The Summer We Lost Her Read online

  Oliver put down the Doppler and excused himself. Said he’d be right back.

  * * *

  EVERY CHOICE, BIG or small, that she’d made over the past day. Week. Month. Eight years. No—eight years plus a pregnancy that didn’t go all the way to term. Every crook of a finger. Every pause at a stop sign. Every weed pulled. Word uttered. Breath inhaled. Horse mounted. How far back could you look, really, for why things worked out the way they had?

  Many times she’d wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t woken up late that night, sick and feverish, with her hair stuck to her cheeks, aching joints and chills, her pajama top plastered to her back. It was her parents’ bridge night, that summer between ninth and tenth grades, but everyone had left and the house was quiet. Elise had gotten up to get a drink of water and noticed a light on downstairs. Her father wouldn’t like it. He’d wonder aloud, in the morning, why he had to pay for them to light up the entire neighborhood.

  As Elise tiptoed down the stairs, she heard a rhythmic thump, the rustle of fabric, and the scrape of furniture feet against hard floor. At the entry to the family room she stopped. There, beneath Big-Mouth Billy, was her father. His pants were off and his bottom rose and fell as he thrusted between Briony’s open legs. On the sofa back were her feet, still in sandals: beige cloth with a rope wedge and crepey soles. Expensive-looking gold buckles on the ankle strap.

  Elise ran upstairs, waited before knocking on her mother’s door. Telling her mother could lead to divorce. But the thought of Rosamunde’s face the next morning, earnest as she soft-boiled an egg for her husband, served it with half a grapefruit and whole wheat toast and absolutely no knowledge that one of Briony’s rubber soles had been pressed into the sofa in the next room? Elise couldn’t stand to watch, knowing her beloved mother was being deceived. It was wrong.

  It may have been minutes that Elise stood at her parents’ bedroom door. It may have been hours. But eventually she pressed her face to the door crack and whispered, “Mom?”

  And what if she hadn’t?

  * * *

  * * *

  OLIVER DIDN’T RETURN. Dr. Upton came in instead, to lay Elise’s clothes at the foot of the exam table, to sit on Oliver’s stool and take Elise’s hands in hers, there wasn’t a chance the news would be good. “You are pregnant. About seven weeks. But I’m afraid the gestational sac is empty. There is no embryo, no yolk sac. We call this a blighted ovum. A phantom pregnancy. I’m sorry.”

  Elise struggled for a place to put this information in her brain. All she knew was she had to get dressed and go. Find her daughter.

  “We can book an appointment for you at the hospital a few days from now, in case you don’t miscarry on your own and need a D and C.”

  This pregnancy was zero to sixty in three seconds, it seemed. Motherhood was instant like that. The prospect of losing your baby, even at the worst moment of your life, was devastating.

  “I can’t book anything.”

  “I hear you. So I’m going to let you get dressed and step back outside to face what to any mother is the pits of hell. You’re not going to be giving yourself and your health a single thought, and that’s just fine. It’s the way it has to be until you get your daughter back. But I want you to promise me this, Mrs. Sorenson—if you develop a fever, or if the bleeding gets too intense, you’ll get yourself back here or to the ER. Are you okay with that?”

  Elise nodded. She started to sit up, pulled the blankets over her belly. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you say my name—Elise?”

  The doctor came around the other side of the table to set the stack of clothes on Elise’s lap. She placed her hands on Elise’s shoulders. “You are in the worst of this. Your heart is broken, you’re afraid for your daughter’s life, and you’re questioning every decision you’ve ever made. I expect every day until you find your daughter will be infinitely worse. And you may not have even reached bottom. When you do, you will stumble. You will fall. But after that, you’ll climb. It’s what we do as mothers. Because no matter how vicious that inner voice can be—and, holy hell, what a heartless bitch it is—we are made to survive. And you will survive this.” She removed her hands. “Elise.”

  The door clicked behind Jennifer Upton when she left.

