The Summer We Lost Her Page 18

  In between those moments, rage and shock and blame and fear sloshed up against him in waves. One minute he wanted to kill his wife. The next he needed to hold her. The woman had left her child alone on a road frequently traveled by tourists. A road featured in Lake Placid travel brochures, for god’s sake. Then again, it was only for a minute or two. He studied Elise. “What did you run out back for?”

  She held up a cut thumb. “Gloves.”

  His own words came back to him. Go get the leather pair from the shed. That was all she had done: listened to her husband’s advice.

  “I’m her mother,” Elise said quietly. “I need my daughter back just like you do.”

  Matt reached out and, more abruptly than intended, pulled his wife into his chest. Elise seemed even smaller than last night. As if she herself were turning into a child. “I know you need her back.” He rested his cheek on her head. “We both do.”

  * * *

  THEY STEPPED INTO a cool mist that would soon turn to drizzle. Dawn was only just beginning to break apart the blackness, giving shape to the trees, the cars on the driveway, the police tape fluttering eerily around the trees and split rail fence along the front edge of the property. Only the lapping waves and their own footsteps broke the early morning silence as they walked toward the lake.

  Cass’s place was lit up. There she was, in the back room with Garth—both in robes. They were huddled close, and it was clear Cass was weeping. Garth stood, ran both hands over his head, and left the room, while Cass collapsed onto her knees and stayed there.

  “How well do you know her, really?” Elise asked. “I mean now. It’s been decades, right?”

  “Last person on earth.”

  “You don’t think it’s weird? Taking all those photos of Gracie? She’s known her for what—two days? And the way she was at the barbecue—calling our daughter her little angel? And now she’s crying? I don’t trust her.”

  It was more weird that Elise wasn’t crying. Matt chose his words carefully. “Just because someone is loving and maternal, that doesn’t mean they’re capable of abducting a child.”

  Elise turned toward the waterfront and strode on. Matt lagged behind, under the pretense of checking the shed, though the door was wide open and it was clear the building was empty of life. He watched his wife search the brush on both sides of the beach, around the back of the boathouse, then inside. They’d checked all this yesterday. As had the police. “What are you doing?”

  “She could have come back. Or we could have missed something.”

  He listened while she climbed up the wooden ladder to search Nate’s antique boat, suspended from the rafters. He refused to even look as Elise looked beneath the dock. If there was anything new or ominous, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive it.

  Gracie’s first word, at six months, had been “Da-da.” Then she started saying “dog,” and “ba-ba” for bottle, “wa-wa” for water. At thirteen months, to his mortification, she shouted “Jesus” when she saw puppies in a pet store window. By eighteen months, she was speaking in short sentences and could count. Cognitively, she was way ahead of her peers. When she was just over two, watching the video of a baby dancing to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” on YouTube, Gracie tried to imitate what she saw and, holding on to the coffee table, started bopping up and down. Only Gracie, much older than the baby in the video, kept falling down. Until then, they’d convinced themselves it was her age, the fact that she was clumsy and walked on her toes. He’d told himself her motor development was normal. It was Beyoncé’s song that prompted them to take Gracie to the pediatrician. In came the diagnosis. And the utter helplessness that came with it.

  There was nothing worse than feeling helpless when it came to your child.

  Finally, Elise was done. The waterfront was clear. Matt dropped to the ground to throw up in relief, his knees deep in the dead leaves and sticks and weeds. Elise rushed back, worked a knee beneath him to lean on—the sticks were jagged, piercing his palms—then produced a napkin from her pocket to wipe bile from his lips. When he was able, she helped him stand again. “I don’t think you’re up to this, babe. Why don’t you rest?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “There are a lot of people looking. We can take shifts—”

  “I’m fine.” It was more than he could take that his wife was stronger than him. What kind of father fell apart like this? His stomach heaved again. “Maybe I need some food or something.”

  “I can make you some eggs real quick—”

  Food was a lie. It was space he needed. “You go ahead. I’ll meet you . . . I don’t know where. The police or the fire station.”

