A Trace of Hope

by Blake Pierce

  Not that it really fit anyway. Her mom had aged a lot in the last six years. Maybe the image Evie had in her head all those years was a fantasy. But she didn’t remember the flecks of gray hair or crow’s feet or rough cheeks or red eyes.

  Of course, her mom was almost thirty-six now instead of the thirty years old she’d been when Evie was taken. And she was recovering from the fight with the Cave lawyer guy (and, from what the nurses said, some kind of car crash and another fight).

  But the age seemed to be deeper than that. Evie suspected it came from years of worrying about whether her daughter was alive or dead, what kind of abuse she was suffering. And it came from doing a job that made her mom constantly see other girls that reminded her of what might be happening to her own daughter. It was actually amazing that she didn’t look worse.

  She wondered what could have her mom so tongue-tied. They’d already discussed how she’d have to talk to detectives about everything that had happened to her the night of the Vista. She knew she was going to have to go to therapy. She knew she’d need a few more surgeries in the coming months to fix some damage that had been done to her “internally” over the years. She knew her mom and dad were divorced and that her dad had remarried some actress and had a little boy. What else was there?

  “So honey,” her mom began, “the doctors are letting you leave the hospital today. And I wanted to discuss the plan moving forward.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your father and I have talked and we’ve agreed that for the next little while, it might be better to have you homeschooled. That way, you can catch up to your grade level at your own pace. Plus we don’t want to throw you back into a school environment right away. That could be pretty intense for anyone, especially…”

  “Especially for a kid whose face has been plastered all over the news because she was going to be a ritual sacrifice at a Hollywood sex party. I get it, Mom—makes sense.”

  “Okay then,” her mom said, “so far, so good. The other thing is living arrangements. For now, the plan is for you to live most of the time at my apartment in Playa del Rey. But you’ll also spend some time at your dad’s house in Brentwood so you can get acclimated there as well. Since school isn’t an issue, we don’t think it should cause too many complications. How does that sound?”

  The truth was that leaving this hospital room terrified her. The truth was that the idea of school and multiple bedrooms was almost more than she could process. The truth was that she knew she wasn’t wanted in one of those homes. But that was the wrong answer. So she gave the right one.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

  *

  Her mom’s apartment smelled like Chinese food. It made sense considering she lived right above a Chinese restaurant. The smell was pleasant but extremely strong and Evie figured she’d either learn to get used to it or grow to hate Chinese food pretty fast.

  Her mom looked so apprehensive as she showed her around that making a joke about the smell didn’t seem appropriate. It might not be taken as intended. So Evie pretended not to notice.

  She got the apartment tour, which didn’t take long, considering the place had a living room, a kitchen, a dining nook, a bathroom, and two bedrooms.

  “It’s cozy,” she said appreciatively when asked what she thought.

  That made her mom laugh. It was the first real laugh she’d heard from her since the rescue.

  “What?” Evie asked.

  “Nothing—that was just very diplomatic of you. You’d make a great real estate agent. Let me know if the sheets are okay for you. I wasn’t sure what you’d like. Ponies and rainbows didn’t seem right. But neither did Renoir watercolors.”

  “What’s Renoir?” Evie asked.

  “Oh, he was an artist.”

  “I guess that’s the kind of thing I’ll be learning in homeschooling. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” her mom said, although her tone sounded like she wasn’t so sure.

  “When did you get this apartment?”

  “Last year.”

  “Why did you get an apartment with two bedrooms when you and Dad were divorced?”

  “That’s easy, sweetie. I was saving the second room for you.”

  *

  That night, her mom invited over a couple of her friends and they had pizza and played board games. Evie thought she was a little worried about being alone in the apartment with her. There were so many people bustling around all the time at the hospital that there weren’t a lot of quiet moments and she suspected her mom was worried about how to handle them. To be honest, Evie was too, so she welcomed the company.

  Her mom’s friend Mags was wild. She looked like this Amazon woman, super tall and gorgeous with blazing red hair and big boobs. But she had this really strong Southern accent that Evie was pretty sure she played up for effect. She acted all fancy like she was in Gone with the Wind or something but then she’d burp real loud and blame it on Evie’s mom. It was pretty hilarious.

  Evie actually already recognized her mom’s friend Ray, even though she pretended not to. She remembered he used to sometimes ask her mom to consult on some cases back when she was a professor at LMU.

  She also knew his voice from a conversation she overheard when he and her mom were talking in the hospital and thought she was still asleep after she had some surgery. He was telling her mom that her dad was telling everyone he’d always known Evie would come back. Her mom got so mad because she said that it wasn’t true—that her dad thought she was crazy to keep looking for Evie and that he didn’t even like for her mom to talk about her anymore. When Ray walked in and said hi, Evie realized it was the same person.

  Her mom said he was her partner now, that they worked missing persons cases together. She didn’t say it but Evie could tell they were more than just partners, more than close friends even. But even though it was obvious just from looking that they liked each other, her mom didn’t say anything about it, so Evie didn’t mention it either. She figured her mom had her reasons and she’d tell her when she was ready.

