by Darcey Bell
Miracle: He picks up.
“I hate to bother you.” Even when her child’s been kidnapped, Charlotte’s apologizing. Maybe they should talk about that! As if there will be a future in which she and Ted will discuss her little problems! What if she never gets Daisy back? They won’t ever talk about anything else.
Better not to think about it.
“Daisy’s been stolen. Ruth took her.”
“Are you sure?” he says.
“I’m sure,” Charlotte says.
“Oh, dear God,” says Ted.
There’s a long silence, like sometimes in therapy sessions. Charlotte doesn’t have time!
Ted says, “I was going to call you.”
“Call me?”
Another silence.
“A woman called this morning. Weeping. Terribly disturbed. She asked if I was taking any new patients. That is, any new couples for couples therapy. Her fiancé has broken up with her. They’d only recently gotten engaged. She wanted to know if she could see me. Right away.”
What does this have to do with Charlotte? Why would Ted call her about it?
“And . . .”
“She kept referring to the fiancé as Rocco. Your brother? What a coincidence, huh?”
“Rocco’s not engaged,” says Charlotte.
Daisy’s aunt. Charlotte’s sister-in-law. What has Ruth been saying? She never worked for the baroness. Her car was never swarmed by children.
“Then she said something about kale. I couldn’t understand. Maybe she did mean your brother. So I asked his last name. It’s him.”
“Rocco isn’t engaged,” Charlotte repeats.
“I’m only telling you what she said.”
“Did she say what her name was?”
“Naomi,” says Ted. “Naomi . . . I couldn’t catch her last name. She was crying too hard. But I’m sure she said Naomi.”
“Rocco’s girlfriend’s name is Ruth,” Charlotte says. Could he have been cheating on Ruth with a woman named Naomi? Had he gotten engaged to this other person, and Ruth found out and kidnapped Daisy as some kind of crazy revenge?
Rocco has done stuff like that in the past. It wouldn’t be totally out of character.
But it isn’t Charlotte’s fault! And it certainly isn’t Daisy’s.
Who the hell is Naomi?
“I tried to keep her on the phone because I had a bad feeling that she was going to do something—”
“She did. She did do something.”
“I thought she was going to do it to herself.”
“Wrong on that one, Ted.” Poor Ted. It certainly isn’t his fault.
Charlotte’s phone beeps.
Eli is trying to call.
“I need to get this,” she tells Ted.
Ted says, “Try to stay calm. I don’t know what else to say.”
Ted has never not known what to say before. It scares Charlotte as much as anything.
“I’ll keep you posted.” She switches over to Eli’s call.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Right near Rocco’s. I mean Ruth’s. Catching my breath. Did you call the cops?”
“They’re on their way over.” Eli’s voice breaks. Not a good sign.
“What’s taking them so long?”
“It’s not like on TV,” he says. “They said they were going to have to write this up as a family abduction. No Amber Alert. It wasn’t clear.”
“Ruth isn’t family!” Why is Charlotte yelling at Eli?
“I know that. But . . . she was on the list.”
There’s nothing Charlotte can say.
“But wait,” Eli says. “Something really strange happened.”
“Something else strange? What could be stranger than this nightmare we’re—?”
“Listen. Okay, Charlotte? Just listen for once.”
Charlotte forces herself to stand and start walking toward Ruth’s apartment as she talks to Eli. Everyone’s on their phones, and in her panicky state, it makes her feel more invisible.
Maybe she looks like a normal person and not like a woman who wants to beg every passing stranger to please help her.
“‘For once’?” she says. “Listen ‘for once’?”
“Sorry. So . . . I was walking upstairs to the loft. And Drew heard me pass by his mother’s door. He came out of Ariane’s loft and stopped me on the landing.
“He said that this afternoon, around two, when he went out for cigarettes, a woman stopped him outside the door and asked if he lived in the building. She said she was Daisy’s nanny.”
“Daisy doesn’t have a fucking nanny!”
“I know that, amor. You need to calm down.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“I asked him what the woman looked like. He described Ruth. It couldn’t have been anyone but Ruth. And Ruth asked if he would do her a favor.”
