The Wishing Trees (24 page)

“We will find her, Mr. McCray,” the receptionist said, pulling out a map of the city. “We are here,” he added, pointing to the middle of the map. “Now, where were you when you lost her?”

“She’s all alone.”

“Where were you? Sir, I must know where you were.”

Ian ran his hands through his hair as, squinting, he studied the map. “Here,” he answered, putting his finger near the receptionist’s.

“Are you certain?”

“Between those two streets.”

“I will call the police. They will start looking in this area.”

Ian shook his head, struggling to maintain his composure. “I’ve left her all alone. Oh, Christ, what have I done?”

“We will find her, sir.”

“No, no, no.”

“Mr. McCray, she will be found.”

“You don’t understand. Her mother’s dead. I need to find her. Right now.”

The receptionist took off his glasses. “I am also a father, sir. I know what it is like to lose a child. And I will help you locate her.”

Ian clutched his side, the pain finally dominating him. “I’m going back out there,” he muttered, writing down Mattie’s name and description on a piece of hotel stationery.

“Wait, Mr. McCray,” the man said, putting his hand on Ian’s elbow. “Please take my business card. Call the number for the front desk if you need me. And here is my cellular phone.” The receptionist then held up his forefinger and went through a doorway behind the front desk. He quickly returned, pushing an old-fashioned bicycle beside him. “Please use my bicycle,” he said. “You can see much more of the city this way.”

Ian grabbed the man’s hand and squeezed it hard.

“Your daughter, sir, she will look for something familiar. And we have many Western restaurants nearby. If you see one—a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a Pizza Hut—you should go in.”

Turning the bike around, Ian stepped toward the doorway. “Please hurry and call the police,” he said, and rushed outside. “Tell them she’s all alone.”

Agra seemed busier than ever. Traffic in the nearby street was almost at a standstill. Ian ran to the edge of the sidewalk and hopped on the bicycle, which was too small for him. Standing up, he pumped the pedals, weaving between vehicles of every shape and size. He didn’t want to panic but couldn’t help it. The thought of Mattie alone and terrified was too much for him.

“Mattie!” he shouted, riding near the sidewalk. A motorcycle suddenly pulled over to the curb in front of him and he almost crashed into it. “Mattie! Can you hear me? Mattie!”

Please, God, he thought, please don’t let anything happen to her. Please, please, please. She’s so good. She’s been nothing but good her whole life and she doesn’t deserve any of this. Now, please. Let me find her.

He passed a Burger King and jumped off the bike, then hurried inside. He called her name and asked patrons if they’d seen her, but everyone shook their heads. Grunting from the pain in his stomach, he ran back outside and started to pedal once again. He knew that child prostitution was a monstrosity in India, and the thought of someone getting hold of Mattie made him weep.

His tears blurring his vision, he sped down the street, ringing a bell on the handlebars to warn pedestrians of his approach. “Mattie! Where are you?”

A cow lay on the pavement before him, and he swerved into the curve to avoid it. People pressed against him from every direction and he realized that he’d never find her like this. He had to be more strategic, though reasoned, calm thoughts flew in the face of his panic.

Where would I go, he asked himself, if I were her? I have money in my pocket. I could get a taxi, but . . . but I don’t know the name of my hotel. Would I find a police station? Maybe. Maybe not. What about a big hotel?

Bugger this! Think! Use your bloody brain! Where would she go? To the American embassy? To the airport? Or to something she knows?

Wait, he thought, gripping the handlebars, his heartbeat resonating in his ears. “The Taj,” he whispered. “She’d go to the Taj!”

He jumped back on the bike and pedaled as he never had, passing rickshaws and taxis and trucks. Agra revolved around the Taj Mahal, and signs pointed in its direction. He stood upright, putting all his weight on each pedal as it crested, forcing it downward as if it were a demon he was trying to keep from rising upward. The city flew past, the sun dropping, vehicles turning on their lights. People who saw him seemed to sense his desperation and stepped aside to let him pass. Though Agra was a city of a million horns, no one honked at him, even when he cut them off.

