“An ER nurse here recognized her from the news segment that aired on TV when she came in, initially,” FBI dude informs me.
“From the forensic artist’s picture,” Dad adds.
“Anyone can see it’s her,” Mom says. “Thank God for that forensic sketch.”
“Wow,” I say.
If I ever doubted their relentless PR strategy, I stand corrected.
Ozzie comes back in with a Coke. I hold it in my hand, chilling, the sensation a comfort proving this is real.
“Ozzie, did you—did you know about any of this?” I ask.
He heaves into his chair and adjusts it, so squeaky it makes everyone flinch.
“I did not,” he says simply. “I had leads in Fresno years ago. Not Fremont. This is goddamn surprising.”
He has a way with words, he does.
“Right now we’re simply working through the details,” FBI dude tells us, clearing his throat and looking at a notepad he has in front of him before continuing. “She says last she remembers she was locked up. She keeps talking about an attic and someone named Jonathan—she says he dumped her—but I don’t think she knows where she was exactly before this or how she ended up in the parking lot. Right now we’re just trying to get her stabilized and we’re not pressing her too hard. If anything comes up, please tell us when you’re done visiting with her.”
“Sure,” I say, bracing myself. “Are we going to go see her now?”
“I need to share the details of the case so far so you understand what we’re dealing with,” the FBI guy says.
Lean in. Pulse a stutter.
“She’s been examined by a doctor and we’ve confirmed quite a bit of evidence of physical abuse that looks to have happened a number of years ago now—broken radius, some scars on her back, cigarette burns on her skin.”
“And what else?” Ozzie asks without blinking.
“Oh, God,” Mom says, gasping for just a moment and then regaining composure.
Ozzie scoots his chair closer with an excruciating squeak and puts a hand on her arm. On the other side, Dad holds her hand with a tight white fist.
“Results of the pelvic exam this morning confirm sexual abuse,” FBI guy says.
“To what extent?” Ozzie asks.
The looks on my parents’ faces—pragmatic, unemotional—like, We’re going to tackle this without falling to pieces, goddammit.
“According to the doctor, the scar tissue definitely shows signs of repeated rape that probably started at a young age,” he says.
Even Ozzie’s face falls a little.
“Okay,” Mom says.
Her eyes are watering, but she just keeps nodding like she is working so hard to accept the reality of this.
“Okay,” she says again.
“Thank you for sharing this with us,” Dad says.
And then, a lapse in his facial expression as he sobs for a moment into his hands. Mom looks away at a wall and I put my hand on Dad’s hand. “She’s going to be okay, Dad.”
“She’s very happy to be here,” Ozzie says after giving us a respectful moment to recover. He wipes his eyes with a handkerchief, but his face remains professional, emotionless. “She’s been asking about her family.”
“Can we see her, then?” Mom asks.
After a few more details, some coaching on how to react to different reunion scenarios, and a serious warning to not tell the press anything for fear of jeopardizing the case, FBI dude nods. “All right then. Follow me.”
We spring up, and he leads us down the hall.
“Doctor said she’ll be discharged this evening,” Ozzie tells us. “They’re going to wait until then in hopes the press thins out.”
“We’ll escort you guys to a hotel and have agents accompanying you tonight,” FBI dude says.
“Why a hotel?” I ask.
“To help you keep your privacy,” Ozzie says. “High-profile cases like this, you’re going to have the press slobbering after you like wolves.”
We stand in front of a door that’s nearly shut. 4C. I can hear a TV and a beeping machine. I am trembling. Trembling so hard parts of me I thought couldn’t physically tremble are trembling. My eyelashes. My hair.
“I’ll stand outside to give you your privacy,” FBI dude says.
“You coming?” Mom asks Ozzie.
“I’ll meet her later,” he says. “Give you guys some time.”
“Thank you,” she says.
She holds her hand up to Dad and me, like, Give me a minute. She wipes her eyes and takes a giant breath and breathes out. Dad squeezes her arm. I can’t help thinking, This is the last time I am your only daughter. After this, everything’s different.