  * * *

  THE ONLY WAY to rid himself of his own uselessness was to move to a higher elevation. Allow himself the illusion that a bird’s-eye view would offer up an answer—no matter how many hundreds of stairs he had to haul his faltering body up to get there.

  It had been their place when they were teens. The top of the K120 at the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex might as well have been, for Matt and Cass, the highest point on earth. It had been erected shortly before the 1980 Olympics, and because the structure didn’t conform to the slope of any mountain but thrust straight up from the ground to soar 120 meters in the sky, to be anywhere near the top was a heady experience at first.

  Over time, however, it had become a place of comfort. Of nostalgia.

  On a weathered plank bench at the top of the towering monolith, where jumpers squatted to step into their skis before pointing their tips downhill and letting themselves fly, they sat now as they had dozens of times before, looking down at the mist that lay over the airport and horse show grounds immediately below and the base of the mountains beyond, to the northeast.

  The beginnings of morning drizzle spattered against his cheeks, and Matt reached up to pull the brim of his cap lower. Cass, hooded, opened the small umbrella she’d brought along.

  “This was a bad idea,” he said. His thighs ached from the steep climb up the ramp’s endless staircase and, before that, the ladder at the base of the jump. “World looks too big from here.”

  The wind picked up, and they both reached for an edge of the umbrella. Her free hand found his shoulder as the drizzle morphed into an audible patter.

  “Yeah, but it isn’t, Matt. Technology has shrunk it down. Already her picture, the details have been blasted all around the world, right? All the border guards know. We will get her back.”

  He looked at Cass, wet curls dancing around her face. “How well do you know Dorsey?”

  “Well enough. See him around the village. His daughter goes to school with River. Carly Jane. A real sweetheart.”

  “You think he’s any good?”

  “For sure. And hugely respected around here. Plus, he knows who you are, which helps. You’re a Sorenson. You’re not just anyone, and neither is your child.”

  That was a good point. Most people in the area would go a little further to help in the face of Nate’s legacy. Matt let out a long, measured breath, vaguely comforted by the goodwill his grandfather had created. “Still. We shouldn’t have come here this summer.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m serious. I never should have contemplated selling the cabin. I should have waited for Elise to come home the night of Gracie’s play. Stayed in Montclair. Carried on as we always had until we had to file for bankruptcy. The creditors could have forced the sale of this place from afar, and it all would’ve worked itself out fine. Gracie would be lying on the carpet in her room right now, lining up her animals for the firing squad.”

  “Stop it.” She handed him the umbrella and lit a cigarette. “This is not in any way your fault.”

  He watched a pair of birds fly by in the dreariness. “Gracie has two parents. I’m one of them. The math’s pretty simple.”

  “Not from where I sit.”

  He turned to her, searched her face. “I told Elise to go get gloves.”

  “You didn’t tell
her to leave your eight-year-old at the side of the road, Matt. Especially that road. Your place is heavily treed out front, set way back. My place, I could sort of see. But yours? No chance. Whatever she needed to get, she should have waited. Like you or I would have.” Cass took a long drag and exhaled, knocking ash to the slick wood at their feet. A heavy gust of wind nearly sucked the umbrella inside out, and she patted his wet knee and stood. “Come. Let’s get down before this gets any worse.”

  – CHAPTER 18 –

  Elise drove along Old Military Road toward the fire station, thinking about the matching photos of their daughter in her high chair. She’d studied them for a good few minutes before Matt came downstairs. Matt was wrong about the morning being perfect. It had been anything but.

  Once Gracie had been freed from her high chair, stripped of her sopping pajamas, and ushered up to the bath by her father—while Elise was down on hands and knees in her robe, wiping the floor lest the old man slip and break a bone—Nate came back into the room in Sorels and a puffy Canada Goose parka. He was about to walk Gunner down to the lake—his morning ritual.

  Elise sat back on her heels. “Thank you, Nate, for being so unbelievably sweet with her.”