“Please, dear God,” he said, straining, smashing over a broken pallet.

He turned to the right, saw the main gate to the mausoleum, saw her talking with a security guard. The bike fell as he leapt from it. Her name emerged from his lips. He ran ahead, sweeping her up in his arms, holding her tight, their faces pressing against each other’s, her tears falling to his cheek, his hands running through her hair. She wept and shuddered against him and he held her as if someone were trying to pull her away. Kissing her brow, he told her that everything was fine, that he’d never lose her again. She cried in his arms, curling up against him, wanting to be encircled by as much of him as possible.

Over the previous year and a half Ian had spent so much effort hiding his true emotions from her, his feelings of grief and fear. But now, as she held on to him and wept, it was as if he were standing on a stage and the curtains had been pulled up in front of him. He was exposed, rendered naked by the spotlights. His joy and relief at finding her eclipsed his strength to remain levelheaded, and he began to shudder, disintegrating beside her like a glacier warmed by too much sun. While parts of him toppled, he clung to her as much as she did to him, his tears incessant. He kissed her again, telling her how much he loved her, that though she might have been missing, he was the one who was lost without her.

The sky continued to darken. Ian’s stomach still ached, and he thought that he might vomit. Now that he’d found her, his nausea and pain were much more pronounced. Trying to slow his breathing, he stroked the back of her head and whispered reassurances. He looked up and said silent prayers of thanks. Never had he been so thankful. Not even on his wedding day.

He thought about how the trip was a mistake, how he was insane to take her to Asia. She could have been kidnapped, he told himself. Some mongrel could have grabbed my little girl. An image flashed in his mind of Mattie being forced into a truck and the landscape began to sway. He closed his strained and aching eyes, rubbing them.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked quietly, hoping that she would nod. “Back to all the beautiful things in America? Back to—”

“No.”

“Why not, Roo? After what just happened?”

“Because . . . if it was time to go home, Mommy would send us home.”

Mommy is gone, he thought, kissing the top of Mattie’s head. She’s been gone for nineteen months. “But, luv, Mommy doesn’t know how hard this is. She doesn’t—”

“No! I don’t want to go home. Stop talking about it. Please stop talking about it!”

He pulled her back toward him, cradling her once again. “Easy on, luv. Easy on. I’ll stop yammering about it. I will. But . . . but you can always change your mind.”

“I won’t. So stop your yammering.”

“Just think about it.”

“No.”

Ian sighed, remembered the hotel receptionist, and called the man using his cell phone. He explained everything, hearing the happiness in the stranger’s voice. Ian thanked him repeatedly before hanging up. “His blood’s worth bottling,” he said to Mattie, putting the phone back in his pocket.

“Who?”

“The receptionist at our hotel. He called the police, and gave me his phone and bicycle.”

“He did? That was nice of him.”

“It was bloody wonderful. He was bloody wonderful.”

“I’m glad, Daddy.”

Ian kissed her head again, smelling sweat in her hair, continuing to shelter her with his body. “Reckon you know how much I love you?”

“How much?”

He pointed to a slice of the sky between a pair of old buildings. The sky was infused with the hues of the setting sun, as if it were a tapestry dyed in the most beautiful of Indian colors. “When I look up there,” he said, “I see a lovely sky. I see something that reminds me of you.”

“What?”

“I still hurt, Roo. From your mum’s death. You know I do. But I can also see beauty in the world. And that’s because of you. That’s the gift of you.”

“It is a pretty sky.”

He saw that tears had dried some of her lashes together and he gently rubbed her eyes. What would make her feel better? he wondered. What would give her the comfort of home without taking her home? “That bicycle is fast,” he said. “A real storm in the bush.”

“It is?”

