32. Lost and Found - 1928
If not for her quiet sobs, Charles Carter might have overlooked his wife curled on their sitting room divan, a wool blanket tucked around her, so only her head was visible.
Her dark hair, normally impeccably coiffed, straggled around her shoulders, and her face was puffy from crying.
Even though a fire roared in the hearth, she was drawn in on herself, the blanket clutched tight. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
A fresh spate of hopelessness consumed Charles. “Lizzie, honey,” he said, sinking into a chair opposite her, “I’m so terribly sorry.”
Just as he had been able to do nothing to bring Ella back to them, he’d been unable to prevent the loss of the latest child Elizabeth had conceived. Like the ones before Ella, it had failed to take root, leaving Lizzie devastated in spirit as well as body.
It was a man’s job to protect his wife and family; Charles believed this with all his heart.
Yet he had failed at both. He’d invested so successfully in steel, in shipyards, in the railroads that crisscrossed the country.
But all of that meant nothing. It bought no true security, if he couldn’t keep his wife and daughter safe.
When they’d gotten that phone call from the man who’d said he’d taken Ella—a man whose voice had sounded infuriatingly familiar, despite his obvious attempts to disguise it—he’d had hope: The man wanted money, a currency Charles understood. He would pay it, and then they would have Ella back again.
But it had all come to nothing. The confusion and unpleasantness that had surrounded the ransom demand hadn’t resulted in him getting his little girl back.
And Charles couldn’t take any more shocks to the system.
This was what he got, for being a trusting man who saw the best in people: a stolen daughter; a devastated wife; an empty life.
He felt useless, which, in turn, made him angry...
at himself, for being unable to fulfill his duties, and even at Elizabeth, for insisting on trying again and again to conceive.
There were ways to prevent it, but she refused, even though her doctor had told her attempting to bear another child was folly.
“Your body can’t take much more,” the doctor had said.
“You have a lovely life with your husband, with everything you could desire. Take up hobbies. You love to play the piano, don’t you?
” He’d given Lizzie a sympathetic smile.
“Go to the opera. Join a sewing circle. Volunteer with needy children. But you need to accept that being a mother isn’t in the cards. ”
Charles had shown the doctor out with a clap on the back, saying he appreciated the man’s advice. But when he went to check on Lizzie, she’d been furious.
“Who does he think he is?” she’d snarled, sounding nothing like the refined debutante Charles had married.
When Charles had pointed out that the doctor was, in fact, an accomplished gentleman with a medical degree, and thus more than qualified to weigh in about such matters, Lizzie had turned on him.
“You men,” she’d hissed, as if Charles was somehow complicit in the doctor’s advice.
“What do you know about having your body betray you, again and again? A sewing circle? The opera? What a fool!” She’d snatched one of her favorite porcelain Scottie figurines from the mantel and hurled it.
Charles watched in horror as it skidded across the kilim rug and onto the herringbone floor, where it shattered into bits.
And before he could say a word, she’d burst into tears and stomped into their bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
That had been two days ago. Though he’d had Dottie, one of their housemaids, scour antique stores until she found the perfect replacement for the figurine, Lizzie still hadn’t stopped crying.
She refused to see any of her friends when they came calling, with baskets of treats and offers of company.
Dottie told Charles that Mrs. Carter had insisted she turn them away.
The piano, previously a source of comfort, sat untouched and silent in the corner, gathering dust. Lizzie wouldn’t even let the maids near it to clean.
Each day, after long hours at the office, the weight of the world settled on Charles’s shoulders as he approached One Lexington.
He’d quit going to The Players, where he’d often spent weekend evenings.
How could he sit around smoking a pipe and discussing the stock market when his beautiful daughter was gone and his wife had fallen apart?
He always hoped he’d come home to find Lizzie dressed in one of her favorite frocks, with music playing on the Victrola and the table set for a lovely dinner.
But instead, she was worse off than she’d been since Ella disappeared nearly a year ago.
She was withdrawn and miserable, and though the doctor offered her sedatives to soothe her woes, the way he had after Ella had disappeared, she’d refused them.
Instead, she’d sat, clutching Smoky close, as if he were her lost daughter.
Even when the cat meowed in protest, Lizzie hadn’t let him go.
“If all I have left of this child—of any of my children—is grief, then I want to feel it,” she’d wept. “Why would I wish away my only connection to them?”
Charles imagined all their little ones—the three she’d miscarried before they’d had Ella, Ella herself, and now this new precious one—lost in a foggy hinterland, wandering unclaimed and abandoned.
Ella, at least, had been baptized, but the church taught that the souls of unbaptized infants were doomed to linger in limbo.
Was it the same for babies who died before they drew their first breath?
He wanted to tell Lizzie that he grieved for their lost children too, but he feared such a thing would only add to her misery.
She was the one who’d carried all of them within her body and suffered the physical effects of their loss.
So instead, he did his best to be strong for her.
He did his weeping alone, behind the locked door of his study, piping music through the phonograph to conceal the animal wails of his grief.
When he thought about the ransom demand, the awful realization he’d had about who was behind it, his boatload of regrets, a savage violence coursed through his veins.
He wanted to smash things, to break them.
In short, to behave in a way that would terrify his wife, who was as fragile as the Scottie figurine.
In those moments, he was unrecognizable, even to himself. And so he drank, to wash it all away.
Now here he was, home from yet another arduous day at the office.
Truth be told, these days he didn’t mind his workaday worries in the least. At least his employees were pleased to see him, and their problems were ones he could solve.
He’d hoped for a quiet night for once, only to find Lizzie cocooned in the corner of the divan, staring into the fireplace as if she hoped to see the faces of their missing children in the flames.
