts. I can prove it.”

  I was too weak to argue. Maybe this was my idea, and my fault.

  He planted his feet and glared right at me. When he talked, his spit flew like a lawn sprinkler. “I’m as smart as any of them.” Any of who? “They let me take classes at the college for cheap, and last semester, I would have gotten straight A’s if the professors hadn’t . . .” He trailed off, eyes darting away and then back to mine. “Some people get all the advantages, you know? They get good parents, parents with money, and then they get all the confidence, and then they can get the best girls, girls who never fuck them over. It’s like they’re set for life. And they never did anything to deserve it.”

  His face was a sunset, it was changing colors so fast. But I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me, or at the world, or if they had become the same thing. Did he think I was one of those people who was going to be set for life, and he made sure to screw that up?

  “Was this a game to you?” For a few seconds, I wasn’t sure I’d said it out loud. I was that tired. It was like I couldn’t tell what was actually happening and what was in my imagination. But isn’t that really the dominant narrative of us as a couple? We saw what we needed to see in each other, we made it true. We faked our best selves, until they almost seemed real.

  “No!” He looked desperate for me to believe him. “It was never a game. It felt so good to talk to you and to think about you. Wasn’t it like that for you? Didn’t I make your life better?”

  He thought my happiness would come with his, that they were joined, because that’s how love is supposed to be. But he must have also wanted to control me. Why else seek out a girlfriend who’s half your age? I have to admit, though, that for a while, my life felt better because he was in it. I felt loved.

  “I never liked lying to you,” he said. “I only wanted you to see me like I would have been, if I’d been born somewhere different. If I’d gotten luckier. So I made up what I should have had. But other than some details, it was the real me, writing to you. And it was me you cared about. Wasn’t it?” He looked pleading, and when I didn’t answer, he was instantly furious. He ran toward
me, and I threw myself backward on the futon. He raised a fist, and I shielded my face. Then he started punching himself in the chest. “This was supposed to be different! It was supposed to work!”

  I scrambled over the back of the futon and across the apartment. I locked myself in the bathroom. It didn’t seem like a stretch for him to go from hitting himself to hitting someone else, the person who was supposed to only see the best in him. In his mind, I failed to do that. I betrayed him.

  I could hear thumps like he was punching the wall and then the crash of a lamp falling. He was tearing the place up. I double-checked the door lock, but it didn’t provide much of a sense of security. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to kick the door in.

  You were still where I left you, in the Tampax box. I saw something else under the bathroom sink, a bottle of bleach. My eyes keep going back to it, even though I try to drag them away. Because I’m starting to think there’s only one way out of this.

  Night 24

  IT’S DARK WHEN I set foot outside the police station. The air’s got that almost-Thanksgiving tang; it’s like I can smell the turkey basting. I’m inordinately grateful for air, and for food, and for freedom.

  The lawyer Paul found for me was corpulent and had a comb-over but he did his job, which was to continually thwart Strickland by advising me against answering questions. If Strickland had asked, “What do you think about the Giants’ chances this season?” I’m fairly certain that my lawyer would have told me to remain silent. He and Strickland seemed to know and dislike each other. It was a tiny bit amusing, seeing how annoyed Strickland was, especially when he declared me “free to go, for now.”

  Within seconds of exiting the station, they’re all upon us. There are reporters and lights and cameras; you can’t buy this kind of exposure, but Paul’s had enough. “No comment,” he says, pushing his way through, shielding me like a bodyguard. On the drive home, he’s pensive and distant.

  I feel peculiarly buoyant, despite having even more media lying in wait for us outside our house, despite the fact that nothing’s really changed. After all, Marley’s still missing; my secrets are out.