'Yes, this is she. Who's calling?'
'You have a very lovely little girl, Susan.'
And Sue freezes, feeling the tiles of the kitchen floor vanish beneath her feet. 'Who is this?'
'She's beautiful. Gorgeous green eyes, precious blond hair, those little dimples on the backs of her hands when she uncurls her fingers. And that smile, Susan. She certainly favors you.' The voice pauses. 'Susan? Are you there?'
7:22P.M.
Sue doesn't say anything. Can't, really. Standing in the middle of her kitchen, gazing out the window where her three acres of dark woods slope away underneath the moonlight, she's hearing things in the man's voice, a barely suppressed note of hilarity underneath what she first thought was a toneless growl. She can hear him breathe between phrases, as if it's difficult for him to get whole sentences out without inhaling. There are no other sounds in the background.
Somehow she has the presence of mind to think that when things like this happen in the movies or on TV the person's first response is to accuse the caller of playing some kind of joke, or to get angry and accuse them of lying. But somehow she knows that this is not a joke and the man on the phone isn't lying to her. And anger is a long, long way from what she's feeling right now.
'I haven't lost you, have I, Susan?'
No,she tries to say but no noise comes out. There is still the sense of not touching anything, not even the clothes she's wearing. In fact she is floating, suspended in a gel of utter disbelief, not even horrified yet, although the horror is certainly out there and she can feel it corroding its way inward. 'No,' she says again, louder. 'Who is this?'
'We'll get there,' the man says. 'We've got all night. And after all this is December twenty-first. The longest night of the year.'
She has absolutely no idea how to respond to that observation. 'Is she there?' she asks. 'Is my daughter there with you?'
'Of course she is, Susan. You don't think I'd leave a little one-year-old unattended, do you?'
'Where's Marilyn?'
The man hesitates like he has to think about it. 'Oh,' he says, 'she's here, too. We're all here, Susan.'
'Let me talk to my daughter. Please.'
'I'll put her on soon, I promise. Before that we need to establish a few ground rules. You've got a long way to go in the next twelve hours. It will make everything much easier and that way there won't be any misunderstandings between us later on.' The man is speaking a bit quicker now, out of excitement, she senses. 'First, it's important that you don't call the police. Not that I don't trust you, Susan, but you should know that I have tapped your phone and I'm scanning your cell, so if you make any calls to anyone, I'll know. Now I'm going to hang up and wait, and if you've followed rule number one, then in ten minutes I'll call back and we'll go from there. Are you with me so far?'
'Wait-'
'I'll take that as a yes,' he says, and hangs up on her, gone, just like that. She stands there with the phone buzzing in her hand and then it leaps upon her, the fullness of it, with all its weight. She has never been one to absorb things gradually. When the unexpected happens she would always rather grapple with it immediately and to hell with denial, anger, and all those other stages of acceptance.
The room begins to tilt and she feels her knees buckle as she sinks to the floor still clutching the phone, realizing she's not breathing yet unable to will herself to inhale. From somewhere deep in her chest she hears the low, slow whine of her lungs pleading for air. Instead she begins slowly and deliberately to bring order to the available facts. She forces herself to think rationally. She hears Marilyn's voice on the phone from an hour earlier:
This loser in a van is just riding my tail.
The realization kicks the door wide open to a blizzard of images. The man who was following her forcing the Jeep off the road, dragging Marilyn from behind the wheel, putting a gun to her head, and forcing her out of the car. Climbing into the Jeep with Veda still strapped into her car seat, Veda facing backward, her round, mostly bald head cocked in confusion and alarm at her nanny's screams and cries for help, the faceless one putting the vehicle in gear and driving off into the night. The man and Sue's daughter somewhere out on the freeway now, somewhere in the black expanse of a New England winterThe phone rings again and Sue almost screams.
7:28P.M.
She drops it, picks it up again, and hits the talk button: 'Yes.'
'Hey, Susie-Q. You sound stressed, babe, you okay?' It's a different man's voice, smoother, familiar, and through her panic Sue realizes that it's Brad from the office. 'Listen, just a couple quick questions about the bank meeting tomorrow morning-'
'I can't talk right now.'
'What's wrong?' He's dropped the hipster affectation for a more genuine concern, but Sue's already hanging up on him, still crouched down so that her kitchen and dining room sprawl high above her. She assumes the world looks like this to Veda all the time. The ceiling just goes up and up. She has another vivid flash of her daughter in her car seat, scared and crying inconsolably, and feels her jaw yawn wide to let out an aching scream that comes out more like a sob.
Through all the crazy shifts she's worked at Commonwealth Emergency Response and the death and bloodshed she's witnessed in those early days, only once has Sue experienced anything of this intensity, a hot summer afternoon that she scarcely remembers except on the most subconscious level. Yet in some terribly practical way that experience has inoculated her against certain dangerous extremes-the very real possibility of losing herself to hysteria, for example. Even now she has found that she does not get hysterical, and in a moment her breathing has restored itself to a shallow but steady rhythm.
The phone rings again. She goes flopping across the floor as if struck by a cattle prod but this time she does not scream.
'Hello.'
'Who was that, Susan?' the voice asks.
'Brad. He works at my office. I didn't tell him anything.'
'I know,' the voice says. 'I told you I would be listening. You were a very good girl. It was an unexpected test, but you passed with flying colors. I believe you're ready to move to the next level. What do you think?'
'Please, just let me talk to her.' It is so deadly quiet on his end, with only his voice relayed to her through the shallow acoustics of a wireless line, the closest thing she can imagine to hearing voices in your own head. 'Just for a second. May I, please?'
'Absolutely,' he says. 'Didn't I promise I'd let you do that? I always keep my promises, Susan.' And there's a rustle of fabric or skin against the mouthpiece, then a silence, followed by soft, intent breathing that she recognizes instantly as her daughter's.
And just like that Sue Young's hard-won composure disappears.
She just melts.
'Veda, honey?' she says. 'It's Mommy, baby. Sweetie, can you hear me?Veda…? ' She feels the tears swell up behind her eyes, pressure mounting in her chest like a balloon expanding between her lungs and ribs, filling her with all the horror and fear in the world until it's leaking out her eyes and nose and mouth. 'Veda, it's going to be all right, honey, Mommy promises, everything's going to be okay, okay?'
Veda makes one of her sounds, a repeating two-syllable noise coiled in puzzlement-dukka-dukka?-and that does it. The fear and grief just take over. Sue breaks down. Tears stream down and the screams start backing up
