“Joe, I don’t want to hear it,” she said, tossing the book off her lap. It landed with a soft thud on the comforter. “And, honest to God, how can you even entertain it? You spent years of your life doing nothing but hunting for her. It nearly broke you. It killed our marriage.” She shook her head. “I mean, you found her. How can you even think of letting her go back there?”
I leaned back in the chair, my head against the cushions, my eyes on the ceiling. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the same knee-jerk reaction as Lauren. If I thought it was possible, I would’ve kept Elizabeth from ever leaving the house again without one of us. But that wasn’t possible. It wasn’t reasonable. And I feared that being unreasonable might drive Elizabeth away.
“I’m trying to think about what’s best for her, Lauren,” I said. “Not what’s best for us.”
“Staying with us is what’s best for her.” She narrowed her eyes. “Not going back to that other family.”
“We aren’t talking about her moving there.”
“No shit we aren’t.”
“Lauren.”
“Joe.”
I sighed. She wasn’t up for hearing it or trying to step into her daughter’s shoes. Pushing it was just going to lead to some unnecessary fight.
“How’d you feel this morning?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Shitty. I ate a bowl of cereal and half a banana and it stayed down for all of five minutes.”
“I remember how sick you were with Elizabeth.”
“The entire first trimester.”
I nodded. “You couldn’t look at milk or cereal.”
Her expression softened. “It’s starting to feel that way again.”
“But dinner stayed down okay?”
She nodded. “So far.”
Lauren was pregnant. With our child. The result of a night spent in a hotel as we got closer to finding Elizabeth. We’d gotten divorced because our daughter’s disappearance had created a gaping wound in our relationship, but that didn’t mean that we’d stopped loving one another. Loving each other just became harder when Elizabeth was gone and when we’d reconnected, a lot of those unresolved feelings had surfaced. We’d been careless. Now, she was pregnant and neither one of us seemed to want to deal with that as our new reality.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said.
“It’s alright.”
“But the thought of her going back there is…” She shook her head. “I can’t even fathom it.”
“I know.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her we’d talk about it. Me and you.”
“So does this count?”
“Sure.”
“Joe.”
I shrugged. “Look, she wasn’t unreasonable when we talked about it. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. I mean, her stuff is still there, you know? Clothes, books, whatever. That’s her stuff, no matter who we are or who the Corzines are. She had a life there. It may have been a false life, but to her it was real.” I paused. “She’s a kid who is probably pretty screwed up right now and I think we owe it to her to at least think about it. To talk to her about it.”
Lauren folded her arms across her chest, stared down at her lap. “Right now is excruciating.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s upstairs in her room,” she explained. “And all I want to do is go check on her every five minutes, make sure she’s still there. But I know we can’t. I know we can’t. But right now? Part of me is in panic mode, wondering if she’s up there.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.” It was the reason I got up every night, trying to be quiet as I stumbled down the hallway to peek into her bedroom.
“So I can’t even think about letting her go to Minnesota,” she said, glancing at me. “Because I can’t think about letting her go to the mailbox alone right now.”
“We have to start dealing with it,” I said. “We have to figure out school. We have to figure out a lot of things.”
“I can’t think about Minnesota yet, Joe. I just can’t.”
“Okay.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Will you lay with me for a bit?” she asked tentatively. I looked at her and saw the dark circles under her eyes, the pinched corners of her mouth.
I nodded and got up from the chair. I crawled on to the bed and lay down next to her. She turned to the side so her back was to me and reached for my hand, pulling my arm over her. She wiggled closer until she was tight against my body. She folded her fingers into mine.
It wasn’t a romantic or sexual gesture. It was one of comfort, one of familiarity. She didn’t want to be alone and I didn’t mind lying with her.
We did, in fact, have a lot of things to figure out.
FIVE
Elizabeth and I went for our run the next morning. She didn’t ask about Minnesota and I didn’t bring it up. Instead, we enjoyed the sun peeking through the clouds, the blue ocean and the white sand as she once again beat me to the finish. It was an easy morning, one that made it seem like she’d never been gone, one that I wished would happen more frequently.
We jogged home to cool down and as we came up the street, I saw a familiar frame leaning against a car, parked at the curb.
In a lot of ways, Chuck Winslow was the reason I’d finally found Elizabeth. I’d come back to San Diego, temporarily ending my nomadic search for Elizabeth in order to help Chuck. He was hospitalized, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and I’d returned because he had been my best friend. Getting him out of the jam kept me in San Diego long enough to get the first clue to Elizabeth’s whereabouts; the clue that ultimately led me to finding her. If he hadn’t been in trouble, I wouldn’t have gone back to San Diego and I might not have gotten the picture of Elizabeth that had set everything in motion.
His six foot four frame was stretched out against the side of his black pick-up truck. He’d lost some weight after spending time in the hospital so he looked thinner than I was used to seeing him. His hair was buzzed short and he had on a gray T-shirt, corduroy shorts and flip-flops.
Elizabeth immediately went on guard and moved closer to me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s a friend.”
She nodded but stayed at my side.
“Lauren said you guys were probably on your way back,” he said, smiling. “I was about to get in the truck and saw you coming down the street.”
We shook hands and he smiled at Elizabeth. “It is terrific to see you, kid.”
She nodded timidly, then looked at me. “I’m going inside.”
She didn’t wait for an answer and headed up the drive to the front door.
I looked at Chuck. “She’s still adjusting.”
He nodded. “Rightfully so. But it is good to see her.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” he said.
“Same here. You look pretty good.”
“Better than in the hospital bed you mean?” he asked, grinning. “Yeah, I’m better. I’m good.”
“How’s Gina?” I asked.
“We’re good.”
Gina helped me figure out how and why Chuck had been wrongly accused. They’d been together years ago, back in high school, and had broken up and then reconnected. She’d been instrumental in helping me clear him.
“That’s good,” I said.
“How are things here?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the house.
I shrugged. “Just trying to settle in.”
“You and Lauren back together?”
I took a deep breath. “I honestly have no idea.”
He nodded, like he’d expected that answer. “Fair enough. Can’t be easy.”
“It’s not. But we’ll figure it out.”
We stood there awkwardly for a moment. It was weird. He’d been my best friend for years and now I wasn’t sure how to make conversation with him.
“I wanna help,” Chuck said.
“With?”
“With whatever you’re planning.”
I tilted my head, confused. “What?”
He chuckled, leaned back against the truck. “How long have we been friends?”
“I dunno. Since high school.”
“Right. So you think I don’t know what’s going through your head right now?” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at me. “No way you’re content just to have Elizabeth back without knowing what happened to her.”