Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

  “Patrick has him,” I said aloud. “I don’t know how. I don’t know where. But he has David.”

  I called Abigail Gill. She answered on the fifth ring and sounded short of breath. “Oh, Anna,” she chirped. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I—”

  “Where’s Patrick?” I interrupted.

  “He’s not here right now,” she said slowly. “Why? Were you hoping to talk—”

  “David’s missing.” I was pacing around the teachers’ lounge, clutching my cell phone as if it were a live grenade. “He disappeared from school today, and I think Patrick had something to do with it.”

  “David was taken from school?” She gasped, and then for a long time, all I could hear was her muffled weeping on the other end.

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “So do you know where Patrick is? Is it possible he was in Port Ambrose today?”

  “Anna, I’m so sorry. If I had only known…” Her pause lasted an eternity. “Patrick didn’t come home last night after his shift; we haven’t seen him all day, and he’s not answering his cell phone. Quentin called his manager, and apparently Patrick didn’t even show up last night, and he’s been coming late and blowing off work for the past few weeks. I don’t know why his manager didn’t let us know, and I have no idea where Patrick has been going instead. He’s been acting so even keel.” And then she burst into tears again.

  I handed the phone off to a police officer. They were already working on dispatching a squad car to the Gills’ house to investigate. One of the twins, Maddox or Mason, I wasn’t sure which, had reported seeing a man lurking near the fence by the parking lot at recess. Today, and apparently last week as well. The man had “yellow” hair and tattoos covering his arms. It was the perfect description of Patrick when he had his dark hair bleached.

  The police asked me for a list of Patrick’s hang-outs and other places he might have taken David. His house seemed unlikely, because his parents would alert me to David’s presence, and then he’d have to give him up. Maybe he had an apartment his parents didn’t know about? All of Patrick’s favorite haunts—the Basilica of St. Josaphat, Gesu Church, the coffee shop on 22nd street, the university’s art history library—seemed like odd choices to which to bring an abducted child. But then again, if Patrick was off his meds and snatching his son from school, he clearly wasn’t making very smart choices.

  I knew that suspecting Patrick was the kidnapper instead of some complete stranger should have reassured me slightly, but it didn’t. Though he could be incredibly gentle and loving, he could also be demanding and harsh, moody and forgetful. I couldn’t help fixating on all the reasons why I had petitioned so hard to get sole custody of David and then eventually found it necessary to get an injunction against Patrick. His fleeting attention span. The loose pills he haphazardly left all over the house—on the kitchen table, between the couch cushions, in his shoes—some of them prescription drugs to treat his bipolar disorder, while others, like the candy-colored tabs of ecstasy, decidedly were not. And of course there were the supervised visits we’d tried where Patrick had held David so tightly he’d wailed. Then he’d scolded his nine-month-old son, “Stop crying, dammit. Don’t you love me? Is your bitch of a mother teaching you not to love me?”

  So while I didn’t think Patrick had it in him to ever intentionally hurt his son, I knew the possibility still lurked. If Patrick was in one of his manic moods, he might recklessly put David in a dangerous situation and then neglect to watch over him or forget him there entirely. Or he might lose his patience with David, if David frustrated him, like he’d lost his patience with me when I was pregnant. I prayed that wouldn’t happen and he wouldn’t harm a hair on David’s head. I prayed that Patrick wouldn’t leave our little area of southeastern Wisconsin. Please, please, do not leave the state. Do not disappear on me. I prayed that we would find them quickly, before anything could happen to permanently traumatize my poor little boy. If he hadn’t already been emotionally scarred by the abduction.

  Duffy appeared in the doorway of the teachers’ lounge. Her blond hair was disheveled and looked like a lopsided wig. There were puffy bags under her eyes from all the crying she had done. I knew I looked ten times worse.

