Girl Last Seen Page 16

  Mercifully, she cuts to the chase. “I got a call from a Detective Ortiz,” she says. My insides clench at the very mention of the name, and I’m afraid I couldn’t hide my reaction fast enough.

  But lucky for me, she misinterprets it. “I know you were involved in the Olivia Shaw case.”

  The air goes out of my lungs in a whoosh of relief. “I was,” I say, careful not to let my mask of indifference slip. “But I was cleared. As a suspect, I mean.”

  Her penetrating gaze won’t let go of mine. “And what did you make of all this?”

  “What was I supposed to make of all this?”

  “Did it make you feel worse?”

  What do you think?

  “Did it make you want to do certain things?”

  “It should all be in my tests.”

  She ignores my remark. “I want to know how you felt about it. Not what you did about it.”

  I give a shrug.

  “You were totally indifferent?”

  “It has nothing to do with me. She’s someone else’s now.” Dr. Elise is one of the few people I feel bad lying to, but the other option is unthinkable right now.

  “But what happened to her, it bears a certain similarity to what happened to you,” she says softly. “You can’t ignore that completely.”

  “We don’t know what happened to her,” I say. “No one does. Some people think she ran away.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did it bring back any flashbacks? Bad dreams?”

  I shrug. “The Ambien is working. I need a new prescription, by the way. I ran out. I think I need more pills. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t go back to sleep, so I need to take a second one.” I blurt it all out without pausing for a breath.

  “We’ll deal with that in a moment. When Detective Ortiz called me, he asked for all your information, but I refused, of course, for the sake of your patient confidentiality. They didn’t have a warrant or any real reason to suspect you.”

  Gratitude fills my chest, scorching hot and tinged with guilt for all the deceptions, all the lies big and small I’ve told her over the years, all the fibs she let slide. For all her efforts that bore no fruit.

  “Thank you,” I say hoarsely. “They didn’t have any reason to suspect me. I didn’t even know she…she was the same girl. Until Sea—until Detective Ortiz told me.” Blood rushes to my face, but if she noticed anything, she lets it go.

  “So you don’t care about her? Olivia Shaw. Not at all?”

  “Not at all.” The lie is so easy. Don’t I ever get tired?

  She waits patiently. I stare her down.

  “Go on,” I explode. “Ask me if I had considered this might be the same man. Yes, I fucking have, okay? But it wasn’t my job to find him. Maybe you should address your complaints to the Seattle PD, who had better things to do.”

  I expect her to chastise me in that way she has, reproachful without judging. But she keeps looking me straight in the eye. “I know. It was an awful injustice. All their efforts should have been directed at finding that man. Stopping him. But because of factors we’re both well aware of, it didn’t happen.”

  “I tried to help,” I mutter through my teeth. My eyes burn. I need my pills, badly. “I tried to. I repeated my testimony, but I’d already told them everything I knew the first time, and it didn’t change anything.”

  She waits while I collect myself. I don’t reach out for the pastel box of tissues on her table. I refuse to be that cliché. Instead I smear the tears all over my cheeks with the back of my hand.

  “I want to remember,” I say. “I want to try to remember. Can’t you help me? Hypnotize me or something?”

  She tilts her head with a look of sympathy. “It’s not a question of repressing, I’m afraid. You remember everything vividly. But—”

  “It’s just not enough,” I finish for her. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I’ve tried hypnosis already,” she says sadly. “It didn’t yield anything new. You presented a fairly typical profile…Sorry. I don’t mean to belittle what you went through.”

  I mutter that it’s okay. “Wasn’t there anything?”

  She heaves a sigh. “Besides your surprisingly vehement feelings of loathing toward…toward your pregnancy, no.”

  “Surprisingly?” I gulp. “Is it really so surprising?”

  “Many other young women have found themselves in your situation before. They regarded the child as their one bright spot. Some called it their salvation.”

  I grit my teeth. I start to notice I’m doing it on purpose.

