Don't Look for Me(35)

But then the warmth turns cold as I read the headline.

SEARCH FOR LOCAL WOMAN MISSING UPSTATE CALLED OFF



And colder, still …

Evidence suggests Molly Clarke left of her own accord after abandoning her car.



Tears burn as they pour down my face.

Emotionally unstable after the accidental death of her daughter …

Ran over her own child on her way home from work …

“She never seemed right after that,” says a source close to the family …



I read every word. I read about my abandoned car being out of gas. I read about my phone left behind. I read about my visit to Evan’s school and how he ignored me and everyone saw it and how I cried by the side of the field house.

Did I? Did I cry by the side of the field house?

It takes me several minutes to find the answers. It takes until I see a passage underlined in red ink to know what has occurred.

Clarke’s daughter, Nicole, and husband, John, participated in the search that was called off yesterday afternoon after four days. Investigators would not give specifics, but a source close to the family said that a credit card charge has been made at a nearby hotel, and some clothing and a note have been found inside the room Clarke rented. Investigators did confirm that it is now believed the subject left of her own accord.



What has he done?

He has my purse. He’s found my credit card. He’s forged a note—maybe using the names and numbers I wrote down for him so he could call my family.

Rage returns, bringing back the heat. It does not stop the tears.

Those thoughts I had as I walked down that road, the road with the lies and the false promises, that had seeped into my head and my heart. Thoughts about leaving my family. It’s as though he read them all and then made them come true. He’s done this to me, but I can’t stop the rage from turning right back around. Did I do this to myself?

At the very bottom of the page, I see a picture of John and Nicole. They are walking from a car to a police station. I don’t recognize the building or the street or any of the people around them. I think it must be Hastings.

I run my finger lightly over the page, touching the image of them.

I hear a creak of the floorboards from down the hall and I shine the light under the door. I get up and walk closer, until I can see through the crack beneath it. The light shifts with the creaks and I know he stands there. Waiting. Listening, perhaps.

The cold, musty air heaves in and out of my chest until it explodes in words.

“You’re a monster!” I scream in futility, in anguish, because I know that nothing I can say to him will touch his soul.

But now a voice—

“Shhhh,” it’s the voice of an angel. My sweet Alice. This is how I think of her right now, in this moment, when I realize it is her little feet making the light change beneath the crack in the door.

I press my hand against the wood.

“Alice?’ I say.

She whispers. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Don’t cry.”

“I know.” I sob. “I just want to go home. I want to see my family.”

Alice sighs loud enough for me to hear.

“We all want things,” she says. “But we get what we get and we don’t get upset.”

She giggles and it makes me cry harder. How can I reach her? How can I make her little fingers move to the dead bolt and turn, turn, turn …

“She’s pretty,” Alice says.

And now comes alarm.

“Who is pretty?” I ask. But I already know.

“Nicole,” she says.

I choke on my own heartbeat. It pounds my throat closed and I can’t speak.

So I listen.

“She has real blond hair and blue eyes and lots of spirit.”

I swallow hard to open my throat. “How do you know?” I ask. The picture was black-and-white. And it gave no description of my daughter.

“He told me. He knows her from when she came to look for you.”

“Oh,” I say. My voice is shaky. I try to infuse it with casual surprise. “When was that?”

“Ummmm…” Alice says, and I can picture her face scrunched up as she thinks. “I don’t know but she just went home. They’re all done looking for you.”

And now I am relieved. I do not want my daughter to be here, to be in this town where he can see her. It’s as though in some bizarre twist of irony, my prayer has been answered, the prayer that they just let me go.

Even so, the panic is acute. My hand taps furiously against my leg to contain the energy that has nowhere to go. It wants to make my fists pound on the door. It wants to make my voice cry out for help.

None of these things are useful.

“Okay,” I say then, hand tapping, hard, stinging my leg. “Do you know what that means?”

“What?” she asks me.

I choke on the words I have to say. But I know I have to say them.

“It means that I can stay now. It means that I can come out of this room and be your mommy because they’re all done looking for me.”

She is quiet. She doesn’t believe me.

“But you just said you wanted to go home.”

Clever girl. How I hate you right now.

No, I will not. I will not hate a child. A child who is also a victim. I pull it back and turn it around.