I shut my eyes, trying to think of some way out of this mess. Some brilliant escape. Yet the moment I closed my eyes, there it was: a long silvery ribbon stretching in front of me in the darkness—The Stardust Pier—and that terrible weekend in Atlantic Beach came back to me in a rush.
* * *
That weekend had started out so beautifully, warm and sunny for early April. We’d rented an oceanfront cottage, perfect for the three of us. The water was cold after one of North Carolina’s rare hard winters, but we played on the beach and took long walks and did what Michael and I loved to do best—hang out with Carolyn. There was a fireplace in the cottage and we built a fire that Friday night and played games, and Carolyn was blissful, having the total attention of both her parents for a change instead of sharing Michael with his computer and me with some household project. Michael and I made love that Friday night. I’d gone off the Pill several weeks earlier, so we were excited and hopeful and ready to alter our lives again.
That Saturday night, we decided to walk out on the pier. We passed through the tackle shop where we paid for our tickets, and as soon as we stepped out onto the long, broad pier, I felt nervous. A sign warned of all sorts of dangers and I wanted to take the time to read it, but Michael kept walking. The night was black, but the pier was well-lit and crowded with men and women fishing. I’d been on fishing piers before, of course. I’d even been on the Stardust Pier before, but never at night. It was a different world. These were serious fishermen, with specially outfitted carts for their poles and buckets and bait. They stood shoulder to shoulder against the railing, their lines in the water, some of them manning half a dozen poles at a time. Carolyn was enthralled. She wanted to run ahead of us to peek into every bucket and watch people reel in fish that glittered in the overhead lights. The hooks were what worried me. I had visions of one of the fishermen casting his line over his shoulder, the hook catching my daughter’s ear or eye. I wasn’t usually that paranoid, but that image just wouldn’t leave my head and I kept calling Carolyn back to us to make her hold my hand.
“She’s okay,” Michael said to me. “She’s having a blast. Just let her go.” To Carolyn he said, “Don’t run too far ahead, and don’t get in anyone’s way.” He thought that was enough direction for a three-year-old.
“It’s the hooks,” I said with a shudder.
“She’s okay,” he said again. “You’re so overprotective sometimes, Erin.”
The pier stretched far out into the sea, high above the water, and we continued strolling its length. I’d always liked piers. I liked the way you’d seem to be out in the middle of the ocean where it was deep and mysterious and yet you’d still feel the solid planking beneath your feet. This night, though, I didn’t have that sense of wonder or ease.
I remembered seeing her just a few yards ahead of us where she stood next to a bucket filled with someone’s catch. She was bent over, peering into the bucket, her hands clasped behind her back.
“Mommy, look!” she cried. “There’s seven in this one!”
We joined her around the bucket and marveled at the fish, and then she ran on ahead again.
“Carolyn!” I called. “Stay closer to us.”
“She’s fine,” Michael said. “I like seeing her like this. She’s adventurous. Sometimes you hold her back.”
“When do I ever hold her back?” I asked, wounded. I was a good mom. I didn’t hover.
“Well, like on the beach today when she wanted to poke at that jellyfish.”
“It was probably poisonous.”
“She was using a stick and it was dead.”
Maybe I had overreacted. I’d shouted at her to get away from the huge gelatinous blob. I’d shouted so loud that she’d jumped and then looked at the jellyfish like it was a monster that might get her in her sleep. “Well, I don’t usually do that,” I said.
He put his arm around me. “No, you don’t,” he admitted, “and that thing was pretty gross.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze. “You’re a wonderful mother,” he said, “and I love you.”
I slipped my hand into the back pocket of his jeans. “I love you, too,” I said.
I could see the end of the pier ahead of us. Six or eight men and women were lined up along the railing, very little space between them. Carolyn walked toward them quickly, though she wasn’t running. Not exactly. Through the slats of the railing a distance ahead of us, I could see the black water that stretched into infinity and I had a flash of apprehension. Just a flash. I pictured Carolyn slipping between two of the broad slats and out into the abyss. I nearly called to her, but I didn’t want to hear Michael say one more time, She’s okay, so I bit my tongue.
Then she was gone. It happened so fast that I didn’t even see it. I couldn’t even tell the police exactly what happened. Somehow, she slipped between the floor of the pier and a broken slat in the railing and simply disappeared. If she screamed or made a splash when she hit the water, I didn’t hear it, but shouts went up from the men and women lining the pier. The second I realized what had happened, I climbed over the railing in a flash of insanity, leaping into the air, not thinking of anything other than getting to my baby.
I seemed to fall forever before the water hit me like a solid wall of ice. I went down, the breath ripped from my body. My eyes were open and my hands pawed frantically through the black water for the child I knew was there but couldn’t see.
The next hour or so was a blur. Someone pulled me screaming and clawing into a tiny boat. I would never forget how it felt to have so many arms holding me down in the rocking and rolling boat, keeping me from diving into the water again to find my daughter. I shoved my fingers into my rescuers’ eyes and scratched at their cheeks to let me go, but they imprisoned me in their arms and blankets, shouting words in my ears I couldn’t decipher.
