Something She's Not Telling Us

by Darcey Bell

  The airplane light seems golden as they prepare their little nest in the bulkhead seats they’ve been assigned as a reward for traveling with a child.

  It’s a short flight from Mexico City, but even so, they take out Daisy’s books and stuffed giraffe, and slip off their shoes. Daisy claims both armrests, which she can do only because she’s sitting between people who love her.

  The drinks cart has no tequila. They might as well have crossed the border. That’s probably just as well. They were drinking too much in Mexico; they’ll cut back when they get home. It’s noon; they should probably hold off.

  But right now they’re celebrating, and they order vodka tonics.

  At their mother’s, Charlotte had been impressed—no, amazed—by how Rocco stayed sober with everyone gulping down delicious margaritas.

  Thinking about her brother will only undo the good effects of the vodka.

  Rocco will be fine. If he can transport a truckload of perfect organic tomatoes from upstate to Union Square, he can get Ruth a temporary passport and fly from Oaxaca to JFK.

  Daisy asks if she can have a Coke. It feels good to say yes. Even if they’d refused, Daisy would have been fine with it. She’s happy to be with her parents, happy to be going home. She had a good time with her grandmother in Oaxaca, and she’s glad it’s over.

  “Sweetheart,” Charlotte says, “you promised.”

  “Promised what?”

  “You promised to show me your notebook. Our Mexican Adventure.”

  “It’s in my backpack,” Daisy says.

  “Should we look at it together?” Charlotte’s tone is irritating, even to Charlotte. She’s already turning back into a stifling New York parent. Maybe that’s why she agrees when Daisy says, “How about you look at the book—and I’ll watch a movie on Dad’s computer?”

  She’s seen Moana countless times, but Charlotte’s so eager to see the book she’ll agree to anything.

  She opens to the first page. It’s less of a diary than a collage of images that caught Daisy’s eye. The pyramid at Chichen Itza. Bananas in a market. She’s cut them from a magazine. Credit card receipts, food packages, wrappers. Small bills, pages stuck together. Random stuff she’d gotten from guests at Mom’s party. Business cards from Chef Basil and a landscaper, cough drop wrappers and matchbook covers, even some puffs of lint.

  Charlotte’s about to close the book when she feels a hard rectangle beneath several sheets of notebook paper.

  Pasted onto the center of the page is a photo of Daisy and Ruth taken at one of those photo booths you don’t see anymore in New York but must still exist in Oaxaca. Did Daisy go out with Ruth when Charlotte thought she was with Mom? The thought of Daisy and Ruth on the streets of a foreign city is terrifying, or would be, if Daisy weren’t safe beside her.

  Charlotte has Ruth’s passport.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  Charlotte pantomimes to Daisy: Take off the headphones!

  “Where did this come from?”

  Daisy looks guilty but confused about what she did wrong.

  “It’s me and Auntie Ruth—”

  “She’s not Auntie Ruth,” Charlotte says. “She’s not your fucking auntie.”

  “Language,” Daisy says. Then she starts to cry.

  What’s gotten into Charlotte? Ruth has turned her into a thief and a terrible mother.

  She hugs her daughter and whispers, “I am so sorry.”

  “Why do you hate her?” Daisy’s voice wobbles.

  “I don’t hate her,” Charlotte lies. But it’s true. She doesn’t hate Ruth. She just wishes that Ruth weren’t her brother’s girlfriend. She wishes she’d never met Ruth. She wishes that Rocco had never brought Ruth into their lives.

  Stealing her passport was an impulse. She wanted to keep Ruth away forever. But it won’t work. She knows that.

  “Where was this taken, Daisy? You and—” She can’t even say Ruth’s name.

  “I don’t remember.”

  In the photo, Daisy and Ruth gaze calmly into the camera, not bugging their eyes and grinning goofily like people do in photo booths. They don’t look alike—you would never think they were related.

  But Daisy doesn’t look like Charlotte, either.

  She looks like Eli. Everyone thinks she looks like Eli. Everyone but Ruth.

