“I was on the rocks!” she protested. “I’m not a’posed to go in the ocean without Mommy.”
I asked Drew to call the police and tell them she’d been found. “Drew, I don’t get it. We looked on the jetty. I ran up and down the beach, calling for her. Leah, did you hear Mommy calling you?” I asked.
She shook her head, still wary of me.
I realized that she didn’t have Uglydoll with her. “Leah, where’s Uglydoll?”
“In the car,” she said matter-of-factly.
The car? Why would Uglydoll be in the car? Unless. Unless. My heart sped up.
“Leah, were you in the car when Mommy was looking for you?”
“I was hiding! I was under the seat, and you couldn’t see me.”
She was there; she saw me search the car. I could have found her three hours ago. I had opened the car door and, in my panic, called her name, searched the seats with a cursory glance, and closed the door. To a child who loved to hide and had no idea how to read panic in a voice, she had probably been thrilled with her cleverness. I could envision her there, flattened under the seats with bated breath, waiting for me to come back and say, “Ah ha! I found you, Leah!” as I usually do when she hides. Then, she got bored and wandered down to the ocean. When? How? While we were in the house, before we called the police, was the only time that made sense. If I had looked out the window at any time while we were searching the house, I might have seen her.
My head pounded. Drew appeared out of nowhere, holding Uglydoll, retrieved from the car. Leah snatched her doll out of his hands and joined her sister on the couch for the rare treat of watching TV for an extra hour.
I poured another glass of wine and drank it down in two gulps.
“Can I do anything?” Drew asked, his hand on my back.
I looked at my watch—seven o’clock. “Yes. We need more wine. And pizza.”
Chapter 24
Drew stayed the night because we had split a bottle of wine, and he felt he shouldn’t drive home. He disappeared into the guest room without a backward glance, and I wondered if my jitters were caused by the adrenaline of the day or something else. My very own Johnny on the spot.
The next day, as he packed to leave, I stood in the doorway of his room. “Sure you can’t stay?” I was aiming for airy, but my words fell like lead weights to the floor between us. I self-consciously crossed my arms.
He half-smiled as he carefully folded yesterday’s shirt into his duffel bag. “Dinner plans.” He avoided eye contact, purposefully vague. My pride kept me from asking anything more.
Before he left, he awkwardly kissed my cheek, lingering a bit too long. His face felt stubbled and rough. I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around his neck, and for a moment, our breathing synced, and my heart picked up an uneven, staccato beat.
I stepped back, breaking the spell, and gave him a wide smile. “Call me, okay?”
He nodded and loped down the walk.
When I looked out the window five minutes later, the car was idling at the curb, but before I could open the front door, he pulled away.
Two days later, I packed up the car, loaded the girls in, and flipped on the DVD player to the Disney princess movie of their choice. An hour into the drive, I remembered the day Leah went missing, Drew had called to talk to me about something. I had been so caught up in Leah, I completely forgot to ask him about it. I picked up my cell phone and dialed his number.
“Hey!” I said when he picked up. “Remember a few days ago, when you called? You said you wanted to talk to me about something.”
“Um, yeah, I remember.” His voice was halting, evasive. In the background, I heard a voice. Female? I couldn’t tell.
“Is this a bad time? I can call back later. I just remembered it…”
“Let me call you back in five minutes, okay?”
I said, “Sure,” and we hung up. About fifteen minutes later, my phone rang again.
“Hi, sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine. You didn’t even have to call me back. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Remember how I had said I was seeing someone? She was here, but she had to leave.”
“Oh.” I didn’t have any response prepared. I tried to come up with conversation. What would I have said if Sarah talked about a man she was seeing? “Tell me about her. What’s her name?”
“Her name is Olivia. She’s a food critic.”
“Oh, that sounds fun!” I hoped I sounded enthusiastic. “How did you meet?”
“We met at a benefit. A mutual friend set us up. Like a blind date. It was so weird; I’d never been on a blind date before.”
“Well… what’s she like? You’ve been seeing her for a few months now, right?”