The week before it happened was a difficult one in our house. School was about to end for the summer. Some of Leslie’s older friends were planning a weeklong car trip up the coast to San Francisco, and she wanted to go with them. Neither Lance nor I thought allowing a sixteen-year-old to go off with high school seniors was a good idea. It was a recipe for disaster. Even though we knew the kids were good kids, they were still kids, and we weren’t too old to have forgotten fake IDs and the ready accessibility of pot and other recreational chemicals. The potential for disaster was too high.
Leslie took our decision badly. She cried and pouted and threw a tantrum. She sang the age-old teenager’s song of angst: We didn’t trust her, we treated her like a child, her friends’ parents were so much cooler than we were. Lance and I stood our ground. But it was harder for my husband.
Lance and Leslie were too alike. She shared her father’s sense of adventure. She was the apple of his eye in part because of her stubborn, independent spirit. They had always been especially close, and it was difficult for him to deny her anything. Probably more to the point, he couldn’t take falling out of favor with her. Lance had always been the cool dad—a title that was important to him. His insecurity clashed hard with his role of authority.
So on the night before our daughter went missing, my husband was in a foul mood with a short fuse. We were supposed to go to dinner with friends.
We had known the Westins since Leslie was in kindergarten. Kent and Jeanie and their kids, Sam and Kelly. Sam was the same age as Leslie. Kelly was Leah’s best friend. Kent had been our girls’ pediatrician. He and Lance and a couple of other guys spent a week deep-sea fishing every summer.
This was to be our annual birthday celebration for both Leslie and Kelly. Leslie didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay home and pout and talk to her girlfriends on the phone, complaining about what horrible, cruel parents she had. Lance and I insisted she go. The dinner was partly in her honor, and it was a tradition between our families. She would go and she would be civil.
The skirmishes between Leslie and her father began as we were getting ready to leave, and continued in the car. A sharp word here, a snotty tone there. Leslie thought the tradition was stupid. She had outgrown it. She didn’t like the Westins. She thought Dr. Westin was creepy. Sam Westin was a dork.
In the backseat, Leah, our rule follower, took her father’s side, and Leslie snapped at her, making tears well up in Leah’s eyes. We should have aborted the plan, turned around, and gone home, but we were in too deep by then.
The mood at dinner was tense and awkward. Having a sulky teenager present was like being set upon by a poltergeist. No one knew quite what to do. Engage Leslie in conversation and try to turn her mood around? Difficult to do when her answers were all monosyllables followed by huffy sighs and eye rolling. Ignore her? That was like trying to ignore the gorilla in the room.
And all through the evening the sniping between Leslie and Lance continued. I could see my husband’s temper growing shorter and shorter, and Leslie’s belligerence getting sharper and sharper.
One sarcastic remark too many, and that was it.
Lance blew up like Krakatoa, and his daughter did the same. We were asked to leave the restaurant.
Leah was in tears. The Westins were embarrassed. Kent had a few sharp words for Leslie. We were humiliated. A vein bulged out in my husband’s neck, and I was afraid he might have a stroke. His blood pressure ran high in ordinary circumstances. His face and neck were bright red.
When we got home Lance went into Leslie’s room and ripped the phone cord out of the jack. He took the phone, shouting at her as he left the room that she was absolutely grounded for the next month.
I went to Leah’s room and reassured her that things would be better tomorrow. I let Leslie stew.
The next day Leslie snuck out of the house to go to a softball game.
She never came home.
The tears came in a burning torrent, as they always did. Lauren buried her face in her hands and tried not to make any noise.
It was one forty-five in the morning. Leah was asleep in her room down the hall.
The pain never lessened. Never. Every time the wound opened anew, it was just as hot and raw as when it had first happened.
People always tried to tell her that the pain would lessen over time, that time healed all wounds. People who said those things had never been in pain, not this pain. This pain was like an alien living in her chest. Only, when it burst out of her, she didn’t die from it. She only wished she could.
She cried and cried and cried. She tried to choke the sobs back down her throat, swallowing and gasping like she was drowning. She didn’t want Leah to hear her. She was supposed to be the rock her younger daughter could rely on. What kind of mother could she be like this?
Despondent, she grabbed a handful of Kleenex and blew her nose. She grabbed the glass off the desk and drank the vodka like it was water.
The thing with alcohol was that the effects were not immediate enough.
She drank the whole glass of vodka and still felt the guilt, the despair, the fear for Leslie, the fear for Leah, and the fear for herself. She still felt like some giant hand had broken through her ribs and torn out her heart.
All she could do was wait for the numbness to come.
8
“You’re not supposed to go anywhere, Leslie,” Leah said. “Daddy grounded you. I heard him. The neighbors probably heard him. Everybody in town probably knows it by now.”
Leslie gave her a nasty look from the corner of her eye as she stood primping in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Daddy’s not here,” she said. “And Mom’s not here either. They won’t know.”
“I’m here,” Leah said. “I’ll know.”
Leslie rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be such a little Goody Two-shoes? I’m just going to a softball game. What’s the big deal?”
“You’re grounded,” Leah said, not understanding why Leslie didn’t think that was a big deal.
Leah had never been grounded in her life—nor did she ever plan on being grounded. Getting grounded meant you broke the rules, and if you broke the rules, Mom and Daddy would be disappointed in you. Leah couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing her parents.
Leslie heaved a sigh. “You’re such a child, Leah. It’s not the end of the world if you break a stupid rule. So what if Daddy’s pissed off? He’ll get over it.”
Leah frowned her disapproval, but tipped her head down so Leslie couldn’t see it. She didn’t like to disappoint her big sister either.
“You’re not telling, are you?” Leslie asked.
She assessed herself in the mirror. She had very carefully dressed in khaki shorts and penny loafers with a lightweight, off-the-shoulder, oversized black sweater over a hot-pink tank top. She had smoothed her long dark hair into a ponytail with a pink scrunchie, and made sure her bangs were just so to frame her big blue eyes.