When She Flew (20 page)

20

J
ess kicked off her sandals at the door. Her feet felt grimy from the night. She was still coated in forest dust; spiderwebs still clung to her hair. Her right shoulder ached from her fall in the forest. Her legs throbbed; her back—no, everything—hurt. She checked messages on her cell, listening to only enough of three from Sergeant Everett to know she didn’t want to hear the rest. Not tonight.

She dropped her purse in the chair by the front window, and stood staring into the dark, waiting for the enormity of what she’d done to sink in. Her job. Her pension. Her reputation.

But all she could think of was Nina. Lindy had reminded her so much of her daughter. Her womb twisted in her abdomen, a strange sensation never mentioned in pregnancy and parenting books. How had she let her daughter get so far away?

A shower. She needed a shower before bed. She walked across the living room to the hallway, turned right, headed for the bathroom at the end, but at the doorway to Nina’s old bedroom, she stopped, took a breath, then turned and walked inside.

She half expected to see the small lump of Nina beneath her blankets, one slender arm hanging to the floor, but the blanket stretched tightly across the bed. The top of Nina’s dresser was empty, no longer cluttered with framed photos or knickknacks or barrettes or half-empty gum packages. The ghost holes of thumbtacks remained where Nina’s Christina Aguilera posters had been.

Tears filled Jess’s eyes; mucus flooded her sinuses.

She sniffed and palmed her eyes. “Okay,” she said to calm herself. “Okay.” She needed just a moment more, here in the place where she came from time to time to torture herself.

She slid open the closet door. Nina’s faded scent wafted from her clothes as Jess rummaged through them. She found the sleeve of a sweater Nina had loved almost to tatters, took it between her hands, and brought it to her face, breathing in the remnants of girl scent and wood fire from some long-ago night in the living room, just the two of them.

Jess blinked away tears as she turned her attention to Nina’s desk, pulling open drawers just to see her daughter’s things. They were still neatly organized with notepads and pens, old birthday cards she’d saved, the eyeglasses she was supposed to wear at school but never did because she felt ugly in them.

The first year Nina was gone, Jess had come into her room often, daily if not more, but eventually the temptation dwindled. It caused more pain than it provided solace, and Jess found the strength to fight the almost addictive pull to touch Nina’s things, to sit in her desk chair, to look out her window and see what she had seen for so many years.

She looked through half-opened blinds into the neighbor’s darkened yard. Running a finger along a crooked slat to straighten it, she realized it needed dusting. She’d kept the room immaculate at first, cleaning and vacuuming weekly, changing the sheets as though Nina had been sleeping between them. How long had it been since she’d cleaned in here? Why had she stopped?

It was as though she’d given up on Nina at some point, when the pain grew too tiresome, when it changed from sharp to aching.

She wanted to call Nina that very moment, to say,
Honey, I don’t know what I was thinking when I let your father come and take you. I should have barricaded the door, called 911. I should have grabbed you and held on to you until you understood that I loved you.

Jess shook her head. Nina would have fled no matter what she did. It hadn’t been right between them for a very long time, Jess trying so hard to protect her that she forgot to be a mother, and Nina looking for the love she so needed in the arms and bed of a boy.

Sobbing overcame her, rounding her shoulders, tightening her abdomen, and she felt her way to Nina’s bed, pulled back the blanket, and curled into a ball, the sheets soft beneath her fingers, stroking them the way she’d smoothed Nina’s hair away from her face when she was small and had a fever or a nightmare.

“Oh, god,” Jess moaned into the pillow. How had she let all this happen? Her family was gone, and now she might lose all that was left. In spite of everything she knew she should do or undo, she was paralyzed by grief, and could only wait until the vacancy of sleep overcame her.

 

 

 

In the MIDDLE OF A vivid nightmare in which Jess skidded her patrol car endlessly across lanes and lanes of oncoming traffic, just waiting to be crushed, the ring of the cell phone in the kitchen startled her awake.

She rushed toward the sound, plucked the phone out of its charging cradle. “Hello?” she said, clawing her way out of sleep. She looked at the clock on the stove. It was five minutes past six on Thursday morning.

“In two minutes, the goddamn chief is going to be calling you,” Sergeant Everett snapped. “And you are going to explain to him, as you’ve refused to do with me, what in goddamn hell is going on.”

Jess tried to clear her head enough to speak intelligibly. “I was going to call you last night, Sarge, but—”

“You screwed up, Villareal,” he said. “Big-time. Have you turned on the news this morning? Seen the paper?”

“No, sir, I was just—”

“The media has hit like a goddamn suicide bomber. Your plan backfired. There’s no way those two aren’t going to be exposed to shit far worse than the social-services system now.” She knew spittle was forming at the corners of his mouth. “You may not want to tell me where they are, but you’re going to have to come clean with the chief. You call me back, goddamn it, after he rips you a new one. We have to fix this, and fast.”

The line went dead. Yesterday’s skirt and blouse had wrapped around her mummy-style. The world still felt surreal, dream-like. She trudged to the bathroom. As she sat on the toilet, the phone rang again.

“Great,” she said, unspooling too much tissue, tripping over the hall runner as she sprinted back to the kitchen.

“Jessica!” her mother said, more than the usual alarm in her voice. “They’re saying awful things about you on TV, that you’ve taken some little girl or something. You didn’t, did you?”

“Ma, no, of course not. What are they saying?”

“That you haven’t been seen since this girl disappeared. They’re making it sound like you’ve done something awf—”

Call-waiting beeped. The chief. “It’s not true, Ma. Believe me. I’m sorry. I have to take this, but I’ll call you right back, okay?”

“But, Jess—”

She hit the button. “Hello?” She was determined to sound professional—sane, if at all possible.