“Lizzie,” he said again, hoping to divert her attention, “I’m so very sorry.”
Her gaze fixed on his, her eyes hollow. They used to remind him of the ocean that lapped the shores at Coney Island—variegated shades of blue, sparkling aqua in the sunlight, shading to a darker navy by the gleam of a candle at dusk. But now, they put him in mind of a bottomless trench.
“What are you sorry for?” she said.
He sank into the upholstered chair opposite her, gripping its carved arms to steady himself. “Everything. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, more than any woman should have to suffer. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you or Ella. And I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give you the life you deserve.”
He meant it to sound matter-of-fact, a mere acknowledgment of what existed between them...but pain crept into his voice nonetheless, and Lizzie’s face softened.
“I don’t blame you, Charles,” she said, leaning forward.
The blanket fell away from her shoulders, revealing the dressing-gown she’d worn almost every day since Ella’s disappearance.
It was as if she imagined that putting on fresh clothes would mean accepting the fact that Ella was truly gone, and she had to begin anew.
As if changing her clothes would somehow cement the reality that she had to face a new day without their daughter in it. “How could you think I would?”
“Perhaps another man could have given you more children,” he said, casting his eyes downward. “Perhaps the fault lies with me.”
He was unaware he was crying until the tears darkened the red-and-orange swirls of the rug between his feet.
Ashamed, he lifted a hand to wipe them away.
But before it reached his cheek, Lizzie caught it in her own.
It was the first time she’d touched him since before the loss of their newest little one, and the breath caught in his throat.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, kneeling in front of him. “It’s no one’s fault, save God’s—and the wicked demon who stole Ella away.”
In the recesses of his mind, Charles thought he should be troubled that she’d blasphemed. But he didn’t care in the slightest. Lizzie had gotten up from the divan. She was touching him, comforting him. She’d said she didn’t hold him responsible for the mess their lives had become.
Slowly, carefully, he raised his head. She was looking right at him, and for the first time since their daughter had disappeared, he saw the woman he’d married in her eyes. Gently, she touched his cheeks, tracing the path of his tears.
“I—I thought you blamed me for the loss of our babies,” she said. “I thought you hated me.”
With vehemence, he shook his head. “How could you think such a thing? You wanted our children so much, Lizzie. If there was anything you could’ve done to—to keep them, I know you would have done it.
I only feel sorry...that it’s all out of my control.
That there’s nothing I could have done—nothing I can do—to help. ”
He would have done anything for her. Faced down any dragon, suffered any blow. He would’ve reshaped the world itself, if he could. Yet here he stood, boxing at shadows, helpless to give her the only thing she wanted: a child.
A small smile curved her lips. It was nothing like the sunny, open grin she used to wear before tragedy had struck their lives, but a smile nonetheless. “You’re a good man, Charles,” she said. “Never think otherwise.” And she wrapped her arms around him.
He closed his eyes, seeking absolution. She didn’t smell like she used to, like the delicate scent of rosewater-and-lilac perfume.
Her scent was earthy, undergirded with salt and sweat and grief.
But it made no difference to Charles. All that mattered to him was that, in this moment, he had his wife back.
“I don’t know how to move on,” she whispered against his shoulder. “But I promise to try.”
He held her tight, meaning to tell her that they would try together and that, even without Ella, the two of them would make a new life. A beautiful one. But before he could speak, a knock sounded on the apartment door.
The staff had gone home for the evening, so, with a pang of regret, Charles pulled back from Lizzie and stood, tugging his suit into place. He strode through the sitting room into the foyer, peering through the peephole to see who stood on the other side.
To his alarm, two uniformed police officers stood there, looking blank-faced and stern. His heart lurched, thinking of the last time he’d seen officers at his door, when he’d had to go to the morgue to identify that unfortunate little girl.
Why were they here? Had they found Ella’s body, or something else…something even worse? And why now, of all times, when Lizzie had finally begun to recover? Were the two of them cursed—or damned?
He straightened his spine. Whatever they had to say, it would be a relief to have an end to this terrible limbo at last.
Drawing a deep breath, he opened the door. “May I help you?”
The taller officer smiled. It transformed his face, made his dark eyes crinkle and gleam. “Actually, Mr. Carter, I believe we can help you,” he said. “After all this time, we think a young couple in Chicago may have found Ella. Alive.”
Charles’s heart stopped lurching and began to pound. “What?” he said, glancing from one officer to the other as he ushered them inside. “I—who? How?”
The taller officer began to explain, saying something about an orphanage and a newspaper article. He pulled out a photograph and stuck it under Charles’s nose.
Struggling to focus, Charles peered down at the picture.
The little girl in the photograph had light-colored curls that might well be blond, and eyes that bore a strong resemblance to the ones he saw each day in the mirror.
She stood next to a gleaming piano, her lips tilted upward in a small, unsure smile.
It could be his daughter. The resemblance was there. But she’d grown so much in a year. How could he be sure?
Perhaps it was a sign from the Lord, though. Here he’d been, thinking how all he wanted was to be able to give his wife the gift of a child. And now this police officer had arrived, photograph in hand. Speechless, he touched the tip of his finger to the girl’s rounded cheek.
“What do you think, sir?” the officer asked, sounding impatient. “Is it her?”
“I think,” he began, conscious of Lizzie in the room behind him, of her short, sharp breaths. Of how much it would mean to her to have their daughter back. He spared a glance at his wife; she was shaking, tears pouring down her face again.
A sign from the Lord, he thought. A gift.
Charles tried again, his voice stronger this time. “Yes,” he said, “I think it is.”