  “You don’t think you’d make a good mother?”

  “Why do you ask me that? I thought you were supposed to help.”

  “So no.”

  I could never bring myself to tell her the truth: I just never knew; they didn’t give me a chance to find out. They took her away and didn’t even let me look at her. I think I might have loved her, might even have forgiven her if only they’d let me take just one look—but I was lost to anesthesia, far under. They came in like thieves and left before I woke up. By then it was too late to object and too painful to question, and no one in their right mind could argue with the fact that it was best for her, this nameless little girl. Especially not me. All I could do was try to mute it, forget it, put it out of my mind the only way I knew how.

  “Obviously,” I snarl. “Next question? Please?”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  I have no answer, not a truthful one anyway.

  “What I think is that it stems from your experience of your own mother. Before and after the kidnapping.”

  My mother. My mother who bought me dollar-store toys on good days and who pawned the electronics on bad days. My mother whom I only saw at the hospital once after I was found—because she got her ass imprisoned for yet another drug offense. Surprise, surprise.

  I think of our last encounter, and in spite of myself, the corner of my mouth curls. “My mother was stupid, junkie trash,” I snap. Like mother, like daughter, rings a sarcastic echo in my head.

  “What do you remember of her? From before?”

  “What I just told you.”

  Dr. Elise shakes her head. “That also struck me. A child, any child—and you were still a child back then, Lainey, no matter what you or anyone else says—will always call for her mother. Always, no matter what, no matter how awful the mother might be.”

  I want to tell her that the child in me died in screaming agony on the basement floor. But something about her words compels me to listen without interrupting.

  “And you never called for her. Not once. Not in your sleep, not when you were alone. You never so much as asked about her. Like you never had a mother at all.”

  That was pretty close to the truth, and Dr. Elise knows it too.

  “I’m not a monster,” I say, holding her gaze. “Just because my mother was. Just because I have no maternal feelings toward my rapist’s child.”

  “I never said you were a monster.”

  “You think I’m abnormal. You just said so.”

  “We all deal with trauma in our own way. The mind is a smart thing. It does all it can to make sure all the bad things are locked away where they can’t hurt us so we can go on functioning.”

  “If you think this is me compartmentalizing…” Anger locks my throat. I squeeze my hands into fists.

  “That’s not what I said.”

  I glower at her, but she weathers my hate-filled glare like a stoic. Deep down I feel bad about all the shitty, mean things I have ever said to her, about every time I blew up at her when she was trying to help me. Even now I feel awful inside.

  But I still can’t help it. “I think our time is up soon.”

  “I can prolong the appointment if you need to talk more,” she says neutrally.

  I pretend I haven’t heard. “How about that Ambien?”

  “Maybe we can
lower the dose. You should be trying to sleep naturally.”

  “I don’t want to sleep naturally.”

  “And I’m loath to prescribe more sleeping pills to someone with your history.” Her voice is steel.

  “But…”

  “You could try natural supplements. I can write you a prescription for melatonin…”

  I push my chair back, leap up. “We’re done.”

  “Lainey.”

  “I’ll see you in two months,” I say with a saccharine smile. I know she has the power to have me locked up again, but I see on her face that she won’t. Because she believes in me, believes I can get through this and live a normal life and be a functioning member of society.

  Stupid of her.

  I storm out without a good-bye.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Keeping an eye on the arrow of the gas meter as it leans dangerously to the left, I drive off the exit ramp and turn in the opposite direction from the hotel.

  As daylight thins and fades from pale-gray to carbon, the streets I drive down turn dirtier. Graffiti covers the walls, garbage everywhere. It’s not quite as bad as I remember. In the last decade, there’s been much overhyped urban redevelopment, as the white guys on the news called it. Between the projects and neglected, dilapidated homes, glossy boxes of condos have sprung up like brick-and-glass mushrooms. Buy up now; this area is about to be booming. Smart investment for a savvy young professional.