  “The police say it’s time for us to go home,” she said. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”

  I slowly assessed the teachers’ lounge, which I’d come to think of as kidnapping case central. Here my grandparents and I would sit, drinking coffee, answering the police’s questions, and getting constant updates until David was returned to the very school where he had been taken from. But clearly that wasn’t how things were going to work. They wanted us to go home?

  “I’m not going home,” I said. “What am I going to do there?”

  Duffy rested her hands firmly on my shoulders. “I know it’s hard, Anna, but now we wait. We go home and we wait for the police to call us once they’ve met with the Gills, and while we’re waiting for that, we eat some dinner and we—”

  I stood up, brushing her hands off me. “I don’t want dinner. I want to find David. I’m going to go look for him.”

  Duffy followed me down the hallway. “I want to find David too,” she called after me. “But we have to stay calm. And we have to be there to help the police. We can’t all go off disappearing on our own.”

  I passed Winston, who gently snagged my arm. “Let me drive you,” he said, walking quickly beside me.

  I sat in the back, next to David’s empty booster seat, deep in thoughts of my sweet child somewhere, petrified and God knows where, with his unfamiliar, frightening father. I kept picturing Patrick as the crazed, half-naked man who had ambushed me two years ago outside my old apartment. So deep in the world of his delusions that he was unrecognizable as the man I had once loved. What would have happened that night if Stacy hadn’t called the cops? We needed to track them down immediately.

  The thought of Stacy made me realize I should call her to let her know about David, just in case she had any helpful information for the police. Since she no longer lived in Milwaukee, I doubted it, but maybe she could give me our old landlord’s phone number, and I could pass it along to the police, in case Patrick decided to stop there for some reason. It was farfetched, but I was desperate. I was hoping to just leave a message, so she could get in touch with the police department on her own, but she answered on the third ring, and I had to break the news for a second time. It wasn’t getting any easier, and Stacy’s horrified reaction didn’t help.

  “Oh, God, Anna, this is awful,” she cried. “I think he’s been planning this for months. That was what I wanted to tell you yesterday. When the kids started their new school, we gave them the ‘stranger danger’ talk again, and Breanne mentioned that someone had approached them in the front yard when she was babysitting David a few months ago. I guess Brett pulled up right then, thank the Lord, and the guy fled. I couldn’t believe she waited this long to tell me! When she described the man and his tattoos, it totally matched Patrick, but his hair sounded like it was black at the time and longer than usual. This would’ve been in early June, right before you guys moved, and a few weeks before he rang my doorbell looking for you.”

  I numbly gave her the lead detective’s phone number, asked her to report the information to them, and disconnected. Without my realizing it, Winston had driven me home. Before he had even fully stopped the minivan, I jumped out and ran up the front steps. Inside, the house was silent except for the relentless ticking of the grandfather clock. Normally at this time of day, the house was filled with the sounds of David singing and a clanging and beeping from the kitchen as Duffy fixed dinner. I hurried to the upper level of the house, to David’s bedroom and my bedroom.

  I first flipped up the dust ruffle on David’s bed and then mine, but the space beneath both beds was empty, as I had expected. David was gone. His imagination was gone too.

  “I hate you!” I screamed at the space where the panther had once crouched, growling. “How can you do this
to him? To me? Bring him back, Patrick. Bring him back right now!”

  I would’ve given anything to wrestle with the two-hundred pound cat right then. To channel my useless adrenaline and energy into such violence. To feel its claws sink into my soft flesh, diverting me from the agonizing emotional pain that felt like it would be the death of me. Stacy was probably right; Patrick had been planning this all along, and a part of David must have known the mysterious man posed a danger to him. When he had first laid eyes on Patrick in the front yard was around the time he had invented his protective dinosaurs, and the black smoke, which would later become the full-bodied panther, had first materialized. On the edges of his subconscious, but always there. And I, who had been given nearly clairvoyant insight into my son’s imagination, still hadn’t understood what he was showing me. Even with almost all the pieces of the puzzle in hand, I still hadn’t figured it out in time. I still hadn’t been able to save him. How stupid I was! And sorry. How very, very sorry.

