Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “I think you left it open because you know it’s right,” I said. “You know I shouldn’t be here.”

  “You have to,” she said. “They don’t need me to be Lizzie anymore, because now you are.”

  “No, Chloe. No matter how I look on the outside, they can’t change what I think or feel. And I’ll always be Emily.” I took a breath. “I’m out of here.”

  She stared at me with obvious pity in her eyes. “My mother said you might say that. See, leaving the door open was a test. She told me to do it.”

  “Well, thank you,” I said, half stepping through. I peered into a shadowy basement. It smelled musty. The walls were fieldstone and concrete. Some of the stones were damp, as if groundwater was seeping in. There was a washer and dryer in the corner. Tall shelves held canned goods. There was the Ping-Pong table that used to be in the Porters’ family room in Black Hall. I picked up speed, heading for the stairs.

  “She told me you’d want to see this!” Chloe called. She held up her cell phone and I glanced at it. The screen glowed blue. I caught sight of Seamus, our golden retriever, bounding through tall grass. That stopped me dead. I stood still as Chloe walked closer.

  At first I thought it was a video. It could have been taken at any time. I saw Seamus run toward my mother. She was taking him through the marsh—my family’s favorite place to walk, and the exact same place where I’d seen Mrs. Porter in August. Then, through Chloe’s phone, I heard voices.

  My mother’s and Mrs. Porter’s.

  “It’s FaceTime,” Chloe said. “This is live.”

  The picture wobbled, as if Mrs. Porter was holding the phone casually, not actually pointing it at my mom, just catching glimpses of her khaki pants, her Merrell boots, her blue jacket, the back of her head, hair in a messy ponytail.

  “Anything I can do,” Mrs. Porter was saying. “Absolutely anything in the world, just tell me. I drove down as soon as I could. When John and I first heard Emily was missing, oh, Mary—our hearts broke.”

  “Thank you, Ginnie,” my mother said. Her voice was gravelly with tears. “They’ve already searched this area for her body. Hundreds of people, and they found nothing—of course! Because Emily’s still alive. I come here every day, just to think, to get through the days, waiting to hear something.”

  “I can see why. It’s very peaceful,” Mrs. Porter said. “I needed a lot of quiet after Lizzie died.”

  “Oh, Ginnie.” My mother stopped, half turned to clasp Mrs. Porter’s hand. She must have knocked the camera because the image bobbled up and down before Mrs. Porter steadied it again.

  “It’s not the same as what you are going through, of course, but I know what it’s like to lose a daughter,” Mrs. Porter said.

  “We all loved Lizzie so much. I pray for you every day,” my mother said.

  “That means a lot,” Mrs. Porter said.

  “But Em is coming home. I wish more than anything that Lizzie could, too,” my mother said.

  “I know you do,” Mrs. Porter said. “You’ve always been such a good friend. I want to be here for you now.”

  They started walking again, and all I could hear was the sound of their feet tromping through the tall, dry grass. The camera showed they were on the remote marsh path. Unless someone else was taking a walk there, no one would see Mrs. Porter and my mother. Mrs. Porter could do anything. “Have you heard from Emily?” she asked my mom.

  “No. I always have my phone with me, and Tom has his, and there’s always someone at home, waiting,” my mother said. “I’m sure whoever has her won’t let her call …”

  “Is it ransom they want?” Mrs. Porter asked.

  “We have no idea,” my mother said, her voice breaking. “Martin Wade, the head investigator, tells us to be patient, but it’s driving us insane. Why would someone take her?”

  “Are you sure she was taken?” Mrs. Porter asked.

  “What else could it be? Emily would never stay away without calling us.”

  “Of course not, Mary. I was just remembering that time she ran away … but never mind. You must be absolutely devastated to think of what she’s going through.”

  “That’s what’s killing me,” my mother said, a sob tumbling out. “I keep imagining what someone could be doing to her … I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s driving me out of my mind.”