  Back then, it was just an investment for a savvy young drug addict. For which my mom, Valerie Santos, certainly qualified.

  As soon as the first echoes of recognition start to go off in my mind, anxiety creeps up, crackling in my fingertips like static. The corner store where I used to shoplift candy bars when I was eight or nine comes into view, still there, still kickin’, same Sharpie-drawn sign in the window. Well, not the same sign but still hand drawn—boasting CIGARETTES WINE BEER LOTTERY. Valerie sent me here for peanut butter, milk cartons, and puffy, cotton-like loaves of plastic-wrapped bread when she wasn’t up for shopping for groceries. After a while, the guy behind the counter started to recognize me and would sell me smokes, “for Val only, little lady.” I remember being so damn proud of myself and sneaking a cigarette or two knowing Val wouldn’t notice the pack was open. None of it seemed abnormal to me. The few other kids I knew lived the same way.

  Circling the block, dreading the moment the old house floats into view, I start to wonder. My fingertips dance out a nervous tattoo on the steering wheel. I don’t remember a damn thing about the actual day I was taken—this much I’ve repeated to everyone a million times. But now, after everything, thoughts creep into my head that Dr. Rowland wouldn’t approve of. I remember her words vividly, and I’ve read enough about trauma-induced selective amnesia online. What exactly is my mind trying to protect me from? What could be so horrifying and traumatic that I chose to just blank it out—while the ensuing three years are crystal clear, every week, every day and minute?

  The answer nags at me from the perimeters of my mind: I could have gone with him of my own free will. It can’t have taken that much to tempt someone like me, like the girl I was back then. He wouldn’t have had to promise me the stars; anything would have seemed better than living with Val. I could have gone with him for a chocolate bar, a pack of gum.

  My foot slams onto the brakes before I realize what I’m doing. Luckily, the street is half-empty. My head snaps forward, not enough to give me whiplash, but nonetheless, I probably should have put my seat belt on. I pull over, rest my forehead on the steering wheel, and focus on my breathing, waiting out the oncoming panic attack. You can’t think like this, Dr. Rowland would say. You weren’t to blame for what he did to you. Or for anything. You were innocent.

  She clearly never met a kid from my neighborhood.

  Once I trust myself not to hyperventilate, I leave the car by the curb and walk in the direction I came from, to the convenience store. Hesitating, I push the door open. The chime that clangs over my head, disharmonious like broken glass, sends a tremor of memory racing up my spine.

  It’s a different guy behind the counter now. Of course it is. Did I really expect to find everything preserved as I remember it, some fucked-up time capsule? He gives me the side-eye as I browse the lone aisle. Doesn’t want anyone shoplifting. To appease him, I buy a pack of smokes, even though I still have some left.

  He makes my handful of change disappear and gives me a fleeting but sharp once-over.

  “Hey, chica,” he pipes up as I’m already at the door, bracing myself for another clang of the chime, “do I know you from somewhere?”

  “No,” I say too quickly and without turning around. “I’m not from around here.”

  “Sure, sure, I’ve seen you before,” he goes on. My gaze darts sideways at the magazine stand under the counter. Huge black letters yell from a headline: SHAW ADOPTION DRAMA—THE ANSWER TO THE SHOCKING DISAPPEARANCE?

  Air rushes into my lungs, burning. The chime gives a sad clink when I slam the door and flee.

  Way to go, Laine. Way to go.

  I know I need to save up my pills, so I content myself with a smoke, which isn’t nearly enough. It only makes my hands shake more, and my heartbeat picks up at a desperate rhythm.

  Having learned my lesson, I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. With my baggy pants and my oversize man’s pleather jacket, my hair and most of my face obscured, you can’t tell I’m a girl at all, which can only work in my favor in these parts. My knife is still with Sean, and I’m defenseless.

