by S. B. Caves
‘Calm down.’ Francine was on her feet. ‘Nobody is taking you to the police.’
‘I won’t go! They know! How many fucking times do I have to tell you?’ Lena reached up, grabbed two handfuls of her own hair and pulled at it.
Cradling her bump, Sheila backed away to the window, doing her best not to scream.
‘Don’t do that.’ Francine reached out and grabbed the girl’s wrists. ‘Stop. Just calm down.’ She held Lena against her, restraining her from doing any more harm.
‘I won’t go,’ Lena mumbled into her neck. ‘I won’t.’
‘You don’t have to go anywhere. I said I was going to look after you, didn’t I?’ Francine glared over at Will. ‘It’s okay now. Easy. There you go. Easy.’
Will stood braced on the other side of the table. He glanced over at Sheila. She was crying silently, one hand on her stomach, the other covering her mouth. He said, ‘Honey? Why don’t you go upstairs?’
‘I can stay … I don’t mind,’ Sheila replied weakly.
‘This doesn’t have anything to do with you,’ Francine said, slowly setting Lena back into the chair next to her. ‘Why don’t you do as your husband says?’
Sheila wiped a stray tear away. ‘What have I ever done to you, Francine?’
‘This isn’t about you,’ Francine said. ‘This is about mine and Will’s daughter.’
‘Our daughter is dead, Francine,’ Will said.
Before Francine could dispute his claim, Lena said, ‘No she isn’t. Mel’s alive.’
‘Mel? Who’s Mel?’ Will asked.
Francine shook her head. ‘That’s what they call Autumn now. They changed her name to Melody.’
‘They?’ he said flippantly. ‘Who are they, Francine?’ He rubbed the side of his head as though trying to tame the onset of a migraine. ‘Look, this is going nowhere. I’d like you and your friend here to leave my house. And in future, I’d appreciate some notice before you think of dropping by.’
‘Are you kidding me? This is our daughter we’re talking about. Our little Autumn! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? What, because now you’re gonna have another child, you forget about your firstborn?’
‘I should go,’ Sheila said, slippers shuffling on the black marble.
‘Yes, you should,’ Francine intoned.
‘No, stay,’ Will snapped, pointing to the spot where she was standing as though commanding a dog. ‘Any madness Francine wants to spout off about, she can do so in front of you. This is your home and you have every right to be here.’
‘Go upstairs, Sheila. No, stay here, Sheila. Can she lie down and roll over too, Will?’ Francine regretted it immediately. Sheila, the poor sad thing, held her stomach and frowned, her cheeks blooming with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Goddam you, Francine. You don’t come into my house and talk to my wife like that, you got it?’
‘I said I was sorry. I’m just … Will, this is different, I’m telling you.’ Some sort of carnivorous worm was trying to chew its way out of her skull. She waited for it to settle, reclaimed her composure and spoke clearly and calmly. ‘I understand how crazy it all sounds. Do you think I would willingly come here and make an idiot of myself in front of the two of you if I had the choice? But look …’ She was speaking with her hands, getting flustered. She took another breath. ‘If there was even a chance that this is remotely true, wouldn’t you want to do something about it?’ The appeal had beaten the wind out of her. She leaned on the chair for support, couldn’t quite remember when she’d ever felt this tired just from talking. Maybe not ever. ‘Is there no part of you that believes Autumn could still be out there?’
He bowed his head and removed his glasses, then pinched the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowing. ‘Francine, the only way I could get past this whole goddam nightmare was by making peace with the fact that I was never going to see my daughter again. It wasn’t easy. Now I would love to sit here reminiscing about her, trying to drum up some hope that she’s still out there somewhere. But we have to look at it logically. It’s been ten years, a decade, and not one shred of proof that she’s alive.’
A sour film coated Francine’s mouth. She wanted to draw phlegm and hock it onto the marble to rid herself of the taste. Or maybe just spit straight into Will’s face. ‘But they haven’t found a body either.’