“I think this is it, honey,” he says softly.
“I know,” she whispers.
She gives me a nod, like, Go for it. And I push.
The knob creaks. The door eeks open.
She has a puffy white bandage wrapped around her forehead. The fluorescent light catches her long electrified curls in a burst of gold. She’s in a hospital bed, sitting up, IVs highwaying off her arms into drips and machines. I almost cry out when I see the mood ring on her pinky, the silver band so old and worn it’s nearly black. She is pale and malnourished but her features are the same. All I can think of is that photo on the flyers on our dining room table—that computer game–girl picture—and how Jesus graphic-designing Christ, it really is her. Down to the mole on her cheek, the cowlick in her hair. The sight of her softens me. I don’t know what I was expecting—a girl in pieces—but she’s whole and there’s a brightness to her despite her injured state that makes me breathe a sigh of relief.
My bones know it’s her, but my eyes can’t believe this. The last time I saw her we were tiny. We were different humans then.
“It’s you,” Mom says. She’s the first one to the side of the hospital bed. “Oh my God, sweetie—it’s you—I’d recognize you in a second—”
“Mommy?” Ava asks, a little confused, like she doesn’t believe herself.
“You recognize me?” Mom asks. “You remember me?”
Ava gives a timid little nod.
“Ava!” Dad says, eyes shining, going to the other side of the hospital bed.
“Daddy?” she says in a scared, childlike voice.
“You remember,” he says, all choked up.
“Ava?” I ask, the urge to burst into tears an itch I will not scratch.
“You’re my sister?” she asks, like she just can’t believe it.
“Yeah,” I say. “Vera. Your twin.”
“Holy crap,” she says tearfully. “You look like a princess.”
Everyone but Ava laughs. I should explain why I’m dressed like this, but I can’t talk. Can’t stop staring. Soon Mom reaches out and hugs Ava, so gently, just hugging her poor stuck-with-needles arm like she worships it. And Dad leans in and pets Ava’s hair. Ava’s face twists, looking like the child she was, overwhelmed.
“It’s really you,” Mom says.
“You’re all . . . grown up,” Dad says.
“My family,” she says. “I have a family.”
Ava and Mom hug, then Ava and Dad, then it’s my turn. Her lake-colored eyes—worn, exhaustion-shrunken, but so familiar. Like staring into a mirror in a dream. They lock with mine. She smells like rubbing alcohol and disinfectant when we hug. I can feel her bones. I pull back and try to drink in her every detail. Those striking dark eyebrows. That olive skin. There’s a scrape on her cheek and bandages on her arm.
“I’m really scared,” she says to us.
We tell her anything and everything she’s feeling is fine.
“My head feels messed up,” Ava says, touching the bandage. “I keep forgetting my name. Then the nurse has to tell me again—and I don’t remember. I got hit by a car—what was
I doing outside? I don’t know how I ended up here.”
“We’ll figure all that out later,” Mom says. “What matters is you’re here, you’re with us now, and you’re safe.”
Ava nods. Finally, she says, in her low husky voice that is all her, that I’ve never heard before exactly but that I’m fast getting used to, “I think this is really good.” She keeps nodding, like she’s trying to calm herself down. “I think I just finally woke up from the nightmare.”
I don’t know what she means, but it hurts to hear, fills me with anger I don’t know where to direct, pangs with twelve years’ worth of longing, but the joy—hallelujah—is so much louder than all the pain.
23
SO MANY PROFESSIONALS come this afternoon to talk to Ava. She’s poked, prodded, tested, questioned all day long. The only truths that matter to me are: She’s my sister, she’s been through hell, and she wants to go home. I’m so anxious to get her there, I could jump out of my skin.