  They kept walking, my mom in the lead. The camera bounced, revealed a corner of Mrs. Porter’s red plaid jacket and then, in her other hand, a knife with a thick, sharp silver blade. She made a jabbing motion. I grabbed the phone from Chloe’s hand, pressed my mouth to it, and screamed.

  “Mom, run! Get away from her!”

  “She can’t hear. My mother has her phone on mute,” Chloe said. She pressed the OFF button, and the screen went black. I slapped her face as hard as I could, fumbled for the phone. Chloe charged at me, clawed the phone out of my hand. We kept fighting for it, but then she shoved me.

  “You’re wasting time! Your mother has five minutes to live!” she said.

  “What?” I froze.

  “I was supposed to make sure you saw that,” Chloe said. “My mother meant what she told you. I have to call her back within five minutes, or she’ll … well, you know what she’ll do. To your mother. She’ll kill her. That’s what the knife is for. So come on. We’re going upstairs. You’ll send that email to your parents. Then I’ll call my mom to let her know, and everything will be fine. Your mother will get to live.”

  I couldn’t even think. Chloe led me up the stairs. They were made of unfinished pine. It’s strange how I noticed that at a time like this, but my dad did carpentry, and the wood was the kind of thing he would have remarked on. There were little amber beads of pine pitch on the banister. I stared at them; they made me feel connected to my dad, to things he had taught me. How to measure carefully, how to hammer a nail the right way, how to sand a surface. I was in some kind of trance—it was the only way I could survive what was happening.

  I half expected upstairs to be an exact replica of the Porters’ house in Black Hall, but although I recognized most of the furniture, it wasn’t arranged as precisely as Lizzie’s room. Chloe led me to the big faded chintz sofa, the one we’d all spent hours on, watching TV and playing Scrabble. The coffee table was a large brass-bound leather trunk that had been Mame’s. It had traveled the world with her. It had taken the Queen Elizabeth II across the Atlantic Ocean.

  There were windows on two sides of the living room. Everything happened very fast. I blinked in the daylight—my first time seeing natural light in twenty-two days. While Chloe clicked the keys of her laptop, I looked outside and saw a house next door. It was big and white, like one of the sea captain’s houses in Black Hall, but it looked old and deserted. The paint was peeling, and the roof looked as if it might cave in. There was a line of beehives along a garden choked with weeds. But as I stared, I noticed a boy standing in the shadows on the front porch.

  He was tall and skinny, his dirty-blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Torn jeans slipped low on his hips, and he wore a faded red T-shirt. His face, a pale oval, was turned toward me. He looked about seventeen, Patrick’s age. My heart began to pound even harder than it already was. Was there a way I could signal to him, get help for me and my mother? I glanced at Chloe; she was intent on the computer screen. Turning back to the boy, I raised my hand, just slightly.

  “Come on,” Chloe said, and I dropped my arm fast so she wouldn’t see. She gestured for me to sit beside her on the sofa. She had her laptop open to Gmail, my username typed in, as if this was predestined, as if she’d already known I would be doing this. All I had to do was insert my password. Mrs. Porter had written out what I was supposed to say. There it was in her neat handwriting on a piece of geranium-emblazoned notepaper next to the laptop.

  “You have to type it exactly. No code words. Mom’s going to check,” Chloe said. “And don’t get your hopes up.”

  “About what?” I ask
ed, as if I had any hopes.

  “Your family finding you through the IP address. My mom figured out how to have a fake one, a virtual private network.” Chloe paused. She glanced away, then back at me. “She thinks of everything.”

  Tracking me through the IP address hadn’t even occurred to me. But now, Chloe telling me it could have been possible—but wasn’t—filled me with despair.

  My heart was in overdrive. My chest hurt so much I wondered if I might drop dead. I read the message on the notepaper, and I couldn’t get my fingers to work.

  “Hurry up,” Chloe said. “If I don’t call my mom right away …”

  “Okay,” I said. I logged in. My password was LiZZieP0rTEr4ever. I had changed it from my old one on the day of Lizzie’s funeral.

