by Jeff Shelby
I laughed and shook my head. She'd suggested it before, but I just wasn't sure I saw it. I was good with her, and I was good with parents looking for their kids, and I was good with kids when I found them. But to go to school day after day, to look into those faces and be involved in those lives and be constantly reminded of all that I’d missed out on in my own child’s life? I wasn’t sure I had it in me.
“Maybe,” I told her. “We'll see.”
She made a face, but it morphed into a smile as she picked up her burger. The patties were hand-formed here, the meat moist, and a big hunk fell off as she brought the bun to her mouth. She grabbed it with her other hand and shoved it back into the bun and took a bite, and I smiled. I liked watching her eat. I liked everything about being her dad.
It was surprising to me how normal it felt to be sitting there, having dinner with her, when so much had been abnormal for so long. She'd been gone for years, we got her back, and then it had actually gotten worse. Sometimes, the rollercoaster ride felt like it was one long descent that was never going to end. But now, even missing Lauren in a way I couldn't explain, there was something peaceful about sitting with my daughter in a dive bar, surrounded by frogmen, the soundtrack from Top Gun playing on the jukebox in the corner, having dinner. Maybe it was the knowledge that I still had her. Even after losing time with her—years, really—and even after losing Lauren, I still had Elizabeth. My daughter.
Elizabeth’s phone vibrated again against the table as she took another bite and she shook her head. She took a long drink from her water, then turned the phone over to check the screen.
“That's weird,” she said, her face screwed up in confusion as she stared at her phone.
“What is?” I asked.
She frowned as she studied the screen. Her eyes shifted to me. “Do you mind if I make a phone call really quick? I promise it will just be a minute.”
I hesitated, but only for a second. “No, it's okay.” I appreciated that she asked, that she was conscious of the fact that she should ask permission. Not because I was her dad, but because it was simple courtesy.
She pushed back her chair and stood. “Be right back.” Her phone was already to her ear as she walked toward the front of the bar and the door.
I focused on finishing my meal and ordered another beer when the server, a tiny blonde who didn’t look much older than my daughter, came by to check on us. I kept glancing at the door, the tiny pangs of anxiety pinging my gut, wondering where she was and telling myself she'd be back in a moment. I was learning to quell those pangs, to not speak them out loud so as not to suffocate her. But I also wondered if they'd ever go away when I didn't know right where she was. It was PTSD for a parent of an abducted and recovered child.
Thirty seconds later, the door swung open and she was walking back to me. I took a deep breath and exhaled. I could see her again.
She slid back into the chair across from me, her shoulders rounded, a resigned expression in her eyes.
“What's the matter?” I asked.
“Tim,” she said, still looking at her phone like she didn't recognize it. “Aaron's friend, the one he went camping with. I'd texted him and asked him if Aaron was around. He texted back, but he said to call him because he'd been trying to get the text to send for like fifteen minutes. That's who I went outside to call.”
“So service is poor,” I said, nodding. “Like we thought. But did you get to talk to Aaron?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No? Why not?”
The waitress returned with my beer and the check. I thanked her and she smiled before hustling off.
“Because he wasn't there,” she said. “Tim said he went hiking a while ago and he wasn't back.”
“Okay,” I said after a long sip from the fresh beer. It was cool sliding down my throat. “So at least you know. Where he is, I mean.”
She set the phone down on the table. “I guess.”
“Not good enough?” I asked.
She shifted from side to side in the chair. “I don't know. It's fine.”
“Hey.”
She looked at me.
“Tell me what the problem is,” I said.
She folded her arms across her body. “Okay. It's just that sometimes, he goes sort of silent.”
“Silent?”
“Just doesn't return calls. Or texts. Or he forgets we had plans to do something,” she continued. “Just stuff like that.”
“And, what? He doesn't have an explanation?” I felt an irrational surge of anger. The last thing she needed was someone to blow her off, to make her feel unimportant. She’d had enough abandonment in her life.
“No, he sort of does,” she answered. “He has a crappy phone. He doesn't always keep it charged. He's not really a phone person.” She rattled off his excuses. “And those are all true.”
“Okay.” I moved my eyes around the interior of the bar so she couldn’t see my expression. Because I was pretty sure she’d be able to tell I was irritated: not with her, but with her boyfriend. “But that doesn't necessarily explain the blowing off plans thing.”
“No, it doesn't,” she admitted. “But he says that he didn't know it was firm or that it was for sure. I don't know. I'm probably being dumb.”
I took another long swallow. “You aren't being dumb. You have...questions. What does your gut tell you?”
“That I'm full of onion rings?” she said, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Ha. What else?”
She unfolded her tan arms and laid her hands flat on the table, studying them. “I don't know. That sometimes he's full of crap, but other times, I read too much into it.”
I didn’t want to offer anything in defense of Aaron’s actions, but I remembered what I’d been like as a teenage boy. I hadn’t been a phone person and I’d forgotten things and I was sometimes a jerk to the girls I’d dated. But none of those things had meant that I didn’t like them.
