Earth to Emily (2 page)

“I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for the repairs.”

“No need.” His lip twitched. “It didn’t even dent the bumper.”

For a moment, his words didn’t make sense. Greg said the front end was “wasted” and I’d heard a clanging. Then a warm glow spread from my chest outward as I realized that Jack was pretending I hadn’t caused any damage, and I could only guess it was to keep me from paying for repairs. A truly kind gesture, given the state of my finances, which he knew all about. I played along. “Really? Wow. We hit the concrete so hard.”

He stomped his boots on the floorboard. “Lucky break.”

The glow spread further, grew hotter. “Did you see the kids?”

“No, sorry.”

“No, I mean, they were right here, at my window. Didn’t you hear me scream?”

“I didn’t hear a thing except the wind.” He craned to see out my side. “I don’t see anyone now.”

As hard as I stared into the darkness and swirling snow after them, I didn’t either.

I parked the Jeep at the edge of the truck lot near where a crowd had gathered. Blue and red lights flashed in all directions. Curiosity clawed at me, and I took a few steps closer to the throng. It parted for two EMTs and a gurney, and through the gap I saw someone big and black on the ground, his head in a pool of blood. He wasn’t moving, and the people around him had the hushed mien I’d come to associate with tragedy. I shuddered. Behind his body, a woman peered between the curtains of what looked like the sleeping compartment above a tractor cab whose license plate read TUCK69.

“Crime scene, ma’am, you need to step back,” a female officer said. She was bundled to her eyeballs with a thick scarf, and she shouted through it to be heard. A roll of yellow tape hung in her hand.

“What happened?”

“A man’s been shot.”

So the noises we heard had been gunshots. “Is he dead?”

“Afraid so. Now, move along. Give us room to do our jobs.”

I backed away, still mesmerized by the blood on the new layer of snow in the parking lot.

“Isn’t that Wallace?” Jack asked, reclaiming my attention.

I turned, and he pointed back toward the Love’s store. Another crowd had formed there under the shelter of the big-rig gas bay. A tall, lean man with sandy-blond hair stood out among them.

“It is.”

Wallace lifted a hand to us as we started walking toward him, then put it on one hip and shook his head, his highlighted hair swinging perfectly over his eyelid. How could he always look so put together, even in the cold and blowing snow, when I looked like the Abominable Snowwoman? I fluffed my bangs, hoping for presentable, and snow fell from them to my face.

Wallace said, “What took you so long?”

“We were following the kids,” I told him.

“You found them?”

“We did. And lost them again. They’re gone.”

Something about my words tore at me. I’d lost a baby of my own in October. A miscarriage, and I’d lost my one Fallopian tube, or most of it anyway, at the same time, meaning I was probably barren. Babies. Children. Loss. Thinking about it made time slow down, and as I watched the snow fall I could see every individual flake in the sky around me, suspended almost to the point of not moving. I had to shake it off; I was nearly over it, and I couldn’t let everyone see it still leveled me. I huffed a deep breath, and let it out slowly through my mouth.

Jack had been standing beside me like a wooden drugstore Indian, but he ended his silence. “She wrecked my Jeep.”

Wallace turned to him now. “She’s hell on wheels, but I hear she’s much better on horseback.”

Jack made some kind of noise halfway between a snort and a laugh.

Wallace introduced a chunky guy with acne and lank hair who had materialized beside him. “This is Byron Philly, you guys. Despite the fact that he looks like a bad episode of
21 Jump Street
, he’s actually a married father of three and a responsible adult.”

“Nice to meet you, Byron. I’m Emily Bernal, paralegal at Williams and Associates. I work for him.” I hooked my thumb at my boss.

“Jack Holden.” Jack shook Byron’s hand.

“Byron Philly. Sorry.” He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “We have a newborn at our house and no one is getting to shower or sleep. Nice to meet y’all. Now, which direction did my kids go?”

I gestured behind us. “Way out across the field.” The snow fell faster, and I could feel the flakes landing on my nose.

“Could you tell if they were dressed for the weather?”