  – CHAPTER 19 –

  Expecting to find Elise inside, Matt had walked into a police station abuzz with muted voices, shouted orders, ringing phones, buzzing radios, and the zigzag energy of search dogs in yellow vests being led in or out of the building. And, every few minutes, the authoritative and promising squeak and rattle of cops marching past, vests loaded with pistols, Tasers, handcuffs, and mobile phones.

  He tried his wife’s cell twice, but she didn’t pick up. Incredulity turned to fury, which turned to alarm. Had she found something? Was she hurt?

  Inside the bare-bones office that was the polygraph suite, the din was a faraway bustle that Matt could almost convince himself was happening because of someone else’s tragedy. Elise had been booked to go first. When she didn’t show, they brought Matt in to be attached to a blood pressure cuff, rubber tubing on abdomen and chest to record breathing, and metal plates strapped to two fingers to measure perspiration.

  From the moment the examiner—a gawky young male with razor burn on his neck—hooked him up, Matt couldn’t get his lungs to fill, not completely. He felt he was sucking every breath through a furnace filter. Gracie was gone—could he be in a bigger panic to begin with? The control questions made him panic more: Are you wearing a green shirt? Are you in New York State? Is your name Matthew Sorenson? Then his panic created still more panic. What if his upset read as lies on the machine? The combination of shallow breathing and racing heart surely must’ve shot his blood pressure skyward. When the real questions came, his answers might not have been audible at all. It was nearly impossible to make a sound when asked if you hurt your own daughter. The examiner kid was poker-faced, eventually letting out a muffled sigh as he unstrapped Matt’s fingers and chest, wound up the cords, and slid them into a drawer. “That’s it. You’re done.”

  Matt didn’t dare ask if he’d passed. It seemed like a question only a guilty person would think of.

  Elise ran in, pale and breathless, as Matt came out. “Hey.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Is there any news? Have you seen Dorsey?”

  “There’s nothing.”

  “Ronnie called on my way here. He’d heard on CNN.”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to Toronto.”

  “What?” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Matt. Our daughter is missing.”

  Before he could reply, the examiner was at the door, ushering her inside. “Mrs. Sorenson? We’re ready for you now.”

  * * *

  MATT STEPPED OUTSIDE to wait for Elise. The air beneath the doors’ overhang was a curious mix of cedar and old cigarettes. The former because most of the building was covered in cedar shakes, the latter because of all the crushed butts tossed into the grass. He looked down at them. In a place like this, a good many of those smokes would have a story—most of them better than his.

  The moment he sat on the stone bench, his phone vibrated within his pocket. He pulled it out to tap open a text from Cass. It was a photo he hadn’t seen in decades. He and Cass, about thirteen years old, lying on the grass, heads touching, amber sunlight making them squint. He remembered the day like it was yesterday. That she was hanging out with him at all was a miracle.

  Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” had been playing from a little radio on the grass, and they both knew all the words. Matt had just gotten his braces off. Cass had a single daisy in her hair and Matt was plucking the petals off another, wondering aloud if she loved him. Or loved him not. Cass had stood up, saying she didn’t want to be there for the last petal because “You have to leave some shit in life unknown” and sauntered inside to get ready to go to a movie with Adam Lerner—a s
ophomore jock at Lake Placid High. After her screen door slammed, Matt had pulled off the last petal to “she loves me,” rolled onto his back, and grinned.

  These other guys were just a phase, he’d thought. She’d come back to Matt one day.

  To marry Cass had always been his dream. Their juvenile plan at one point had been to build a little place up the lake. He’d be a lawyer in town. She’d take pictures. They’d spend their summers canoeing and their winters skiing. It had always slayed him how she was so kind. Once, she found three newborn squirrels after a storm, and when their mother never returned, raised them in her bedroom, taking them outside every day to grow accustomed to the forest. They lived out their lives in her yard—or so Cass charmingly believed. He used to tease her—who the hell could tell one squirrel from the next?

  They would’ve had a slew of giggling kids running around underfoot—all growing up with German shepherds and leaf collections and the ability to point out the Little Dipper in the night sky. Cass’s goals would have aligned with Matt’s. Family first.

