Chapter 33 #2
“I know what time it is.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended.
Sawyer’s tone changes immediately. “Dean.”
“Her phone is off.”
“It probably died,” he fires back.
“I know.”
“Then what are you asking me?”
I press the heel of my hand to my chest as though I can physically force my heart to slow.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty leaves me feeling exposed.
Sawyer is quiet for a moment. “Do you want me to call Kayla? Maybe Aubrey mentioned where she was going.”
“Yes.”
The answer comes too quickly.
“Okay. I’ll call you back.”
He hangs up, and I begin pacing from the kitchen to the windows. Each pass takes approximately thirty seconds.
I know because I begin counting them.
It gives my mind something to hold on to.
One.
Two.
Three.
By the sixth pass, I am no longer counting.
I am remembering my father standing beside the kitchen phone.
His shoulders rigid as he pressed the receiver to his ear. The sound of him saying my mother’s name once, then again, louder, as though volume might carry his voice to wherever she was.
I remember the dinner on the table. A casserole drying around the edges.
I remember asking if we should eat without her. I remember my father saying, “no, not yet. She’ll be home soon.”
At 6:58, Sawyer calls back. “Kayla hasn’t heard from her.”
The floor seems to tilt. I’m too caught up in my panic to respond.
He continues, “Did she say where she was shopping?”
“Bryant Park, Saks, maybe Macy’s. She had a list.”
“That’s half the city,” he replies.
“I need to find her.”
“You need to breathe.”
“Do not tell me to breathe,” I shout back.
The words tear out of me. Liana begins crying in the nursery.
The sound cuts through everything.
“I have to go.”
I end the call and hurry down the hall. My hands are shaking by the time I reach the crib. They tremble so badly that I hesitate before lifting my daughter, terrified I will not have a secure grip on her.
I curl both arms around her and pull her against my chest.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
I do not know whether I am talking to her or myself.
She cries harder, startled by the tension in my body. I lower myself into the rocker and try to soothe her, but my leg bounces beneath us. My breathing comes too quickly. Every inhale catches halfway down.
I force myself to count.
In for four. Hold. Out for six.
The technique does nothing.
She should be home. She said she would be home.
My mother said she would be home too.
I am fifteen again, standing in the hallway while my father walks from one window to the next.
He called her work. They say she left two hours ago.
He called her again. No answer.
He looked at me and tried to smile. “Traffic,” he said. “Probably traffic.”
But I saw the fear in his face.
I could feel it filling the house before either of us knew the reason. Every ordinary object became threatening.
The untouched dinner. Her coat missing from the hook. The empty space in the driveway. The phone that refused to ring.
I stand abruptly, still holding Liana. The motion makes her cry harder.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly as my voice cracks.
The sound frightens me more than the tears. I never lose control. I solve problems, but there is no solution for not knowing where Aubrey is.
No call I can make that will guarantee she is safe.
No amount of money I can spend to pull her through the apartment door.
I carry Liana into the living room and set her carefully in the playpen because I no longer trust my arms.
Then I call Aubrey again.
Voicemail.
I call again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
By the fourth call, I am no longer hearing the recorded greeting.
I am hearing the knock at our front door nineteen years ago. Three hard raps.
My father freezing in the middle of the room. His face changing before he ever opens it. Two police officers standing beneath the porch light.
One removing his hat.
I remember the way my father’s hand slipped from the doorknob. I remember knowing, instantly and completely, that nothing would ever be the same.
Aubrey’s face replaces my mother’s.
I see her in the path of a taxi. I see blood in her hair. Her coat torn. Her eyes closed.
I press both hands against the kitchen counter and bend over it, trying to drag air into my lungs.
“This isn’t happening,” I say. The words sound distant. “It is not happening.”
My phone rings. I snatch it up so quickly that it nearly slips from my hand.
It’s Sawyer, not Aubrey. I answer anyway.
“I’m coming over,” he says.
“No.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I need to stay here in case she comes back.”
“I can stay there too.”
“No.”
I look toward Liana. She sits quietly now, watching me with wide eyes.
Shame cuts through the panic.
My daughter is watching me unravel.
“I have Liana.”
“That’s exactly why I’m coming.”
“I said no.”
The silence on the other end lasts a second too long. I end the call without saying goodbye. My thumb hovers over the concierge number.
I cannot press it.
If I call hospitals, this will become real. If I call hospitals, I’ll become my father.
I see him at the kitchen table after the police leave, elbows on his knees, both hands covering his face. I hear a sound I have never heard from another human being before.
My legs weaken. I lower myself to the floor beside the kitchen island. The marble presses cold through my jeans.
I grip the phone in both hands and stare at Aubrey’s name. Her picture fills the screen. She is laughing in it, head tilted back, Liana held against her chest.
I took the photo two weeks ago. She had complained that her hair looked terrible. I thought she had never looked more beautiful.
A pressure builds behind my eyes. I blink hard, but it does not go away.
I do not cry. I have not cried in years. My vision blurs anyway.
“Please,” I whisper to no one. The word barely makes a sound. “Please come home.”
The elevator dings. For one second, I do not move. My brain refuses to understand the sound. Then the doors slide open.
Aubrey steps through, both arms overloaded with shopping bags. Her cheeks are pink from the weather, strands of hair escaping from beneath her knitted hat.
She is talking before she turns around. “You would not believe the line at—” She sees me, and the words stop.
The bags slide from her hands. One tips onto its side, spilling red tissue paper across the floor.
“Dean?”
I am on my feet before I consciously decide to move. The room blurs around her. I cross the distance between us in seconds and pull her against me with enough force that a startled breath leaves her.
My arms lock around her body. One hand presses against the back of her head. The other spreads across her spine, holding her so tightly that I can feel each breath she takes.
Her coat is cold beneath my palms. Her hair smells like winter air and the perfume she sprayed on before leaving.
“Dean,” she whispers.
I bury my face against her neck. My entire body is shaking now; there’s no hiding it.
Aubrey’s hands come up slowly, first touching my sides, then wrapping around me when she realizes I am not going to let go.
“What happened?”
I can’t answer. My throat has closed.
I pull her tighter, even though she is already pressed completely against me. She shifts enough to look toward the living room.
“Is Liana okay?”
I nod against her neck. “Yes.” My voice breaks on the single word.
Her hand moves up my back in slow, uncertain strokes.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “My phone died, and the lines were insane. I knew I was almost finished, so I kept thinking I’d get through one more store and then come home. I didn’t realize how late—”
I shake my head. I cannot listen yet. The explanation doesn’t matter. Not while my mind is still trying to separate what I imagined from what is real.
Aubrey is alive. Her heart beats steadily against my chest. Her fingers are in my hair.
I focus on each physical fact, forcing them into my brain one by one.
“Dean.” Her voice is quieter now.
She leans back, but I resist until her hands frame my face. The concern in her eyes nearly undoes me.
“What is it?”
I try to speak, and nothing comes. I look at her and see every image my mind created over the last hour.
I grip her wrists, not to move her hands away, but to keep contact with her.
To prove she is still here.
“I called you.”
Her eyes fill with guilt. “I’m so sorry. I should have found a charger or used someone else’s phone.”
“I called over and over. I checked downstairs.”
Her expression changes. The guilt gives way to something deeper. Understanding has not arrived yet, but she finally sees that this was not annoyance.
It was not anger. It was terror.
My chest tightens again.
I stare at her beautiful, living face and hear the truth leave me before I can soften it.
“I thought you were dead.”