  My inbox was overflowing. Emails from my mother, my father, all my brothers and sisters, school friends, even Dan. I caught the subject line of the most recent from Bea: I love you so much! Emily, I need you now, come home!!!!! Did they really think I was able to read my emails? Why wouldn’t I have written back? A yearning for my cell phone overtook me, nearly knocked me down.

  “Do it,” Chloe said, tapping the time in the upper right corner of the screen. “You have sixty seconds or the knife comes out for real.”

  I heard myself moan, and then I stopped thinking. I addressed the email to both my parents and just typed:

  Mom & Dad,

  Everything got too hard. I know Mom is back to drinking—I found the bottles. If she really loved us, she would have stopped for good. Don’t look for me. For now, I don’t want to be part of the family. There’s too much wrong. I’m safe, and I’ll come home when I figure things out.

  Love, Emily

  I hesitated before sending—I couldn’t bear to think what this would do to them. But I looked at the time—one minute had already passed. Was I too late? My heart was pumping so hard, in sheer terror for my mom, and I hit SEND. The instant the email went, Chloe turned her phone back on and dialed her mother.

  “It’s done. I’ll take a screenshot and send it to you so you can see,” she said into the phone. Then she hung up and nodded at me.

  “Why didn’t you just forward it to your mother?” I asked Chloe. “That would be her proof.”

  “My mom says the police have probably already hacked your account. They’d get suspicious if they saw you forwarded it to my mom.”

  I pictured my mother, over by the marsh in Black Hall. Mrs. Porter getting a call from Chloe would be the most natural thing in the world. My mother would be wishing she’d get a call from me. Her smartphone would buzz, an email notification, and she’d pull it from her pocket. She’d see my screen name. She might cry out. Then she’d open the email. She’d read it. My father, wherever he was, would be reading it at the same time. Their hearts would be broken.

  Tears were pouring down my cheeks. I stood up and started stumbling toward the cellar stairs. Chloe caught my arm.

  “You don’t have to go down there now,” she said. “You proved yourself.”

  “What?”

  “By sending the email. You’ve officially joined our family, Lizzie. You’re allowed to be anywhere you want in the rest of the house during the day. You can sleep down there. It’s a nice room. But you’re free to be up here with us.”

  I stared at her with all the hatred I felt.

  “But one more thing,” she said. “You’d better put those contacts in. My mother said if your eyes aren’t green next time she sees you, the email won’t matter—she’ll hurt your mom.”

  And I walked downstairs, my hand sliding down the rough wood banister, bumping over the tiny, hard orange beads of pine sap, and barely feeling the pain of the long splinter that slid into my palm.

  In the back of my mind was that boy next door. Maybe he had seen me. Maybe he would know something was wrong and call the police. But the thoughts dissolved. I felt too hopeless to really, seriously consider the possibility that someone could help.

  I went into the bathroom and stuck the contacts into my eyes, first try.

  I kept thinking of the email I had sent, wondering if my parents would think it sounded like me, if they could tell I hadn’t written it myself. If they didn’t figure out the truth, my mother would feel so hurt I believed she was drinking, and the rest of the family would be filled with suspicion that she was. I didn’t have long to wonder, though.

  “You’ve earned this,” Mrs. Porter said, beaming as Mr. Porter filed silently in, carrying the TV, setting it on the left side of Lizzie’s desk, hooking it up to the cable that was already there.

  Mr. Porter handed me the remote and left without a word, but Mrs. Porter took the remote from my hand and switched on a news network. She sat next to me on the bed to check the stitches in my head and the puffy red splinter gouge on my palm.

  Then she took out her cell phone.

  “You’re everywhere,” Mrs. Porter said. “Online, on TV.”

  That felt weird to think about, but I didn’t react.

  “You know the next step, don’t you?” she asked.

  I stared at the TV screen. There were my parents. They walked silently from our car up our sidewalk toward the house. At the same time, Mrs. Porter scrolled through her phone. She pulled up the same video on CNN online, held it in front of my face. She closed that window, opened another news page, and there was my smiling photo from last year’s yearbook.