  *

  When Keri woke up to the screaming that night, it was 2:04 a.m. She had grabbed her gun, cocked it, and pointed it at the bedroom door before she realized it was coming from Evie’s room.

  She dashed over and turned on the light. Her daughter was sitting bolt upright in the bed, clutching her pillow to her chest, sweat pouring down her face. Keri put the gun on the hall bookshelf before Evie could see it and hurried over to the bed.

  She sat down and pulled her daughter close. Evie dropped the pillow and wrapped her arms around her mom instead. For several minutes, neither of them spoke.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Keri eventually asked quietly.

  Evie shook her head.

  “That’s okay. You have your first therapy session tomorrow. If you want to talk about it then, you can. For now, just rest, all right?”

  “Will you stay with me?” Evie asked plaintively, her voice partly muffled as her face was burrowed in Keri’s T-shirt.

  “Of course, sweetie. Let me just turn down the lights a bit.”

  “But not off!” Evie insisted.

  “Not off,” Keri agreed, “just lower.”

  She turned on the reading light before turning off the overhead one.

  “I’ll be right back,” she promised.

  She returned the gun to her bedroom, reminding herself that she didn’t need it with all the exterior cameras Ray had set up outside the apartment, along with the roving patrol car that had been assigned to monitor the area 24/7. Neither of them considered Jackson Cave’s claim that the conspiracy didn’t end with him to be an idle threat.

  She grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom, wet it, and got back into bed beside Evie. She dabbed her daughter’s forehead, mopping up the beads of sweat that clung to her brow.

  After a few minutes, Evie’s breathing slowed and she curled up beside Keri, who was lying on
her back. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and drifted off, whimpering occasionally. When she did, Keri would coo softly or hum a lullaby until she settled. This lasted all night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Keri sat in the waiting room of Evie’s therapist’s office, trying to keep her eyes open. After initially meeting the doctor together, Keri had left them to finish the session without her. Evie had been inside for about twenty minutes and the quiet solitude and bland wallpaper of the room was making staying awake a challenge.

  Suddenly an image of Evie, sweaty and scared in her bed, popped into Keri’s half-conscious brain and her eyes popped open. Tingling with adrenaline as if it had just happened, she knew she wouldn’t be able to catnap. She decided to take advantage of the free time and took out her phone.

  Rita Skraeling picked up on the second ring. Rita ran the South Bay Shared Home, a residential facility in Redondo Beach that served as transitional housing for girls who were trying to get out of the world of underage prostitution.

  That’s where Keri had taken Susan Granger, the girl who had tipped her off that Evie was to be the Blood Prize at the Vista. Keri had found Susan hooking on a street corner in Venice last year and rescued her from her pimp.

  Since then, Susan had made remarkable progress. Under Rita’s mentorship, she’d resumed school, done intensive therapy and, inspired to become a detective like Keri, even started a Nancy Drew book club. If anyone could offer “on the ground” advice on how to help teenage girls find their way back from the horrors of forced prostitution, Rita was that person.

  “I was wondering when you’d call,” Rita’s raspy, cigarette-tinged voice said without a formal greeting. “Save dozens of girls from sexual slavery and you think you’re too big for your britches, do you?”

  “Sorry, Rita,” Keri said, laughing despite herself. “I’ve been a little busy lately.”

  “That’s okay, Detective. I figured you’d call when you had the time. But I can’t say our friend Susan will be as forgiving. She’s been bouncing off the walls waiting to hear from you. I think she’s also expecting some kind of civilian commendation from Chief Beecher for that tip about the Vista.”

  “Will you let her know how grateful I am and tell her I’ll call when I can? I just have my hands full right now.”

  “I already have and I will again,” Rita assured her. “I can tell from your voice that something’s eating at you. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s Evie,” Keri admitted. “I’m just not sure how to treat her. With all those other girls, I had some distance. I had some perspective. But this is my baby. I breastfed her. I put her hair in pigtails. And now I have to take her for reconstructive surgery on her uterus. I feel like I’m suffering whiplash every other second.”

  “Detective… Keri, I’m going to give you some advice. It may not always work. But I think it’s a good general rule. You ready for it?”

  “I am,” Keri said.

  “Evie was eight when she was taken. The girl you have now is still your daughter, but she’s a different person with different experiences. She’s not eight anymore. She’s what, thirteen now?”

  “Fourteen next month,” Keri noted.

  “Exactly. Even if she hadn’t been through all these horrors, this would be a difficult time—raising a teenage girl as a single mother. But you’ve got it ten times worse. Still, you have to treat her as the person she is, not the little girl she was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she’s Evelyn Locke, an almost-fourteen-year-old young person. Your baby is gone. Your pigtailed princess doesn’t exist anymore. Those monsters snuffed her out. Don’t get me wrong. She still needs you desperately. She may still revert to being a little girl at times. But don’t baby her. You have to accept who she is now so she can start to accept it too. The sooner she sees that you are willing to move forward rather than dwell on the past, the sooner she’ll start to do it too.”

