B009QTK5QA EBOK (20 page)

I wanted to be able to put myself in his position, to understand where he was coming from, to have some sort of sympathy. But I couldn’t. All I could see was the guy who’d taken my place.

“And she was satisfied with that?” Lauren asked. “She just accepted vague details?”

“At first, I guess,” Alex said. “And there weren’t many more questions. But then recently, she pressed some more. She wanted more answers. More clarification.”

“And?” Lauren said.

He cleared his throat. “We shared some things, but not others. But
…
I think she sensed that. That we were leaving some things out.”

“Why?”

He glanced at his wife, then back at me. “We told her it was a private adoption. That records were scarce. She wanted more info on her birth parents. We tried to be vague, but she pushed. So, we told her about the explosion and the deaths.”

The hair on the back of my neck was standing at attention.

Alex Corzine ran a hand through his hair, deep lines gutting his forehead. “She said she didn’t remember any explosion. We told her that was probably normal, that she’d blocked it out. Too traumatic. But she was adamant. She didn’t remember any explosion. And that’s when she really started getting angry with us.”

I wondered what Elizabeth was like when she was angry. Did she yell? Did she withdraw? Did she slam doors? Was she like me? Like Lauren?

I didn’t have those answers and I despised Corzine for that.

“So, she went digging,” he said.

“Digging?” I asked.

“Through our file cabinets,” he said.

I took a deep breath, glanced at Lauren, who was deep in concentration, her eyes focused on Corzine. I turned my eyes back to him. “You kept her adoption paperwork in a file cabinet? Seriously?”

He shook his head. “No. We didn’t. There’s barely any paperwork to begin with. But we came home one night and she had the entire thing torn apart. Paper and files everywhere, screaming at us.”

“So, then you told her?” I asked.

He hesitated then shook his head again. “No. We still maintained we’d told her everything we could tell her.”

My teeth ground together.

“But then a week ago, she found it,” he said.

“What’s it?”

“The one piece of paper we had,” he replied. “With Gelson’s name on it. A phone number. A couple of other details about our meeting in Phoenix. We kept it in case we ever
…
I don’t know. We just kept it.” He exhaled. “Kept it inside the pocket of a pair of jeans that I don’t ever wear. Buried in my closet. But she found it.”

Valerie Corzine wiped at her eyes. “She called us liars. Called us a hundred things. She called the number. It was disconnected. Then she just refused to talk to us. Just stopped talking. Nothing for two days.”

“Then what?” Lauren asked, her hand still clutching my leg.

Alex and Valerie exchanged a look, then Valerie looked at Lauren, then me.

“Then she left,” Valerie said. “With Bryce.”

FORTY-FOUR

“Who is Bryce?” I asked.

Both of their expressions changed, concern and worry shifted into dislike.

“Her boyfriend,” Alex Corzine said. “He’s older. Twenty. And not a great influence.”

I was trying to create some distance as I asked questions, tried to separate myself emotionally from the fact that I was asking questions about my daughter, whom I didn’t really know.

“Not a great influence how?” I asked.

“He’s twenty dating a seventeen-year old,” he said, frowning. “No job. Doesn’t go to school. I know he’s taken alcohol from our house. Doesn’t respect our rules about curfew. Just not who you want dating your daughter.”

I resisted the urge to argue that she wasn’t his daughter. “So, she left with him?”

They both nodded. “She said he was driving her to the store. But they were both acting weird. We should’ve known something was wrong. But we were just happy that she was speaking to us again. So he came and picked her up and they left.” He swallowed. “We haven’t heard from her since.”

“Any idea where they went?” I asked.

Alex shook his head as his wife stared at the floor. “None. We don’t know his parents well. I’ve tried to talk to them, but have gotten nowhere.”

“I want the address,” I said.

Valerie looked up at me, unsure. Then she looked at her husband.

Who was still looking at me.

“We don’t know anything about you,” he said. “We’ve just told you everything we know and we don’t know anything other than you two are claiming to be Ellie’s real parents. So, how about if you share something before we give you anything else?”

I stared across the coffee table at him. “You want me to share something?”

He nodded.

“Easy,” Lauren whispered.

I turned to her. Smiled. “I’m fine. I’m happy to share.”

She eyed me, wary.

I turned back to Corzine, leveled my eyes at him for a long moment. He shifted on his sofa, uncomfortable under my stare.

“Here’s what I
’ll share,” I said, slowly. “Eight
years ago, I walked into my home for about two minutes and our daughter was taken from our front yard. Vanished. Gone. I lost my career as a police officer. I lost my wife. I lost my friends. And I lost my daughter. But I didn’t lose hope.”

Corzine glanced away, unable to hold my gaze.

“I’ve spent eight
years looking for her,” I continued. “Every morning, I wake up and hope I’ll find something that leads me to her. I’ve helped hundreds of people find their missing children but haven’t been able to locate my own. Every night, I go to bed and wonder where she is, how she is, who she is. I don’t sleep. I wonder.”

He tried to look at me, but his eyes drifted past me to Lauren.

“I wondered who took her. If she was alive. If she was good at math. If she had a boyfriend. If she liked the color blue. If she liked snow. You name it, I’ve wondered about it,” I said, smiling at him. “And every morning, I forced myself to get up, to keep looking until I found an answer. One way or another.”

