I'll Be You(50)

MISSING: EMMA GONZALEZ

Last seen: March 13

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Brown

Age: 22 months

Weight: 26 pounds

Circumstances: Emma Gonzalez was last seen on Tuesday, March 9 at 12 p.m. in the garden of her home in the 800 block of Joshua Tree Drive in Scottsdale. Family members in attendance believe that she may have wandered into the desert.

A throb of nausea, dank and pulsing, rose in my stomach.

The barista was still dabbing at my leg with the sodden towel, making noises about ice packs and bandages. I nudged her off. “I’m fine, really. Thank you.”

She stood and noticed the flyer in my hands. “Oh yeah, that. So awful. Poor kid.”

I looked up at her. “You know about this?”

“You don’t?” She blinked at me from underneath those disconcerting rhinestones, a fairy trapped in a coffee-stained apron. “Shit, it was all over the local news.”

“I’m not local.”

She folded the towel in half, and in half again. “So yeah, the grandma is taking care of the little girl, right? They’re out in the garden and the little girl falls asleep in the grass and the grandma goes inside to use the bathroom and when she comes back out a few minutes later, the kid is gone. They think she woke up and wandered off into the desert. Or a mountain lion snatched her.” She twisted the towel in her hands. “Desert’s full of predators. A coyote got my cat last year.”

“They searched for her?”

It was a stupid question and the barista gave me a suitably withering look. “Of course. Big search parties. But, no, nothing. Never found her body.”

Of course they didn’t, I thought. Because there was no body. Because Emma Gonzalez was now Charlotte Hart, living in Santa Barbara. My sister had her. Or rather, she had had her, before she vanished, leaving the missing child in my care.

It made no sense whatsoever.

I thought of something. “Was the family part of a cult?” I asked.

The barista looked taken aback. “A cult?”

“Or, like, a self-improvement group.”

“I mean, who isn’t in a self-improvement group? My parents were into the Landmark Forum. And my brother worships Tim Ferriss like he’s some sort of god.” She paused, gave me a closer look. “Why? Do you recognize the kid, or something?”

I realized I was in danger of drawing suspicion to myself. I shook my head and pinned the flyer back on the board. “No. Just thought she was cute.”

Another customer came in then, and the barista headed back to her counter. I waited until she was distracted at her espresso machine before pulling my phone out of my pocket and snapping a photo of the flyer.

I waited until I was back outside before texting the photo to my sister.

YOU NEED TO CALL ME BACK NOW, I typed.

This time, there were no dots at all.



* * *



—

The drive from Scottsdale back to Santa Barbara flew past as a smear of desolate landscape and radio static. I pounded Starbucks coffee until my head buzzed so loudly that it almost drowned out the questions that were spinning through my brain. Was it possible there was an innocent explanation for why this little girl had disappeared from her Scottsdale home and materialized in my sister’s in Santa Barbara? Could my sister have rescued her? Did Elli somehow not know who she was? Or had my sister absconded with the Gonzalez child? If so, why this child, all the way out in Scottsdale? Were the Gonzalez parents members of GenFem, friends of my sister? And if so, was Emma/Charlotte’s disappearance something that had been engineered by the group—not a disappearance at all, but some sort of smoke screen?

I wanted so badly to believe that Elli hadn’t done anything wrong.

It wasn’t until I was crossing the border into California that it finally occurred to me that Charlotte wasn’t my niece after all. She was someone else’s niece. But calling my sister Mama. How long had it taken Charlotte to adjust to her new reality? Did she remember her real mother? Did she miss her? She’d been twenty-two months old, still a baby, when all this happened. She didn’t seem traumatized to me, these four months later. But still…my God.

And the parents.

I couldn’t even think of them.

It was growing dark, just past eight, by the time I made it back to Santa Barbara. It had been less than twenty-four hours since my bender landed me on Caleb’s living room couch, thirty-six since I’d started visiting the addresses on my sister’s list. I’d slept four hours since then, maybe five, and driven for fourteen; and now I was tired, so tired that the road was blurring in front of me. I slapped myself to stay awake, until my face stung and my palm hurt. Now was not the time to die.

When I let myself into my parents’ house, I found my father sitting on the couch watching baseball highlights. He saw me standing in the doorway and muted the television, then shifted sideways so that he could take me in. “Well, well. Look who decided to come back.” The expression on his face wasn’t anger, or even sadness; it was profound resignation, as if he’d expected this of me. “Where have you been?”

“Trying to get some information about Elli.”

He shot me a look of disbelief. “Since last night?”

“I had to go to Scottsdale.”

Now he didn’t look resigned. He looked perplexed, like I’d handed him a lemon and told him it was an orange. “Why Scottsdale?”