‘And they probably never will.’ He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply in his throat. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Francine. Don’t do it to us. We have to let her go. You and me. We need to move on.’
‘Move on,’ Francine echoed, and looked over at Sheila’s bump. ‘Is that what this is?’
All the compassion fled his face and was replaced by a sneer of contempt. ‘Why don’t you just go home? Take your friend here and go.’
‘You’re a fucking fraud, you know that? You go around holding your stupid seminars, talking about Autumn, sharing all these little anecdotes, exploring your so-called grief. But all you’re really doing is manipulating people with your lies.’ She pounded her chest with her fist. ‘I never gave up hope. Never. And now we have the best chance in ten fucking years of finding her and you want to shoo me out like I’m some kind of fucking lunatic? You make me sick. You’re a real coward.’
Will stepped closer until Francine could feel the breeze from his nostrils, and for a second, she thought he might actually strike her. ‘You think what you have is hope? It’s not. It’s guilt. That guilt has poisoned you for years. And if you don’t find a way to get rid of it, it’ll kill you. You have to learn to forgive yourself, Francine.’ After a moment’s pause, he added, ‘I forgave you a long time ago.’
His words were worse than a slap. He’d held that moral superiority over her like the Sword of Damocles, but had never reached for it until that very moment. In a strange, sick way, Francine had to admire his self-restraint. Even when things had got really messy during the divorce and the arguments that preceded it, he had never openly blamed her.
That was it. Argument over. No more appeals.
Well, maybe one more. She dug into her jacket pocket and produced the Polaroid. ‘Here. Look at this.’
Will took it, his eyes flicking to the photo, then back up to Francine. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘That’s Autumn.’
‘Francine …’ He closed his eyes. ‘Francine, please …’
She turned to Lena. ‘Tell him. Tell him who that is with the flowers in her hair.’
‘Mel … sorry, Autumn. Tammy took that photo when we had the big festival.’ Lena peeled a shred of skin from her chapped lip and sucked up the blood.
Will looked at the worn Polaroid again, holding it close to his eyes for a better view. ‘Francine, this could be anyone.’
‘She just told you it’s Autumn!’ Francine snapped, her voice ricocheting around the kitchen. ‘You just heard her tell you that.’
Will held a palm up in Lena’s direction like a traffic cop signalling a car to stop. ‘How about we cut her out of the equation for now? Let’s just agree that maybe she isn’t the most reliable source of information. If you believe that this is Autumn, then you should go to the—’ He halted, obviously remembering Lena’s last outburst. ‘You should go and inform you-know-who. I’m not going to stop you. That’s your right. In fact, it’d be the correct thing to do.’ He handed back the Polaroid, as though eager to be rid of the thing. ‘I want nothing to do with it, but if they think you’re on to something, I’ll do everything in my power to help you. How’s that?’
7
On the way home, Francine stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka, along with an assortment of candy bars for Lena. She planned on forcing herself to eat something substantial before pouring a large measure of the vodka, but she couldn’t wait that long, uncapping the bottle in the elevator ride up to her apartment and taking a long hit. It was cheap stuff, but it had a lot of bite and did the trick. Another swig and she could feel it going to
work, dissolving the ache in her head, lubricating the knots in her chest.
Once they were in the apartment, she turned the TV on for Lena and gave her the candy bars. ‘There’s a bunch of tea and stuff in the cupboard above the microwave,’ she said, though she wasn’t sure it was safe to leave the girl to her own devices with something as dangerous as boiling water. She grabbed a stool from the kitchen and carried it to the landing outside her apartment, where she sat with the bottle, watching the rain cascade and listening as the wind wailed through the complex. Her hair blew into her face and mouth and the force of the breeze pulled tears from her eyes. But the vodka kept her warm. She was well aware that she was drowning any coherent thoughts and killing questions she could pose to her new house guest, but what was the alternative?