  Time was becoming more elastic, speeding up and slowing down in unpredictable ways, so I had no idea how much time had elapsed when Duffy finally found me in my bedroom, rocking violently in David’s rocking chair, hugging his pillow to my chest.

  “I made some butternut squash soup,” she said. “I thought you might like to come downstairs and have some with us.” Leave it to my grandma to make her famous cold and flu remedy, in the hopes that it would help alleviate the suffering of a kidnapping too.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Come downstairs anyway. Winston just got an update from the police about the Gills.”

  “Did they find Patrick and David?” I asked, propelling myself from the chair.

  She shook her head sadly. “Well, no, but they had some information the police found useful.”

  On the kitchen table, three bowls of orange soup were cooling. Winston sat on one end of the table with a photo album spread out in front of him. When I came in, he held up a glossy photo of David. It was a picture taken a few months ago, of David squatting on the living room floor, playing with his racetrack and his matchbox cars. In it, David was grinning broadly, and Vivien Leigh’s bushy black tail made an appearance in the corner of the picture. He looked smaller and younger; his nose was a little sunburned, but his hair hadn’t been lightened by the sun yet. He had grown and changed so much over just this summer alone. If Patrick kept him from me, I wouldn’t get to see him continue to grow and change—I quickly banished the thought from my mind.

  “Do we have anything more recent?” Winston asked, tapping the photo.

  I didn’t have any more recent pictures because I was a terrible mother who was constantly failing my son. More recent pictures had been taken of him—next to the fire truck at the fair, for example, or at the pioneer village—but those had been photos taken by Jamie, and they were still on his phone. And presumably Jamie had no idea that David was missing, and even if he did, he had no reason to want to approach me now. I was the girl who had made it perfectly clear I didn’t have room for him in my life anymore. The girl who always let down those closest to her, those she loved.

  I shook my head and sat down in front of one of the steaming bowls of soup. “So what was the police update? What did the Gills tell them?”

  Winston closed the photo album and filled me in. The Gills had cooperated fully, letting the police search the guest suite above the garage where Patrick lived, giving them a description of the car they let Patrick use and its license plate number, recounting Patrick’s unusual behavior the past few weeks—how they’d recently learned he’d been ditching work a few days a week, how he talked of little else except seeing his son, how they hadn’t seen him in over twenty-four hours now. Quentin didn’t keep any guns in the house, and they didn’t seem to think Patrick could’ve gotten his hands on one legally because of the restraining order, so they didn’t suspect he was armed. (Armed! I had never even thought to worry about a gun!) The police found a couple of gas station receipts in Patrick’s garbage can, dated from the last two weeks. The gas station was in Port Ambrose, somewhere he had no business being. Apparently Patrick had been driving to David’s school and watching him for days now. Watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab him. The thought chilled me.

  “The police have put out an Amber Alert,” Winston concluded. “Describing David and Patrick and the car. I guess they’ve already gotten one sighting. Someone saw his car traveling south on Highway 45 near Menomonee Falls about half an hour ago.”

  “So he’s headed back to Milwaukee?”

  “It seems like it. The police are going to keep an eye out for him at all the places you and his parents suggested he might go.”

  I stood up from my chair, bumping the table in the process. My untouched bowl of soup quivered a little but didn’t spill. “Good. I’m going to go look for them, too.”

  “Anna, no!” Duffy got in my way. “Let the police do their job. We need you here. How else can you hear the police updates? What if they need to ask you more questions?”

  I stepped around her. “That’s what cell phones are for. Call me if you hear anything.”

  Winston remained seated, his large hands folded calmly over the photo album. I knew if he said just one word, I would stay here. If he truly believed my staying home was what was best for David and me, I would do it. But he didn’t say anything.

  “David needs me, Duffy,” I said. “I’m his mother.”