I thought back, eyes closed. I’d gotten a good look at Greg. Black watch cap. Faux leather lined aviator jacket. Gloves? I wasn’t sure. As for Farrah, I couldn’t say. She’d blended against the darkness, and by the time she’d appeared, it was her words I had focused on, not her clothes. But even hats, coats, and gloves wouldn’t do much good on a night like this. “Coats and hats. Other than that, I couldn’t say. The weather looks like it’s getting pretty bad.”

He grimaced. “I’ll update the cops.” Byron walked toward the Love’s entrance and a congregation of men and one woman in blue uniforms.

I turned to Wallace, who was admiring Jack while Jack picked at a fingernail, which of course he made look smolderingly hot. Wallace waggled his eyebrows in Jack’s direction for my benefit. Bless his heart. Wallace never quit trying to promote a match between us, and I had to admit I hoped he’d succeed. I rolled my eyes at him anyway, though.

Wallace said, “Well, you guys missed some excitement. One of the truckers was shot and killed out in the lot.”

“Yeah, I saw the scene. Gruesome.”

Jack dipped his chin once. “Yep. I think we heard the shots, too.”

To Wallace I said, “I’d guess we almost drove up on it, but then the kids came sprinting by, and we forgot about the shots.”

A tiny woman approached from the direction of the truck lot. She strolled slowly, almost casually, but her eyes darted left-right, left-right, left-right as she picked her way across the snowy ground cover in sky-high wedge-heeled boots. Fake leather extended all the way up to her thighs where it almost met a zebra-print tube skirt. The one inch of exposed leg was covered by nothing except fishnet. On her upper half she wore a waist-length jacket with black strands of something that wasn’t fur. Her eyeliner, fingernails, and long, straight hair were as black as the coat.

She zeroed in on Wallace, calling to him. “Hey, I know you, right?”

As she got closer, I saw that her makeup didn’t hide the testaments to hard living that time had etched around her eyes and mouth. Thirty-five or more years of time, if I had to guess.

Wallace evaluated her for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think so, but I can’t remember where.”

“Well, I’m a dancer. Do you ever go to any clubs?”

“Do you by any chance dance at the Polo Club?”

“I do.”

“That must be it. I was in there not too long ago on an investigation.”

Her eyes opened so wide I was afraid they’d get stuck that way. “Are you a cop?”

“Not that kind of investigation. I work for Child Protective Services.”

She exhaled. “Whew! Well, thank God.” She whispered in his ear and his eyes widened. Goose pimples rose on the back of my neck. I didn’t like secrets unless they included me.

After a good thirty seconds of furtive back-and-forth whispers, Wallace reincluded Jack and me in the conversation. “I’m going to walk Ms.—”

“You can call me Ivanka.”

An eastern European name with that drawl? I didn’t think so.

“—Ivanka over to my car, and give her a ride home.”

“Good night, then,” I said.

“Ivanka” shot a last furtive glance over her shoulder at the Love’s then took his arm, pulling him along. It was hard to say which of them had the better swing to their walk, but I gave Wallace the edge.

I looked at Jack and he arched his left brow.

I frowned. “I wonder what that’s all about.”

Byron walked in our direction with a uniformed officer. As they neared us, though, Byron peeled off after Wallace and the woman. The policeman kept coming. He had on an Amarillo Police Department coat, and it looked warm, as did his blue knit cap with a white owl’s head on it, the Rice University mascot logo. I envied him that coat and hat. I was freezing to death. My toes had started losing feeling. I’d worn thin socks under my boots, not expecting to spend the evening out in the weather. I stamped my feet one after another to warm them.

The officer stopped in front of us. “Emily Bernal and Jack Holden?”

The guy looked familiar. Jack caught my eye and raised the same eyebrow he had a moment before. He recognized him, too?

“I’m Emily. Have we met?”

The officer got out a small spiral flip notebook and a pen without looking at me. “Possibly. I’m Officer Samson, and I need to ask you a few questions about Greg Easley and Farrah Farud.”

“Okay.” I stared at him, my mind flipping through a card catalogue of faces.

White male. Puffy, dark-circled eyes. Uni-brow. Dishwater hair shot through with gray. He was Jack’s height, maybe six foot one, not lean like Jack, though. But the guy I pictured in my mind’s eye had a good six inches of Wonder Bread protruding over his belt and skinny legs. Right now this one looked thin under his jacket. Still, I knew it was the same guy.

