Rise: How a House Built a Family(78)

“Cara? Are you checking your kids?”

“Let me talk to her. Cara?”

My mind went around in a circle before I whispered, “Sophie.”

“Cara, Adam drove his car into the Arkansas River. The car’s gone, but he got out and swam around, naked and yelling crazy stuff.”

“River?” my lips said but my voice did not.

“We need her to check the goddamned kids!” Officer Stracener was losing his cool, but I had enough for both of us. I was sinking deep into a cool, dark place and I wasn’t sure I would ever find my way out again.

Sophie said something I didn’t hear. Maybe I didn’t want to. Then she was loud, talking fast. “He told them you were in the trunk. He told them that, and he believed it. But you’re not, so—”

So my kids might be.

A noise exactly like Hershey had made, bloody and taped like a rodeo calf on my back porch, came out of my throat. Then another, and I sucked it all back in and bit my lips to silence. I was in my doorway without any memory of standing.

Why had I put four-year-old Jada in her bed last night? Why? She had fallen asleep reading with me in my bed. Why? What was I thinking? Just because we hadn’t heard from him in a while, had I really believed we were safe?

I made it to the stairs, gaining confidence when Hershey appeared next to me, sleepy-eyed. She would have alerted me if anyone had entered the house. Wouldn’t she have? Or would she have cowered, too afraid of Adam to move or even growl? I crawled up the stairs like a toddler. Knee. Palm. Knee.

The phone was in my hand. Still connected. If they were talking I couldn’t hear them, but they would hear the phone thumping against the stairs. Up. Up. Up. My vision tunneled, cleared, and tunneled again.

I had been afraid for my own life so many times, but I’d never even imagined he could slip my kids right out of the house and drive them to the bottom of the Arkansas River, float them out of my life for good. It was a brand-new terror born into a mind that thought it was full up with them.

At the landing, I stood, even though I wasn’t steady on my feet. My mind spun in a frantic whirlwind, urging me to run as fast as I could to find my children. At the same time the too-logical side of my brain held me back, froze my body in place. There were only two possible outcomes. The kids were either there or they weren’t. And that urgent side of my brain didn’t understand that speed couldn’t change the outcome.

Officer Stracener wasn’t in a hurry to find out if my kids were in the trunk so he could rescue them; he was checking to see if they had bodies to recover. My children’s bodies.

One, two, three.

I held on to the half wall at the top of the stairs, hyperaware of the rough Sheetrock texture under every fingertip. I curled my toes into the carpet and swore I felt each individual fiber. Hershey had stayed at the bottom. As badly as I wanted her with me, I didn’t have the courage to open my mouth and call her.

For one last minute, a precious one, I stood there as a mom. In only seconds I could walk into one room after another and find empty beds. Cold sheets. It could be the very last minute that I was someone’s mommy, and I needed to hold it.

Jada’s room was closest, but I couldn’t go there first. At four, she would be the easiest one to get out of the house in total silence. I started to think of ways he could have pulled the other kids out and stopped myself. They were ugly thoughts.

Drew’s door was closed, and when I tried the handle it was locked. The little pseudokey over the bathroom door fit in all the doors, and I slipped it in until it clicked the lock open. My son stretched diagonally across his bed in a pair of checkered boxers, feet tangled in his sheets. The room smelled of body spray and dirty sneakers.

A sob cracked out of my chest so rapidly it hurt like it had been jerked out by a fist. I pulled the door closed and ran to Hope’s room, my hair flying and arms out, so I must have resembled a ghost running across the long playroom. Hope’s dark hair fanned onto her pillow like it had been arranged. The quilt was pulled neatly to her chin. I could hear her slow breathing but couldn’t come anywhere near to matching the pace.

Tears had drenched my face. I could no longer breathe through my nose. The phone had gone missing at some point and I’d have to find it eventually. But not yet. One. Two. I had two children.

My head and kidneys ached from fear and adrenaline. My vision tunneled out more than in. I was cold. At some point I realized I must be going into shock. I gagged. The only way I could make it to Jada’s room was by holding the doorframe and hugging the wall like Spider-Man, like a woman who had lost gravity.

What if she’s gone? How will we go on? The kids—we just can’t—

I couldn’t hear anything from the doorway. Shouldn’t I hear her?

Jada’s door caught on a pile of clothes when I pushed it open. Even from the doorway I could see that her pillow was empty.

From the middle of the room I could see a lump in the middle of her bed. A dark, hopeful shape. I stood there for at least a minute, imagining it was her and everything was okay. Then I imagined Adam, and a terrible part of me wanted him to be in his car at the bottom of the river—out of my life forever. In a watery grave. I could see him there clearly, curled up in his own trunk. Gone.

I walked across the rug, dragging my feet to keep from stepping on a project or stray earring. I ran my hands over the pillow, palms flat, then down the bed, tangling my fingers in blankets. Nothing but blankets. I moved slowly at first and then faster, frantic, looking for a piece of my little girl. I jumped when my hand ran up against a stuffed toy, flipping it over with a mechanical mew. I echoed the cry and resumed my search, friction heating my palms and making a whistling noise against the sheets. When my hand found her back, I almost shook her, angry that she was pressed long and flat against the footboard, using a beach towel for a blanket.