  “Where?” Charlotte’s voice is so cold it scares her. How frightened her daughter must be.

  Still crying, Daisy says, “The circus. When I went with her and Tío Rocco. I found the picture with my stuff, so I put it in the book.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Auntie Ruth was with us at Granny’s. She was part of our Mexican adventure.”

  Daisy has never called Mom Granny before.

  Granny is what Ruth calls the grandmother she talks about all the time.

  Granny Edith. Just the word freaks Charlotte out.

  Now Charlotte has the full-on chills. For the first time she wonders if her daughter is lying. If Ruth is teaching her how to lie.

  When they get home, Charlotte decides, she will do whatever she has to do to keep Ruth away from Daisy. Ruth and Daisy will never be in the same room together again.

  Part Three

  April 19

  22

  Charlotte

  As Charlotte runs to meet Rocco at Ruth’s apartment, the smell of hot bread and cinnamon stops her. Looking in the window of what seems to be an old-fashioned Polish bakery, Charlotte pauses to catch her breath again.

  Her daughter is missing and she’s looking at cake. No. Charlotte is being guided.

  Had the driver found Ruth’s building, had Charlotte come from another direction, she wouldn’t have passed the bakery and stopped to look at the trays of sticky buns. Had the bakery been closed, she wouldn’t have seen the icing on the pastry: the sun with the eight rays and eight mini-explosions that Ruth said were her grandmother’s trademark.

  Does Ruth’s grandmother work here? Does she own the place? Is that why Ruth lives nearby?

  Ruth’s grandparents live in Hoboken. She made such a point of it. Her granny baked the sticky buns for Ruth in her Hoboken kitchen.

  For protection, Ruth said.

  Granny Edith.

  Is it a coincidence that Ruth lives next door to a bakery that sells a pastry with the same frosting design that her grandmother uses? Or did the pastry come from here? Was Ruth lying even about that? Has she lied from that very first evening? How many warnings did Charlotte miss?

  Why didn’t Charlotte tell Rocco what Chef Basil reported about Ruth and the baroness? Why didn’t she question Ruth more closely about the swarm of children and the driver? They had missed so many chances to cut her out of their lives, to protect themselves.

  To protect Daisy. What has Ruth done with Daisy?

  It’s only a sticky bun. A pastry in a bakery window.

  Evidence, in a way.

  A lie has been told, then another lie. A crime is being committed. Daisy is missing.

  And part of Charlotte still believes (has to believe) that everything will be all right.

  A bell clangs as Charlotte walks into the steamy, yeasty-smelling bakery. Two women—both blond, both young—stand behind the counter. Charlotte glimpses two Latino guys stacking trays in a back room.

  It’s all extremely old-fashioned. Not faux vintage but truly old-school. Time travel is how Ruth described her grandparents’ house.

  “Can I help you?” one of the women says.

  Charlotte points to the sticky buns. “Those look delicious. Do you bake them here?”

  “I don’t bake,” says the woman. “I just work here.”

  “Do they bake them in back, or are they shipped in—?”

  The woman eyes Charlotte warily. Is she from the health department? Do the guys in back have immigration issues? She glances at her coworker. Now they both look suspicious.

  Charlotte has been trying to act like an ordinary customer, chatting about the pastry. But she’s not good
at it. She isn’t fooling anyone. She’s in hell.

  The woman sees that and takes pity.

  “Not much is baked on-site. Most of it comes from this mega-factory in the Bronx. Don’t you love that crazy thing they do with the icing? What genius invented a machine that can do that?”

  Charlotte says, “I’ll take a dozen.”

  She should taste one. But if she does, she’ll be sick. She holds the bag at arm’s length.

  RUTH’S NAME ON the buzzer seems like a good sign. Ruth exists. She has an apartment to which she might still return with Daisy.

  That would be too good to be true.

  Charlottes buzzes more forcefully than she has to, and when someone—Rocco?—buzzes her in, she runs up the two flights of stairs. She’s out of breath, and yet she finds the strength to pound on the door like a cop on TV. She imagines the door swinging open and there will be Daisy, sipping hot chocolate with Rocco and Ruth at a kitchen table.