  The idea that I might get hurt or killed because he took my knife away fills me with bitter vindictiveness. How sorry he’d be, I think as I peer through the shadows in search of unknown assailants.

  The walk to my old house takes less time than I thought. It floats out of the descending shadows, sneaking up on me. One moment I was just walking down the street, and the next, there it is.

  It’s not a shock, exactly, but not a happy homecoming either. I don’t know what I expected—maybe for it to be sold, so now there would be a happy family living there, two-point-five kids and a little yappy dog, a colorful plastic slide and swing set in the tall grass of the Kleenex-sized front yard. No such luck. It’s abandoned. Not the only house on the street with windows boarded up, but it seems to be in the most advanced state of disrepair. The cheap white boards that cover the walls and façade have fallen away in places, and the rest have turned a yellowish, grayish color. Plywood-covered windows stare at me blindly, reminding me of my poor apartment I can never come back to.

  There used to be a chain-link fence that reached up to my waist, but it’s rusted through and pieces are missing. I don’t even have to step over it to get into the yard. Tall grass rustles as I advance through it, crushing the dead stems under my boots, pushing them out of the way. They whip my hands and face, and I hit back with twice the violence.

  Memories resurface as I circle the house. I know there’s another door in the back, and that’s where I’m headed.

  The glass insert in the door is cracked and so coated with dust and cobwebs that it’s nearly opaque. Two crisscrossed boards were once nailed over the door, but one has been pried away and the other is so rotten it’s falling to pieces, crumbling under my fingertips. When I turn the door handle, it obeys with surprising ease and barely a squeak of rust. It doesn’t take much effort to duck under the board and slip into the house.

  It would be pitch-black if not for the massive hole in the roof, but the last of daylight is ebbing away, so I have to light my way with my cell phone. Naturally, the moment I turn it on, the empty battery alert starts to flash. I groan, but I don’t intend to stay here for too long anyway.

  This part is the kitchen, long and narrow, with an arched doorway leading into the main room. There’s no hall—the front door opens right into the living room. Even back when I was a kid, the insulation always came unglued and icy breezes speared the place. Now long stripes of fading light fall from the door a
cross the dirty floor.

  There’s a thin plaster wall separating the living room from my bedroom, which is the size of a closet and windowless. The doors are gone, and empty doorways are like gaping mouths, dark and forbidding. Beneath my boots, broken glass and the expected used syringes crunch softly—it doesn’t even gross me out. The place smells like you’d imagine an abandoned house to smell, of human debris.

  I don’t know why I came here. What was I looking for? Did I think my memory would magically come back, a lightbulb going off in my brain like in a cartoon? Wouldn’t that be convenient.

  It does come back, but not like a lightbulb—more like a trickle. Mostly useless, random things. I remember the vomit color of the couch and the angle of the TV facing away from the door. Valerie’s walls were painted a strange, deep red, mine a cloying pink—a rare attempt at decoration on her part, long before I could remember. I assume there was a time even Valerie gave a shit. At some point, I had one of those child’s four-poster beds, before I outgrew it at seven or eight. There was no money to replace it, so I slept on a mattress on the floor ever since.

  Something pulls me, some unhealthy need to see it with my own eyes. Not that there’s anything left to see—all hints of furniture and appliances are long gone. But I take a step toward the dark rectangle of the door on the right, then another step, and then my legs are carrying me of their own free will.

  Claustrophobia-inducing walls close in on me. When I raise my phone, I see humidity-stained paint with black flowers of mold creeping down from the ceiling, but the memory of the original color still lurks underneath.

  I turn around and shine the phone light into the corners, one after another. The room is empty, and something about it is odd—I can’t put my finger on it at first, but it nags at me until I get it. There’s no trash here. Not like the rest of the place anyway. There are still dust and cobwebs and paint chips but no broken glass or condom wrappers.

  When I turn to leave, the phone light snatches something out of the darkness, just the corner of an object. I spin around, and the phone nearly flies out of my hand.