by Kelly Rimmer
When he’d finally finished, he stood and walked toward me. For just a moment I thought he was going to hurt me, and I made a sound like a whimper. But he ignored me, instead bending to take Beth from my arms and to walk her into her bedroom.
Then he returned, sat heavily opposite me and looked right into my eyes.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
* * *
The lie took on a life of its own after that. I told the truth about the day’s events—only I swapped my role with Grace’s. By the time I finished, he was sitting with his head in his hands.
“You’re sure this has nothing to do with your...” He looked up, lip curled scornfully, and waved vaguely at my abdomen. “Your business.”
“They didn’t even know I was meeting her,” I said thickly.
Patrick began to pace, tension in the heavy fall of his footsteps and the locked set of his broad shoulders. “I need to call the police, but I can’t tell them what you were really doing because if they find her she’ll be charged, too. And Jesus Christ, I gave her the money! We could all end up in prison!”
He stopped abruptly, and shot me a withering glance.
“I can’t believe you’d get us involved in this kind of shit. Grace is a good girl. And she was so determined to help you and now look! Who knows where she is?” He ran his hand through his hair, and then puffed out a frustrated breath. “I don’t even know where to start.” He stopped pacing abruptly, then turned to me again. “You’ll have to stay with the children. I’m going to go look for her.”
“No,” I protested, standing. “I know where she was last time I saw her. I should be looking for her. I don’t know the first thing about children, so you need to—”
“It’s time to stop playing games, Maryanne,” he said, cutting me off. “I know you live in some fantasy world where you think you can do anything a man can do, but this is the real world. This is our lives you’ve thrown into chaos. You’ll do as I tell you to do!”
He slammed the door as he went out, and I was left sitting alone in their dingy little house, and the hours began to drag past me.
I didn’t know if my sister was dead or alive, but her ghost haunted me in those hours. Her scent was in the air, and her style was in the sparse decor, and it was her books on the wooden chest they used for a coffee table and her hands that had last touched the television set. Her life didn’t seem like much to me, but in my terror and my grief, I had my first taste of humility.
Grace had struggled and she’d suffered, but she’d loved her children and somehow, she’d loved Patrick, and those aspects to her character that I had shrugged off as a “waste of a life” were the very things that gave her life worth and meaning.
I couldn’t sleep, but I was too tired to keep my eyes open, so after a while I lay on the couch and I gave in to the pull of exhaustion to close my eyes. This made my anxiety so much worse, because without visual distraction, all I could do was let god-awful scenarios play out in my mind. But I couldn’t prop my eyelids up, and so I lay there awake and let myself feel the sheer terror of my situation.
When Patrick came home at dawn, that’s where he found me: lying on the couch, wide awake and shaking with grief and shame. When I opened my eyes, I saw that he was alone, and I knew for sure then that my worst fears had come true.
* * *
Patrick went to Mrs. Hills’s house first thing the next morning and called the police, and two officers came about an hour later. They sat in Patrick and Grace’s living room, one on the threadbare armchair, one on the end of the sofa beside me. When they asked us what happened, Patrick looked at me, and I spun the lie out further.
Shopping in the city. She went to look at shoes. I went to the diner to get a table for lunch. Separated. She never came back.
Patrick corroborated the story in dull, flat tones.
It was evident from the first moment of that interview that the police had looked around the ragged house, seen the four tiny children squabbling at the kitchen table, smelled the stale alcohol on Patrick’s skin and assumed that Grace had decided to take herself on a little vacation. They assured us she’d turn up sooner or later, and advised us “not to worry too much” in the meantime.
I went back to Mrs. Hills’s house as soon as they left and called the phone number scrawled on that now-tattered piece of paper. I was entirely unsurprised when it rerouted to the operator.
“Hello, the number you’ve dialed has recently been disconnected,” the operator said brightly.
“Can you tell me who the number belonged to?”
“Of course I can’t, ma’am. I don’t have access to that information. Can I route you elsewhere?”
“No,” I said hollowly. “No, thank you.”
She was just gone—disappeared. When that man put the blanket over my sister in the backseat of that car, he didn’t just hide her. He erased her.
I took Dad’s car and drove to my parents’ house after that, but I’d forgotten all about the promise I’d made—I had told Mother I’d be home in time for dinner. Father sat up all night, and when I opened the front door that morning, the look of sheer relief on his face was a punishment in itself. I was often hard on my parents for their focus on money and reputation, but that day was a vivid reminder that they did actually feel a depth of love for us. If I had forgotten that truth until I saw how happy he was to see that I was safe, I was entirely certain of it by the time I’d finished explaining that they’d been worried about the wrong daughter entirely.
Shopping in the city. She went to look at shoes. I went to the diner to get a table. Separated. She never came back.
