Tanya and Michelle look at each other.
“No,” says Michelle. “Her aunt.”
“Her aunt?” says Charlotte. “What aunt? She doesn’t have an aunt!”
Her anxiety has gone from zero to sixty in under five seconds. She tells herself: Calm down. It’s a mistake. They’ll figure this out and get Daisy from her classroom, and that will be that. Problem solved.
She reaches for the sign-out book.
“Can I see?” A jagged vibrato shakes her voice, though it’s too early for panic. Unless it isn’t. Before she can look at the list of names of the parents and caretakers happily going home with their children, the women gently repossess it and call the head of after-school, Mrs. Hernandez.
“Hello, Charlotte,” Mrs. Hernandez says, proving that, like her employees, she remembers everyone’s name. “There must be some misunderstanding. Your sister-in-law signed Daisy out at three—that’s over two hours ago.” She shows Charlotte the line on which it says:
3:00. Ruth Seagram
“She’s not my sister-in-law!” It’s not what Charlotte means to say. What she wants to say is: I need this to be fixed! I need this not to have happened! Why does Ruth have my daughter? Someone needs to make this right! Now!
Michelle says, “She was very nicely dressed, in a suit and little heels and this big fuzzy vest.”
What does Charlotte care what her daughter’s kidnapper was wearing?
Actually, she cares a lot. What Ruth’s wearing might be the most important fact in the world, second only to what Daisy has on.
What was Daisy wearing this morning? Why can’t Charlotte remember?
Maybe Rocco and Ruth came for Daisy. Maybe Eli reached Rocco.
“Was she alone?”
“No,” says Michelle. “There was a guy with her.”
So it was Rocco. Thank God.
“Big guy? Six four? Dark curly hair? Two-day stubble, probably? Three-day stubble, maybe.” Charlotte laughs. “My brother.”
Tanya and Michelle aren’t laughing.
“No . . . ,” Michelle says. “This guy was short. Kind of slight. Glasses. Graying hair.”
“Heavily gelled,” says Tanya. “I remember thinking that the guy used an awful lot of product.”
It sounds like someone Charlotte knows, but who? Where is Daisy? Why has Ruth taken her daughter? Who was Ruth with?
They wait several minutes for two school officials, a man and a woman Charlotte has never met. She doesn’t want to meet them, doesn’t want to know who they are or what their position is. She doesn’t want to watch them calmly and professionally dealing with the question of who might have taken her daughter by mistake. Mixed signals, confusion, whatever. Who has stolen Daisy?
With her permission is what these strangers seem to be saying. They show her Ruth’s name. On the pickup list. There it is. Right there.
Then she remembers: The circus. Rocco and Ruth took Daisy to the circus. She should have taken Ruth off the list. But it didn’t seem important. And she’d had so many more urgent things that she had to do.
Charlotte is going to wake up, and this will be a normal afternoon. Daisy will appear in the doorway and burst into smiles when she sees her mom, and she’ll run across the cafeteria, swinging her lunch box in circles.
Mrs. Hernandez says, “We have it on record . . . Ruth Seagram is right here on the list . . . We can only do what you tell us.”
Charlotte should have taken Ruth off the list. She had other things on her mind. She’d been focused on the Mexico trip. And now her daughter has been kidnapped by a woman claiming to be her sister-in-law. Rocco and Ruth aren’t married. Daisy doesn’t have an aunt!
Once more she thinks: Calm down. There’s probably some logical explanation. Maybe Ruth just wants to spend the afternoon with Daisy. Maybe Rocco got Charlotte’s text and asked Ruth to pick Daisy up, since he couldn’t or wouldn’t. Maybe this isn’t a problem. But why didn’t Ruth ask her—or tell her? Why didn’t anyone bother to inform her?
She knows in her heart and in the pit of her stomach that it is a problem. That something is not right. That something is very, very wrong. And this time—she doesn’t know how she knows, but she does—it’s not just her overactive imagination.
Who was the man with Ruth?
“Where is she?” Charlotte says. “Where the fuck is my daughter?”
The whole cafeteria goes quiet. Everyone is looking at them. Even the kids, especially the kids, know something’s going on. They stop playing and yelling and eating their microwave pizza—and stare. How lucky they are, how safe. None of those children have been kidnapped. Only Charlotte’s child. She has never felt so lonely than she does here, surrounded by teachers and kids.
“Please,” says Mrs. Hernandez. “We understand that you’re upset. But you’re upsetting the children. I’m sure we can figure this out. We’ll clear this up in no time.”
Charlotte looks at the clock. It’s five thirty.
Daisy’s been gone for two and a half hours.
She’s gasping. Someone brings her a paper cup of brackish water. She takes a sip.
Disgusting.
“Daisy’s asthmatic.”
Whatever warm, cooperative fellow feeling flowing between her and the others cools in an instant. They are not all in this together. She is in this alone.
“We do know she’s asthmatic,” says Michelle. “Believe me, we are fully aware of the children’s health issues.”
Just as Charlotte is growing enraged by the thought that the person she loves most in the world has become a “child with health issues,” Tanya says, “We know that Daisy’s inhaler is in her backpack.”
“Did she take her backpack?” Let the answer to that one question be yes, and Charlotte can cope with everything else.
“Yes,” says Tanya. “I remember. We’re careful . . . because of your daughter’s health issues . . .”
They look toward the corner where the backpacks are piled in a heap. Even from a distance Charlotte can tell that Daisy’s pack—a lurid purple, decorated with black and white piano keys—isn’t there.
Daisy was wearing her purple jacket.
Daisy’s inhaler! Charlotte has the GPS tracker on her phone that lets her locate the inhaler. If Daisy has the inhaler, she can find out where Daisy is.
The app was a present from Ruth. Best not to think about that now.
Charlotte whips out her phone. “There’s an app. So we can find her inhaler . . . it’s a tracking device . . . it’s . . .”
She’s tapping her phone as she says this, trying, even in her panic, to show these strangers that she is a responsible mother. She’s figured out how never to lose her daughter’s rescue inhaler. Meanwhile they are the ones who have lost her child.
She finds the app and presses LOCATE. Her screen goes blue, and a brighter blue doughnut circles and circles and circles. The children in the cafeteria have lost interest in her and resumed making noise. Charlotte hopes someone is looking after those kids. The people around her are watching her phone.
In tiny yellow letters against the blue background, it reads:
Oops! Service interrupted, please try again later.
Oops. She’s gotten used to Oops! when online service breaks down. Oops! Her daughter has been kidnapped.