  If Cass were Gracie’s mother, not only would she be around every day, but Gracie would also grow up with room to shine. She would take center stage, as every child should.

  As it was in the Sorenson family, there was only room for Elise to shine. Gracie and Matt hovered around like devoted fans. They waited for Elise. They swelled with rare sightings of her. They clapped. They held their breath with anticipation. They stood up and cheered. It had always been clear that the stage belonged to Elise and there was no understudy.

  Now, a male voice called out from the parking lot. “Matt?”

  Alan Dionne, an old friend from summer camp, had morphed from wiry soccer player with black hair and sunburned skin into a stocky man with a silver crew cut and a face that had toughened into leather. But the thick black brows were the same, as was the nose bent from Alan’s end of the canoe crashing down onto his face while they were portaging one spring. Clearly a cop now, he was in full uniform. When Matt rose, Alan slammed him with a hug, held him close. He still smelled of the same Polo cologne that had attracted mosquitoes all those summers ago. “Buddy. I couldn’t believe when I heard. I can’t imagine how you’re coping.”

  God, to be able to step back into those simple days. “You know.”

  In Alan’s hand was a crumpled white bag—a takeout breakfast he was bringing to work. “Yeah. I’ve got three boys.”

  “They brought us in for polygraphs.”

  “That’s just to be by-the-book on this. It’s a good thing, trust me. Every name that gets cleared narrows the search.”

  “Will the neighbors be cleared today? What about Cass and her boyfriend? I’d like to know they don’t have this looming over their heads.”

  “They all have appointments later this morning.” The breeze kicked up and the lake behind them churned gray, dotted with whitecaps. Alan fished around in a pocket and pulled out a card. “My cell’s on the back. When I say use it anytime, I mean it. Middle of the night, you need a shoulder? I’m there for you, man.”

  Matt took the card, nodded.

  “Hell of a thing you did. Quitting law to stay home and raise your little girl. Admirable.”

  “I didn’t quit law.”

  “Huh. I thought you were doing the stay-at-home-husband thing while your wife is riding.”

  “No. I’m . . . no. I work. Every day.”

  “Ah. Well. Rumors, right?” He motioned toward the doors. “I’d better head in. But I mean it about my cell. Stay in touch.”

  As Alan started inside, Matt called out. “Hey, Al. That forty-eight hours thing. Is that true? If you don’t solve a crime within the first forty-eight hours, it’s pretty much over?”

  “Shoot, no. It’s bullshit conjured up to sell papers. All you need is a viable lead in that time.”

  Matt felt his stomach drop. They didn’t have anything close to a viable lead and they were barreling toward the twenty-four-hour mark. “And if you don’t have one?”

  “Sure doesn’t mean you aren’t going to find her. Don’t be filling your head with that.”

  “But what are the odds?”

  “Seriously, Matt. Every case is unique.”

  “Just level with me. If we have no lead, what happens to our chances? Do they go to nil?”

  Alan waited a minute, his collar fluttering in the breeze. A low buzz came from the radio slung from his vest.

  “Please.”

  “You’re still looking at a fifty percent chance of success. Which is a lot. It means your chances of finding her are every bit as strong as. . . .” Alan’s voice trailed off. There was an awkward moment in which the man raised his breakfast in goodbye and marched through the metal doors.

  Matt dropped back down onto the bench. As the doors swept shut, he set his gaze somewhere over the treetops.

  Every bit as strong as . . .

  “Babe?” He looked up to find Elise staring down at him, hair swirling in the wind. He had no idea how long she’d been standing there. She sat on the bench beside him and pulled on her coat and baseball cap.

  “How’d it go?”

  She pushed her hands into her pockets. “Can we talk?”

  “Of course.”

  Her eyes followed his, hovering over the tree line. “It feels like . . . we’re so far apart right now, and it’s making this doubly painful. If we’re broken at the same time as her being gone . . . I mean, how are we going to do this?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “We need to be together. On the same side.”