  “Rita, can I ask you something?”

  “One more question,” Rita said, “but then I have to start charging you.”

  “How is it that you can dispense such pearls of wisdom but you can’t seem to quit your Newport addiction?”

  “That’s the true mystery, isn’t it?”

  *

  The main word Evie would have used to describe her first visit to her dad’s house was “awkward.” Her mom stuck around for the first five minutes, doing her best to be polite.

  It was almost funny to see her standing in the foyer of his fancy house, wearing her bulky sweatshirt to cover the bandages on her ribs, limping around in the walking boot meant to protect her chipped shinbone, with the wrap on her left hand to protect the reconstructed skin on her palm and the angry set of nine stitches running down the right side of her face.

  Her mom seemed very out of place amid all the art and expensive furniture. And even though she was obviously reluctant to leave Evie alone, she knew she had to. Besides, she had to go to a funeral for some FBI agent who had died in a bomb blast while investigating a case with her last week.

  Of course, once she left, Evie was the one who felt out of place. Her dad introduced her to his wife, Shalene, who invited her into the kitchen for a snack. She said their three-year-old son, Sammy, was napping, but would be up soon.

  Her dad was a talent agent at a major agency and Shalene was one of his clients. She was an actress who had a recurring role on a sitcom called All Aboard. Evie had watched about a half dozen episodes out of curiosity. It was like a half-hour version of The Love Boat. Shalene showed up every other episode or so as the assistant cruise director who was always screwing up and causing headaches for her boss. Evie thought the show was awful and Shalene was terrible on it, mostly there to act dumb and wear really tight clothes. She was great at that at least.

  Both of them tried to be nice to her but there was nothing to talk about. It’s not like they could ask her about school or how her week had been. Shalene brought up a few singers and movies but realized after a bit that Evie hadn’t really had many chances to keep up with pop culture in the last few years.

  It was almost a relief when Sammy woke up. He was blond, super-cute, and pretty clearly a spoiled brat. When Shalene introduced Evie as his half-sister, he threw his fruit cup at her and then threw a tantrum. Her dad apologized repeatedly but Evie was just happy for the attention to be on someone else.

  When her mom picked her up two hours later, she had a searing pain in her stomach. Her mom took her to urgent care and that’s when Evie learned what an ulcer was.

  *

  The next day, Mags and Evie were sitting in the mall food court waiting for her mom to get back from the bathroom when she decided to ask what was really going on with her mom and Ray.

  To her credit, Mags didn’t get flustered or anything. She just took a sip of her iced tea and in that fantastic drawl, asked Evie a question.

  “What do you think is going on, darling?”

  “I think they’re into each other for sure, definitely having sex, maybe dating. But they don’t want anyone to know because they’re partners and that’s against the rules or something.”

  Mags nodded in a way that didn’t confirm anything other than that she had heard what was said.

  “How would you feel if any of that was the case, Evelyn?”

  Evie noticed that in the last few days, Mom, Ray, and Mags had started calling her Evelyn instead of Evie. No one had asked her permission. But she kind of liked it so she didn’t stop them or say anything.

  “I think I’d be cool with it. Dad has his bimbo wife. I don’t see why Mom can’t get a little action too.”

  A look flickered across Mags’s face that made Evelyn wonder if she’d said something wrong. But it was gone in a flash.

  “Do you think that’s what your mother is after with Raymond—a little action?”

  Evelyn shrugged. Mags seemed to be debating how to proceed. Then she glanced up and saw Ev
elyn’s mom heading back in their direction.

  “Look, darling, it’s not my place to say, as much as I would dearly love to. But I think you might want to talk about this with your mom. I think she wants to protect your feelings. And it seems you care about her happiness. Maybe it would be best if you were both straight with each other. But maybe once I’ve said my goodbyes.”

  *

  That night, as they were looking through old photo albums from when Evelyn was a toddler, she brought it up.

  “I know about Ray, Mom,” Evelyn said out of the blue.

  “What do you know?” her mom asked, deliberately not looking up from the photo she was staring at.

  “I know you’re more than just partners.”

  “That’s true,” she said, finally looking up at Evelyn. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m cool with it. I like him. He’s nice but not ‘fake’ nice. I like that he looks scary until you get to know him a bit.”

  “Yeah, I like that about him too,” she said.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Evelyn asked.

  “It’s a little complicated. But yeah, I guess he kind of is.”

  “Weird,” Evelyn said.

  “What’s weird?”

  “It’s just weird to say ‘my mom has a boyfriend.’”

  “You have no idea.”

  *

  Keri was ready for the screaming that night.

  It usually started around two or three in the morning. If she put Evelyn to sleep and went back to her own room it would resume again momentarily. The only way to prevent it completely was to stay in bed with her the rest of the night.

  For whatever reason, on this night Evelyn just couldn’t get back to sleep again.

  “What are you thinking about?” Keri asked.

  “Can I tell you something, Mom?’ she asked. “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  “You can tell me anything, sweetie.”