So I recognized him, but from where? I cross-referenced places, looking for a match, and got one. He’d questioned Wallace and me at a witness’s apartment when the little girl we were searching for had been abducted. Not just any little girl. Betsy, the one I would adopt as soon as the great state of Texas approved me, if all went as planned. Jack—who I could tell definitely knew the officer, too—didn’t say anything about it, so I didn’t say any more either.

“I hear the two of you saw Greg and Farrah tonight, the runaway teenagers?” Officer Samson stood with pen poised.

Jack gestured at me. “I saw two figures running from the truck lot. She saw more than me.”

I nodded and pointed toward the field we’d plowed up with the Jeep. “I talked to them, about ten minutes ago, out in the middle of that field. They took off from there.”

Samson squinted at me. “What did you talk about?”

“I ran our vehicle into some concrete thing, and they came up and asked if we were all right. I said yes, and then they took off.”

“To where?”

“I have no idea.”

“Which direction?”

“I’m sorry, it was so dark and snowy that I couldn’t tell.”

He frowned and wrote something. “Where did you first see them, when they ran from the lot?”

“On the back side, about halfway down.”

“And you were where?”

“Also on the back side, but we were pretty far away. We’d made the turn to the back.”

Two women hurried past us, dressed not unlike Ivanka, but one was bonier than Ivanka and the other had horrible teeth. They cut their eyes down and veered away from Samson.

He scowled after them. “Damn lot lizards. They’re half the problem out here.”

I hadn’t heard that expression. I looked at Jack, and he mouthed, “Hookers.” Oh.
Oh.

Samson was talking again. “Did you hear any gunshots here tonight?”

I nodded. “Yes, several. Right before the kids came running out.”

He looked up quickly. “Did they have any weapons on them?”

“No, not that I saw. They just looked scared and young and cold when I talked to them in the field.”

“Did you see anyone else when they ran from the parking lot?”

“No.”

He turned to Jack. “And you?”

“No.”

“Did you happen to see the shooting”—he pointed toward the murder scene—“or anyone with a weapon?”

We answered almost at the same time. “No.”

Officer Samson chewed the end of his pen. “All right. Call me if you think of anything else.” He handed each of us a card.

We agreed, and Samson walked back toward the Love’s. There was nothing left for us to do there, and Jack and I walked toward the rear of the Jeep. I was frozen through and through by that time, and Ivanka, Wallace, and Byron had disappeared, and I still didn’t know what my best guy friend had learned from the dancer.

My stomach growled. “You know, I’m really cold, but even more, I’m strangely hungry.”

Jack snorted. “No one to blame but yourself for that.”

“Yeah, well, I’m eating my dinner the second I close the door to the Jeep.” Then I leaned toward him, my voice low in case the friendly Officer Samson could still hear me. “Say, had you met that police officer before? I met him once, at Victoria’s apartment, when we were searching for Betsy.”

“He was one of the cops at the scene when they charged our client with assault, one of the state’s witnesses against Alan Freeman.”

Alan Freeman was our client. I’d first met Alan a few months ago, when he was retiling our office floor to pay his bill. I didn’t know which I loved more, the fact that Jack let his clients pay in whatever form they could swing, or that Freeman was the kind of guy who lived up to his responsibilities.

“I thought it was a former cop, Jason somebody or other, who Freeman supposedly assaulted?”

Jack walked me to the passenger side and opened the door. I climbed in, and he leaned in a little after me. My pulse accelerated and my brain function decelerated in response. “Wu, yes.”

“Woo what?” As I spoke, I realized he meant “Wu,” as in Jason’s last name, and not “woo,” as in seek the affection, love, or support of another. My cheeks started heating.

He raised his left eyebrow, and it was all I could do not to bridge the last few inches of gap between our lips. The dimple puckered. Flames climbed my face. “Woo-hoo.” He slammed the door, and I caught a glimpse of his lopsided smile.

I exhaled. “Whew,” I said, and put my cold hands to my flaming hot cheeks.