Mother stopped me halfway through my explanation so that she could fetch a container of pills from the kitchen, and after that appeared numb with some combination of medication and fear. Father seemed to be on a roller coaster of emotions, and as soon as I’d finished spinning my story, he snatched up his keys and sprinted to the car to go look for her in the city.
For the first few days fear was a buffer. It insulated us from the real world and from each other. Father took off work at the bank, and both parents were soon lingering at Patrick and Grace’s house, apparently still convinced that she was going to walk through the door at any given moment. Father went out and purchased three stretcher beds so we could all try to sleep there, and we jammed all four kids into one of the bedrooms so we could set the stretcher beds up in the other.
I slept in short spells. I’d drift off, then wake up and leap out of bed, convinced I’d heard her coming in the front door. The children cried constantly, especially sweet little Bethany, and I spent much of those early days trying to console them with hugs that didn’t feel at all natural to me.
“You’re hurting me, Aunt Maryanne,” Tim protested at one point. The next time I hugged Ruth, I was apparently too gentle, because she leaned back and stared at me in disgust.
“Cuddle me,” she said, frustrated. “Properly. Like Momma cuddles me.”
My parents were no help at all, although they tried their best. They spoke to the children as though they were adults, and the children reacted by avoiding them at all costs. I knew that a big part of their distance from the children was self-inflicted due to their stubborn disapproval of Grace and Patrick’s life choices. But my heart ached when I saw my mother watching with a confused, hurt expression when the children came to me for comfort, not her.
“They hardly know us,” she said at one point, her chin wobbling. “But they don’t know you, either, and you’re not exactly the most maternal stranger they’ll ever meet. Why are they so willing to come to you for a cuddle when they’ll barely speak to me?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, because it was obvious that my mother’s cool, formal engagement with the children terrified them. But she had always been that way, and she was hardly likely to change her mannerisms anytime soon, so there seemed no p
oint explaining the problem to her, especially when she was already so distraught over Gracie.
Patrick, too, was in a fog, walking around as if he was half-asleep, barely reacting when the children spoke to him...not reacting at all when they asked after Mommy. Father snapped at him about that, and Patrick stared back at us with hollow eyes as he explained that he just didn’t know what to say.
I’d felt confused and I’d felt guilty since Grace went missing, but her disappearance seemed to have broken Patrick entirely and it was an awful thing to see, even in a man I had long despised.
“I think you should try to explain to the kids what’s going on,” I whispered to him later, when my parents were out of earshot.
“I can’t,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. “I just can’t.”
I took the children out to the backyard after that. I sat them in a little semicircle on the grass and I sat right there on the grass with them, heedless of stains on my beige cigarette trousers.
“I need to explain something to you all,” I said. I scanned their confused little faces and blinked hard, determined not to cry in front of them. Timothy’s gaze narrowed on my face. “Mommy is lost. We don’t know where she is, but we’re trying to find her. We all need you to be good little boys and girls until we do. Any questions?”
Tim’s suspicious gaze cleared. The skin on his cheeks paled, but he didn’t say a word. Jeremy reached for Ruth’s hand. Beth looked from her siblings to me, then burst into noisy tears. Before I could comfort her, Tim stood, shot me a glare, then slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her away.
* * *
Days soon became weeks, but life couldn’t remain paused forever and we fell into something of a routine. My parents and I would all climb out of our “beds” when the children woke. Mother and I took turns preparing breakfast, and then dressing the children and sending them into the backyard to play. Father and Patrick would pull out the street directory and agree on a plan, then each would go to their designated section of the city to show a photo of Grace around and to ask if anyone had seen her.
Mother made trip after trip to the department store in search of items to freshen the place up, as she put it, returning each afternoon with bags or boxes or deliveries of furniture and knickknacks. I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d have been in this situation if Mother had paid such close attention to Grace’s comfort and safety at any point over the recent years that had passed, but I couldn’t discourage my mother’s shopping sprees. I needed to be alone in the house during the day.
While the children played in the backyard, I searched high and low for Grace’s notes. It did seem likely to me that she’d hidden them somewhere in her cleaning supplies or even the kitchen—after all, she said she’d left them in the last place Patrick would think to look. At first, I was optimistic—the house was small; there were only so many places she could have hidden them...but the days began to pass, and I had checked and double-checked every conceivable spot. I considered so many possibilities. Had Patrick found them already? Had my parents stumbled upon them? That seemed unlikely, too. They wouldn’t have called the police, but they’d have certainly let me know about it. I decided the letters must still be there somewhere, only hidden in a place I hadn’t thought to look.
I had to keep searching, just in case—I had no option to stop. Besides, searching for the notes and keeping busy with the children were effective ways of prolonging the immense grief and shame I knew would bury me the minute I let myself be still.
* * *
In the second week Father arranged for the telephone to be connected, and then he returned to work. I called Professor Callahan and explained my situation.
“The week after your grandmother died!” He clucked his tongue. “What rotten luck. Take another few weeks.”