And where was Michael during all of this? Still on the pier, running back toward the entrance. Running away from Carolyn and me instead of toward us. How could he not jump in? Maybe it had been stupid, leaping into that cold water. It had certainly been useless. But I couldn’t get past it—the fact that he ran away from us instead of toward us. He was running for the beach, he told me later. He thought he could somehow get to us more easily and safely that way. The police told me he wasn’t thinking any more clearly than I was and that, since he was not a strong swimmer, he’d done the right thing. Still, maybe if he had jumped in, too. Maybe if we’d had four arms in that black water, we could have found her in time.
I didn’t blame him right away. I didn’t even question him until weeks later, because I didn’t care about anything other than the fact that Carolyn was gone. I understood then what you always know intuitively about parents who have lost a child: that the fact of that child’s death is impossible to believe, that the hole in their lives is bottomless, that the future’s been stolen from them, and that they believe in the craziest parts of their beings that there must be some way to get their son or daughter back. I always understood all that intellectually. Finally, though, I understood it in my gut, and the experience was completely different and painful beyond endurance.
“I want my daddy,” Bella whimpered.
My eyes flew open and I was suddenly back in the darkness of Roy’s car, groggy and disoriented. I wrapped both my arms around Bella. “I know, honey,” I said.
“I want him now.”
“Shut her up,” Roy said from the front seat. “She’s disturbing my nap.”
I should try to distract her, I thought, but I couldn’t tear my mind away from the pier. Away from Carolyn. Away from my husband. After the accident, Michael threw himself into a one-man crusade to have more slats added to the railing, and I remembered his fight with an ache in my heart. He’d lost that battle because the railings were found to be safe. One of the slats had been broken just that day by a runaway cart and no one had reported it. By some horrible freakish chance, that was where Carolyn ran to the railing. That was the place that swallowed her whole.
Ro
y’s phone rang and he answered it with a couple of words I couldn’t hear. Then he got out of the car and pushed the seatback forward. “Come on,” he said. “Get out.”
I grabbed my purse, slipping the strap over my shoulder, and Bella and I got out of the car. My legs were stiff and I felt so dizzy, I needed to lean against the car for a moment. Bella was still hanging on to her purse and lamb. It was quiet, the only sound the water lapping against the bank and the pilings of the dock. Bella tugged on my hand. “Is Daddy here?” she asked.
I bent over. “He might be coming, honey,” I said. “I’m not sure.” I didn’t know whether to hope Travis was coming or not. I had trouble imagining that Roy would simply let Travis, Bella and me walk away with all we knew about him and Savannah. And what if Travis showed up empty-handed? I didn’t want to think about it, but even worse, I didn’t want to think about walking out on that dock. If not for Bella, I would have taken my chances and run through the darkness back toward the street. With Bella, though, I’d never make it.
“I can’t walk out there,” I said to Roy, pointing toward the long moonlit dock. “You’ll just have to let us stay here.”
“Oh, I will, will I?” He gave a sour laugh. “It’s not an either/or sort of thing,” he said. “You’re going out there, so get going.”
“Can’t Savannah bring the boat up closer to the—”
“Too shallow.”
I stood my ground. “It’s like a…a phobia, with me,” I said. “Please.”
“So, this will either cure you or kill you.” He was behind me and I felt something hard against my back. His gun? I didn’t know and I didn’t turn around to find out. I started walking toward the dock, Bella’s hand in mine, but when I stepped on the first plank I stopped and lifted her into my arms. It would be too easy to lose her here. Too easy for her hand to slip through my sweaty fingers.
“Keep going,” Roy said.
I took a few more steps onto the boards. They were firm and unyielding, but the long dock was incredibly narrow and there were no railings at all. Not even a piling to hold on to. My heartbeat accelerated and I stopped walking. “I can’t do it,” I said.
“Bitch!” he said, and before I knew what was happening, he tore Bella from my arms. She let out a yelp and her lamb went flying over the side of the dock and into the dark water.
“Lambie, Lambie!” she cried, reaching toward the darkness where it had disappeared. Roy was carrying her like a football under one arm as he walked, and he smacked his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.
“I’ll do it!” I shouted. “Put her down!”
He swung around. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Your voice echoes out here.” He set Bella on her feet and she ran back to me, grabbing me around the legs.
“You’re okay.” I lifted her up again. “Hold on tight,” I said. “We’re going to walk all the way to the end.”
I sang “Wheels on the Bus” as we walked, more to calm myself than Bella. It was a breathy, gasping rendition, but I kept singing until we’d reached the very end of the dock. I sat down on the boards, trembling all over, and held Bella on my lap so tightly she said she couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care. She was safe. For now, at least.
44
Robin
I’d always thought of Travis as strong, both physically and emotionally, but tonight I’d seen how vulnerable he really was and it was all because of his daughter. Our daughter. He would kill for her. I had no doubt of that. My fear was that he might get himself killed for her. I wanted them both to survive this night. I wanted to have a future with them. I didn’t know what form that future would take and as he headed out the door at eleven-thirty that night, I didn’t care. I just wanted him to live. I knew what I’d be throwing away: money and security, along with hypocrisy and the stress of trying to be someone I wasn’t.