“I'd also offer that he's a teenage boy,” I said, even though it pained me to say it. “And communication is not the specialty of that breed.”
She snorted. “For sure.”
I finished off the beer and looked at her over the empty pint glass. “I know you aren't really asking for my advice, but I'm going to give it to you, anyway.”
She looked up from her hands.
“Trust your instincts,” I said. “Especially with relationships. If something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. Don't hang on to something just to hang onto it. You're smart. If something feels out of whack, then you're feeling that for a reason.” I smiled. “And I'm not saying to dump Aaron now or anything like that. But maybe when he gets back, ask him to be more communicative. If that's what you want. Or tell him it upsets you when he doesn't respond. Be direct. The response you get will probably tell you enough about him for you to decide what you want.”
She reached up and brushed away the strands of hair away from her forehead. “I guess. I mean, compared to some of the guys at school?” She shook her head. “He's a million times better.”
“Teenage boys are pretty awful human beings.”
She chuckled. “Were you?”
“Nope. I was perfect. The man teens aspire to be.”
She gave me a look and it was my turn to chuckle.
“Unfortunately, yes. It's like we're pre-human beings. We don't reach full human status until after high school. Sometimes longer.”
She laughed again. It was a nice sound and I wanted to hear it more often. I needed to remind myself that I was partly responsible for making it happen. Walking around in a dark funk wouldn't produce that laugh.
“Good to know,” she said, pushing her phone around with her finger. “Okay. Thanks.”
I dropped cash on top of the check. “You're welcome. And if you decide you want his leg broken, I'm happy to take care of that, too.”
FOUR
We walked home from Danny's and Elizabeth headed upstairs to shower as soon as we were thro
ugh the front door.
I tossed my keys and phone on the kitchen table and frowned at the stack of mail. Right on top was the letter from the Corzines that Elizabeth had mentioned earlier. I took it off the pile and headed to my bedroom.
I laid the envelope on the bed, then stripped out of my running clothes and hopped into my own shower, letting the hot water soothe my muscles after the run on the beach. I was out quickly, drying off, pulling on a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I picked up the letter. I turned the envelope over in my hands a few times, then pulled out the thin sheet of paper.
It was like Elizabeth said. There was nothing threatening about it. It was addressed to both of us and asked how we were doing. It was short, polite. They mentioned that they had gone on vacation to South Dakota, had visited Mt. Rushmore, and that they would be around for the remainder of the summer if we had any plans to visit Minnesota. They’d be happy to see us. It was signed from both of them, but I knew it was Valerie's handwriting.
I laid it on the bed next to me and rubbed at my temples. I would've been fine never hearing from them again, but I knew that probably wouldn’t be the best thing for Elizabeth. Lauren and I had both waffled over how to handle that relationship. After all, the Corzines were the ‘parents’ Elizabeth had known the longest, and wrenching her out of that home had been just as traumatic as the abduction itself. There was no roadmap on how to handle the future, and it wasn’t up to me to pick the route.
I reached over and slid open the top drawer in my nightstand. I pulled out a thin stack of envelopes, maybe five or six, held together by a red paperclip. I slipped the clip off of them and laid them on my lap.
All of them were from the Corzines, all of them not much different than the one we'd just gotten. Most of them were sent before Lauren's death, but two of them had been sent after. They'd all attempted to stay neutral, just touching base, reminding us that they were open to contact with Elizabeth if we were.
Lauren had been incensed when the first one arrived. She was firmly against the idea of them having any contact or relationship with her, and she'd wanted to burn them. I'd felt the same way, but I talked her off the ledge and persuaded her to let Elizabeth see them by telling her that if our daughter chose to have a relationship with the people she’d been led to believe were her parents, we couldn't stop her. She'd very reluctantly given in, but each time something showed up in the mailbox, she would cuss the entire way into the house and then cuss at it some more as she laid it on the table.
I put the letters back into the envelopes, paper clipping them back together. I dropped them in the drawer and slid it closed and fell back against the stack of pillows.
Like it or not, Elizabeth spent a significant portion of her life with the Corzines. That was a hard thing to wrap my head around most days, but it was the truth. She'd established a life in Minnesota, with their family and with friends and with people she encountered on a daily basis. Those things didn't go away simply because it had been a facade. In some ways, it was probably no different than when she'd been taken from our driveway. She was in one world one moment, then thrust into another the next. Even if she was glad to be back home and in her first life, it didn't make the second any less real. As great as my anger was, it wasn't Elizabeth's anger and she was at an age where she needed to be allowed to make her own decisions about who was in her life.
I pulled out one of the pillows from behind my back and tossed it to the side, then leaned back again. In a little less than a year, Elizabeth would be done with high school and, if what she’d talked about held true, be headed for a college. An adult who could make her own decisions about who she let enter her inner circle. At that point, I'd have no say in whether or not the Corzines were part of her life or not. It would be her decision alone, and I'd have to accept it. I didn't think I could ever stand in the same room with them again, but I might very well have to accept that they could be in the same room with Elizabeth.