Mother’s days at Grace’s house became shorter and shorter over the third week. And then Patrick’s boss, Ewan, came to the house, his hat in his hand, muttering something about needing Patrick at a building site.
Patrick, who was spending his days driving around the city searching for Grace and his nights sitting up pouring over maps to plan his next day’s search, told Ewan he just couldn’t. But the next day the postman came, and there was a stack of overdue notices in the mail, including a particularly fierce letter from Yesler Terrace estate management. He’d missed a month’s rent payment.
“How did this happen?” I asked Patrick quietly. He scratched a hand over his scruffy beard and admitted, “I spent all of my last pay on gas so I could keep looking for her. And when I don’t work, I don’t get paid, so everything that’s come due since has just had to wait.”
I convinced Father to cut Patrick a check so he could at least cover the rent. He grumbled and complained but wrote the check and informed Patrick that this was most definitely a “one-off.”
Patrick went back to work the next day. The vigil was over without a conclusion and I was about to learn yet another hard lesson: sometimes life demands that you to move on without closure. Grace had disappeared, we had no idea where she was, and the truth was we might never know. Maybe I’d have run away then, too—tucked my miserable tail between my legs and run back to California—except that I couldn’t. I knew it was a little less likely with every day that passed, but I could not let go of the hope that Grace would resurface somewhere. And in the meantime, I simply had to keep searching for her notes. The last one she wrote now represented a threat to my entire future.
Fortunately for me, it seemed to make sense to everyone else that I’d stay. They all assumed I was sticking around at least in part to help with the children, and the only problem with that assumption was that it meant I was alone with four children all day, every day, and I had no idea how to care for them.
I gradually, painfully, figured out the basics on my own—diapers, simple meals, how to work the television, but I still felt like a bumbling fool. After five years of excelling in academic study, I was learning that domestic life commanded its own skillset, one I’d never thought to respect. I forgot I put eggs on the stove to boil one morning and the pot went dry and the eggs exploded, sending yolk and white all over the kitchen walls and ceiling. I took the children to the grocer to buy food for dinner and Jeremy ran off—it took half an hour to catch him because he thought running up and down the aisles away from me was a delightful game. I discovered that Beth’s diapers were almost impossible to clean properly if I didn’t get to them quickly. Mrs. Hills started spontaneously delivering baked goods for snacks for the children and days later, I learned that she was only doing this because the kids had been sneaking through the fence to beg for food.
“I didn’t realize children snacked so much,” I told her, by way of apology.
She gave me an incredulous look and said, “This is what happens, isn’t it? You girls go off to get your book learning and you don’t learn common sense.”
The worst indignity of all for me was that even as a twenty-three-year-old woman of the world with an honor’s degree under my belt, I was now periodically forced to ask a four-year-old for guidance. Tim seemed to know how to manage the younger children best. He knew where their clothes were and when they needed naps and what foods they would and wouldn’t eat.
“Do you know where Mommy kept her letters?” I asked him hopefully one day. He nodded confidently and took me to a drawer in the kitchen, but when he opened it, I found it was stuffed to the brim with old bills and overdue notices.
“Thanks, Timmy,” I sighed, and I sorted through them just in case, but just like all of my other efforts to search, it was fruitless.
Beth
1996
When I wake the next morning, Hunter is still in his pajamas, speaking quietly on the phone. I feed Noah while I sip tea and nibble on some toast. When my husband hangs up the handset, he takes the seat beside me and gives me a hesitant look.
“Your dad really didn�
��t look great last night so I thought I’d call and check in on him before I go for work.”
“Oh?”
“They said...ah, they said maybe you should come in.”
“Today?”
“As soon as you can, honey.” Hunter reaches across and rests his hand on mine. “I’m so sorry.”
“Dad’s had his ups and downs for months,” I say, more for my own benefit than for Hunter’s. “This is just another down. He’ll pick up.”
“Babe,” Hunter says gently. “I get that you’re trying to be positive, but you do realize...” I stare at him expectantly, and he winces and looks away. The end of that sentence hangs heavily in the room, and I push my chair back abruptly.
“I’m going to get dressed.”
Forty minutes later Hunter has taken Noah to his mother’s house and I’m at the nursing home. They’ve moved Dad from his original room into another, much larger space. This room is painted in a soft yellow, and Dad is resting on a much wider bed. There are comfy sofas and pastel artworks all around, and a little kitchenette stocked with a coffeemaker and snacks.
This room is setup to bring comfort, and I admire it for a moment, but then a shiver runs through me. This is a special room, but it’s not an upgrade—it’s a place to see out the last hours of a loved one’s life.
“How did you get here so fast?” I ask Tim. He’s stretched out on the bed beside Dad, focused on the chart in his hands.
“I called the nursing station at five,” Tim says without looking up. “They told me about his bloods, so I did my rounds and canceled my day, then came straight in.”