  Charlotte will forgive Ruth. She’ll chalk it up to a misunderstanding. She will never say a mean word or have a negative thought about anyone. Not even Ruth.

  Rocco opens the door. He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He’s newly showered, his hair is wet, a shaving cut on his chin is sending up a trickle of pinkish blood.

  He looks terrible. His face has a yellowish cast, and spider veins have turned the whites of his eyes a hideous sunset pink. She’d know that face anywhere. It’s the face of the guy who held a knife to their mother’s throat. Charlotte flinches when he steps forward to hug her. He smells of alcohol.

  Poor Rocco! Charlotte blames herself. She stole Ruth’s passport. If he’d been on the plane with them, he would have stayed sober. Anyone would need a drink after being stuck in Mexico with Ruth.

  But still, how could he do this? How could he make all those years of sobriety count for nothing?

  It’s Charlotte’s fault. It’s Rocco’s fault. It’s no one’s fault. He’s her brother. She loves him.

  It’s Ruth’s fault.

  Hugging her brother is comforting. Charlotte wishes she could stay like that, with his arms around her, until her panic subsides. But she needs to pull away and look past him for what she knows she’s not going to see.

  Daisy. Ruth. Where are they?

  Ruth’s place is tiny, but everything is unexpectedly chic, furnished with good mid-century modern pieces—Ruth mentioned getting furniture from her grandparents—mixed in with knickknacks that are whimsical without being cloyingly cute. A brace of pens sticks up from the back of a ceramic pig. A pagoda and pines trees are carved on a large abalone shell, propped on a stand.

  “That was her grandpa’s,” says Rocco. “From Okinawa.”

  Why would Charlotte care? Rocco is telling her what he found interesting about Ruth: a grandpa who served in Okinawa. Does he not understand what’s happened?

  “Where are Ruth and Daisy? Where’s my daughter?”

  “I don’t know.” Rocco looks at Charlotte. His eyes are half closed, and he’s teetering slightly, like someone not quite recovered from a long illness.

  “This is fucked,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  You should be, Charlotte thinks.

  In the center of the living room is a large brown couch on which Rocco has staked out his corner of Ruth’s kingdom. Charlotte senses that he’s straightened up the place since he got her text, but he must have missed the beer bottle signaling, from under the coffee table, its own version of the story of what happened between Rocco and Ruth.

  Ruth’s home looks like Barbie’s dream castle after Ken has gone on a weeklong bender. In the kitchen, bottles bulge like a bodybuilder’s muscles under the shiny white skin of the trash bags.

  How could he—anyone—have drunk this much since they got home last night?

  Was Ruth drinking with him? Did she purposely get him trashed enough to pass out and stay passed out while she stole Daisy?

  The impulse, which Charlotte restrains, is to smash the bag of pastry into her brother’s face.

  Calm down. Rocco is on her side. But if he was on her side, why did he let Ruth go anywhere near Daisy? Why didn’t he say something as soon as he realized that the sticky buns didn’t come from her grandmother’s? He’s not the most observant guy, but he would have seen it in the shop downstairs. Everyone looks in bakery windows, besides which it’s one of the few businesses on the block. The icing is distinctive, and Ruth made such a fuss about it.

  He must have figured that one out early on.

  Charlotte says, “They make those sticky buns in the bakery down the block. It’s not from her granny’s kitchen. Wasn’t that a red fucking flag right there? The first time you saw it in the window downstairs, it must have crossed your mind that something was a little off. A lot off.”

  “I didn’t notice,” says Rocco. “I swear I didn’t see them in the window. I don’t even like sticky buns. I thought she was getting them from her grandmother.”

  Charlotte says, “You’re lying. And she’s a liar. She never worked for the baroness. Her granny never made sticky buns—”

  Rocco says, “Could you forget about the fucking sticky buns? I need to tell you something.”

  Charlotte yanks the pastries out of the bag, stuffs some in her mouth and then in Rocco’s. He gags, but she doesn’t care. It’s the closest thing to a physical fight they’ve had since they were kids.