I grabbed at the spare pillow and tried to shove it back in place behind me, unable to get comfortable. I wanted Elizabeth to do what was best for her, but selfishly, in my darkest moments, I wanted her to do what would be best for me, too. I wanted her to ignore the Corzines, to forget they even existed. I wanted her to go to college nearby. I wanted her to be my daughter and no one else's.
As I listened to her feet pad around upstairs above me, I wondered if I'd get my way.
FIVE
“Dad. Wake up. Dad.”
I was vaguely aware of Elizabeth standing over me. After I'd finished ruminating on the bed, she'd come downstairs and we'd watched TV for a little bit, finding a tape-delayed track meet from Europe on an obscure sports channel that was included in our overpriced cable package. We'd watched the runners circling the track, critiquing their stride and arm swing, trying to pick winners early in the race before we knew who was actually good. She'd checked her phone a few times, but said nothing to me about what she was looking for or whom, if anyone, she was hearing from. The meet ended and we'd gone our separate ways to bed. It had taken me a while to fall asleep, despite the two beers I’d downed, but I eventually had because I was now having a hard time getting my eyes to open.
I rolled over, the sheets twisted around my bare torso. “I'm awake,” I mumbled into the pillow.
“Are you?” she asked. She poked me and I flipped again and squinted at her. She was looking down at me, her eyes clear, sharp, like she'd never even gone to sleep. “I need to tell you something.”
I untangled myself from the sheets and blinked, clearing the sleep from my eyes. There was something about her voice, her expression, that instantly had me on edge. “I'm awake. What's up?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Aaron never came back.”
I processed that for a second. “He never came back?” It took me a minute to remember. Camping. The desert.
She shook her head. “I tried texting both Tim and Aaron last night, but texts still wouldn't go through. I didn't freak because I knew the service is bad out there. But then I woke up just a few minutes ago. There was a text from Tim. Aaron never came back.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows. “So he was gone all night?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. “Tim’s pretty freaked out.” She didn’t say as much, but I could see that she was pretty freaked out, too.
I thought back to what she'd told me at dinner, when she’d stepped out of the restaurant to make a phone call. “And he said Aaron was just going for a hike? That was it?”
“That’s what Tim thought he was doing. I'm not sure.”
“And where are they exactly?”
She held out her phone, which she'd had wrapped tightly in one hand, and thumbed the screen. “The San Jacinto Mountains…above Palm Desert?” She said this last bit like a question, another reminder that she hadn’t grown up around here and would have no way of knowing mountain names and their proximity to desert towns. “That's what Tim said.”
I nodded. It was a forested range to the northeast of San Diego, dividing Temecula and Hemet from the desert floor where Palm Desert and the rest of the Coachella Valley rested. I wasn't much of a camper or outdoorsman, though, so I didn't know much about the area other than where it was on the map.
“Did he call Aaron's parents?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. They're in Mexico. He doesn't know how to get ahold of them.”
“Isn’t there a ranger at the campground? Someone he could talk to?”
“They’re not at a campground. They’re just hiking around the canyons or something.”
I wondered if that was even legal. Was it a protected area, where permits were issued to backpackers, or was it a free-for-all for anyone to come and hike?
“Okay. What about the police?”
“The police?” She looked alarmed. “Why would he call the police?”
“To report him missing. Get the wheels in motion.”
Her eyes were huge. “Do you think he’s really
missing? Like, hurt or ki—?” She blinked several times. “Or something?”
I knew what word she’d prevented herself from saying. Kidnapped.
“I don’t know,” I said, and then when her eyes widened more, I added, trying to keep my voice gentle, “Everything’s probably fine. He probably just got into an area he didn't know and got lost. The temperatures are probably okay overnight, so he's not at risk from exposure or anything like that.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but I did know that often times, the easiest explanation was often the likeliest.
“Tim is freaking out,” she said. It was the second time she’d said this.
I nodded. “Understandably so. Does Aaron camp a lot?”
“I honestly don't know,” she said. “I know he's gone before. Maybe twice in the last couple months? But I don't know if he knows what to eat and how to navigate and that kind of stuff.”
“Does Tim?”
“I don't think so. Aaron had to talk him into going this time. It didn't sound like he really wanted to go.”
I sat up in the bed and ran a hand through my hair. I was now fully awake. “So it sounds like the best course of action might be to bring in someone else who can help.”
“Can we go there?” She bit her upper lip. “To go look for him?”
I frowned. “I wasn’t talking about us. I meant the police or the sheriff's department.”
“But, Dad—”
“I don't know the area,” I told her.
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s never stopped you before.”
“I don't know how much good we could do.” I wasn’t trying to be difficult and I wasn’t trying to blow her off. “I’m not exactly well-versed in camping and survival skills.”
“But could we at least go and see Tim? Maybe he wouldn't be freaked out so much if we were there?”
She wasn’t making any sense. There was no reason for us to go hold hands with a teenaged boy while he waited for his friend to return from a hike.
“He should call the police,” I said. “Tell them his location and the last time he saw Aaron. And then stay put so they can find him and communicate with him. That's the best thing to do.”
