Little Girls Lost (10 page)

And then a gray van pulled slowly out of an alleyway and turned down the street. Sam stabbed his finger at the screen.
 

"That's him. That's the bastard."

Some minutes later, as he sat in his car and eyed the plastic shopping bag that contained the security camera footage the guard had copied over for him, Sam's excitement was beginning to cool. They were still a long way from catching the man who was responsible. The footage was far too grainy to capture a license plate, or even to draw up a description of the driver. But for all that, Sam still felt in his heart that the game had changed. Now he had a place to start. Now he had the scent, and the bloodhounds in his mind were beginning to bay.

Something in Sam had changed. He could feel it in his head.

Just like birds had something in their brains that could read the earth's magnetic fields that told them which was was south, there was a vague awareness in the back of his head throughout the day that whispered, "Celeste is that way." He felt her direction and proximity as if they were physical things. He was scared to realize how much he already needed her.

His last hour at work was a useless thing. He picked up papers and put them down, he started phone conversations that went nowhere. All he could think of was Celeste, and her apartment, and when it would be late enough if the day for him to go there. Sam felt ashamed of himself, and guilty, and at the same time excited. He felt like his heart was beating twice as fast as it was a few days before.

When he finally found himself at his apartment, knocking on her door, it seemed like forever before the door finally swung open and he saw her beautiful face, her long hair, and that mischievous smile on her face. He stepped forward and took her in his arms.
 

She started saying something that turned into a squawk when he kissed her hard. "Later," he mumbled, and pushed her back into the apartment.

And it was later, much later, when they had time to speak. Sam was pressed hard against the porcelain of the bathtub, Celeste's weight added to his own, and it was anything but comfortable but also the only place on earth that he wanted to be. He curled his arms around her and marveled at the feeling of her skin against his. There was what looked like an inch of water on the bathroom floor, and at any moment he expected the building manager to start banging on her door, wondering why water was seeping into the downstairs apartment.
 

Sam was amazed at it all. This whole thing—a beautiful young woman in his arms, passionate sex in the bathtub—this was not him. These things were not a part of his life, and yet somehow now they were. He wanted to hold on to every second in case it was the last.

"You keep surprising me," Celeste murmured, her head against his chest.
 

He stroked her wet hair. "That's a compliment, I hope?"

"When I first saw you, I thought, if only I'd met him ten years ago. But now I'm just trying to keep up with you. Ten years ago you would have broken me in half."

Sam chuckled. "Ten years ago I probably wouldn't have seen you. I was so focused on my career then, climbing the ladder. I would have looked at you, thought, wow, she's hot. And then I would have gone back to work."

She looked up at him. "What changed?"

He paused, wondering whether to tell her, wondering whether to let her in. After a few moments he found the answer that felt right. "Missy," he said.

"Was that a girlfriend?"

"My daughter."

Celeste pulled away from him so she could see his face. "You have a daughter?" she asked, a trace of accusation in her voice.
 

Sam sighed and began telling the story that he hated to tell, but that he knew he'd never be done telling. "Missy was ... Missy was my little girl, and she would have been eight years old in July."

"Would have been?"

"She died. She drowned at a friend's birthday party."

Something in Celeste's face folded, and her eyes swam with tears. "Oh, Sam," she said, and came back to hold him. "You said that you and your wife were going through hard times, but I never imagined...."

"It was such an ordinary kid's party," Sam continued over the ache in his chest. "Balloons. Lots of kids running around and screaming, playing. I was with some of the other fathers, talking about nothing. Just killing time until it was over. I don't know where Patty was, but she was probably with the mothers, doing the same thing I was doing. I remember I was holding onto Missy's dress. She had her swim suit on under the dress, and she gave it to me when she wanted to play in the pool. It was purple and white, with little flowers on it. Sometimes I have trouble remembering her face, but I remember that dress."

He was silent for a while, wondering if it was enough, wondering if he could stop. He found he wanted to tell the story, though, and so in time he continued. "It's amazing the racket that a group of kids can make. When they're really having fun it's just a bunch of screaming, and then there was the splashing in the pool. I looked over there pretty regularly, checking out what was going on. It seemed like everyone was having fun, and I guess I figured that if something went wrong someone would start shouting and I'd know about it. Only the first thing I heard wasn't screaming, it was silence. It was a drop in the noise. It was the sound of a birthday party turning into something awful."

He took a deep breath and willed himself not to cry. He didn't know why he shouldn't cry, exactly. He was talking about the worst thing that could ever happen to him, why shouldn't he cry? Didn't Missy deserve his tears? But Sam had been taught well by his father, and something about telling the truth to Celeste made it important that he not to reveal everything, not be that raw in front of her. And so he fought the tears back, he got his voice under control, and he finished his story.

"There was a lot of shouting after that, of course, and there were sirens and paramedics and screaming. Patty was hysterical. She screamed at Missy to wake up and at me for not saving her and at God for taking a little girl who was only having fun with her friends. I don't think Patty has ever really stopped screaming. She's more quiet now, but I can still hear her screams."

Celeste was holding him tight. Sam pulled her even tighter, as if he would pull her inside and fill the empty space in is chest. "So Missy was the one who woke me up from my obsession with my career. She loved me so intensely that I couldn't even imagine putting anything in front of her. And then, when she died, I went back to the work because I didn't have anything else."

"And now?" Celeste asked, looking up at him with sad eyes.

"Now I have something new, and it makes me feel amazing."

The high from his time with Celeste carried Sam all the way to his front door, and no further. He stood on the step and looked at the knob on his front door, not wanting to turn it, knowing that he had to.

