But as I stared at the house, I was angry. Angry that my daughter had lived there without me. Angry that someone else had gotten to see her grow up and take care of her. Whoever was in that house, they’d gotten all of the things that I’d been robbed of. They had taken things away from me that I couldn’t get back.
“You have that look,” Lauren said.
“What look?” I said, my eyes still on the house.
“The one that broke our marriage,” she said. “The one that told me that finding Elizabeth was more important to you than anything else. The one that scared me sometimes.”
I didn’t say anything, just opened the car door and stepped out into the street. Lauren got out on her side. We crossed the street and shuffled up the driveway, the snow trying to find its ways inside my shoes. I navigated the snow-covered steps up to the front door and stuck my finger on the doorbell. I felt Lauren’s hand on my elbow. I took a deep breath that did nothing to calm my nerves and waited.
Footsteps echoed behind the door and a young girl, probably six or so, opened the door. Blond ponytail, big brown eyes, wearing a long sleeve T-shirt and sweatpants.
“Are your parents home?” I said, loud enough so she could hear me through the screen door.
She hesitated, then closed the door. Footsteps echoed away from the door and were soon replaced by heavier footsteps. The door opened again.
An older version of the young girl appeared. Around my age, sporting a longer blond ponytail and the same brown eyes. But hers were red-rimmed, framed by dark circles. Slender, she wore faded jeans and a plain gray thermal.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Are you Valerie Corzine?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. What can I do for you?”
“You have a daughter? Ellie?”
Her shoulders stiffened and the lines in her face drew tighter. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Joe Tyler. You have a daughter named Ellie?”
If my name meant anything to her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she stepped closer to the door. “Yes. Ellie is my daughter. Is she with you?” Her eyes scanned the street behind us.
“No. She is not.”
“What do you know?” she asked, the tension moving to near panic. “Have you spoken to her? Do you know where she is? Who are you?”
A different kind of dread was filling me now. Lauren’s hand tightened on my elbow. Her questions weren’t what I’d hoped to hear.
“We’re her parents,” I said.
She stared at me, her mouth setting in an angry line. “Excuse me?”
“Elizabeth Tyler,” I said, my hands beginning to shake again. “The girl you call Ellie? Her name’s Elizabeth. She was taken from us. I’m her father. This is her mother. And we’re here to take her back.”
“Taken from you?” she asked, squinting at me. “What the hell is this?”
“Where is she?” I said, my voice rising, my patience ebbing away.
“What do you mean she was taken from you…”
I slammed my hand against the plexiglass pane in the door and it banged against the frame. “Where is she?”
The woman jumped back and the little girl hidden behind her legs took off running.
“She’s my daughter!” I screamed. “Not yours! And so help me God, if you’re the one that took her, I am going to end your life! Where is she?”
The woman stepped away from the door, her eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth.
“Joe,” Lauren whispered, her other hand touching my waist now. “Easy.”
Another person approached the door. A man, about her age, wearing jeans and a University of Minnesota sweatshirt. About my size, slightly built. He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, looked from me to her and gently moved her back so he was between us.
“I’m not sure what the hell is going on here, but you need to leave,” he said.
“Where’s my daughter?” I asked.
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave.”
The woman said something behind him and he glanced back at her quickly, not wanting to take his eyes off me.
I shrugged Lauren off my arm and pulled out my cell phone. “Tell you what. I’ll do it for you. Because I’m not going anywhere until I see her. And while I’m at it, I’m also going to call the F.B.I. because they’ve been involved in looking for her, too, so they are all going to want to talk with you. And when I get off the phone, I’m coming through this door to find my daughter. They can sort through the fucking wreckage when they get here.”
The man stepped forward, closer to the door. “Wait, wait. Ellie is your daughter?”
I gritted my teeth. “Her name is Elizabeth.”
The woman spoke again. He turned around annoyed, said something to her that sounded like he wanted her to be quiet.
He turned back to me. “Have you seen her?”
“I just saw her in a yearbook photo. She’s my daughter.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Have you seen her recently?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He ran a hand through his hair and unlocked the screen door. “Ellie ran away three days ago.”
FORTY-THREE
Alex and Valerie Corzine sat on their sofa, nervous, anxious, and not very happy. Lauren and I sat across from them on an old, floral-patterned loveseat. The little girl had been dismissed to her room.
Alex looked at his wife nervously one more time, then at me. “You’re her father?”
“I am. This is her mother.”
“I need some assurances from you.”
Anger flashed in my gut. “Right now, I’m not assuring you of anything.”
“You get angry about anything I’m about to tell you, we can go outside and you can take it out on me,” he said. “But not on my wife, and not in front of our other daughter.”
“Elizabeth isn’t your daughter.”
Lauren rested her hand on my knee.
He licked his lips, took a deep breath. “Take it out on me. Not on Val and not in front of Teresa.”
I looked at Valerie. Her hands were in her lap, clasped so tightly together that her knuckles were the color of enamel.
I looked back to Alex. “Alright. On you. Not your wife. Not in front of your daughter.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “We adopted Ellie eight years ago. Through very private channels.”
“Illegally,” Lauren said.
He nodded. “Yes. At the time, we thought we were unable to have children. We were years away on the public adoption lists. No guarantees of anything ever. So we explored other options.”
I pictured Elizabeth standing in the front yard with the Christmas lights. Like it was the day before and a hundred years before, all at the same time.
“We found a woman on the Internet, offering private adoptions,” he continued. “For…a large sum. At first, it seemed out of reach. But we were desperate.” He glanced at his wife and she nodded, staring at her hands. “So, we agreed to meet with her.”
“Where did you meet?” I asked, glancing around the room, looking for pictures of Elizabeth. But there was only generic art on the walls.
“Phoenix,” Alex said. “We flew in on a Sunday afternoon, met with her that night. She told us that a girl was available. Orphaned. Parents died in a home explosion. Only child. About seven years old.”
I was chewing on the inside of my cheek, my teeth grinding into my flesh as I listened. Lauren’s fingernails dug into my leg.
“We asked for more info and she said that was all she could tell us and that was all we could discuss with her,” Alex said. “There was no extended family and she’d be turned over to DCFS within forty-eight hours if we didn’t want her.”
Lauren cleared her throat. “This woman say where she was coming from?”
“No. We asked and she wouldn’t tell us. We had to decide that night and let her know the next morning.”
“So, you said yes,” I said.
Alex let out a long breath. “We went back to our hotel and Val and I talked about it. The cost was our entire life savings and then some. We pulled money from retirement funds and borrowed against our home.”