He leaned back in his couch, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.

“And all of that, all eight
years of sleeplessness and wondering and destruction to my own life has led me here,” I said, pointing at the coffee table. “Right here, right now. And I’m here to get my daughter. Today. I don’t care about you, your wife, the kid in the other room or your fucking pets. I don’t care. I’m here to get her. And if you ask me one more question, if you really think you have the right to ask
me
one more question about who I am or what I’m doing here, after what
you’ve
done—I swear to God—it will be the last question you ever ask. Anyone.” I leaned across the table. “And her name is Elizabeth. It’s Elizabeth Tyler.”

Except for a clock ticking somewhere in the background, the room was silent. I leaned back from the table, aware that sweat was running down my back beneath my shirt and jacket. Lauren was still next to me. The Corzines were looking down at their feet, unable to look at either of us.

“I will ask again for Bryce’s address,” I said.

Alex reached over and touched his wife’s hand. She nodded, stood and left the room.

“I’ll assume you haven’t contacted any authorities regarding her disappearance, given your relationship to Elizabeth,” I said.

He shook his head. “We have not, no. For exactly that reason.”

I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or a bad thing. At that moment, I could make an argument for either side.

“You checked cell phone records?” I asked. “Her bank account?”

He nodded. “Yes. Both. Nothing’s been used since she left. I’ve turned her room upside down, looking for any clue and I can’t find a damn thing.”

“You should look at her room,” Lauren said.

Before I could say anything, Valerie returned and handed me a piece of paper with the names of Bryce’s parents, a phone number and an address.

“They live about twenty minutes from here,” Alex said as Valerie sat down next to him.

I took the paper, folded it up and put it in the pocket of my jacket.

Lauren stood. “I want to see her room.”

I knew that we needed to, that we needed to take a look and see if there was anything in there that might help us.

But I wasn’t sure I was ready to see where she lived.

FORTY-FIVE

I couldn’t go in.

Lauren sat down on the floor next to a bed covered with a lavender bedspread and dotted with small pillows. She looked up at me, standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

I tried to shrug. “Nothing.”

“You aren’t coming in?”

“I’m fine right here.”

She watched me for a moment, then let her eyes drift around the room.

I looked, too.

A small, stuffed tiger on the bed. A desk in the corner stacked with books. A Twins baseball hat hung on a wall peg. An iPod dock next to the bed. Mirrored closet doors. And framed pictures I couldn’t bring myself to look at.

Lauren ran her hand along the bottom of the bedspread and pulled the tiger off the bed. She closed her eyes, hugged the tiger for a moment. Then she stood and pulled one of the pictures off the wall. She set the tiger down and held the picture like it might crumble.

“She’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Elizabeth is beautiful.”

I didn’t say anything.

She stared at the photo in her hands. “And it’s her, Joe. You were right. It’s her.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Lauren giggled at the photo. “It’s her.” She held it out to me. “Look at her.”

I glanced down at the floor. “I know. I know it’s her.”

“Joe?”

“I know it’s her, Lauren.”

“Look at me.”

I did. “What?”

“Why won’t you come in?”

I tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I mean, you found her,” she said, spinning slowly in the room. “You did it. This is her room. We’re going to find her. We are standing in her room. Her life is right here.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

Lauren stopped and stared at me. “What?”

I kept my eyes on her, careful not to look at any of the photos. “I don’t want to see what I’ve missed, alright? I don’t want her to have had a life without us. And all this? This is what I missed. What I didn’t get to give her.”

She walked over to me, then reached out her hand to me, the picture in her other. “Come here.”

I shook my head.

“Joe,” she said. “Come in here.”

My heart thumped in my chest and my fingers tingled.

“Come on,” she said.

I reached for her hand and let her gently pull me into the room. She pulled me in close to her.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes. “She’s okay.”

“Not yet,” I said, my breathing coming in bursts. “Not yet she’s not.”

“But she’s alive,” she said. “She’s alive.”

Tears were pushing behind my eyes.

“Look at her,” she said. “Look at Elizabeth.”

She held out the picture frame and I took it, my hand shaking.

Elizabeth was hugging another girl and they were cheek to cheek, smiles taking up most of the frame. Her face was a miniature version of Lauren’s and there were very faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her teeth were perfectly straight and the one ear I could see was pierced twice, sporting a small emerald colored star and silver hoop. Her hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail. There was nothing hidden in her expression, just a teenage girl with a friend, mugging for a camera.

My tears spilled onto the glass frame, blurring Elizabeth’s face. I handed it back to Lauren before I dropped it.

She took the photo and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me as I shook and cried.

“We’ll get her,” she whispered in my ear. “We’ll get her.”

FORTY-SIX

There was nothing in her room that indicated where Elizabeth was.

I sat on the bed, mostly ineffective, as Lauren weeded through drawers, the closet, anything she could find. She pulled out stacks of clothes, sifted through her books and papers, checked every nook and cranny.

Nothing that told us where she went.

We walked back out to the Corzine’s living room. They were both still sitting on the couch, huddled together, looking dazed and confused. Lauren and I resumed our seats.

“Nothing?” Alex asked.

We both shook our heads.

“So now what?”

“We’re going to go to Bryce’s home,” I said, glancing at Lauren. “Check there.”