Dina Santorelli (19 page)

"Twenty-four
hours." Edward paced the kitchen floor. "I last heard from her yesterday
afternoon."

"Where
was she?"

"She
was..." Edward stopped pacing. "I don't... know where she was. She had just
come from a job interview. In Manhattan. She texted me. Said she was coming
over for dinner."

"And
that's the last you heard from her?"

"Yes."

"Did
she get it?"

"Get
what?"

"The
job, sir."

"I
don't know," Edward said, annoyed. "But it didn't sound like it went well. Does
that matter?"

There
was a pause on the line.

"Listen,
I know what it sounds like," Edward said. "Just got divorced. Bad interview.
Been out of a job for nearly a year..."

"A
year?"

"It's
a tough job market, okay?" Edward opened the kitchen window. "Jesus."

"Okay,
sir, calm down."

But
Edward wasn't calm. He realized how this all sounded.

"Wait,
wait... You need to know," he continued. "I'm not calling because I think she...
you know... she, um... she would never..."

"Sir,
let's take this one step at a time, all right?"

"Okay."

"All
right, what does your sister look like?"

"What?"

"Your
sister, sir. What does she look like?"

Edward
flashed back thirty years to a muggy summer's day on Long Beach Island on the Jersey shore. His mother—tall, beautiful—was packing up the plastic pails and
shovels that had been left scattered along the sand and bringing them to the
water to rinse out. He and Jamie were removing the pairs of shoes they had
placed on the corners of their blanket so that they could fold it. A sudden
storm was approaching from the south, causing a mass exodus from the beach, and
Edward had turned to marvel at the speed with which the dark clouds were
advancing. When he turned back around, Jamie was gone.

"Where's
Jamie?" his mother asked, her chapped lips creasing as she smiled. She dropped
a stack of pails onto a beach chair.

"I...
I..." Edward stammered. "She was... just here."

His
mother's freshly sun-kissed face went white. She turned her head from side to
side. "Jamie!" she yelled. "Jamie!"

But
there was no answer. No giggling of "Peekaboo!" His mother ran up to the large
woman who had been sitting on a lounge chair next to them all afternoon. "Have
you seen my daughter?" The woman shook her head. She stopped an old man who was
heading toward the boardwalk. "Have you seen my daughter?" No. "Have you seen a
little girl about this big, two years old?" No. No. No.

The
sky grew darker. A slight breeze blew.
This is my fault
, Edward thought
.
At the tender age of five, he felt an intense protectiveness for his little
sister, particularly since his father had left them the year before, making him
the "man of the house," as his mother used to say. Wracked with guilt, he
started to run. He heard his mother calling, "Edward! Edward!" But he just kept
going.
Where was she? Had someone taken her?
The thought of something
happening to his sister made his belly hurt. He spotted a policeman stationed
on a horse on the boardwalk and ran to him.

"Sir,"
Edward called out in his tiny voice. "My sister is missing."

"What
did you say, son?" The officer got off his horse and bent down to hear him.
Edward imagined how his scared but determined little self must have looked
trying to be brave.

"My
sister. She's missing," young Edward repeated.

"What
does she look like?"

What
does she look like?

Edward
remembered being put off by this question; he had never really
looked
at
Jamie before. "She's two," he answered. "She's wearing a white T-shirt. She has
brown hair. Green eyes. Smiles a lot."

Even
at such a young age, Edward could feel an encroaching sense of dread as he gave
the policeman what he knew was not a very vivid description. He had seen dozens
of children on the beach that day who looked like that. As the seconds passed,
there was also the horrible feeling that life as he knew it was over, that he
would never be the same. His mother would never be the same.

The
officer pulled his walkie-talkie from its holster, when Edward saw his mother
running toward him, waving her arm frantically. "Edward! Edward! I found her!"
she yelled, pointing to the bundle she was carrying in her other arm.

"Is
that your mother, son?" the police officer asked, but Edward was already
running back down the beach and into his mother's free arm.

"Sir,
are you there?" the voice on the phone grew concerned.