Whenever one of the doctors shows up, Mom, Dad, and I go back to the tiny blank room with the Coca-Colas again to give her space. They’re all nicefaces to us and come by the room for introductions and to explain what they do and ask if we need anything and to tell us how happy they are for us. The miracle has spread joy to everyone, even strangers and hard-faced experts and law enforcement. The news is infectious and electrifying. I lose count of the people we meet. Sergeants, doctors, more FBI, a victim advocate, a transition specialist, the head of the Berkeley PD, and a psychiatrist. That pubescent FBI dude whose name I now see on his badge is Jean-Paul Johnson sticks with us the whole time we’re in the little room and gets food delivered. He asks us if we’d like him to relay a statement to the media circus, and Mom says to tell them we’re going to take a day or two to reconnect with Ava and we’ll give a statement once she’s home.
So far, Ava’s only asked if we know where Jonathan is. That’s the first clue toward a person or a reason for all this. Jonathan. The name turns my stomach, even though she can’t tell us if he was who “dumped” her, how she got in that parking lot, or where he is now.
Every time I pass by the locked door to the ward to hit up the bathroom, the reporters ogle through the window and police have to keep pushing them back. It’s gross, actually. I always liked reporters and newspeople before this—they wanted to help us, they wanted Ava to be found. Now they’re just a bunch of bloodthirsty dogs let off their leashes.
One of them gets in a couple hours before discharge, a man with a crooked nose and a camera who went so far as to dress in scrubs to pass himself off as a medical worker. He waltzes into the hospital room while we’re with Ava and offers to pay us for an exclusive interview. I recognize the name of the magazine. I see it in drugstores with pictures of celebrities in bikinis with arrows pointing to their cellulite. Dad threatens to kick his ass—I’ve never heard Dad say anything so menacing before—and Mom frantically presses the nurse button and says she’s going to sue. Ava watches on blankly, even as the reporter in scrubs uses his camera to snap a picture of Dad standing protectively in front of Ava’s hospital bed, brandishing a jar of cotton balls like a weapon. We shout in unison, and then the nurse comes in and pulls the reporter in scrubs away and yells, “Security!”
If Elliott were here, I’m sure he would not have hesitated to bust the guy’s teeth in. I’ve seen him do it for way less heinous crimes. Where the hell is Elliott, anyway?
Mom closes the door. We all stare at one another.
“Wow,” Ava says.
The TV drones on nonstop in the background as we sit together.
MISSING GIRL FOUND ALIVE AFTER 12 YEARS
AVA RIVERS DISCOVERED ALIVE IN CALIFORNIA
BREAKING NEWS!
#AVARIVERS
Click the remote. Same show, different channel. They keep repeating the noninformation over and over again, flashing between her first-grade portrait and a blurry current photo. It’s been less than an hour and the picture the guy took of Ava, with Dad in front of her with cotton balls and crazy eyes, is on every news station.
“I look insane,” Dad says, shocked.
“Are we famous?” Ava asks, eyes bright.
“Unfortunately,” Dad says.
Mom goes and glances out the window. “They’re lined up down the street. I don’t know how we’re ever getting out of here.” She crosses to the mirror above the sink and finger-combs her hair. “I mean, I could give a statement.”
“Michelle,” Dad says. “We said we’d wait.”
“What?” she says. “Ask them to respect our privacy and to let Ava be with family right now.”
“Exactly, honey, let’s just be with Ava right now.”
It took twelve tragic years and a miracle resurrection to hear my dad call my mom “honey” again without irony.
“You’re right,” she says.
That also took twelve years.
They look to Ava for her input, but she’s closed her eyes and appears to have fallen asleep. She’s holding the remote to her chest with a bandaged hand, the mood ring bright violet. We gaze at her for a long time. We whisper about the parts of her that look different than we expected—her hair didn’t straighten like mine and Elliott’s did. Instead it curled even kinkier. She stayed blond while Elliott went brown. But her dark eyelashes and eyebrow shapes, her mole on her cheek, the little bow above her upper lip are all exactly her. Her proportions are identical to the little girl we last saw. The curve of her chin, the stretch between her eyes, the nearness of her nose to her lips. Funny how we’re not just our features, we’re the areas between.
I’m not sure when this will start feeling real. There’s something in me that can’t trust what’s happened today—like any second I’m going to wake back up to the reality where my sister is a giant black hole instead of a person.