We’d had to drive all over two counties to get cases of the right brand of baby formula. We’d hit every Wal-Mart and Costco and Kmart. Some places had limits on the amount we could get. Some places just had the cans loose on the shelves rather than in cases. Travis was dogged, though. We both were. Even so, his van was two shy of the total he needed and I knew he was nervous about that. It would have to do. “Maybe they’ll forget how many we had,” he said. “They were aiming for fifteen, but I drove off long before we got that many, so maybe they just don’t know.” By the time we got back to the B and B, he was pale and jittery. I made him bacon and eggs he didn’t touch.
“We should call the police,” I said, for about the third time. “I know he said not to, but this is too dangerous. Please let them handle this.”
“He’ll hurt her,” Travis said. “He’s a psychopath, Robin. He’ll hurt her and I’ll end up in jail.”
But as the evening wore on and we shifted between talking about Bella—I couldn’t hear enough about her—and a scared sort of silence, I kept thinking about the police. That was my worldview: you were in trouble, you called the cops to help you out.
I was afraid Dale might stop over, so I called him at eight and told him I was going to turn in early. I was so finished with Dale.
* * *
As Travis drove away, I felt terror creep into my bones. I watched his taillights disappear into the darkness. You’re going to lose him again, I thought to myself. You’re going to lose your daughter again.
I reached for the phone. Travis would be angry. I’d have to risk that.
Dale’s voice was muffled with sleep. “Wake up,” I said. “I need you right now. I need you to listen to me. Are you awake?”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“There’s a drug deal going on at one of the docks at the end of Lenoxville Road,” I said, “and I—”
“Are you having a dream? A drug—”
“I need your help,” I said. “You know everyone. People owe you favors. Call one of your friends in the police department and tell them to be very, very careful. There’s a little child involved.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. I pictured him waking up quickly now. Sitting up in his bed.
“One of the men has a gun,” I said. “He’s holding a little girl—and a woman—for ransom. You need to get someone over there.”
“How do you know this?”
“Later. I’ll tell you later. But call someone now, Dale. Right now. And Dale?”
“What?”
“The little girl,” I said. “She’s mine.”
45
Travis
I drove around the area a few times to get my bearings. The one thing I could tell for sure, even in the dark, was that folks out here had money. There were only about a dozen properties on a spit of land that jutted out into the water. Robin and I had looked up the address on a satellite map. Each property had a long dock that shot way out in the water like the spokes of a wheel. We pinpointed the dock I needed to find, but it had been much easier on a satellite image than from the street in the dark, even with a pretty good moon. The houses were set far back from the road and the yards were full of trees and shrubs, but my headlights finally picked up the house number on one of the mailboxes. I turned into the driveway, thinking about the cases of formula in the rear of my van. I put on the brakes halfway down the driveway. Damn. The X’s! I should have bought a marker and drawn a small X on the side of each case, the way the stolen cases had been marked. Too late now. Anyway, it was dark. Would Roy look at them that closely?
The house came into view, not a light in any of the windows. It was so massive it nearly blocked my view of the water. Roy’d said to drive around back, but the driveway ended at the garage. I drove onto the lawn and around the side of the house, and that’s when I saw Roy’s car parked near the water’s edge and couple of lights bobbing far out at the end of a long dock. Four people out there, one of them tiny, and once I spotted her, she was all I could see.
I didn’t like this setup one bit. Deserted area. Darkness. The four of them out on the end of that dock, one
of them with a gun. A gunshot would travel across the water out here, but was there anyone around to hear it? I was so wired, I felt like I’d been mainlining caffeine.
I parked my van next to Roy’s car, then started running up the dock to get to Bella.
“Stay where you are!” Roy called out. He was walking toward me, fast. Someone—Savannah, I guessed—was holding a flashlight and it was nearly blinding me, but I still saw the gun in Roy’s hand. It was pointing straight at me and I stopped running.
“Daddy!” Bella cried, but I couldn’t see her well with that light in my eyes. I held an arm over my face to try to block it out.
“Stay right here, Bella,” Erin said, then she called to me, “Travis, be careful! Do whatever he says.”
“I’m here, Bella!” I called to her. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Y’all shut up!” Roy said.
Savannah moved the flashlight a little and I could see Bella again. She stood in front of Erin, who had her hands locked on her shoulders. I caught a glimpse of the pink purse. I was so close to my daughter, but I’d never felt farther away from her.
“Let me get Bella,” I said to Roy. “I can put her in the van while—”
“We load the boat first,” Roy said.
I couldn’t see any boat but guessed it was hidden from my view by the end of the dock.
“Get one of the cases and bring it out here,” Roy said. He wasn’t going to let Erin and Bella go until he was sure I had the drugs. I was scared he wasn’t going to let them—let any of us—go at all.
“Let Erin and Bella come to me and I’ll—”
“Shut up,” he shouted. “Keep your voice—”
“Just do what he says, Travis,” Savannah called.
I wasn’t sure I had a choice. I walked to the van and lifted out one of the cases, then started back down the long dock. Roy was near the end of it now, standing with everyone else. It sickened me that he was so close to Bella. That he’d been this close to her all day.