As she raised the bottle to her lips once again, she realised that the weight of it felt different. Confused, she inspected it and saw to her surprise that she’d killed almost half of it in less than an hour. That was two days in a row that she’d binged outside of her allotted ‘drunk day’. She hadn’t had a slip-up like that in probably … how long? Two years? Maybe a little longer. Perhaps three.
* * *
Francine had long since resigned herself to the fact that she was never going to be completely sober. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be. But she’d found a way to control the drinking on her terms, and that was good enough for her.
When things had started to get really bad, when Will had finally snapped and left her screaming incoherently in an empty house, she had made a deal with herself that had very likely saved her miserable life. She had woken up one Friday morning with a hangover – 10.0 on the Richter scale, with seismic shocks that had continued throughout the day. Up until that point she’d built something of a tolerance for hangovers; they never got any easier, but she had her little tricks to help her get out of bed and shake her ass into gear for work. For some reason that she couldn’t fully recall now – or perhaps there hadn’t been a reason at all – she had gone completely wild. She’d collapsed in the bathroom and fallen asleep in a puddle of her own vomit.
That incident had put her off whiskey for a while. It had also forced her to make a deal with herself. It wasn’t exactly a moment of clarity, more a grudging truth she had avoided facing for too long: there was no sense in drinking herself stupid if it dulled her ability to progress with the search. If Autumn was still alive as Francine believed her to be, then she had to keep looking, and she couldn’t do that blind drunk. So she made Thursday evening her drink zone. In hindsight, perhaps Friday or even Saturday would’ve been better days. This way, though, she could use Friday as her day to recover and spend the weekend working on finding Autumn. And when her pickled brain couldn’t produce fresh ideas, when she spent entire weekends staring at the wallpaper with tears in her eyes, she finally joined the gym.
It took her about eight months to get fit.
Mentally, she felt different after a hard shift in the gym. She’d heard somewhere that working out released endorphins in the brain and that a lot of people got over depression through exercise. She wasn’t there yet, but when she sprinted on the treadmill it was like a vacuum cleaner sucking the fog away from her brain. She zoned out, her mind too occupied with the aches and pains to throw any obstacles at her. Soon she was at the gym every day, sometimes twice a day – before and after work – with the exception of Thursdays, of course.
* * *
Now her mouth was dry and she felt a pang of something like guilt needling her. She’d drunk too much, too soon, and no longer felt the relaxing ebb of the vodka. Instead, she felt heavy and sluggish, as though she could collapse on her bed and fall into a coma. It was no good. Maybe she would sit out in the cold a little while longer, let the chill get back into her bones.
An hour or so later, she plodded back into the house and washed her face. Blinking rapidly, trying to refocus her vision, she looked in the mirror and noticed that both eyes were bloodshot. She thought about tipping the rest of the vodka down the sink, but decided against it before the idea made more sense. After all, she’d only drunk half the bottle, and Thursday wasn’t too far away.
She poked her head into the living room. Lena sat on the sofa with her knees pulled into her chest, transfixed by a Seinfeld rerun. The curtains were drawn and the twitchy light from the TV made their silhouettes dance across the walls.
‘How’s it going?’ Francine asked, perching herself on the arm of the sofa.
‘I feel sick. Ate too much chocolate.’
‘Well, that’ll do it. Did you want a hot drink?’
‘I got one.’ She reached down and lifted a mug. Francine was mildly proud that the girl had been able to produce the beverage without scalding herself.
‘Good.’ A burst of canned laughter rattled into the room.
‘I don’t think he’s going to help me, is he?’ Lena asked, picking at her lip.
Francine watched the screen. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You said he would, though.’
‘I think it might take a bit of time to convince him. You have to understand that this is a shock to him. He’ll come around.’
‘We’re running out of time.’
‘What do you mean?’ Francine grabbed the remote and turned the volume down.
‘I’ve been gone two weeks. They’re already out there looking for me. They’ll track me here.’