On a self-declared break from Freeman trial prep the next morning, I parked my aging green Mustang on Wentworth alongside the almost treeless playground at Windsor Elementary. Someone had hung red and green tinsel garlands around the one scraggly evergreen near the school building. The previous night’s snow still clung to the ground around the tree and across the playground, but the precipitation had stopped. Not a great day to pretend to power walk through the neighborhood. Usually I parked farther away—it made me less conspicuous—but today the temperature hovered below freezing, and with the wind-chill factor it felt like fifteen degrees. No way was I walking any farther than I had to, even to see Betsy.

If I could see Betsy, that is. I glanced at the time on my phone. It was still two minutes until recess time.

When I found the orphaned girl and Jack and I brought her back from New Mexico, I’d handed her over to CPS via Wallace. She had become the most important person in my life by then, and I was desperate to make her my forever daughter. Wallace showed me how to work within the bureaucracy of the state system, and urged me to trust it. I’d signed up on the foster-care and adoption lists. I’d taken the classes. I was saving up to move out of my mother’s and into my own place, at which time I could schedule a home study. I scrolled back to an email I’d sent myself with the link to a listing for a duplex off Soncy Road that sounded perfect. I needed to book a time to see it. Meanwhile, CPS had placed Betsy with a large foster family with a good record. The Hodges. Trevon and Mary Alice.

The Hodges had fostered, all told, twenty-three kids, per Wallace. They specialized in noninfant and nonwhite kids, and kids with disabilities; in other words, they took the kids who were hard to place. Wallace said they had a history of keeping them long-term, until someone else adopted them or they graduated from the foster system, whichever came first. I initially found this admirable—astounding even. How difficult it must be to raise so many children, some of whom required extra care.

Then jealousy crept in. They had Betsy. I didn’t. I’d stalked them a little. On Facebook. While grocery shopping. At their church. Okay, I admit it, the Hodges were an impressive sight with their line of multicolored ducklings in all shapes and sizes following behind them. I’d finally decided maybe Betsy had drawn a lucky card from the deck with them. All those siblings. A family with values, with morals.

But the Hodges wouldn’t allow me to visit Betsy. It was their right, but I didn’t like it, and it made me even more determined to maintain a relationship with her, not less. I checked the playground again. Still no kids. It was time for them to be outside.

I’d begun these clandestine visits to her school as soon as she’d started the first grade, which was the first time she’d attended a school of any kind. Betsy and her parents had entered the U.S. courtesy of a scurrilous human trafficker named Paul Johnson. When other kids her age were discovering the joys of recess and snack time in kindergarten, she was captive in southern New Mexico on Johnson’s Ranch where her undocumented parents were enslaved in a silver mine. When other kids her age started first grade, Betsy was hiding under her mother’s housekeeping cart at the Wyndham/Ambassador Hotel, coloring pictures and singing to her doll, after her mother had escaped from the ranch. So, she hadn’t had a chance to go to school before now. The girl was smart, though, and I knew she would catch up with her classmates fast.

A text came in on my phone from Wallace:
No word from Greg and Farrah. Getting really worried.

I shot a quick text back:
Me, too.
Then I remembered the thing that was still bugging me from the night before.
Why’d you leave so fast with “Ivanka”?

Wallace:
She was looking for a sympathetic person to help her make an escape before she got busted.

Me:
For what?
I could make a good guess since I’d heard Samson call the two skanky women lot lizards.

Wallace:
She’s a lady of the night, honey.

Me:
Oh. Okay.
She’d picked the right person for empathy.
You’re such a nice guy.

Wallace:
Outcasts are my kind.

We ended our text conversation, and my mind flashed on Sunday school past, of stories of Jesus washing dirty feet and hanging out with prostitutes. Wallace could try to pretend it was just solidarity, but the man had the biggest heart I’d ever seen.

The bright voices of children floated across one hundred yards of open playground to my ears as they charged out a side door.
Bravo, Windsor Elementary,
I thought,
for not letting a little inclement weather throw you off your game plan.
The kids were wrapped like mummies, and I realized that they were probably running late because of the extra time needed to get them all bundled up.

Knuckles rapped on the window by my left ear, and I jumped, spilling my Roasters large breve with sugar-free hazelnut—my favorite coffee drink—on the black Red Raiders sweatshirt I was wearing over a long-john top.