  Leash in hand, the old man allowed his gaze to light upon Elise for a half second. “I don’t know how you live with yourself. She would’ve been born perfect,” he said before following his dog out into the snow.

  Sapped of all strength, Elise had lowered herself over her knees until her forehead rested on the wet floor. Here, in a child’s pose, she remained, listening to the clock tick, listening to the splashing upstairs in the bathtub, until, what felt like days later, Nate’s boots stomped up the back steps with hollow, menacing thuds.

  The command station had been set up in the local fire hall out where Mill Pond Drive met Old Military Road. It was where the searchers were congregating before setting out, and where representatives from all the different agencies met, and the streets around it were narrowed by parked vehicles. Elise pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine.

  Hundreds of people, it seemed, had descended upon the area, even a few locals on horseback. Members of the state police canine unit were there with German shepherds, a bloodhound, another shaggy black dog of indeterminate breed. There were local cops. State troopers. Firefighters. In the engine bay, there was even a table holding stacks and stacks of plastic-wrapped ponchos. All this for Gracie.

  All this because of Elise.

  She climbed out of the car to the crackling buzz of police radios and just stood there. She could have been anybody in the parking lot: a waitress from the village who wanted to help, a frustrated neighbor who couldn’t get out of his driveway, a curious jogger who’d been off-line for the past fourteen hours. For a moment, she could almost imagine it was happening to somebody else.

  She couldn’t help herself; her eyes searched for blond heads in the crowd, in cars passing by. She looked at the parents in the search party, ambling alongside their children as if they had a lifetime together. Which they most likely did.

  They all had to be thankful it wasn’t them. They’d be feeding their sons and daughters chicken fingers or hamburgers or, yes, spaghetti come evening. And later, after a bonfire on the beach or a quiet night at home watching a family movie, they’d be tucking those warm little bodies into bed, running their fingers through the strands of silk that are the tousled heads of freshly bathed children.

  As she started toward the station, a ponytailed woman in hiking boots and a flannel shirt who was headed the same way offered her a sad smile. “Terrible occasion to be out early on a Monday morning.”

  Elise didn’t know what to say.

  “Says a lot about human nature,” the woman said. “To see how many people turned up.”

  From the lack of curiosity in the woman’s eyes, Elise realized she didn’t know she was walking with the missing girl’s mother. “You’re right,” she replied. “There is so much kindness.”

  A resigned frown. “And so much evil.” The woman held up a hand in parting and jogged inside the station, where a bearded man who looked like Gracie’s old kindergarten teacher was organizing people into groups.

  Elise tripped and fell. Arms appeared to help her to her feet—a firefighter in a clear plastic poncho. He recognized in an instant that he had in his hands the tragedy’s ground zero, the mother of the missing girl. Right away came the Mrs. Sorenson this, Mrs. Sorenson that. She’d never been called Mrs. Sorenson more in her life. There were offers of coffee, water. A granola bar. A chair. But not before his face flickered with judgment: You’re the one who left that little angel out on the road.

  Elise hurried inside to find the restroom, feeling sicker still as she passed people rolling out maps and huddled over laptops and talking on cell phones at a small city of collapsible tables. After two wrong turns, someone led her to the ladies’ room. There, Elise’s middle twisted into hard cramping, followed by a gush of warmth between her legs. She burst into a stall and tugged down her jeans in a panic. There, almost violent against bleached white briefs, more blood. Too much blood.

  Her heart started to pound. This was no longer like what she had experienced with Gracie. She squatted, and her palms found the cold tile floor as she squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn’t the usual spotting during pregnancy. This had to be a miscarriage.

  She folded toilet tissue into her underwear and fought to get her pants zipped and buttoned. A flash of the high chair photos. The BIG SISTER T-shirt Gracie so desperately wanted. Elise got up to run the cold water, held her wrists under the icy flow, if only for a distraction.

  Orders shouted through a megaphone echoed through the fire hall. The volunteers were about to mobilize. Elise dried her arms and marched past the bedlam, fully aware of the stares that followed her to her car.