“Please,” says Charlotte. “Drew? What does Drew have to do with this? Is Drew mixed up in this? Jesus, not Drew. Please not Drew. Do you think Ruth and Drew are in this together? Do you think they’re planning to kidnap Daisy and hold her for ransom? Do you think Drew and Ariane could be in on it too, that they’ve been planning to kidnap Daisy for money or revenge or—”
“No,” says Eli. “I don’t. I don’t think any of that. What I think is that you’re letting your imagination run away with you. Anyway, this person . . . probably Ruth . . . she told Drew she was Daisy’s nanny and—”
Oh, why hadn’t they been friendlier to their downstairs neighbors? Drew would have known that Daisy didn’t have a nanny. Not that he would have cared—
She’d made Eli look Drew up on the sex offender registry, just because he gave off a weird vibe. Instead they should have asked Drew to dinner. Maybe he would have helped them today. Maybe he would have saved Daisy.
“Ruth told Drew that you asked her to pick up Daisy after school. But Ruth said she wasn’t feeling well, and would Drew go with her? In the event of an emergency, like if she had to find a toilet fast or get herself to the ER, maybe Drew could watch Daisy for a while or even bring her home. Obviously, he knew where she lived. And Ruth could get to the ER before . . . well, she didn’t want to say.”
Now of course she remembers the after-school teachers’ description of the man with Ruth. No wonder it sounded familiar! Drew. Charlotte’s downstairs neighbor.
The light turns green. Look both ways. This is when people get run over.
Charlotte reaches the other side of the street. Inhale. Exhale.
“Did you ask Drew what happened then?”
“Obviously,” says Eli. “They left the school. They went outside. She said goodbye. By the time he’d turned around, she and Daisy had disappeared.”
Charlotte is trying not to cry. For Eli’s sake, she’s trying.
She says, “Has Rocco ever talked about someone named Naomi?”
“Not that I remember,” says Eli.
Charlotte starts to run again. She doesn’t care who sees.
13
Three Months Earlier
Rocco
As Rocco puts on speed, gathering momentum to get his truck up the long, steep climb that’s Andrew John’s driveway, he thinks he can smell smoke.
That’s crazy. He knows that. It’s been almost twenty years since the family house burned down. There’s not even a charred place where the house used to be. Just weeds and saplings, like every spot that’s been cleared from the rocks and forest.
Rocco knows where the spot is. His house used to be visible from the road. That’s how Charlotte saw the fire. Saw it burning, that day. That’s how Charlotte saved him.
He can’t let himself forget that. He can’t let himself remember. When he tries to remember, his memory doesn’t match Charlotte’s.
He always looks as he drives past the spot where the house used to be. He always sees nothing, feels nothing.
Andrew John’s house is an all-glass rectangular box perched on the peak of the mountain, a multimillion-dol
lar see-through Noah’s ark. Rocco likes being there. It would be just as easy—easier—to meet with Andrew John in his city office, near Union Square, where Andrew John works one or two days a week. But Rocco likes coming to his house. It’s more casual, friendlier, less like a business meeting, though of course it is a business meeting.
From the outside, the house looks icy cold—but it’s pleasant inside. Warm but not too warm. Like its owner.
Andrew John gives Rocco a light hug, which Rocco returns, first because Andrew John is his boss, and it would be awkward to just stand there, and second because he likes to feel the rich fabrics of Andrew John’s shirts and jackets. Even his country clothes are expensive. If he has the money, and that’s what he wants, so what? He’s giving back enough. He’s repairing the planet.
Ordinarily, Rocco might hate a guy like Andrew John—a privileged rich guy who doesn’t have to work. But Rocco has respect for him, partly because Andrew John is so cool about this weird situation: Rocco, the farm’s former owner, working for him. It might be really uncomfortable if Rocco’s boss were anyone else.
Rocco’s grateful for the job. He likes the work. Andrew John hired Rocco right after he got out of rehab. It might have been tough to find work. And Rocco wants Andrew John to be glad that he took a chance on him.