“It’s a beaut, Roo. And there’s a bar on the back of it, and you can stand while I pedal.”

Mattie looked at the busy street. “Should we go back to the hotel?”

He lifted her from his lap as he stood up. “I think I passed an ice-cream store a few blocks back. How about a big, fat, dripping scoop of cookies and cream? Something to cool us off?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Taking her hand, he led her toward the bicycle. He thought about losing her, about how she was the light of his world. Suddenly he needed to feel her again, and so he lifted her up, kissing her cheek as her arms and legs wrapped around him. “I love you so much, Roo. That was hell for me, to lose you like that. I was dropped straight into hell. I’m so bloody sorry.”

She continued to hold on to him, trying to be brave, afraid of getting separated again, but also of going home. “When I was lost,” she said, “I thought about Jaidee.”

“Who?”

“The girl in Thailand. She was all alone, so far from her parents. I remembered watching her on that boat, going home. I wanted to get on a boat and go to you.”

“Well, you did, Roo. You did.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“I know.”

“Maybe tomorrow, when we walk, we can hold hands.”

“I’d fancy holding hands. And later, back in our room, we’ll talk about ways to make sure that we never get separated again.”

She smiled, fleetingly. “Is that the bike?”

“Yeah. And do you know what? That man at the hotel, who helped me as much as we helped Jaidee, I think we should do something nice for him.”

“Let’s bring him some ice cream.”

Ian set her on the ground and picked up the bicycle. She placed her feet atop a pair of bars that jutted from either side near the back wheel’s hub, then held on to Ian’s shoulders as he sat down and started pedaling. Though an hour earlier she’d been terrified of the streets, of the chaos, her fear had mostly subsided. She leaned closer to her father, happy that he’d compared her to a sunset, that she made him think of beauty. She’d always known that her mother had thought as much, but to have her father say such words made her feel safe, and she didn’t regret getting lost, because he’d rescued her, as he always would.

Agra swirled around them, the city such a blend of hope and sorrow, of love and loss. Feeling blessed for the first time in days, Ian pedaled on, pausing several times to hand out bills to beggars, eager to share his good fortune.

TWO DAYS LATER, IAN AND MATTIE SAT on a train bound for Varanasi. They once again had paid for a sleeper car. Though the day had been hot, the train’s windows were open, and a refreshing breeze tumbled from car to car. The clatter of the steel wheels on the tracks was soothing—a combination of gentle movement and soft, constant noise. Ian thought that riding on a train like this one must be similar to being in the womb. The warmth, the background noise, and the movement merged together into a sensation that could hardly have been more pleasing. For the first time since he’d lost Mattie, he felt completely relaxed.

The sun had set, and scattered lightbulbs illuminated the train. Mattie and Ian sat on one side of a stainless-steel table, while an Indian couple occupied the other seats. The woman was dressed in a red sari with blue trim. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, her nose and ears pierced with gold jewelry. A red
bindi
dotted the spot above and between her eyes. Sitting beside her, a balding man in black pants and a white collared shirt put down his newspaper and looked out the window. His companion carefully unfolded a misshapen box of aluminum foil. Inside were small yellow cakes. She handed a cake to the man, then looked at Mattie. “Would you like one, dear?” she asked in well-spoken English, holding out a cake. “This is mango
halwa
, really nothing more than mango puree mixed with a little sugar syrup.”

Mattie glanced at Ian, unsure if she should accept food from a stranger. He nodded and so she smiled and extended her hand. “Thank you.”

“And you, sir?”

“I’d fancy a go at one,” Ian replied, the smell of the treats making his mouth water.

“I made these from fresh juicy mangos,” she said. “Not like those monsters grown from fertilizer that you buy in the city.”

Ian smiled, biting into the dessert, which was sweet and soft. “Crikey. That’s quite good.”

“She’s a good cook,” the man said, reaching for a second helping. “Of course, her cooking makes me fat, but I’m not complaining.”