  There was too much blood. She had no choice but to get medical help.

  * * *

  MCKENZIE MOUNTAIN URGENT Care sat on Highway 86 just past Whiteface and Carolyn Road, where the buildings grew fewer and farther between, eventually giving way to forest. As Elise rolled into the parking lot, wipers working hard now against driving rain, she made the mistake of looking farther up the road to where traffic had stopped. Beyond, a flash of troopers holding rifles or what Dorsey had said would be AR-15s, standing wide-legged behind neon orange pylons. Some were bent over open windows, peering into backseats.

  Others were looking into trunks.

  Dorsey had described the roadblock. It was another thing entirely to see it.

  Then, coming up the knoll from behind the clinic, seven or eight heads, then rain jackets and booted feet, along with an older cop who had a bloodhound on a leash. They used sticks to part the bushes and weeds in the rain. As they approached a copse of young trees, the group split, some entering the forest, ducking under branches, the others continuing through the long grasses at the edge of the road. Two men waved over the cop and dog, headed for the Dumpster.

  Elise fumbled, in a panic, to turn the car around and park on the other side of the building. She failed to get the car into reverse as, in her peripheral vision, more searchers gathered around the Dumpster. She forced her gaze into her lap, fingers digging into her jeans.

  The flash of a red jacket—someone had climbed up and into the big blue bin. Elise cut the wipers and allowed the rain to blur out the brutal reality before turning off the car.

  When the search party had become a smudge of color in an otherwise gray landscape, she ran for the cover of the clinic.

  * * *

  THE WAITING ROOM held about eight or ten patients flipping through magazines or dozing in vinyl chairs when a dripping Elise burst in to find no one at the receptionist desk. Seat by seat, the room came alive with nudges and stares as Elise was identified. Her palm found the silver bell.

  A youngish female in denim shirtdress and runners came out from the back, glasses pushed back on her head, open file in hand. The woman looked up to see Elise’s stricken fac
e, waved her into an examining room that smelled of rubbing alcohol, and closed the door, tucked stray blond hair behind one ear. “I’m Dr. Jennifer Upton.” Her voice was so kind and safe. Elise wanted to put her in charge of everything. “And you’re Mrs. Sorenson.”

  Elise all but grabbed hold of her. “I shouldn’t be here. But I’m bleeding, vaginally.” Her hands shook and she sat. “A lot.”

  “It started when?”

  Elise tried to think. Stood again. “A bit lately, but mostly just now.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “I took a test.”

  “So there is a chance?”

  “I might be, yes. . . . I really can’t think.”

  Dr. Upton frowned kindly. “Of course you can’t think. You don’t know which way is up, and you don’t know which way to turn. I understand.” Cool fingers on Elise’s wrist, then a paper gown in her hands. “Let’s give you all the answers we can as quickly as we can. Bring your focus right back to where it needs to be. Does that sound good?”

  Elise nodded wildly. This woman was straight from God.

  “Strip down to bra and panties. Put on the gown, ties to the front. When you’ve done that, open the door. I’ll be waiting on the other side to take you down the hall to Oliver. We’ll know very quickly what’s what.”

  * * *

  THE ROOM WAS so tiny it was a closet. A womb. Oliver rolled fresh paper over the examining table and helped Elise lie down onto her back. Flannel blankets covered her pelvis and chest as he parted the gown to bare her belly. He was an overgrown puppy in the sliver of space between exam table and monitor, all big knees and folded limbs and hair that flopped like spaniel ears.

  He shook a plastic bottle of gel in one hand and smiled. “I won’t lie to you; this is going to be cold.”

  She gasped as he squirted the goo over her lower abdomen and spread it around with the Doppler. The exam was a blur of bright lights and gel and the plastic fist driving into her flesh. The memory of her first ultrasound with Gracie made it hard to breathe—in the clinic back in Montclair, Matt holding her hand as the female technician probed her belly, searching, searching, searching. Then the Doppler stopped moving and the tech’s face broke into a smile. The sound of Gracie’s wicked little heartbeat filled the room.