There were so many things that kept Sam on that front step: guilt over what he was doing to his marriage, depression at the thought of confronting his wife, and a small strand of desperate regret that he had shared the story of his daughter's death with his lover. That act, which had seemed so right and healing at the time, now felt like the biggest betrayal of them all.

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. Time to be a man. His hand closed on the knob and he turned it.

Patty was in the living room, clothed in shadow, illuminated only by the sickly light that drifted in between the half-closed curtains. She didn't look up when Sam came into the room. He stood in silence, allowing himself the hope that she had drifted off to sleep. He knew his hope was and empty one, though, which was confirmed when she spoke in a low voice.

"Are you fucking her?"

Sam sighed. "Who?" he asked, knowing the question was pointless.

"Whoever. Do you think I care who she is? Do you think I keep track of your whores?"

Almost Sam offered a defense: "But this is the first one. The only one." He knew it was pointless, though, and not only because he would be splitting hairs. He could smell the alcohol on Patty's breath. Its poisonous tendrils curled around him.

"You should sleep now. We'll talk in the morning."

In a rage, Patty lurched to her feet. "Don't you fucking shut me down! Don't you do it! I want answers, God damn it! I want to know where you were!"

"Now you want to be my wife?!" Sam roared in response, anger burning away his sadness and his guilt. "For days, for weeks you're nowhere to be seen, and now you're wondering where I was?! Where have you been, Patty? Where have you been?"

Where have you been since our daughter died, he almost added, but that became one more thing that they did not say to one another. Between the two of them, they had accumulated a long list of silences.

"I'm out with my friends. I'm out with people who like me. Some of them are men, Sam. Do you think you're the only one who knows how to cheat?"

Sam closed his eyes. He wasn't a fool. He knew what Patty had been up to, but he didn't want to hear the specifics. He didn't want names and places. The mere thought of it was enough to make his stomach twist.

"Patty," he sighed, "let's not..."

"No, Sam, let's do just that. Because I don't think you have any idea what sort of world you've been living in. Your partner, for instance. Did you think he was your friend? Did you really think that he has your back?"

A tendril of icy cold slipped into Sam's chest as his mind chased after the implications of what his wife had said. "What do you mean by that?" he growled in a low voice.

"I mean that I fucked him!" she spat at him. "And he was lousy in bed, but I fucked him again just to have a good laugh at your expense. The thought of the two of you together as partners, it's hilarious! You think you can count on Bud? You think you can trust him? You have no idea, but I do."

There was a roaring in Sam's ears as every emotion he could name forced its way up through his chest and into his head. He wanted to shout at Patty, he wanted to make a fist and punch her angry, blotchy face, he wanted to pull his gun and fire it into the ceiling just to hear the noise. Instead he turned on his heel and stalked out of the house without a word.

Just one more silence, he thought. Add it to the others. Add it to the pile that marked his marriage's grave.

Warren Sundquist found Tyrone exactly where he expected to find him: around the side of the house, a broom in his hands, standing with his shoulder hunched and a faraway look in his eyes.

Sundquist stood quietly and watched him for a few moments, reading his thoughts from his posture and the slant of his head. Tyrone was the sort of man who made silence loud. Warren knew that his quiet exterior was a mask he wore to hide the desperate, raging, confused child who cowered inside.
 

Finally he approached, moving quietly, and speaking up in a low voice calculated not to startle the man. "Are you done with the sweeping, Tyrone?"

The man twitched, visibly pulled back into the present moment from whatever revery held him. He started sweeping again in hurried movements. "I will be soon, doctor. I'm sorry."

"There's no need to be sorry, Tyrone. I'm not angry with you."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

Sundquist's mouth quirked. "Yes, I know you're sorry, Tyrone." He watched the man work for a few moments, then asked the question that had brought him out here. "Are you having trouble with the thoughts again, Tyrone?"

Tyrone stopped sweeping and shot him a furtive glance. "Not as bad as it used to be. Not usually. At night sometimes, but I do what you taught me and it goes away."

Sundquist nodded. "You apply the techniques we've worked on. The affirmations and the breathing techniques?"

Tyrone nodded earnestly. "I do. I do all those things."

"And they help?"

"They help, Doctor. I was so much worse before. I don't know what ... I'm just so glad that you let me stay here."

Sundquist smiled at him. "I like having you here, Tyrone. And not because I can keep an eye on you. I like having you here because I feel like we're partners. I know how important it is for you to feel strong and complete, Tyrone. I understand how hard it is for you to get past the things that happened to you when you were younger, and I'm proud of how far you've come. Do you believe me when I say that it's important to me, too, for you to be strong?"

Tyrone nodded vigorously, though his eyes slipped from contact with the doctor's. Sundquist knew that Tyrone was experiencing a surge of emotion, and even after all their work together he still struggled with emotions and what to do with them. "I do believe that, Doctor. You've been very good to me."

"I've tried to do the right thing. I know I wasn't the first therapist who tried to help you, but when the others looked at you all they could see was a broken thing. What you went through as a child was enough to break anyone, Tyrone, and I believe it very nearly finished you. But I saw something a little different: damaged, certainly, and as much a danger to yourself as you were to others. But I knew that it took great strength to survive what you went through, and I wondered what that strength might make you capable of, if someone gave you a chance."

Tyrone looked at him silently, but his eyes were shining. Sundquist imagined that this must have been what Captain Cook experienced when he landed on Hawaii and the natives worshiped him as a god.
 

That didn't work out so well for Captain Cook, but Warren had a plan. He stepped up to Tyrone and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"There are people in this world who lead charmed lives, Tyrone. They're born to loving parents who care for their needs. They go to school and get married and live their lives surrounded by friends and loved ones. And after they die they are quickly forgotten, because nothing really good comes out of something so easy."