Don't Look for Me(40)

Or maybe that was just a belief held by this little girl who plays with her dolls.

She never answers. Sometimes she shrugs. Sometimes she says things about how it’s important to know secrets about people to be prepared. I wonder now if she doesn’t know what he does or how he found out about me.



* * *



I hear the knock on the inside wooden door. I know to open it without hesitation, even though there is no working lock on my side. She knocks as a courtesy. Alice stands before me on the other side of the metal grate. She is still in her pajamas, hair not brushed and tangled from the restless sleep of a child who still dreams.

“I want to play a game. Pick one,” she demands.

“Hannah and Suzannah,” I say. When we play with the dolls, I get to ask questions. The questions bring answers, which are giving me insight into her mind.

“I’ll go get them,” she says.

Mick is here now. He studies me longer than yesterday. Which was longer than the day before, which was longer than the day before that. In the mornings, I wear the first mommy’s pajamas and they cling to my breasts and the curves of my hips. He has been coming earlier so I don’t have time to change.

I can’t decide if I should sleep in the other clothes he’s given me. Her baggy sweatshirts and pants. I can’t decide if I want him to look longer. He seems ambivalent about me, as though he is trying to see something in me that he needs, but he can’t find it yet. Maybe I’m too old and my body repulses him. Maybe I’m being too good and he wants me to fight so he can exert his strength over me. Maybe he needs me to be more of a victim. I study his face and try to understand. I need him to want me here, with him and with Alice, so he will stop looking beyond these walls.

Pulling Alice close, even having her in my bed, will give me power over her. Of that, I am certain.

But with Mick, I don’t know. And that terrifies me.

“Step back,” he says. And I do.

He unlocks the bottom panel of the grate and slides me some breakfast. Coffee, eggs, toast. It’s the same every morning.

“Thank you,” I say. I wait for him to lock the grate again. Then, and only then, do I step forward and take the small tray which holds the food. I sit cross-legged on the floor while I eat because Alice will soon return and this is where I will stay for most of the day. On the floor. Playing with a child through prison bars.

I draw from my work as a teacher years ago. And also as a mother, although those memories are locked away, behind that invisible line. The before and after of Annie’s death. They are provoked now by Alice and the things she makes me do. How we would play board games together, me and John and our three children. And how Annie hated to lose, just like Alice when we played Candy Land. Nicole and Evan would yell at her and she would cry. Not every time. It was just a stage. A normal stage that children go through. Learning to play nicely. Learning how to handle disappointment.

I think I was good at this, at teaching them these lessons, because I know what to do with Alice. It comes to me without effort. With the ease of experience. And it comes to me with the pain these memories provoke.

Alice returns with the dolls. She hands me Suzannah.

I sip my coffee. Take a bite of my food.

“What should we do today,” Hannah asks Suzannah.

I swallow as I think through my data and what is still needed.

“I’m very angry today,” Suzannah says.

“How come?” asks Hannah.

And then I adjust my voice so it is just right. So Alice will not see the path I am leading us down.

“I had a fight with my mother.”

Alice smiles, and tilts Hannah to the side so she can reach through the bars and give my doll a hug.

And I think, that’s right, Alice.

Keep reaching through these bars. And maybe one day soon they will open.





16


Day fourteen





I didn’t think it mattered.

That was the first excuse Kurt Kent made. Then, I felt bad for the guy.

What did he think Nic was going to do? Laugh at Roger Booth because his girlfriend left him after high school? Torture him with bad memories from his adolescence?

Finally, he gave an answer that rang true.

“I thought you might accuse him of having something to do with your mother’s disappearance.”

Nic watched the wall of trees pass as she fought to stay calm.

“You’re the one who told me about Daisy Hollander,” Nic reminded him.

“I know.”

“So you must have known it would lead right back to him.”

Kurt started to say something but then stopped. A long sigh, a glance out the side window— “What?” Nic asked now.

“I wasn’t thinking about Booth when I told you.”

“Well, maybe you should have—he lied to me about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I asked him if he knew about Daisy Hollander and he said everybody knew, but then failed to mention she was his girlfriend—or that he spent all that time searching for her.”

“That’s not really a lie.”

“It’s an omission. Same thing.”

Yes, Nic thought. Just like her father with the handwriting analysis. And what else? What other things were people not telling her, here and at home?