“Well, hello there, Officer Outlaw,” an unfamiliar male voice said. Was she already getting crackpot calls?

“Who is this?” she demanded.

“It’s just me, Z. Chris. Dog man. I was just so surprised when I turned on the tele—”

The phone beeped again; another call waiting.

“I can’t talk to you right now, for god’s sake. I can’t even talk to my mother.” She clicked him off and the new call on, and tried to compose herself.

“Officer Villareal, please.” It was Kathy, the chief ’s secretary. She and Jess sometimes went to the movies together or had coffee.

“Kathy, it’s me.”

“Hold for Chief Gleason, please,” the woman said, then classical music replaced her voice.

Jess trembled and sat at the kitchen table, hand over her eyes. She had to calm her breathing, her heart. So she was being crucified in the press. She’d seen it happen to others but never thought it could happen to her—she’d always been too boring, too normal for that. She suddenly felt the need to cry; the heat of it waited just behind her nasal passages, in her throat. Crying was a cardinal sin in her line of work—especially for a female. She drew deep, long breaths, exhaled slowly, counted backward from one hundred—a trick she’d learned to help frightened crime victims calm down enough to answer questions.

“Gleason here,” he finally said, as though she’d placed the call.

“Good morning, Chief. Let me explain.”

“No,” he said calmly. “Let me explain. You bring in the father and daughter, now. If there are reporters in front of your house, don’t let them see you. Go out the back or through a neighbor’s house. Borrow a car. Once you get them to the station, we’ll talk about what we do with you. Got it?”

Jess stood to peer through her curtains. There didn’t appear to be anyone outside. “But—”

“No buts. Do it, or this thing will get a whole lot uglier, and I don’t think anybody wants that.”

“But, sir—”

The line clicked dead. Jess pressed the OFF button, her hands shaking, and set the phone on the table. It began to ring; she walked away, then turned back and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Is Officer Villareal available, please? I’m calling on behalf of Reverend Rosetta Norton Albert.” A male voice, not Ray’s. Who else knew?

“Who is this?”

“Michael Rogers. I’m with the City of Refuge Church, where you dropped Lindy Wiggs off last night. The reverend would like to meet with you this morning. This is Officer Villareal, isn’t it?”

His pronunciation of her name was perfect.

“Yeah, but I . . . I can’t really do that,” she said.

“We think we can help you just as much as you can help us.”

“How so?” she said, doubtful.

Outside, a large truck lumbered up in front of the house. She edged closer to the window and read the call letters emblazoned on the side: KCMB-TV.

“Could we talk in person about that?” the man asked.

Jess hesitated. “Who are you again?” Every bit of her training and experience told her to hang up.

“A friend, trust me.”

“Well then,
friend
, give me a reason to trust you.”

He paused. “You like being a cop, right?”

Tears pricked her eyes. “Of course. It’s the best thing I am.” Confessing it aloud did not make her feel better.

“We’d like to help you keep your job, but you have to trust us. Keep the faith, as it were.”

“What, is this a syndicate? You and God or something?”

“Nope, just me and the rev,” he said. “We want this situation to turn out well for everyone, for the Wiggses, for you. For us.”

Jess sighed. She was too tired for all of this, for any of this. “What do you want me to do?”

“We’d rather talk with you in person. I could come get you, take you to the reverend. We can sit down together and figure this thing out.”

Another truck pulled up outside. “I’m not going anywhere without being followed.”

“I’ll take care of that. Do you have a back door?”

“Don’t you think they’ll have thought of that?”

“Trust me,” he said. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Yeah, well, I sure hope that’s who you’re working for,” she said, but it sounded better than any of her other options. She moved away from the window, gave him her address, and went to get ready for whatever the day might bring.

21

I
woke when it was still dark outside, feeling hot and sticky. I was damp in the small of my back. The birds weren’t even singing yet. I kicked off the sleeping bag and rolled over to look out the window, to find some cool air to breathe. The neighboring house had finally turned out its light, and all was still.

You would think I might have not known where I was—that happens in stories in books: the character wakes in a strange bed and forgets for a moment where she is until it all comes rushing back to her in a flurry of emotions—but I knew exactly where I was, and why I was there. It was hard to believe that less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d seen my first great blue heron up close, had been foraging for morels in my beautiful forest like any other day, wearing Crystal’s dress, which was now just a dirty memory. It was the only thing of hers I’d had, but I threw it away in the bathroom at the police station.

I should have thrown it away a long time ago.

I knew this feeling of waking, hot and damp and uncomfortable, from before Pater came home, before he was there to protect me. Living in the woods, I always woke to cool, sweet breezes in the summer, chickadees and bushtits twittering, or rain pattering on the wood roof and the smell of Pater’s strong coffee drifting up, the sound of his whistling.

But one night, when I lived with Crystal, I woke in the dark to sweaty hands inside my nightgown, down my underpants, hot, foul breath covering my face. I struggled and turned my head away, trying to close my legs, to get away from the hands. Just touching, Crystal said to the man, or I’m calling the police. Then she said to me: Hold still, please, kitten. It’ll be over soon. She had a desperate sound to her voice. Whoever it was touching me had something she wanted. Something she needed. That’s what methamphetamine can do to a person.

At the library, I didn’t just read about Nature.

I lay awake thinking of everything bad that had happened in my life, something I never let myself do. Whenever I felt this way, I would pray like Pater taught me to, like Reverend Rosetta said, and I would feel better. But this time I couldn’t pray it away. I’d thought I was safe forever from bad things, and then I went and messed it up by being selfish. I should have paid attention. I should have watched where I was going. Where were Pater and I going to live now? We couldn’t live at the reverend’s house forever. There was no place for us in the city, with no money, and if we tried to go back to the woods, they’d just come find us again.