“Spit in a well bucket!” I shouted. It was an expression I’d picked up from my father, before he’d split.

Mother hated cursing, but she didn’t mind the work-around expressions favored by Dad and me. So spit, heck, darn, and Mother Goose made the cut. Any variants of damn, shit, crap, hell, ass, and—gasp—the f-word did not. Nor expressions she considered vulgar, like douche or vagina. I tried not to even think them, even in the direst of circumstances, let alone say them.

I glanced out the window and recognized the woman standing there in a gray wool dress that cascaded from the bottom of a white jacket. A white wool cap covered her head, and she’d crammed long, curly brown hair under it, given away by the messy strands that had escaped. She’d knocked with bare knuckles, and I watched as she pulled an insulated ski-type mitten back onto her hand.

“She” was Mary Alice Hodges, with a runny-nosed, snowsuited toddler of indeterminate gender on one hip. We hadn’t met, but I’d seen her, of course, when gathering information on her and her family. Not that I was going to disclose that I recognized her, or how. I hit the down button on my window with one hand and scrounged with the other in my purse for something to sop up the spilled coffee. Jackpot: a fistful of napkins from Taco Villa. I pressed them to the spill site like it was a bullet wound as cold air violated my warm, cozy space.

“May I help you?”

“Ms. Bernal?” She pronounced my Colombian (married) surname Burr-NAL, like most every other non-Hispanic person north of the Mexican border. But I had to wonder how she even know who I was.

“I’m Emily Bernal.” I stressed the correct pronunciation: Bare-NAHL. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Mary Alice Hodges, Betsy’s mother, and—”

The word
mother
tore at my gut, and I couldn’t let that slide. “
Foster
mother, isn’t it? I’ve been trying to reach you through CPS about bringing a Christmas present over for her. You may recall hearing my name. I’m the person who rescued her when she was kidnapped.”

I knew Betsy would love my gift, too. She had lost her treasured pink backpack when she’d been held captive, and I’d bought her a new one like the one she described—since I hadn’t found the one she’d lost, despite repeated calls to the task force of federal, state, and Alamogordo officers and the trustee for Johnson’s Ranch.

“I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible. We don’t allow Christmas presents in our home. That’s our special time to praise God for the birth of the Christ child.”

I could feel my jaw drop, and I stared at her. I had no response to that. Poor Betsy. Presents rocked. I’d considered the Hodges top tier because of siblings and morality, but I also hoped for fun and happiness. Maybe they were a loving family who made up for it in other ways, though. I knew how much worse it could be—neglect or abuse was a whole ’nother level of Hell from unhappy—but it wasn’t what I wanted for this sweet little girl who had stolen my heart.

Mary Alice switched the child to the other hip. “Betsy said she’s seen you here.”

I didn’t doubt that she had. Betsy and I had talked on one of my many visits, until a teacher put the kibosh on it. After that, I would wave to her as I walked laps around the school block, soaking in the sight of her and her nearness.

My pulse sped up, throbbing in my ears. “Yes, and . . . ?”

“I thought my husband made it clear that we don’t welcome outside interference with the young people we bring into our home.”

The child in her arms suddenly threw its head back and wailed, flailing and kicking. I stared at the toddler, distracted. The hood came off its head, revealing short locks of wavy cotton-candy hair. The haircut looked very male, even though still babyish, and I decided to run with that gender classification. The little boy lifted his face again, still squalling, and I took a closer look. He didn’t look like your normal everyday kid. Something about the eyes. Down syndrome, I realized.

“Ms. Burr-NAL?”

“Um, yes, well, I’ve never spoken to your husband, but Wallace Gray with CPS did let me know you’ve turned down my requests to see Betsy. I wasn’t given a reason.”

She bounced the boy up and down and made shushing noises for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to me as she continued to bounce him. “We keep tight control over the type of people our children associate with.”

My face grew hot. “All righty then. You have a nice day.” I reached for the button to raise my window.

She put her free hand out as if to stop me. “You need to stop bothering her here.”

I recoiled and released pressure on the button. “Bothering her? I’m in a parked car a football field away.”

