Wherever She Goes(32)

Girl from Cedar Rapids seems to drop out of family life at fifteen. She has a child two years later. A child she hides from the world, as she lives in a Chicago suburb under an assumed name. Yet she maintains contact with her older sister, who keeps her secrets for her.

There are patterns in life. Old stories, often told. Personal tragedies rendered almost banal by their very commonness. I see one of those in Kim’s story, and I want to chide myself for being so unimaginative. The truth is, though, that I am very good at recognizing patterns, at predicting cause and effect. I remember in high school, we’d done some aptitude test measuring our intellectual strengths. Mine was logical reasoning, and when my guidance counselor saw the results, she actually double-checked to be sure she was reading them right. This is what makes me so good with computers. I can analyze, and I can foresee outcomes, and it’s hard for me to understand why others cannot.

When I took that bullet to my shoulder, I didn’t for one moment think Why me? I wasn’t shocked. Not even surprised. This was one of the potential outcomes. So was jail. Or betrayal. Or death. The others had been outraged on my behalf. I’d laughed at them.

After I split with Paul, I’d gone to a group for newly separated women. I could say I was seeking support, but really, I just wanted information. I wanted to learn from their experiences. I remember one woman who’d been shell-shocked by her separation . . . which she instigated. She’d given her husband an ultimatum, and he chose divorce. Somehow, that surprised her. She’d only wanted him to know she was serious, and threatening divorce seemed the way to do it.

That baffled me. When I told Paul our marriage didn’t seem to be working, of course I wanted it to be the wake-up call that would save us. But I knew it might also be the excuse he needed to jump in and say “I agree.” Which is exactly what he did, and as much as that hurt, I would rather know how he felt and set him free to be happy. I love him. I’m not going to trap him in an empty marriage.

So in Kim’s story, I see a pattern. There’s more to it. I have noticed that while Ellie talks about going home to see her mother, there’s no mention of her father. According to condolences in her timeline, he died three years ago, yet she never mentioned the death, responding to those messages with a simple “Thank you.”

My dad and I had our differences—blow-out fights, the front door slammed, me spending the night at friends’—but I loved him like I loved no one else before Paul came along. When my father died, I was inconsolable with grief and rage. The chill I see on Ellie’s page speaks to more than a strained relationship. Death heals those wounds. This one did not.

I study the last photos of Kim. At her fifteenth birthday celebration, it is obvious she’s putting on a good face for her big sister—home from South Dakota and very pregnant—but I do not miss the look in Kim’s eyes, the one that says she has already, in her mind, hit the road, putting as much distance as she can between her and a bad home life.

I know I might be wrong. I might be carelessly stuffing Kim into a convenient box. Girl with harsh home life flees and ends up in an even worse place, addicted to drugs, hooking up with the wrong guy, pregnant at seventeen. Then she has a maternal-instinct wake-up call, takes the kid, and flees, living under a false name with a child hidden from his daddy.

Old story, often told.

So I take Kim’s real name and what few details I can glean, and I set about trying to prove myself wrong. Find the piece of evidence that says I’m full of crap, seen too many movies, read too many novels.

There are traces of Kim Mikhailov online. Nothing since she was fifteen, but I expect that. I skim through those bits and pieces—high school website archives, abandoned social media footprints—and put them aside for later. I’m looking for . . .

I find what I’m looking for in a newspaper article dated two months after Kim turned fifteen. Local Teen Missing. The article has been written with obvious reluctance by a journalist who’s convinced he’s dealing with a teen runaway, but has been persuaded to mention it briefly and make the family happy.

Kimberly Mikhailov disappeared one night after an argument with her father. Her mother admitted this wasn’t the first time she’d left but said she always returned the next day. This time, she didn’t. After two weeks, the family was desperate for any word from her. Mom and sister, Ellie, pleaded for news, any news.

I see no mention of her dad.

I find another scrap online, dated two years later. The passing mention of a divorce case, nothing newsworthy, just a tidbit in a list of court proceedings. The dissolution of a marriage between Kim and Ellie’s parents. I find her father’s obituary, too, asking for donations to be made to the American Liver Foundation and AL-ANON. An alcoholic’s death.

Old story. Often told.

After that I begin to reconstruct Kim’s missing past. Which sounds like I’m some kind of detective prodigy. Give me an hour on the Web, and I’ll give you the bio of a woman who’s been in hiding for ten years! It’s not like that. I’m chasing threads, vapors really, of the trail she’s left. A comment here. A mention there. Spot the faintest whorl of smoke and follow it for miles, only to find a long-dead campfire at the end, the stories told around it evaporated. I am running through the internet pathways for hours, popping pain meds when my shoulder screams for mercy, setting timers on my watch so I don’t overstay my welcome, moving from shop to shop.