He blew off some air.
“Did you actually see her get on the plane?”
He blew again.
“Scotty, answer me now, or so help me, I will reach through this telephone and rip off your face.”
“Calm down, Maggie.”
“I will not. You lost my daughter.”
“Everything has a rational explanation.”
“Give me one.”
“Well, we didn’t actually see Casey get on the plane. We had a very pressing appointment. So we dropped her at the airport an hour or so early.”
“At the curb or at the gate?”
“Maggie, this child has more flight time than most commercial pilots. She can get herself from the curb to the departure gate unassisted. She only had carryon.”
“But she didn’t make it,” I shouted.
Mike came running out of the bathroom at that point. “Maggie, what?”
“Casey is missing,” I gasped.
“Where?” He wanted more, but I still had the telephone to my ear.
Scotty demanded, “Who’s there with you?”
“The best sex I ever had.” I hissed it. “Where is our daughter?”
“I’ll check it out. I’ll call you.”
“Damn right you will.” I gave him Martha’s number and slammed down the receiver. I needed to scream some more. When I looked up at Mike, all that came out was: “She’s only fourteen.”
The telephone rang under my hand. I snatched it up. “Lyle?”
“There’s one sorry little teenager here,” he said. “Want to hear her last words on earth?”
“Lyle, have I ever told you I love you?”
“Too often. Here she is.”
“Mom?” Casey was really sweating. I could hear it.
“What happened?”
“The flight was overbooked.”
“But you had a reassigned seat. You’re an unescorted kid. They couldn’t bump you.”
“I volunteered. They gave me coupons for two free tickets if I took the later plane. Round-trip coupons. The next two times I go to Denver, it won’t cost anything.”
“Oh my God.” I fell back on the bed.
“I only had to wait two hours.”
“And during those two hours Lyle died a thousand deaths. Didn’t you call?”
“I left a message.”
“If Lyle was at the airport, how would he know you called him at home? Why didn’t you page him?”
“Mom.” She was crying. “I’ve already gone through this with Lyle, okay?”
“Not okay. Have you learned something here?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “I’m never going to Denver again.”
“Go home,” I said. “I’ll yell at you some more tomorrow. And Casey?”
“What?”
“After you drop down to your knees and kiss Lyle’s feet and beg his forgiveness?”
“What?”
“Call your father.”
“Bye,” she said, and then she was gone.
Mike was standing by the bed, naked except for a damp towel, face worried. “So?”
“She took a later flight.”
“So she’s all right?”
“She’s fine. The rest of us may die of apoplexy. But she’s fine. Just another example of independent thinking.”
“Gotta nip that in the bud.”
I shook my head. “Gotta get both of us cellular phones. Little hand jobs.”
“We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”
Mike turned off the lights and slipped into bed beside me. For the third night in a row. I was getting used to rolling up against him in the dark. Three nights in a row. Three different beds. I was still juiced with adrenaline. We lay quietly in the dark, parallel bumps under Martha’s sheets, letting our minds slow down. It was very companionable.
I reached out for his towel on the nightstand and used it to cool my face. “My God, Mike. It’s so easy to lose them.”
He shook his head. “No it isn’t. You raise them right, they know how to take care of themselves. Casey’s okay.”
“I was seeing her on the street, like Pisces.”
“Never happen.”
Mike coughed and I felt him turn onto his side to face me.
“Casey’s a good kid,” he said. “You just have to tell yourself that she’s at one of those ditty ages and roll with it. Give her a couple of years and she’ll be a normal human again. Like Michael. Now he’s seventeen, the worst is over. He can pretty well be trusted to take care of himself.”
“Michael left a message for you.” I was glad he couldn’t see my face in the dark, the smug grin. “He left his calculus book in your car and he needs it before school tomorrow.”
Mike laughed softly. “What I just said?”
“Yes?”
“Cancel it.”
Mike left before sunrise. He had to deliver Michael’s book, then go home and dress for work. His shift officially began at seven-thirty.
I remember kissing him goodbye, I think. The kiss may have been part of the dream I had about swimming with the Ramsdales, Randy and all of his women. Pisces was there, and so was Hillary, dressed in a stiff party frock. The water was red and full of fish. I was glad when I woke out of it and found myself in Martha’s bright, flowered guest room.
When I went downstairs – showered, hair brushed, teeth brushed, but wearing day-old clothes – Martha was in the living room chatting with a fresh team of Long Beach detectives. They were both very good-looking, sharp in suits and ties. I thought she was flirting again. I hated to interrupt her.
“Good morning,” I said, hovering near the door.
“Good morning, Maggie. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Are you hungry?”
“Not yet. I need to go tend to business, but I’ll check in on you before I leave town this afternoon.”
“Lovely, dear.” She dismissed me with a cheery wave and went back to her detectives.
It was another beautiful, clear morning, full of newly washed sidewalk smells. Wind whipped the empty sail lines of boats at anchor, snapping their metal lanyards against mast poles, making music like wind chimes. A very zen and soothing music. Filled with a longing to stay, I walked back to the yacht club where I had left Mike’s car. I wished for my running shoes.
I wiped heavy dew off the Blazer’s windshield and got in. First thing, I checked Sly’s bundle of stuff to make sure it was still intact – it was. Then I drove into Belmont Shore, following the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls. I had several bakeries to choose from, so I settled on the first one with an open parking space in front.
Fortified with rolls and coffee, I walked down the street to The Gap for a change of clothes. According to the sign on the door, I had ten minutes to wait until opening. I found a news rack and used the time to scan the local paper, the Press-Telegram.
There was a brief stop press on the front page about Randy and Hillary. Grisly murders, they were labeled. A cliche, but apt. The salient point the paper passed over was that even though both of them had their throats slashed, there was perhaps a two-month space between them. And not a word about Elizabeth Ramsdale.
When The Gap opened I went in and found a shirt on the sale rack, a loose-fitting thing with green-and-red parrots all over it. Casey would like it. I changed in the fitting room, paid, and was back in Mike’s car before my half-hour investment in the meter had expired.
As I drove along the waterfront toward downtown, I began to think that I had a handle on how Hillary had been misplaced.
Nothing I had learned came even close to explaining how she had ended up on the street, but it was clear enough that long before reaching that point, she had dropped into the crack between what she needed and what the adults around her wanted. A big crack.
She had a wicked stepmother. So what? A lot of kids do. My Casey says she does. Very few stepchildren end up trolling for tricks.
As I put the sequence together, after Randy supposedly went abroad, Hillary had been at home, alone, with Elizabeth from around Valentine’s Day until perhaps St. Patrick’s Day. About a month.
I tried to imagine what would happen to Casey if she were stuck with Linda for a month or so. I felt an old rage begin to bubble up from its hiding place. Linda – and Scotty – had lost Casey after only two days. And not for the first time. A year or so earlier, Casey had been so upset by the situation at her father’s house that she had put herself on a plane and come home. I figured that this back-and-forth-to-Denver routine now had two strikes against it. Strike three and we were headed to the judge for an amended custody agreement.