"I'm
here," Edward said, wiping his brow.

"Can
you tell me what your sister looks like?"

"Yes,"
Edward said. "She's about five foot five, about 140 pounds, maybe. Brown hair.
Green eyes." He paused. "Smiles a lot."

"All
right, I need you to fill out a complete missing-persons report. We have a form
online that you can use, or you can come to Pier Ninety-Four, which is at Fifty-Fourth and Twelfth Avenue. Although we do have a Long Island office..."

"No,
no, Fifty-Fourth and Twelfth. She was in Manhattan. I'm sure of it."

"Please
be sure to bring photographs, dental records, personal articles, and any other
identifying information about your sister."

"All
right. Thank you."

Edward
tossed the phone onto the couch. The mad rush of adrenaline he'd felt earlier
had been replaced by an abrupt malaise, triggered by the memory of the beach.
Edward had never recovered from the incident—even though his mother had told
him, again and again, that it wasn't his fault, that he was only a baby
himself, that Jamie had simply walked away, watching her feet in the sand under
the cover of the exiting crowd. But Edward felt that he'd let his mother down,
and he had spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it.

And
now his sister was missing again.

Where
in the hell am I going to find dental records
, Edward wondered. He couldn't recall seeing anything like that. Then
he remembered that when Jamie was in the third grade, the local precinct had
visited her elementary school to talk about stranger danger and had
fingerprinted all the kids. Edward knew he had those somewhere packed up in the
garage.

And
photos. He needed photos. The most recent ones he had were online, posted like
everybody else's on Facebook, particularly so that Aunt Clara in Arizona could
see them. He ran upstairs to his home office and logged on to his laptop
computer. Out of habit, he first checked his email. Tons of garbage, but
nothing from Jamie. He opened Facebook and saw on his news feed that Bob and
six of his friends had changed their profile photo. From the thumbnail, it
looked as though it were a photo of Bob standing next to a red car.

"Asshole,"
Edward muttered.

He
scrolled down the page and stopped. Jamie's name appeared. Written next to it
was "Help Albany Charlotte."

He
looked at the time stamp: 10:23 a.m.

Edward
leaned back in his swivel chair and exhaled.
She was alive.
And then
without giving himself more than a moment of relief, he hunched over his
keyboard, clicked open a comment box just below a person named Ralph Beckman
who had written, "Help Buffalo Raleigh," and he typed, "Where r u??"

He
pressed
share
and folded his arms across his chest, watching the
computer, half-expecting Jamie to reply immediately, his fear now mixed with
anger.
Why hadn't she called? She knew he'd be anxious to know where she
was.
While he was waiting, Edward also checked Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn,
and any other social networking site he could think of, but there was nothing.

Tricia's
words rang in his ears. "She's a grown woman, Edward!"— Tricia's go-to mantra
whenever they argued about Jamie—"you're so goddamned overprotective. She can
do what she wants. She doesn't have to report to
you
."

Edward
felt a bit embarrassed at the thought that Trish had been right, that Jamie was
fine, and that he had jumped the gun.

He
looked at her post again. "Help Albany Charlotte."

What
did that mean?

Edward
refreshed the page to see if she had answered, but he already could see that
she wasn't logged on to her profile. He picked up his phone to call her again,
but he'd already sent dozens of texts and voicemails. He put the phone down,
clicked out of the news feed and onto his profile, and scanned through his
photos. He stopped at one that was taken last Christmas of him and Jamie
holding up the matching wool sweaters that they'd received from Aunt Clara.
There she was. Smiling. Happy.

Help
Albany Charlotte.

Help...

Albany
...

Charlotte...

Edward
studied Jamie's face, the way her arm was draped over his shoulder.

Help...

Help...

Help...

"Overprotective,
my ass," he griped.

He
printed the photo and another, and then he ran downstairs and out into the
garage to find those tiny fingerprints.

