She feels her heart plummet in her chest. She feels like she’s swallowed an egg. She wants to sit down. She can’t sit down. She will get stuck there forever and never find Daisy.
She wants to throw her phone against the wall. But that’s the last thing she can do. She needs the phone now more than ever. She tries again, presses LOCATE again, and the same thing happens. Oops!
“Turn it off and on,” suggests Tanya.
“I will,” says Charlotte.
“The reception’s not great down here,” says Michelle.
It was always fine before.
Charlotte says, “Are you sure she didn’t leave her backpack here?” This makes no sense, she knows. If the inhaler was in her backpack, and if her backpack was in the gym, that familiar, comforting beep would be audible across the room.
“Yes,” says Tanya. “Your sister-in-law was clear about that.”
“Let me say this one more time, okay? I don’t have a sister-in-law.”
“Her name was on the list,” repeats Mrs. Hernandez, as if Charlotte is Daisy’s age. “And ‘sister-in-law’ was how she self-identified.” She looks to the others for confirmation, and all of them nod.
Michelle says, “She told us that she was Daisy’s aunt, and Daisy looked happy to see her Auntie Ruth.”
Tanya says, “That’s what we look for. The response of the child.”
“And the guy?” says Charlotte. “Did my daughter respond to this man . . . this stranger?”
Tanya and Michelle look at each other and shrug.
How safe these women used to make her feel. And now they’ve become her enemies. How could they let this happen? Charlotte let it happen. Nothing was ever safe.
“Legally,” says Mrs. Hernandez, “she was—”
“On the list,” says Charlotte. Oops again! She sounds curt and ungrateful. But don’t you get cut some etiquette slack when your child is missing? “Did they happen to say where they might be going?”
Tanya, Edditha, and Michelle—they all have photographic memories, but they’re having a hard time with this.
Charlotte is texting Rocco and talking to them at the same time.
CALL ME! NOW!!!!!!
There aren’t enough exclamation points for how urgent this is.
“Can you call the police?” Charlotte asks.
“You would have to make that call,” says Mrs. Hernandez. “Because nothing illegal has happened.”
“Call the police,” says Charlotte. “I’m begging you.”
“Let’s give it a few hours,” says Mrs. Hernandez. She smiles, as if to reassure Charlotte that this problem will be cleared up soon. They deal with these things all the time. Custodial parents, nannies, confusion. In fact this little problem is probably not a problem at all.
“We don’t have a few hours,” says Charlotte.
She runs outside with no idea where she’s going. She just needs air, light, space, and to be away from people who want to help her, who say they want to help her, but who can’t and won’t do one single thing to help her. She’d loved those women until now. Now she hates them all, even though she knows that this isn’t their fault.
Ruth was on the list.
Parents walk by, hand in hand with their children. Each loving, chattering pair is a knife in Charlotte’s heart.
She texts Rocco and Eli separately.
RUTH HAS DAISY. SHE TOOK HER FROM SCHOOL.
Rocco texts back right away. Jesus X.
A second text, moments later, also from Rocco: Ruth will come here. Soon. Trust me.
Trust me. At this point Charlotte will trust anyone who says trust me.
Bing bing. Eli texts: Rocco says meet him at Ruth’s. Wait there.
Seconds later Charlotte’s phone rings. Her ringtone is a spooky theremin woo woo woo she downloaded from the internet. She’s always been amused by its weird, ghostly sound, but now it terrifies her. It’s strange how your favorite jokes can turn into bad jokes. Warnings you should have heeded.
It’s Eli. Charlotte explains what’s happened, trying to speak slowly, comprehensibly, to not hyperventilate. For Eli’s sake. For Daisy’s. For her own. She can hear, in Eli’s voice, that he also is trying to stay calm. Charlotte loves Eli—she always has. She always will. No matter what.
“Should we meet at Ruth’s?” he asks.
“There was a man with her—”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. Not Rocco. That’s what scares me.”
“You want me to send a car to take you out to meet Rocco?”
“Subway’s faster,” Charlotte says. “I’ll call you from there.”
She calls Rocco, and miraculously, he picks up.
Charlotte says, “Is Ruth there? Is she back yet? Where’s Daisy?”
“No . . . I don’t think . . . I was sleeping . . .”
There’s a funny rhythm in Rocco’s voice. A slight drag and the hint of a slur. It reminds her of . . . when he was drinking.
Oh, no, please no. Not that too.
Has Rocco gotten drunk and done or said something to Ruth that set her off? Or has Ruth gotten Rocco drunk so she could leave him passed out—and she could go steal Daisy?
“Don’t move,” she tells her brother. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
2
Six Months Earlier
Charlotte
Early Saturday morning, Eli and Charlotte lie in bed drinking coffee, enjoying what grainy sunlight the park allows into their window. Their silence is so companionable, each other’s presence so soothing, that they can listen, in perfect contentment, to the noises outside their loft. Traffic, car horns, parents packing to leave for the weekend, shouting at kids, slamming car trunks.
They talk about Daisy, who’s begun kindergarten at the local public school and seems happy. They talk a little about their work.
It’s only when they get to the question of what to have for dinner that Charlotte says what she’s avoided saying too soon after Eli wakes up.
“You do remember that Rocco’s bringing his new girlfriend for dinner?” How could Eli remember when she hasn’t told him?
She’s never sure why her brother always wants them to meet his girlfriends, most of whom have turned out to be seriously unbalanced. He wants to see if they approve, but it’s never clear how, or if, their feelings influence his.
Eli says, “Great. Hide the valuables and don’t cook anything too delicious.”
Charlotte laughs, a giggle she makes when someone (usually Eli) kills a hope that she knows is unrealistic. Each time Rocco brings over a girlfriend, Charlotte hopes she’s the one, though she hates the idea of the one. She wants her younger brother to be happy, to have someone to love him and help him, someone kind and decent and conscious. Or at least sane.
In therapy, Charlotte and Ted have discussed the possibility that Charlotte might be ever so slightly possessive and territorial about her brother—the way she is about her daughter. And maybe that’s why she’s so critical—hypercritical—of Rocco’s women.
But Charlotte didn’t imagine what those women actually did. Mae-Lynn came to dinner with a bag of organic broccoli crowns and a beaker of distilled water in which she insisted they steam them. The girlfriend after that, Kathy, stole from them, never anything expensive, but always something treasured, which was the point. Daisy’s beloved stuffed giraffe, Eli’s favorite fountain pen, a business card from a man who told Charlotte he’d developed a solution that made cut flowers last longer. Each time there was a frantic search, especially for Raffi, the giraffe. Kathy is out of Rocco’s life, but Charlotte will never forgive her for pretending to look for the toy when she had it all along. Charlotte had been so afraid that the dust kicked up by their search would bring on one of Daisy’s asthma attacks.