‘That’s impossible, Lena. For all they know, you could be on the other side of the country.’
‘No. You don’t know them. They’ll want to keep me quiet. One way or another, they’ll find out I came here. They know where you live. That’s why we need to move.’
‘If they haven’t caught you by now, they aren’t going to. Maybe they figure you’re too scared to go to the police. I mean, that’s true, isn’t it?’
‘They know I won’t go to the police.’
‘Exactly. So you have nobody to run to. If they’re as powerful as you say they are, then why would they be afraid of you?’
She laughed. ‘They’re not afraid of me. They’ll just want me back because I belong to them.’ She clamped her lip between her teeth. ‘In this life, you pay what you owe.’
‘If you’re that frightened, Lena, then your best chance of freedom, true freedom, is to give me something I can work with.’ Francine paused and thought carefully about her next sentence. ‘If I find Autumn, then you can come and live with me; the two of you, together. I’m sure she’s going to need a lot of help, and you’re the one who has been there for her these last ten years.’ You’re also the one who helped take her away from me … ‘You’re pretty much like sisters, right? When I have her back, the three of us can go and live in Hawaii.’
Lena didn’t appear to be listening. Francine withdrew her phone from her pocket.
‘Lena, come sit by me a second.’ Lena did as she was told. Francine opened the map app pointed at the marker indicating their location. ‘This is where we are now. You see here?’ She traced her finger along the serpentine grey line that dissected the landmarks. ‘This is the highway that leads directly to this neighbourhood.’ She looked over to see if the girl was following her. ‘You see the names of these other places? Do they ring any bells?’
Lena’s scabby lower lip drooped as she looked at the screen. She didn’t speak for a long time, though her eyes flittered rapidly across the map.
‘Lena? Can you read these names?’
‘Of course I can fucking read,’ she growled, speaking through bared teeth. ‘You asked me to look at it and I’m looking at it. Stop rushing me!’
‘Okay, all right.’ Francine wanted to get away from the girl, to get the vodka. Lena’s violent temper made her unpredictable; it was like sitting next to a frothing stray, waiting for it to snap.
A few minutes went by. Then a few more. Lena began muttering under her breath, so quickly that Francine couldn’t quite pick up what was being said. She heard ‘not tomorrow, tonight’ again, and ‘pa
y what you owe’. Eventually Lena leaned back in the sofa and continued watching Seinfeld.
‘Lena?’
‘I don’t know any of those places. I don’t know the names.’
‘All right, but look at this here.’ Francine tapped her finger on the light green section of the map that indicated a woodland area. ‘Could this be it, do you think? Somewhere in this area?’
‘I said I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t know any of it.’
Francine leaned forward and rubbed her head. The wormy veins in her temples pounded. ‘Then what good is any of this? Huh? How do you suggest I find Autumn if I don’t have the first idea of where to start?’ She stood up and blocked the TV screen from Lena’s view. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, Lena. What do you think I should do? If I can’t go to the police, then all I have for help is you. And you don’t seem to want to help me all that much either. So you tell me, what’s my next move?’
Lena stared up at her. Sitting there in the garish light of the living room, her face expressionless, she resembled a faulty doll that had been taken off the assembly line. ‘We watch TV.’
‘That’s your suggestion?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re gonna have to run that by me one more time,’ Francine said, hands clenching into fists.
‘I said we should watch TV. Saturday Night Splendour’s on.’
‘What?’
‘Saturday Night Splendour. You know, Glenn Schilling.’
‘Lena, I don’t give a shit about Glenn Schilling.’
‘You should,’ Lena said, and then her cheeks dimpled as though she were trying to hold her laughter in. ‘Because sometimes, we go to his place for parties …’
8
The limo pulled up into the studio parking lot just before six p.m., the space marked with a sign reading Mr Glenn Schilling.
‘Now I don’t think that’s appropriate,’ said the limo driver. ‘That kiddie will catch a cold.’