  “We’re her parents. Of course, we’re on the same side.”

  A strand of hair caught in her mouth and she tucked it behind her ears. “I need to know you love me.”

  “I will always love you.”

  She mulled this over, saying nothing.

  A pair of police cruisers pulled out of the driveway and sped toward 86. She zipped her jacket to the chin and turned to him. “You know I’m sorry, right? You know I’d never have left had I thought there was even a one percent chance of anything—”

  As Elise went on, what Cass had said on the ski jump that morning came back to him. That he wouldn’t have made the choice Elise made. Not in a million years, with all the trees and the cabin set so far back from the road.

  Nor would Cass.

  – CHAPTER 20 –

  After Warren left them for Briony and her expensive blouses, the hangers that had held his clothes never hung still again. There must have been a vent in his closet that kept them huddled together, softly shivering. Or else they too were simply in shock and needed the comfort of bumping shoulders. It drove Rosamunde out of her bed. She began to sleep in the spare bedroom.

  Warren’s financial support was steady but meager. Elise’s part-time pay from working at a local tack shop on weekends helped. And Rosamunde continued to work her Tuesday and Thursday shifts. But she eventually stopped driving. She walked to work and back, and Elise now got herself home from school and the barn on the bus.

  Her old Tercel sat in the garage, silver paint filmy with dust.

  Seeing Briony at school had become an issue for Elise. The woman made painful attempts to befriend her. Elise had taken to arriving late and bolting at the last bell, and when weather permitted, she ate her lunch in a nearby park. Warren’s suggestions that she come over for pizza and tone-deaf assurances that she’d “really like” Briony if she gave her a chance were flatly ignored. Eventually, in some sort of gift from the gods, Briony left the school.

  All this came at a time when Elise’s competitions took her away most weekends, often funded by Ronnie, as Elise was showing his horse. Breaking the news to her mother every time she was set to go had become worrisome. Rosamunde would arrange her face into a smile. Tell her daughter she was happy for her.

  But as the edges of Rosamunde’s world began to fray, as holes grew where her husband’s fishing trophies used to be, as Elise’s ribbons piled up, she stopped coming to her daughter’s
room to stare at the sky. She began spending more and more evenings drinking Sanka on the back porch, alone.

  Then the divorce papers arrived; Warren wanted to get remarried. And everything about Rosamunde began to shrink back. Elise couldn’t tell if her mother was losing weight from not eating or if her skeletal structure was getting smaller, but one thing seemed certain. Her mother was vanishing in every way.

  Elise skipped horse shows. She took over the shopping, the bill paying. She cooked the meals and cleaned the floors. Eventually, Elise began to lie in bed next to her mother. Rosamunde had become the child. Elise would smooth the hair off her gaunt face, and point to the stars out the window. For months, Rosamunde refused to look. Then, one Thursday night, her gaze lifted to the garage roof, its outline illuminated by a streetlamp. “I can’t go back. Not ever.”

  “Back where?” Elise asked.

  “I can never go back.”

  Nothing she said made sense. Elise shushed her. Held her mother close until she calmed, eventually fell asleep.

  Later, as she was tidying the foyer, Elise gathered up the things Rosamunde had left on the hall table: house keys, wallet, sunglasses, and a manila folder. Curious, Elise opened the file. It was a patient’s test results: HCG levels of 118,082. Even at sixteen, Elise knew she was looking at a positive pregnancy test.

  The name at the top of the report was Briony Lagasse.

  Elise took the file outside and dropped it into the trash can, now able to see that it wasn’t a streetlamp making the fence and the trees and the roof of the garage shine. It was the moon—big and white and unabashedly full. She marched inside and yanked all the curtains in the house shut.

  * * *

  WITH A SLAM of the screen door, splattered with the rain that had just started to fall again, Elise stepped onto the Sorenson back porch with a hammer from the shed. Methodically, she unrolled a huge world map and, holding nails between her teeth, hammered the map into the log wall that was the outside of the original house. She reached for a tiny container of pins with colored heads and scanned a printed e-mail on the table.