  She nodded at me, jarring loose tears that rolled down her cheeks. “Okay,” she said grimly. “Be safe. But call me every hour on the hour to update me and let me know you’re alright. Otherwise, I’m coming after you.” She looked beseechingly at Winston, as if expecting him to offer to go along with me, but he was still staring down at David’s photo.

  “I need to get this to the police station,” he said. “Good luck, Anna.”

  Outside, I was surprised to see that the sun was starting to set. How much time had passed since David’s disappearance? Eight hours? It felt like a lifetime. I trotted to my minivan, digging in my purse to make sure my cell phone and its charger were there. I didn’t notice Jamie striding up the driveway until he was almost at my car door.

  “Anna,” he said.

  I whirled around, nervous energy coursing through me. Jamie’s face was sadder than I’d ever seen him. Although the sight of him would have filled me with joy only twenty hours ago, now I felt only impatience for his timing and a jolt of guilt. Because maybe if I hadn’t been so focused on my relationship with Jamie, I would have figured out what was going on with David sooner and stopped Patrick from taking him.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have time to talk,” I said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “David is missing.”

  “I heard,” Jamie said, “and I am so sorry. I can’t imagine how scared you must be feeling right now.” He took a hesitant step toward the minivan. “I’d like to help. Is there anything I can do? Can I come with you to look for him?”

  I fumbled with my car keys and managed to turn the minivan on. Every second that passed that I was sitting here was a second that David was getting farther and farther away from me, scared and confused.

  “Can you send one of the recent photos you took of David on your phone to the police department?” I asked. “I don’t have any really current ones.”

  “Definitely. Consider it done.”

  “Thank you.” I stepped on the brake and shifted into reverse. “I need to go.”

  “Anna, please let me come with you. Please let me help. As an old friend.” There were deep wrinkles of concern on his forehead, and I could see that he was genuinely worried about David’s safety too.

  “Get in,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jamie kept me talking the entire drive to Milwaukee. The only time he paused in his stream of questioning was to call information and get the police department’s phone number, so he could send them David’s picture from his cell phone. I told him what little
information I knew from the police about David’s disappearance. I told him about Patrick and the custody battle and how we’d been estranged for the past four years. I told him about the smashed piggy bank and his suicide threats and the way I’d found David alone in his bathtub as an infant. I told him about Patrick’s run-ins with the law, his hospitalization, and later unwillingness to take his medication and see his doctor on a regular basis. Then I bit my lip and tried not to cry when we passed an electronic sign over the highway proclaiming my son’s Amber Alert.

  Once we got to Milwaukee, we were running low on gas, so Jamie suggested we take the opportunity to fill up and switch drivers. It was pitch black by this point, and it was becoming apparent how naïve my hopes of simply driving around and spotting Patrick and David on the streets were. But there was no way I could just give up and sit still while my poor little boy was still out there somewhere. Even driving around the streets of Milwaukee aimlessly was better than doing nothing. Jamie cruised past my old apartment and then asked me to direct him to Patrick’s favorite cathedrals (which were both closed at this time of night) as well as the coffee shop (no luck) and art history library (also closed). Duffy called twice to check in and tell me that no other tips had come in about Patrick’s whereabouts and she thought I should come home and try to sleep. When I told her that Jamie was with me, she seemed relieved but then wanted to talk to him. “I’m supposed to tell you to take a break and go home and get some rest,” he conveyed, shaking his head sympathetically. We kept driving.

  Jamie proposed we look for Patrick’s silver car in some of the local motel and hotel parking lots in the area, in case Patrick and David were holed up for the night. I went along with his idea, even though there were about a million places to stay in Milwaukee and its suburbs, and we’d probably have a better chance of finding them if we looked in the phone book and randomly started calling people to ask them if they knew where David was. We weren’t in Salsburg, with its total lack of hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts, anymore. To top it off, I wondered if Patrick had already abandoned his car. Maybe they were on foot or taking the bus or train. Maybe they had been swallowed up in Chicago or an even bigger city by now.