29. Stella
TWENTY-NINE
stella
Twenty-four hours feels like an eternity when part of your soul is missing.
Minutes seemed to drag on, somehow morphing into hours.
The sun rose and fell, but I couldn’t acknowledge its existence.
A heavy blanket of gray settled over my senses, leaving only a dull ache where vibrant life used to be.
The moment I became a mother, I felt like the universe had broken off a piece of my essence, and it now lived and breathed outside of my body.
There lived a primal part of me that yearned to protect that tiny piece of myself at all costs.
Every ache, pain, and emotion that my child felt resonated through me in tandem.
The oppressive guilt of not having defended Charlie from the wickedness of the world consumed me. I felt suffocated in the weight of my grief. Every second stretched into an eternity, and the fear of not finding her soon gnawed at my insides.
Statistics state that if a child isn’t located in the first twenty-four hours of abduction, it’s unlikely that they will be found alive. As we neared the end of that window of time, my hope refused to wane. I refused to give up on my girl. I would find her, even if it killed me.
Sheriff Cortez and his team had left a while ago. Hours, or perhaps minutes, had drifted by in the unnervingly silent house, leaving me with no sense of how long I’d been there. At least with the officers here, I felt we were constantly working towards the end game of finding her.
“Stella,” I heard Max whisper from beside me. I hadn’t even registered him coming into the room.
I adverted my eyes from the empty crib I’d been staring at for God knows how long and met his gaze. I could see the turmoil reflected in his eyes that mirrored my own.
It wasn’t until I felt his thumb swipe softly under my eyes that I even realized I was crying. How did I even have tears left?
“You need to eat something,” he murmured.
I could tell that the idea of eating thrilled him just as much as it thrilled me. Was Charlie eating? Had the sickos who’d taken her made sure she was fed, changed, and taken care of?
Thoughts of my beautiful girl in a soiled diaper, screaming for food and comfort, threatened to overtake my mind.
Sensing my inner struggle without me even having to utter a word, Max tugged on my hand, coaxing me over into his lap. I went willingly, my weary bones heavy with defeat, no fight left in me.
I curled into his embrace as the tears fell harder. Shuddering cries came from my lips and Max brushed the loose strands of hair from my face and rested his cheek on top of my head.
“We’re not giving up,” he insisted. “Everyone down at the station is working overtime to find her. They have put a rush on any finger prints they lifted earlier and all evidence is being combed through with every set of eyes available.”
As much as I wanted his words to comfort me, I couldn’t mask my fear. Would we find her? If we did manage to find her, what state would she be in?
“Let’s go lay down,”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Stell..”
“I said, I’m not going anywhere ,” my voice cracked with the desperation of needing to feel close to Charlie. I couldn’t leave her nursery. If I did, I felt like I was giving up. I would sit vigil here until they brought us news of where she was.
“Okay, okay,” Max conceded, shifting so he could sit with his back against the wall, myself between his outstretched legs. “We’ll stay right here.”
“You don’t need to stay. Go sleep,” I huffed in annoyance.
He didn’t need to sit here with me out of pity. We’d gone through hell and back before and I was intimately familiar with the ways in and out. I was used to handling the pressures of life on my own. I didn’t need my boyfriend to coddle me.
“Don’t do this, Stella,” he pleaded.
“Do what?” I bit out.
“Don’t push me away.”
“She’s not your daughter, she’s mine. I don’t need your pity.”
I knew that I should have felt a tinge of regret saying the words as soon as they left my mouth, but Max just couldn’t understand.
He wasn’t her father. He hadn’t raised her from the moment someone set her on his chest and said ‘congratulations’.
He hadn’t soothed her to sleep through regressions, teething, cluster feeding, and sickness. Point being, I didn’t need him here .
“Don’t you fucking dare.” He seethed, pushing out from behind me to stand. Pacing the floor, I could feel the frustration and anger radiating off him in waves. He stopped in front of me and crouched down so that he was level with my gaze. I refused to look him in the eyes.
“Don’t you fucking dare assume I’m not going out of my fucking mind right now.”
He placed his hand on the side of my throat, angling my face so that our gazes met.
I didn’t flinch as I looked up at him. I could see the tears threatening to fall on his lower lash line.
His eyes seemed almost hollow and in that moment, I could clearly see he was hurting just as bad as I was.
I’d underestimated how much Charlie and I meant to him, but seeing his face contorted in grief cleared things up.
“I may not have given life to that little girl, and I may not be her biological father, but I swear on everything I have that I love her more than life itself. Stella, it’s killing me not to be out there looking for her.
I want to find the mother fuckers who took her and make them pay for the pain they’ve caused this family over the last twenty-four hours.