  “Taste familiar? What else did she lie about?”

  He says, “She attacked Reyna. I’m pretty sure it was Ruth. No. Actually . . . I’m sure it was Ruth.”

  “Oh my God. You’re joking.”

  “I wish,” Rocco says.

  “And you didn’t do anything? You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Call the Mexican police? The Federales? She’d have made it look like I was the one who did it. Ruth texted Reyna on my phone, pretending to be me. That’s how she got her to come to the park where Ruth attacked her.”

  “You and Reyna must have made quite a connection at Mom’s party for her to want to come and meet you later that night. But why would anyone think that you would hurt Reyna?”

  “Believe me, Ruth would have thought of a reason.”

  Charlotte throws her arms around her brother again. Tears seep down her cheeks.

  Only now does she understand what Ruth is capable of. The truth dawns on her in stages. A murderer—an attempted murderer—is out there in the city. Disappeared. With her child, her daughter. With Daisy.

  “Does Ruth know that you know she attacked Reyna?”

  “I told her this morning. When she was leaving. I was half awake and pretty out of it. I said we had to talk. And when she asked me about what, I said, About what you did to Reyna. I’m pretty sure I said that. Or anyway something like that.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She asked what I thought she did to Reyna—and when could she have done it. I said, Our last night in Oaxaca, after the party, when she went out. She insisted that she met the driver she stiffed for the fare from Mexico City. She claimed he’d wanted to give her money back.”

  “That makes no sense,” says Charlotte.

  “None. That was when I told Ruth that she and I needed to take a break. That actually . . . well, actually . . . I just didn’t think that I could be with her anymore.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she stormed out of the house. And I passed out again. I think.”

  “God help us,” Charlotte says.

  “She’ll come back here. I’m sure of it.”

  She? Why doesn’t Rocco say they? They’ll come back. Does he mean Ruth and Daisy? Or just Ruth? Can he not imagine the two of them returning safely? Does he wonder if Ruth took Daisy as revenge for him saying they needed to break up? Charlotte can tell from the catch in his voice that he isn’t sure of anything. Still it’s nice not to be alone. And it helps to cry openly, without holding back.

  “You’ve got to quit drinking,” she says. “You k
now that.”

  “I already quit,” says Rocco. “Drinking.”

  “When?”

  “Just now. When you texted.”

  “Great. You’ve earned your twenty-minute sobriety chip.”

  “Almost an hour,” says Rocco.

  Has it been an hour?

  “I called in sick to work,” he says. “I can get up to the country tomorrow—or as soon as this . . . thing gets settled.”

  Daisy’s gone, and Rocco is calling it this thing? And he imagines that this thing will be settled by tomorrow? Charlotte almost shouts, What if it’s not settled by tomorrow? What if it’s never settled? What if they never find Daisy?

  If only she hadn’t stolen Ruth’s passport. Maybe none of this would have happened. Or maybe it would have. Who knows how long Ruth has been planning this?

  Where did she put Ruth’s passport? In the midst of everything, Charlotte panics about that. In her sock drawer, where Eli never looks. She’ll get rid of it tomorrow.

  She checks her phone. If Eli had good news, he would call or text. Have the police shown up? Ruth was on the school pickup list! Don’t those frightening Amber Alert signs light up even when a child has been abducted by a noncustodial parent? And Ruth isn’t even a parent. She’s the crazy, violent girlfriend of the kidnap victim’s uncle.

  The kidnap victim. Ruth assaulted Reyna. And now she has Daisy.

  Somewhere out there. The city has never seemed so big!

  Charlotte just wants to hear Eli’s voice, so she calls him. He says he has phoned the police again, who have promised to stop by—

  “Stop by?”

  “Let’s be glad they’re responding at all. Ruth was authorized to pick her up. Apparently the school called too. They’re covering their asses.”

  Eli is trying to stay strong, for her, and Charlotte loves him for it. But the hoarseness in his voice signals sheer terror, and it makes her even more afraid.

  “All right,” says Eli. “We can do this. We’ll find Daisy. I know it.”