She adjusted her hair tie, tucking away the wayward strand as we walked. “I just need to…figure stuff out.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just…I don’t know. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said, wiping my forehead on my sleeve. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“They are my family,” she said and the words cut me like razors. “I mean, I know they aren’t. But to me they were. Does that make sense?”
“Nothing makes sense, Elizabeth,” I said. “But I understand it’s hard. For you and for everyone.”
She stopped, dug the toe of her shoe into the sand and looked out at the ocean. It was gray-blue, a mirror image of the sky. “I’m just not sure about anything.”
“I don’t think any of us are,” I said
She bent over and hugged her chest to her thighs. Somewhere along the line, in the time she’d been gone, she’d turned into a runner. A pang of loss jabbed at my gut, knowing I’d missed out on something that I couldn’t get back. I wondered who’d introduced her to running, what kind of shoes she bought to start, if she’d run any races. It was a constant thing. I was always wondering. Always.
She stood again and exhaled. She messed with her hair again and looked at me. “So, do you think I can go?”
“I’ll talk with your mom,” I said, knowing that even though she wasn’t comfortable saying that word, I was. Lauren was her mother in every sense of the word. “But we’ve got a ton to figure out here, too.”
“Like?”
“Like school,” I said. “Like figuring out exactly what happened to you. Like figuring out…”
“Like figuring you and her out,” she interrupted.
That was fair. Lauren and I were divorced. But now Lauren was pregnant and we’d grown close again, searching for Elizabeth. I was staying in the house because I didn’t have any other place to stay on Coronado and because Lauren invited me to stay there. I wasn’t sure if we were together or not. I didn’t think Lauren knew, either.
“Yeah,” I said. “Figuring us out, too.”
She sighed. “She’s just gonna say no.”
She was right. Lauren probably would say no. And if I was being honest, I didn’t want her going either. I didn’t want her running to the grocery store without me, much less traveling a thousand miles to the place she’d lived without me. I’d yet to sleep through the night. I tossed and turned, waking up with a start. I’d sit there, listening for some sound that might reassure me. When it wouldn’t come, I’d pad down the hallway and stick my head in her room, a sigh of relief escaping every time I saw her, curled up in her bed.
But we couldn’t suffocate her. That wouldn’t work, either. Smothering her would make it worse and she’d come to resent it at some point. We had to be mindful of what she wanted. And needed. Even if we disagreed. Lauren was resistant. I was trying to play the mediator.
The morning breeze picked up off the ocean and I took a deep breath. I wanted to put my arms around her, hug her and tell her she didn’t need anything or anyone else, that I’d take care of her for the rest of her life.
Instead, I tried to smile at her, reassure her that I was on her side.
“We’ll see,” I told her. “We’ll see.”
TWO
Elizabeth and I jogged slowly back to the house to finish our cool-down after the run. Lauren was just crawling out of bed and into the shower. Elizabeth disappeared upstairs to her room and I knew morning wasn’t the best time to approach Lauren about anything. So I grabbed the keys and headed to the gym. It had been my morning routine since finding Elizabeth. I wasn’t completely comfortable in my old home and I felt like Lauren and Elizabeth needed their own time to begin rebuilding their relationship. So I’d taken to vacating the house in the mornings.
I spent two hours at the gym, lifting and stretching. I’d ignored my body while chasing down Elizabeth over the previous few weeks and it showed. I was sore, I was weak and I was tired. But everything was slowing starting to come back. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I wasn’t quite sure where.
The week since we’d finally found Elizabeth had been chaotic. The media wanted the story and were relentless in their pursuit of talking to us. I’d given several benign statements and made it clear that Elizabeth was off-limits and would be for quite some time. That had deterred most of them and their round-the-clock near stalking of us had finally abated.
The FBI had interviewed me and Elizabeth for nearly two straight days. It wasn’t meant to be harsh, but reliving the entire thing from my end had sharpened the edges of my memory and been agonizing at time. I knew it was a necessary evil, but that hadn’t made it anymore pleasant.
And when it became increasingly clear that Elizabeth had blocked much of the early part of her ordeal out of her mind, the FBI leaned heavily on getting her into therapy immediately so she could deal with the trauma. Lauren and I had talked with her, though, and she said she needed some time before she was going to be able to sit down and talk with anyone.
So we’d told everyone to back off, circled the wagons and gone about the business of trying to figure out exactly how we were going to put the pieces back together in our own home.
After a long shower at the club, I headed across the bridge, off the island and into downtown San Diego. I hadn’t told Elizabeth or Lauren, but I was meeting with someone who I hoped might be able to help me dig deeper into the mystery behind my daughter’s abduction. I wasn’t sure how Elizabeth would react, but I knew that Lauren would tell me to leave it alone, that we needed to focus on the fact that she was back and leave the past behind. But that wasn’t me. I couldn’t do that. And she knew that, even as words to the contrary came out of her mouth. I wasn’t going to rest until I knew exactly what had happened to Elizabeth. We may have circled the wagons around us, but I was still stepping out of the circle to find out who had made a mess of our lives.
Paul Lasko was sitting in a small corner booth at an out of the way deli, just off Broadway, near Horton Plaza. He was out of uniform, in khaki shorts and a black golf shirt. His short dark hair appeared to have just been razor trimmed and he held up his water glass in my direction when I came through the door.
We shook hands and I sat down across from him.
He pointed at the rectangular, laminated menu. “Everything’s good.”
“Yeah?”
“I like the turkey and avocado, but it’s all good.”
The waitress appeared, a younger Hispanic woman with friendly eyes and a tired smile, and I took his advice and ordered the turkey and avocado, as did he. She took the menu and went back behind the counter.
“So,” he asked. “I was kind of surprised to hear from you.”
I was sure he was. I’d only met Lasko once, in the hour before we’d finally found Elizabeth. He’d pulled me, Lauren and two others over when an AMBER Alert had been issued for Elizabeth and he’d flagged the car we were riding in. It was a bogus call, one designed to slow us down and I still didn’t know why it had happened. When Lasko realized the alert was bad, he’d cut us loose and we’d gone and found my daughter. He’d made it clear to me on the street that day that he hadn’t like being played and I believed him. So I’d reached out to him, offering to buy him lunch, wondering if he might be able to help me. It was a long shot and I knew that. But I’d liked the way he’d handled himself that day and he struck me as a guy who didn’t care much for bullshit.
“I’m sure,” I said, nodding at the waitress as she set a glass of water on the table for me. I picked it up. “I appreciate you taking the time.”
He smiled. He was in his early thirties, I guessed, tiny flecks of gray in the short hair, small wrinkle lines at the corners of his grayish-green eyes. “Hey, man. A free lunch is a free lunch.”
“That it is.”
The smile faded. “But I’m not dumb enough to think this is just a social call. Am I right?”
The fact that he wasn’t dumb at all was why I’d gotten in touch with him in the first place.
“You’re right,” I said. “But I did want to first say thank you.”
“Thank you?”