I looked at her, really looked at her. I took her gently by the arms and pulled her closer. She dropped her gaze.
“Look at me,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, she lifted her head. Her eyes were still puffy, her nose bright red, her complexion mottled from the flurry of tears. But she had never looked more beautiful, at least not to me. Because I was holding her. My daughter.
“Stop apologizing,” I said. “You did nothing wrong. Do not say I’m sorry again to me or to anyone else. You did nothing wrong.”
“But it feels like…”
“I don’t care what it feels like. You did nothing wrong, Elizabeth. Nothing. Do not apologize.” I shook her gently, trying to make her understand. “Someone took you against your will. You did what you had to do to protect yourself and that was block out the bad stuff.” I locked my eyes with hers. “You have nothing to apologize for. Do you understand me?”
She stared at me, her eyes still cloudy with tears.
“Do you understand me?” I asked again.
She blinked several times, then nodded her head and whispered, “Yeah.”
I knew it was going to take more than a speech from me to make her understand that, but I hoped that it would at least convince her that I didn’t hold her responsible for anything that had happened to her. I knew I couldn’t fix things for her. I didn’t have the words or the skills to help her through the emotional trauma that she needed to address. She’d have to work that out with a counselor, but I wanted her to at least hear the words come out of my mouth. She had nothing to apologize for.
I took my daughter by the hand and her fingers closed around mine and we crossed the street to our home.
NINE
Elizabeth spent the rest of the afternoon upstairs. I asked her if she wanted to get in the car and driver over to Lauren’s office, but she said she didn’t feel like going out. I didn’t try to talk her down or try to make small conversation. I figured after the afternoon we’d had, if she really wanted to come and talk or wanted company, she’d do that. She didn’t and I was fine letting her be up in her room. At least I knew where she was.
I spent the day reading through and answering the emails I’d been avoiding. As predicted, there were several seeking my help. I set them aside without answering, unsure of what I was going to do. I didn’t see myself leaving Elizabeth or Lauren anytime soon, but I didn’t want to shut the door, either. I wasn’t sure any longer what I was qualified to do. The only thing I’d done for a decade was locate missing people. At some point, I was going to have to start my life again and that would mean going to work. I didn’t know what else I’d do, but I also didn’t know if I’d be any good at looking anymore. My motivation was back in her bedroom.
I worked my way through the emails and when I was about to close up, another popped up with “Congratulations” in the subject line. The email address wasn’t one I recognized, a Yahoo exchange from J. Smith. I clicked on it.
“Congratulations. You found her. Hope you don’t lose her again. Be careful.”
I read it at least six times, my heart beating faster with each reading. There was no signature and I knew the email address it had been sent from was phony, probably masked several times over so it couldn’t be traced back to the sender.
I touched the screen and ran my finger over the words. Probably someone messing with me. Someone who’d never met me, who’d read that she was home and decided to mess with me. It happened. Families with missing kids were often tormented with bullshit emails and phone calls from people who were just looking to get under their skin, who got off on fucking with people. Someone had read that Elizabeth was found and decided to mess with me a little bit, probably some jackass in a basement with no life.
Probably.
I stared at it for another moment, then closed the computer. I didn’t delete the email. I thought about it, then decided against it. I wasn’t going to let it keep me up at night, but I wasn’t going to forget about it either.
Just in case it was something else.
Lauren came home from her office around six. She’d gone back to spending part of the day at work, as long as she knew I’d be with Elizabeth. I was pretty sure she wasn’t doing much more than clearing her schedule for the next few weeks so she could be at home, too, but she seemed to need the time out of the house.
She went up and sat with Elizabeth for awhile after she’d changed clothes and I could hear their voices, but wasn’t sure what they were saying. That was okay. Lauren needed her time with her, too, time that didn’t involve me.
While she was upstairs, I threw together a large salad, mixing together lettuce, turkey, tomatoes, blue cheese crumbles and croutons. I tossed it all in a big bowl with a blue cheese dressing and warmed up half a loaf of French bread. I was pulling it out of the oven when Lauren came downstairs.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Pretty good,” she said. “But not hungry. Said she’d come down for something later.”
“We can eat,” I said. “I made a salad to go with the bread.”
“I smelled the bread upstairs,” she said. “Probably why I came down.”
I set the bowl on the table and grabbed two plates out of the cabinet above the stove. I sliced the bread and set that on another plate. I put it and the butter on the table.
“You still know where everything is,” Lauren said.
“Didn’t think you reorganized the kitchen,” I said, grabbing forks and knives for each of us, then finally sitting down across from her.
“I got in the habit of eating out,” she said. She looked at the salad but didn’t put any on her plate. “You were always the cook.”
I nodded. “I’ve had enough fast food to last me a lifetime, living out of hotels.”
She grabbed a piece of the bread, buttered it and tore half it off and put it in her mouth. “I did miss these meals.”
“Are you having salad?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?” We might have been separated for almost a decade, but I knew my ex-wife. And she loved salad.
Lauren made a face. “The turkey. I just…I can’t eat it right now.”
The pregnancy.
“Shit. Sorry. You want me to throw something else together?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Not super hungry anyway.”
I scooped a large helping of salad on my plate. “She tell you about our afternoon?”
“Just that you went to lunch. More to it than that?”
I told her about seeing Mike and then our conversation on the way home as we ate. She listened but didn’t say anything, tearing off hunks of bread as I talked.
“She didn’t say anything,” she said when I’d finished. “She was in a decent mood.”
“Good,” I said. “I figured she just needed some time alone.”
Lauren nodded. “Yeah, probably.”
I watched her eat another slice of bread. She picked a tomato from the salad bowl and popped it into her mouth.
She finally realized I was watching her. “What?”
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Lauren. What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You didn’t interrupt me once while I told you about this afternoon,” I said. “And you’re fine letting her stay up in her room, with no additional commentary. The last time you were this quiet was never. So what’s wrong?”
She made a grunting sound and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was right or because she thought I was full of crap. She pushed the plate away and glanced up at the stairs, then back at me. “I was working through my calendar today. At work.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got a case that doesn’t look like it will settle,” she said. “We hoped it was going to and there’s still time, but we have to get it calendared. So we were working with the opposing council to clear some dates. We’ve still got discovery to get through and some other crap that needs to get done, so it’s not an immediate thing.”
“Okay,” I said, still not understanding.
“The date the opposing council is pushing for is about nine months away,” she said, crumpling up her paper napkin and throwing it on the plate. “And it got me thinking.”