Delicacy, tact, respect—something about Andrew John’s humility and simple good manners smooths over the awkwardness of the fact that a billionaire Argentine, with vast estancias in his homeland, now owns the land that used to belong to the dispossessed American guy, who transports the vegetables from his farm. Rocco couldn’t have taken on the responsibility; he doesn’t have the vision or the resources. He wouldn’t know how to hire the people Andrew John has hired to advise him on how to turn the valley into an organic, productive, profit-making—and beautiful—farm.
Andrew John shows Rocco to what he calls his “napping couch.” It’s been almost seven years since Rocco began working for Andrew John, and he’s gotten used to the little jokes that Andrew John makes, the catchphrases he uses over and over. He’s so rich he can repeat himself without worrying that anyone will judge him. But there’s a purpose to it. Everything Andrew John does has a purpose. The little repetitions—“my napping couch”—create a kind of ceremony, a sense of continuity. They remind Rocco of how many times he’s been here, of how well he and Andrew John know each other without knowing each other at all.
Rocco always thinks the same thing. Who could nap on this couch? It isn’t as comfortable as it looks. Rocco sits on the couch, and Andrew John accordions his tall frame into an armchair beside it.
“Coffee? Tea?”
“Coffee would be great.”
Andrew John transmits a message—telepathically, it must be—and Margarita, his “house manager,” appears with two cups, a coffeepot, and a pitcher.
“Hope you don’t mind that it’s heavy cream. My weakness. None of us live forever.”
The coffee is delicious, and the gas fire in the freestanding fireplace is surprisingly warm.
“How is your mother?” asks Andrew John.
This too is a delicate subject, best handled with care.
“Mom’s fine. She loves being in Mexico.”
“And your sister and brother-in-law?”
“Charlotte’s business is booming, Eli’s working on a play.”
“And your niece?”
“She’s great. I took her to the circus for her birthday.”
Rocco notices that he’s said I. First person singular. And the circus was for Ruth’s birthday, not Daisy’s. It’s a good thing that Ruth’s not here.
“Was it fun?” says Andrew John.
“Was what fun?”
“The circus.”
“Lots.”
Andrew John’s wife and son and daughter elected to stay in Buenos Aires until their kids finish school. They agreed it would be too much of a change, not just from Argentina to America, but from the city to the country.
Rocco knows this from the internet, where he’s seen pictures of his boss’s wife—a beautiful woman with beach-streaked hair and two fashion-model-grade children. Andrew John visits them every few weeks. Otherwise, he never talks about them, and Rocco never asks.
Andrew John walks over to the window. He has a habit of standing up in the middle of a sentence, drifting over to the glass, and talking with his back to Rocco. Rocco can’t blame him. If he had that much money and land, he wouldn’t be able to look people in the eye, either.
Andrew John returns, sits down, and grabs a sheaf of printouts from the table. They go over the figures, discuss the shelf life and the popularity of each hybrid or heirloom vegetable and fruit. How are Tengbo and Ravi doing? What can be done to help them? Both are citizens now, but their families have immigration issues. Andrew John has contacted lawyers who will help them, if need be.
Rocco likes these conversations: calm and highly focused. He often feels as if Andrew John is looking slightly past him, into the future. That must be what a visionary is.
Rocco certainly isn’t one. He can’t see into the future. In fact, some days—some more than others—he feels as if it’s an accomplishment to get up and put one foot in front of the other. That’s another reason he doesn’t mind working for someone who pays him well enough to be paying off the mortgage on his own little house, and who makes him feel as if his work is important and valued.
After their business conversation ends, Andrew John invites Rocco to tour his greenhouse, where he is working on multiple projects: easily grown lichen that is nutritious and delicious, organic aphid-resistant cabbage, hydroponically grown sunflowers.
Today he shows Rocco pots in which he is raising a beautiful species of daffodil with delicate petals, frosted silver.
“What do you call it?” Rocco asks.
Andrew John loves naming brands and breeds. It’s my poetry, he often says.