It’s taking every ounce of my willpower to let the Sheriff and his men do their jobs.
I’d love nothing more than to grab my gun, search the town from top to bottom, and put a bullet between the eyes of the men who did this. ”
A single tear crested over the edge and tracked down his cheek. I reached my fingers up to silently brush it away.
“I love you and Charlie with everything I am and everything I have. You two are my light and my world. I know you’re hurting and I can’t even begin to imagine how painful this is for you, but please Stella, don’t push me away. Let me carry this burden with you. Please, Trouble, let me in.”
The pain in his voice broke me and wracking sobs shook my body as I threw myself into Max’s arms. We held each other like our lives depended on it. It felt as if, in that moment, our embrace was the glue holding our broken pieces in place, and if either of us let go, we would fall apart.
Breaking through the sound of our collective sobs, Max’s phone let out a shrill ring.
He hesitated to loosen his hold, but released me enough to reach into his back pocket and pull out his cell.
I saw his eyes shoot wide with concern as he pressed answer and then switched it to speaker so we both could hear the conversation.
He gripped my hand in his, both of us shaking so hard that I didn’t know where I ended, and he began.
Before we could speak, a voice answered.
“We’ve found her.”
A guttural cry wrenched from my soul as I bent forward and cradled my head in my hands.
The sense of relief that flooded my veins was overwhelming.
They’d found her. They’d found Charlie. Before I let myself drown in hope, I had to make sure she was okay.
I needed to hear Sheriff Cortez say in clear terms that my girl wasn’t hurt.
“Is she okay?” I asked, clearing my throat through the thickness of emotion.
“Our forensic analysts were able to lift fingerprints off of Charlie’s crib and it came up as a match in the national database.
The guy has a rap sheet a mile long. His name is Silas Price, and he’s a known drug dealer in Minnesota.
I don’t know why we didn’t think to search your car before, but we found a tracker in one of the wheel wells.
He’s been tracking your every move, Stella. ”
Max cut in before Sheriff Cortez could speak again. “Emmanuel, with all due respect, cut to the chase. Can you tell us if our girl is okay? ”
Hearing Max call Charlie ours was a shot of lightning to my soul. I never realized how much I craved the feeling of being wanted until that moment. I squeezed his hand in solidarity as we waited on bated breath to hear what Emmanuel had to say.
“We were able to locate our guy just outside of Firefly Cove at an abandoned warehouse off Interstate 285 near Atlanta. Patrol cars are over there now, scoping out the place. I wanted to update you with what information we have, but as far as they can tell, Charlie’s okay.
They reported that there were multiple individuals coming and going from the property, one of which was a woman carrying a little girl matching Charlie’s description.
I’ll keep you up to date as I have more information, but Max,” he paused, gaining our attention, “don’t do anything stupid. ”
“Yes, sir.” Max gritted through a tightly clenched jaw. I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he formulated a plan, his brow furrowed in concentration, to find the warehouse and save our girl.
“I’ll call when I have more information,” Sheriff Cortez promised.
“Thanks.” Max clipped and hung up the phone, tossing it across the room. He paced from wall to wall, running his fingers through his hair.
“What are you thinking?” I asked hesitantly, knowing I probably wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I’m thinking that I can’t just sit by and wait while someone else takes their sweet fucking time to get our girl out safely.”
“I feel the same way, but Max, we can’t barge in there and break down doors. What if they’re armed? Someone could get hurt or worse, killed. I want to go in there and get our girl just as bad as you do, but we have to keep a level head.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my forehead on his chest. Feeling his heart rate slow and his arms come around me, I closed my eyes in contentment. Our girl was okay. Now, we just needed to find a way to get her home.
I held Max tight, knowing that this could very well be the last time I got to be in his arms. He was right. We couldn’t sit by and wait while someone else took their time rescuing Charlie.
Even though I’d just told him we couldn’t make any rash decisions, my mind swirled with plans.
I knew that Sheriff Cortez and his team were doing everything they could to get to Charlie, but I also knew how unpredictable this scum bag was.
After all, who lets a woman who saw what I did go, just to play a game of cat and mouse across half of the country?
I wasn’t going to let Max charge in there, guns blazing, and get himself killed. But, I wasn’t going to sit around with my thumb up my ass waiting for Emmanuel and his team to come up with a plan.
We had already passed the threshold that the experts expected to find a child alive. Every moment we waited was borrowed time. I needed to do something, but I couldn’t drag Max and his family into it.
“Let’s go update everyone and come up with a plan.” I said, knowing that a plan was already coming together in my head. I knew in my heart that as soon as the house was quiet and asleep, I’d be breaking his heart to put mine back together.