“You know what I mean.”

A roaring started in my head. “I’m not really sure that I do.”

Her eyes narrowed and I saw her arms tighten around the child. He squealed. “Don’t make me take this further, Ms. Burr-NAL.”

The roaring intensified. “Further? Should I be scared of something?”

She leaned away from the child, toward me. “The wrath of God,” she whispered. “You should always be fearful of the wrath of God.”

I laughed aloud. “Okay, gotcha. Thanks for stopping by.” I rolled up my window.

She took three steps backward, then whirled, almost falling on the packed snow along the gutter. I watched in my rearview mirror as she strapped the boy into a car seat in her oversized army-green van, then went around and climbed in on the driver’s side. She started the engine, but she didn’t leave. Instead, she looked at me—or the back of my head, at least—then lifted a phone and spoke, waving a fist in what looked like punctuation to her words. Her eyes fell. She nodded. She set the phone down and stared toward me again, a half smile on her lips. Finally, she grabbed something at the height of a steering wheel gearshift and her vehicle engaged. She accelerated away from the curb, her van fishtailing for a moment as she passed me, snow spitting up behind her tires as they caught.

“Well.” I said it aloud, even though I was by myself. “She’s a whackjob.” I chuckled, but it wasn’t a laugh of mirth. If that woman had been holding up a cross instead of a baby, I would have sworn she was attempting to exorcise demons from my soul in her last moments at my window. I wouldn’t have been completely surprised if the archangel Saint Michael had swooped from the sky to assist. But now I was the one thinking crazy. I breathed out through my pursed lips, very slowly and deliberately.

Clearly, the Hodges were ultrareligious, in a way that made my church-lady mother look like a trifler. Still, I didn’t understand Mary Alice’s behavior. Wallace said he had informed the Hodges that I intended to seek adoption of Betsy as soon as I could gain state approval. They’d known that when they first got Betsy, just like they’d known that I’d saved the girl’s life and forged a strong bond with her. So why forbid me to see her in the first place, and why the fuss now? Maybe they considered me to be an unsuitable kind of person. Yes, I’d been the talk of Amarillo for a few months after I moved back from Dallas, pregnant and humiliated by my cheating husband’s sexuality and paramour. But that was him, not me. Surely I was not such a threat to a child that I had to be warned off.

I peered through my passenger-side window, looking for Betsy in the playground full of shouting kids. My eyes sorted through them. Too tall. Hair too light. Hair too short. Skin too dark. Skin too white. When I’d narrowed them down to short brown girls with long dark hair peeking out from under their winter caps, I found her. Tiny and adorable. She saw me looking at her, and she waved at me, using her whole body.

I raised my hand, waving back. She looked around and I saw her eyes lock on the back of a teacher, and then she took off, a tiny pink dynamo hurtling in my direction. I jerked open my car door without hesitation, cutting the engine and pulling the keys out as I did, and ran toward her, coatless. Betsy made it twenty-five yards and I covered the other seventy-five. She slammed into me and I lifted her into a huge swinging-around hug.

“Hi, Emily!” Her high-pitched voice sang out, as she pressed her cold face against mine. It felt wonderful.

“Hi, sweetie-pie! How are you?” I set her down. Her long hair hung in braids fastened with pink scrunchies on each side of her head. She had lost a front tooth.

She frowned, very serious and adult suddenly. “I’m good, but I miss you and Thunder.” Thunder was the horse we’d escaped on together.

I laughed. “I miss you, and I’m sure Thunder does, too.”

Her face lit up. “Have you found my backpack? Mama would be so mad I lost it.”

I stuck out my bottom lip. Per Mary Alice Hodges, I couldn’t give her the new one, so I didn’t mention it. “No, no one has seen it. I’ll ask them to keep looking, okay?”

A whistle blew.

Betsy looked back toward her teacher, who was walking toward us, fast, head shaking back and forth, whistle in hand near her lips. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, uh-oh.” I hugged her one last time, and she ran back to the teacher.

I walked toward my car. At the last second, I turned. Betsy was walking backwards, waving to me, and I pulled out my phone and quickly snapped a picture. I got in the Mustang, restarted it, and blew on my cold hands as I watched her.