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“No, you told me that we deserve each other.”
“It’s the same thing, darling. The man who bravely rescued you from the basement where your bad mother locked you away. Where is he now?”
I’m locked inside a deep hole of despair, just like I was in that basement, only this time Nero’s not coming to pull me out of the dark. I don’t know where that man has gone. Some days I wonder if he was even real.
“Have you seen Harriet?I can’t find her.” Annie’s voice is shaking on the other end of the phone line.
I sit up in bed, pushing my hair out of my eyes and trying to get my bearings. What time is it? Have I fallen asleep in the middle of the day again? It’s still light outside, so I must have.
“Harriet? No, I haven’t seen her. Is everything all right?”
Of course everything isn’t all right. What a stupid question.
“She was in our front garden. I thought she’d be safe in the front garden.” Annie’s house has a waist-high fence with a gate. There’s a pause, and then Annie says tearfully, “She got colored marker on the sofa, and I yelled at her. She went into the front garden while I cleaned the marker off, and when I went to look for her, she wasn’t there. I—I didn’t mean to get so angry.”
I can hear the remorse and despair in Annie’s voice. She’d suffer colored markers being drawn all over her house if it meant she could have her daughter back.
I get out of bed and head downstairs. “I’m getting in my car. I’ll drive around the neighborhood until I find her. You keep calling people. Maybe she went to a friend’s place.”
Annie immediately clutches at the straws I’ve offered. “Yes, a friend’s place. Thank you, Rieta. Call me if you find her.”
“Of course I will. She can’t be far. We’ll find her.”
I grab a Coke from the fridge and drink it quickly, hoping the caffeine chases away the alcohol in my system, and then I run to my car. I drive laps around the neighborhood, looking closely at every small figure I see. Harriet’s a good girl, but perhaps she ran a few blocks away because she was upset that Annie yelled at her over an accident. Maybe she needed some space.
With every minute that I don’t find her, my anxiety grows. I drive until it gets dark, and then head back to my street. There’s a police car outside Annie’s house. The front door is open, and I can see Annie tearfully talking to a police officer. Her husband, Jake, is standing outside, pacing up and down as he talks on the phone.
When he hangs up, I approach him. “You still haven’t heard anything from Harriet? I’ve been driving around looking for her.”
“We haven’t heard a thing. I don’t know what to do.” Jake’s expression is confused, and he seems frozen by desperation.
Apart from the single police car parked on our street, there isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Should there be more activity if a girl has gone missing?
“I can knock on our neighbors’ doors and ask if anyone saw anything,” I offer, and when Jake nods distractedly, I squeeze his arm and tell him, “We’ll find her.”
For the next few hours, I knock on doors, asking dozens of neighbors if they’ve seen Harriet and ask if they’re willing to join the search. Some make a lap or two of the block in their cars or on foot, others stand gossiping in the street.
Around nine in the evening, I see Nero’s car pass me on the way to our house. I don’t think he sees me, and he doesn’t stop. A light switches on inside our house. A minute passes, long enough for him to realize I’m not there, but he doesn’t call to find out if I’m all right. The sight of a police car parked on our street hasn’t made him worried about my safety.
I’m glad I saw that.
Ineededto see that.
I turn my back to my husband and head for the next front door.
The hours are long, cold, and futile. More police cars arrive in the neighborhood. I ask one uniformed officer why an AmberAlert for Harriet hasn’t appeared on my phone yet, and he tells me that they can’t issue one unless they know she’s been abducted.
“But it’s been hours. Harriet wouldn’t stay away this long on purpose. She must have been taken.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t.”
A day passes and Harriet doesn’t come home.
Three days.
A week.
Another week.