  “You see?” Mrs. Porter asked, shoving her phone into her pocket before I could grab it from her. “I don’t want you dwelling on it, but I think it’s important for you to see what is being said. And you need to think about this: You know what is possible. You saw with your own two eyes how close I came to your mother. When you’re ready, you will join us upstairs. The invitation was extended the minute you did the right thing—wrote that email.”

  “I didn’t write it,” I said. “I only sent it.”

  “The point is, you will come upstairs and we will all be together. As a family. Now watch.”

  On TV, I saw that my father’s arm was around my mother’s shoulders. He was tall and thin and towered over her. I leaned close to the screen. Mom’s posture looked hunched, as if she was curving into her own heart. She wore the same blue jacket she’d had on yesterday, when Mrs. Porter had broadcast their walk to me.

  Or maybe this news report had been taped yesterday. I heard reporters calling, asking for a reaction to my email, but my parents didn’t answer. They walked up our steps, across the front porch. It was late October, so the house was decorated for Halloween. Bea and I had always done it. There were the jack-o’-lanterns our family carved, the haystacks we tied to the posts, the dry ears of yellow-and-purple corn we would get at Sloane’s Orchard and hang on our bright blue front door. Someone inside the house opened the door, and my parents disappeared inside.

  Marcela Perez, our family’s favorite newscaster, who wore tortoiseshell glasses just like my sister Anne’s, and who reported on all the big stories in Connecticut—fatal accidents, a home invasion in Guilford, drugs on the streets, and missing kids—stood in front of my house holding a microphone.

  But this wasn’t about other people. It wasn’t even all about me. Marcela was talking about my whole family.

  “Breaking news in the Emily Lonergan case. After twenty-two days of silence, Emily made contact. Her email hasn’t yet been released, but a source close to the family says that Emily ran away once before and that, according to the email, she is safe and will return home when she is ready. A spokesman for the Black Hall Police Department confirms that Emily was once a runaway. More as this story develops.”

  Mrs. Porter switched to a different news channel. I glanced at her. I wondered if she was the source close to the family. In this news clip, she was standing right on our front porch, hugging Patrick, an expression of concern on her face. She glanced at the camera, as if surprised to see it there.

  “Two families, united by loss,” this other reporter—a TV-perfect-looking man I didn’t
recognize—said in a fake TV-modulated voice. “Virginia Porter, mother of Emily’s best friend Elizabeth—a tragic victim of childhood cancer—is here in idyllic coastal Black Hall to comfort another family in distress. Emily Lonergan, missing for three weeks, sent this email to her family.”

  The network showed a screenshot of what I had written. I wanted to die. Everyone in the world could read it: my mother drinking again, me not feeling like part of my family. I twisted my head away, but then I had to look back at the screen.

  There was Patrick. I always teased him and said, You’re the best brother in the world except for my other brothers. Patrick had the classic Lonergan black Irish coloring I’d always wanted—for real, not fake and dyed like the way I was now. His blue eyes blazed. His mouth was set in a hard line. Was he mad, sad, confused? I tried to read his face. Then he bowed his head, and I saw his shoulders shaking. He was crying—my big brother. On TV. Mrs. Porter embraced him.

  The reporter continued, speaking in a grave voice. “Alcoholism is a tragic illness that all too often plagues not only the drinker but entire families. Tune in at eleven for our special report. ‘Problem Drinking: Destroyer of Families.’”

  “He likes the word ‘tragic,’” Mrs. Porter said, sitting beside me. “He said it twice.”

  “It is tragic for my family,” I said. “Because of what you made me do.”

  “Well, the death of a daughter is a true tragedy. Your parents have the hope that their child will return. Even though you won’t, because you’re ours now.” She put her arm around me, just as she had around Patrick, and the physical sensation made me want to throw up. “Lizzie, you’ve come home.”

  She muted the sound and handed me the remote. I clicked around, searching for more views of everyone I loved. There was Anne at Trinity College, bundled up in the red wool cape she’d sewn herself. Even though the black satin lining didn’t show on TV, I knew it was there because I had helped her pin the pattern to the fabric, kneeling on the floor of our living room.