24
WE FINALLY HEAD to the hotel that night after a long, ridiculous escape from the hospital through a back entrance and then a ride in an unmarked van. Police cars and Ozzie in his Prius drive along with us. I can’t tell whom they’re protecting us from at this point—the press or the villain who’s allegedly responsible for Ava’s state. My mom, my dad, and I sit in the back, and Ava sits in front. She’s been quiet all day, dazed, except every once in a while she turns to us and says, “You’re my family?” or “Why is there a bandage on my head?” or “Am I in trouble?” The doctor warned us she’d be like this—repeating herself, a little bit out of it—because of the concussion and the traces of drugs in her system. The tests showed Zolpidem, a sedative. But she’s going to be okay.
Facts keep rattling around in my head. There aren’t many yet. Here’s what we know: Ava was locked up by a monster named Jonathan, and for reasons unknown he drugged her and packed her a backpack and kicked her to the curb in a parking lot, where she was apparently then hit by a random car. In the hospital, a nurse recognized her from TV. More staff noticed her. They alerted the police. And here we are.
But honestly, there are so many unanswered questions and this day has been so endless and surreal, I don’t even have the brainpower to analyze the information on the drive to the hotel. It’s all swarthy clouds and the diamond chops of whizzing streetlights. By the time we get to the Best Western off the freeway and into our room and dig into the bags of toiletries and sweats provided by the FBI, we collapse, Ava in one bed, my mom and I in the other, my dad with a makeshift sheet bed on the floor between. Ozzie lingers outside somewhere, self-appointed reporter patrol. Jean-Paul Johnson is there in the room next door and asks us more than once if we want an additional room, but we don’t. Ava says she doesn’t want to be alone. Dad and I get up again, stepping out onto the balcony. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and tries to call Elliott’s number again, but now it’s fully disconnected. I can’t believe he’s missed this, or hasn’t turned on a TV or a radio all day to figure it out. I mention as much to Dad, but he just s
hrugs. His eyes look younger to me right now, but his wrinkles seem deeper. We hug. He lets me take a drag of his cigarette once before I head inside.
Ava asks Mom if she can sleep with the Home Shopping Network on.
“Sure,” Mom says cheerfully. “Anything you want.”
“I always sleep with it on,” Ava says, and drifts off in an instant.
Even though I’ve never been this exhausted, I can’t sleep. I’m humming with the knowledge that my family is whole again. My sick curiosity about Ava’s blank years gnaws at me. I can hear Dad going in and out of the room, the sliding glass door to the balcony opening and closing while his secondhand smoke drifts in, and Mom kicks the blankets off and pulls them back on, and my sister snores as the man on TV yammers on about spectacular dish soap.
25
THE NEXT MORNING we wake up early, and the four of us—plus Ozzie, plus Jean-Paul Johnson—go downstairs to eat at the breakfast buffet. Mom of course is coiffed for the gods. Dad’s got bedhead that you’d think must be on purpose—I mean, it’s pretty much a monument. I haven’t even washed my face. Ava removed her head bandage this morning. A violet bruise remains; it hurts to look at. I keep admiring her cheekbones and reminding myself we are twins.
We are twins.
Present tense.
We’re all in Cal sweats we slept in courtesy of the FBI as we stand at the buffet, fixing our plates.
“We look like a family of school-spirited dorks,” I say.
Ava stares back at me blankly, putting a box of Lucky Charms on her plate with no milk.
“These are Cal Berkeley sweats,” I say. “It’s a university.”
“Oh, I thought it was, like, a California thing,” she says.
There’s no one else up this early to enjoy the breakfast buffet. Or they’re not allowed—Jean-Paul Johnson instead sits on the computer at a table in the corner mumbling nervously to himself, and Ozzie stands in the doorway like a bodyguard. Our family sits at a table in the middle of the room. Ava’s across from me. The gap in years is something I can’t hurdle. She’s my sister and also someone I just met. But her eyes. Her features. Déjà vu.
The Second Life of Ava Rivers Page 6
