Don't Look for Me(38)

“So she just never came back? Didn’t you worry about what had happened to her?”

“I know what happened,” V said. “She texted me. She moved to New York. Begged me not to tell her poor boyfriend. That kid nearly lost his mind when she left.”

“But that was ten years ago.”

“Look—some of us are close. Talk every week. Others, a few years go by. Daisy texted once in a while. Stopped altogether a few years ago. But there’s nothing strange about that.”

“And you’re sure they were from her—the messages?”

“I know how she says things. How she talks. Why are you asking this?” V was now concerned. “Do you know something?”

“No—it’s not that. I guess I’m just in that frame of mind, looking for my mother.”

V placed her hand on top of Nic’s. “Oh, you poor thing. But Daisy—well, that’s not the same situation. She moved to the city. She wrote to her boyfriend, too. And thank God! That poor kid. Went to Boston. Harassed my sister there, demanding to search her house looking for Daisy. Put up flyers all over the city. Did the same in Hartford. Any place he thought she might have gone. You know, he even went up to this summer camp she used to go to.”

“Summer camp?” Nic asked.

“I told you she was resourceful. She got herself a scholarship. Up in Woodstock. Some camp for gifted kids. They read plays and poetry all summer—can you imagine? She came back full of herself. Quoting things from people we’d never heard of, making us feel stupid. But it was hard to blame her. Daisy wanted a better life and she was willing to work for it. She said some of the kids at that camp had more money than everyone in this town put together. She got a real taste of it.”

Nic looked at the woods now, through the window. It was dirty, like everything in this room. This house. Piles of clothing. Piles of books. Piles of old magazines. Piles of canned food with bright orange value stickers. V was a hoarder, and Nic couldn’t blame her after the way she’d grown up. Still, there was nothing here that was going to help Nic find her mother.

She took a moment to be respectful, but then got up to leave. Kurt followed.

“Thanks for talking to me,” she said.

“Yeah—thanks,” Kurt echoed.

V got up as well. “My sister left ten years ago. Can’t see how it had anything to do with your mother.”

They walked to the door. Said their goodbyes.

Nic was about to leave, but then she stopped.

“Is her boyfriend still around?” she asked.

“Of course,” V said. She looked at Kurt curiously. “Everybody knows him.”

Nic also looked at Kurt now.

“Who is he?” she asked.

It was Kurt who answered. “Roger Booth.”





15


Day fourteen





My mother used to say that you can only be as happy as your least happy child. She said there was no getting around this if you were a good and loving parent. She said that’s why she only had one child. Once she had me and came to understand this about being a parent, she didn’t want to further reduce her chances of having a happy life.

My mother was a pessimist.

She never got around to telling me what happens when a child dies. And when you are the one who killed her.

I think about this while I lie in bed staring at the cracks of light that sneak in through the seams of the plywood. It covers the window from the outside. Sometimes I pull the draperies closed so I can pretend it’s just a window. Other times I don’t want to pretend.

On the frame of the bedroom doorway, he has installed a metal grate—a second door with eight vertical bars and four horizontal ones. There is a small piece that can open at the bottom with a latch on the other side. Another panel is at the same height as the door handle and it, too, has a lock. A lock with a key.

The bedroom is now a prison.

“Sorry about all this,” he said on the day he let me out of the back room. “It’s my fault, really. I should have remembered to turn off the phone.”



* * *



It has been fourteen days since the night of the storm. Two days in the house, thinking I would go home. Five days locked in the dark room with the tile floor, knowing I wouldn’t. Seven days in this bedroom, wanting to die. But knowing I can’t.

Everything now is about keeping this man away from my family. Away from Nicole.

I stare at the streaks of light and assess the state of my mind. On each of these nine days since leaving that back room, it has surprised me and I have come to view it as a separate entity. Separate from my body. Out of my control in every way.

Some mornings, I wake up not remembering where I am and I feel what I used to feel before the night of the storm—what had come to feel normal after five years, but which I now recognize as numb. It only lasts a moment before reality washes through me like a wave of nausea. That is how I feel today, on day fourteen. And I have the answer my mother never told me. What life is like when you have killed your own child. Numb. I see it now for what it is, because now it washes away with the horror of my captivity.

On other mornings, I wake up startled and I jump from the bed and stand with my back to the wall. I let out small gasps of air with cries of despair that I cover with my hand. I am alive with desperation. But I am alive.