“Lunar narcissus,” Andrew John says.
Rocco thinks of the circus.
He’d been amazed that Charlotte let them take Daisy. Mostly he disapproves of how Charlotte is raising his niece. He loves his sister, but he wishes she were different, and he suspects that she feels the same way about him. It’s not just envy of her easy life, her money. Charlotte and Eli have no real respect for labor, for hard work. Eli hasn’t had to work in years, and though Charlotte spends lots of time at her job, it’s not like loading turnips and carrots on and off a truck.
Charlotte shelters Daisy, teaching her to be frightened of her own shadow and then obsessing about why she seems so timid. Maybe Rocco wouldn’t be so concerned if their mother had been different. Sane. Maybe he wouldn’t find himself worrying that Charlotte’s wound so tight she might snap. If Eli weren’t a sensible guy, Daisy would have been in therapy when she was in her baby carrier, her little limbs flopping helplessly against the adult chest propelling her through the world. If Rocco has children, he will do a better job. He thinks Ruth wants children, though—thank God—the subject never comes up. When they pass a child on the street, her gaze catches and lingers.
He has no idea how long this whatever-it-is with Ruth will last, but already it’s set a record for how long he can stay interested. He doesn’t know what it is, maybe some brightness of spirit. She’s a fighter. She’s not going to drown, and she means to keep Rocco dog-paddling right alongside her.
She’s never tried to psychoanalyze him, in that irritating way so many of his other girlfriends did, even though they were the crazy ones. Maybe it’s because her childhood was as bad as his. They both had mothers who were, to say the least, unreliable. Both of their mothers are far away now: Rocco’s mom in Oaxaca and Ruth’s in Scottsdale.
Rocco likes having sex with Ruth; she likes to try new things, and when it doesn’t work, when their bodies won’t fit together a certain way, she laughs. He’s never met a woman who thought sex was funny. It was always so deadly serious, you had to check your sense of humor at the bedroom door. In bed and out, Rut
h is energetic and generous, but never freaky or weird. Well, maybe a little weird, just enough to make things interesting. And she has never asked—never seemed to care—about the other women he’s been with. Another first, in his experience.
Lately he’s been feeling as if a page has been turned. Ruth has her quirks, but she’s not insane. He must have been a different person to have gotten involved with those others. Who was that guy who dated cutters, suicidal shoplifters, gambling addicts, closet alcoholics, each time choosing to ignore the signs or to be the last person to figure it out?
He even likes staying over at Ruth’s apartment: also a first, for him. She’s decorated her place with stuff she’s gotten from her grandparents and rescued from the street, and it has a breezy charm, like her—neutral, not too girly. There’s a big TV, a comfortable couch, which—she learned from her grandparents—is the secret of domestic bliss. Her grandparents are regular gold mines of good advice. She cooks well, mostly Italian food she learned to make at a cooking school run by Tuscan grandmas.
On the way to the circus, in the car that Ruth organized, Rocco felt doors swing open before he and Ruth and Daisy bothered to knock. By the time the performers finished their opening parade, strutting around the ring, Ruth was beaming. All through the show, she was in another world, high in the stratosphere. She’d looked more sparkly than he’d ever seen her. He couldn’t stop looking at her.
He wants Ruth to be happy. He’s never cared about someone else’s happiness before. It’s a new experience that he’s not entirely sure he likes.
RUTH’S BIRTHDAY FALLS on a Wednesday, so Rocco can stay in the city if he drives upstate the next day.
He asks Ruth how she wants to celebrate. He likes it that she doesn’t expect him to guess her secret birthday desire. He’s seen women get furious because he wasn’t a mind reader. Ruth will be twenty-four, eight years younger than he is. He’s glad that she doesn’t seem to care about the difference. She pretends they’re the same age.
Ruth wants to go out to dinner. And she’s found a restaurant, a collective in East New York that grows vegetables on the roof and trains neighborhood kids for careers in food service. It’s community-based, affordable, delicious, serving the neighborhood. Rocco’s dream restaurant.