Jamie looked down the meadow
at the stream of rushing water.
So this was the source of the noise
, she
thought. The river wasn't a wide crossing, perhaps about fifty feet across, and
she wondered how deep it was and how quickly it would take her to swim its
width with a baby in tow. She wasn't the strongest swimmer, but she did have
practice in carrying small children across pools until she thought her legs
were going to fall off.
How different could this be?

It
distressed her that she was relieved to see Bailino return to the log cabin,
but it was getting difficult to keep ducking Leo, which she'd been doing all
morning and afternoon. He followed her from room to room, asking if she were
hungry, wanted to lie down, needed a massage. She must have changed Charlotte's
diaper fifteen times for no reason other than to have something to keep her
busy and away from him.

The
gurgling of the water had drawn the attention of Charlotte, who was walking
beside her, and the little girl pulled Jamie's hand in the direction of the
river.

"No,
no, honey, we can't go there." Jamie picked Charlotte up so that she wouldn't
fall on the smooth pebbles that had replaced the firm terrain of grass and
dirt.

"Why
not?"

Even
though she knew he was directly behind her, the sound of Bailino's voice
startled Jamie anyway. "There's no one around for miles," he continued, as if
reading her mind. "Let her get wet. Have some fun. You know, after what she's
been through."

When
Bailino had suggested that she and Charlotte go for a walk with him, she
immediately thought he had discovered her Facebook post and that this was it.
She hesitated by the back doors, remembering the ball of blonde hair by the
vegetable garden, the swing of the shovel, the steely look in his eyes at
Bryant Park. But they had been walking for fifteen minutes, and he had pretty
much stayed a few feet behind them the whole time. The others were playing
cards again on the backyard table, with the exception of Leo, who said he was
going for a drive, and Joey, who was watching SpongeBob SquarePants.

Walking
there in the woods, with Bailino's presence looming behind her, Jamie
remembered a freelance article she'd written years before about a forest
ranger, Joe Buck, who had saved a pair of teenagers from a wolf attack in Oregon. Buck had visited Long Island during the tail end of his promotional tour for his
book:
The Teens Who Cried Wolf
. He had told the bookstore crowds—none of
whom, Jamie ventured, would ever come into contact with the animal—that when
confronted by a wolf, it was unwise to stare directly into his eyes for he considered
that a challenge. Jamie imagined Buck's wolf didn't have the habit of saying,
"Please look at me when I talk to you."

Charlotte grabbed the side of Jamie's face and tried to worm
her way out of her arms, pointing toward the water.

"No,
honey."

Charlotte pointed again, this time with more emphasis.

"I
think the decision's been made," Bailino said.

"I
just don't think it's a good idea," Jamie said. "She's still not that steady on
her feet. She's been falling all morning."

Bailino
stepped over a large rock so that he was standing between her and the river. He
reached out for Charlotte with two hands, palm-side up, like a well-meaning
relative at a family reunion. Charlotte recoiled.

Bailino
stared out into the water. "You know, loyalties are an interesting thing," he
said. "They tend to shift depending upon what you want. Don't you think?"

Jamie,
who was focusing on a piece of dirt on Charlotte's shirt, was silent.

This
was it.

"I
asked you a question. Please look at me when I talk to you."

"No."
She looked into Bailino's eyes. "I don't think that's true."

Bailino
smirked and shifted his feet. The sides of his loafers were wet and darker than
the rest of the shoes. He looked amused.

"Really.
Why?"

"I...
just..." Bailino's eyes were boring into her, and she was struggling for the
words.

"You're
free to say whatever you like," he said.

"I
just think that..." She thought about what Joey had said, about keeping quiet,
and about whether these would be her last words.

"You
think... what?"

"I
think true loyalty isn't something that can be bought or... frightened into
someone. Or changed on a whim. I think it's something that develops over time."
She lifted Charlotte higher in her arms. "I think it's something that runs
deep. When you're loyal, nothing can break it." Suddenly, she couldn't stop
talking. "I think when someone has been a loyal friend or person, you know that
you should always give them the benefit of the doubt even if you suspect
disloyalty." Would that be enough to save her if Bailino discovered the
Facebook comment? She didn't know.