The ringing sent my heart up into my throat. I guess that’s kind of an old cliché, but in that moment I really understood what it meant. I felt it.
I grabbed up the phone, my mind filling with horrible ideas. Not really visual images. More like concepts. This growly, deep-voiced monster would tell me he had Etta. He might threaten to hurt her. I’d hear her crying in the background. And die inside.
By the time I got the phone to my ear, my heart was pounding so hard I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t speak.
“Brooke?” I heard on the line.
It was the voice of Grace Beatty.
All that breath rushed out of me at once. Too much breath to have held in those poor lungs of mine, by all rights. Those horrid images of the monster who was about to own my life, my heart and soul—they flowed out of me. I felt like nothing without them. They had taken me with them as they exited. There was nothing left.
I tried to speak. But what came out was more of an unintelligible grunt.
“We didn’t find her. I didn’t call to say that. I know it’s best to say that right up front, as fast as possible.”
The bedroom door flew open. So hard it swung back and hit the wall. I jumped. My mother stood in the open doorway, panting. She looked into my eyes and asked a direct question with her own.
I shook my head.
She began to cry.
I don’t think I’d ever seen my mother cry. I don’t think I’d ever gotten the impression that she cared that deeply about anything. In retrospect, I guess I should have known better.
Then I burst into tears, too.
I think I hadn’t cried yet, though I had been so numbed by shock as to not trust my own memory. I think I’d been so overwhelmed with fear that it had drowned out the sorrow underneath.
But when my mother cried, there was no holding it in anymore.
Meanwhile Grace Beatty was talking. And I was only half hearing her.
“. . . so they raided this chop shop in San Diego. Not far from the border. And we recovered your mother’s car. They were already halfway through repainting it, but they hadn’t filed off the VIN yet, so we got them dead to rights. The San Diego PD has them in for questioning, but the guys running the shop seemed surprised to hear about a child. Could be an act, but our colleagues down there don’t think so. They think whoever dropped the car off didn’t share much. Just got his money and left. So we have the car. And we’re still doing all we can to find your daughter, I swear. But I’m afraid this development doesn’t put us any closer. But of course I had to call and tell you.”
I was falling again. And every one of her sentences was echoing down the well to me. From farther and farther away.
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”
And it was amazing, because I said it like a real person speaks in a normal situation. I have no idea how that happened.
“Are you doing okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not.”
It was the most honest answer I could find.
“If you have a doctor, you can call. I’m sure you could get a prescription for some kind of sedative.”
“Okay,” I said.
But only because I wanted the conversation to be over. Only because I wanted anything that required anything from me to stop. I had nothing to give to the world in that moment. Literally nothing. Couldn’t everybody see that?
I knew I would not call the doctor or take any sedatives. What if my baby needed me?
“Okay,” the officer said. “Well . . .”
“I know you’re doing all you can,” I said. Or somebody said. It didn’t really sound like me. Or feel like me. But it was my lips and my breath, so who else could it have been?
“Stay by the phone. We’ll be in touch.”
“Bye.”
I gently hung up.
I purposely didn’t look at my mother. But at the edge of my vision I saw her rush across the room to me. She lowered herself onto the edge of my bed and wrapped me up in her huge arms. I didn’t resist. I had nothing in me to mount a resistance. Even if I’d wanted to.
I mostly didn’t want to.
“They’ll find her, Brooke,” she said. “It’s their job, and they’re good at it. It’s what they do.”
It may have been their job. They may have been good at it. But they don’t find every child who goes missing. And we both knew it.
We just couldn’t bring ourselves to say it out loud.
About an hour later I crawled out onto the slant of roof outside my bedroom window. The way I used to do when I was a child.
I sat with my knees up tight to my chest, my arms wrapped around them.
I spoke a few words out loud.
It wasn’t praying, exactly. Because I wasn’t sure if I believed in God or not, or what kind of God I believed in if I did. But more importantly than that, God just wasn’t who I was talking to in that moment.
I said a few words into the night to whoever had her. Whoever was with her. If in fact anybody was with her.
I said, “Please be gentle with her. Please don’t hurt her. Please comfort her when she cries. Please don’t let her be too scared. She’s a good girl. She’s totally innocent. She doesn’t deserve anything bad from anybody. Please take good care of her and get her back to me.”
Then I sat still, as if listening. As if waiting for the night to say something in reply.
Nothing came back to me except silence.
