The last part of his plea was a bit of an understatement. In fact, her salary and sizable bonuses and soon-to-be-cashed-in stock options had fueled their lifestyle for years. In any event, David hadn’t wanted a baby. At least as far as Carole could tell, just not then. He’d wanted to pursue his dream unencumbered by the responsibilities of fatherhood, and she’d gone along with it.
Before the moment that sent her searching the river frontage and every room in the house for her son, Carole thought that her greatest irrevocable mistake had been the abortion. She’d done it willingly. She couldn’t completely pin her decision on David. He hadn’t forced her, even though it felt that way sometimes. She’d agreed to it because she hadn’t really wanted to press the pause button on her own career. Not then. She had moved up to director, and the power and money that came with that was undeniably intoxicating. A drug that she couldn’t shake in any kind of rehab. She’d been sucked into a lifestyle that she loved but also knew precluded whatever personal dreams she’d had before joining Google. She loved her job, but she couldn’t see a way just then to be both a mother and a rising executive.
Carole let herself believe that she’d terminated the pregnancy at David’s insistence. It was, she came to know, a little lie she told herself. She cried a thousand tears after the procedure. She could still picture everything about that morning. The silent drive with David’s hand on her knee. A young mother pushing a stroller across the crosswalk as they made the turn to the clinic. A dead bird on the road. The brochure rack in the lobby. An old disco song playing in the waiting room, as though there could be some reason why anyone would ever dance there.
It all came rushing back to her as she searched for her son.
The sound of the technician as she did her work under the shroud of a sheet.
The icy feel of the metal stirrups on her heels and against her calves.
Carole didn’t know if it had been a son or a daughter she’d aborted, but she secretly named the baby’s spirit anyway. She mourned Katherine and wondered what might have happened had she said no to David.
She was sure she had more time for a baby. But when it became time to have one, she didn’t become pregnant. A deep chill went through her. It was payback for her selfishness, for choosing ambition over Katherine. For more than a year, she tried to get pregnant—and nothing. At thirty-nine, she started looking up in vitro fertilization clinics on the Internet—something she’d sworn she’d never do.
But then it happened. It was nearly five years after the abortion when Charlie was born.
When David didn’t answer his cell right away, Carole dialed the restaurant’s main number.
Amanda Jenkins answered on the second ring.
“Where’s David?” Carole asked, her voice sharp and charged with adrenaline.
“Hi, Carole,” Amanda said. “He’s out of the office right now.”
“Where?” Carole asked, her voice rising to nearly a scream. “Where is he?”
“Are you all right, Carole?” The young woman had weathered more than one storm of David Franklin’s making over the past couple of years at Sweetwater. She’d juggled staff and customers whenever David asked her to do so. Even when it made no sense. She was good at her job because she was unflappable and loyal. “Take a breath,” she said to her boss’s wife.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t breathe. Charlie’s missing. I need David.”
“Slow down,” Amanda said. “What happened?”
Carole started to spin. She was sure she was going to pass out. She’d fainted once before, when she hadn’t bothered to eat in the morning. Low blood sugar. But this was a different kind of wooziness, one brought by fear instead of hunger.
“Amanda,” Carole said. “I need my husband.”
“He’s not here. Can I help? I’ll call the police.”
“No,” Carole said, feeling a wave of nausea in the back of her constricted throat. “No. No. I’ll do that.” In truth, she admitted to herself, she didn’t want to call the police just then. Doing so would elevate what might be, must be, a careless mistake into something much more devastating than she could handle at the moment.
She hung up and made her way to the basement.
“Charlie!” she screamed, the words discharged from her vocal cords with a kind of power that she hadn’t, up to that second, known she possessed. “Charlie, where are you?”
Carole ran back up and through the main level, then the upstairs. Pulling off the sofa cushions. Looking into the shower stall. The pantry. Under the stairs. Her studio. She scoured every inch as rapidly as she could. She threw herself to the floor next to each bed, looking under the bed frame and pulling herself upright to move as fast as she could to the next room.
The police emergency number was only three digits. She couldn’t bring herself to dial them. Not yet. Not to make it real. Not to make it bigger than it was.
She ran over to the Jarretts’ little bungalow next door and pounded her fists against the bright pink front door. Her fingertips found her bloody earlobe and she brushed off the blood with the shoulder of her blouse. Owen and Liz were gone. Of course they were. Liz had her exam that day—the essay section of the Oregon bar—and Owen had been going to the office early to prepare for an infusion of venture capital money and then an IPO of his software firm.
She returned to the house and went through it a third time. Nothing. No trace of her son. Charlie was gone.
This was real.
It was her fault.
Finally, Carole slumped on the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed and dialed 911.
“My little boy is missing,” she said, giving the dispatcher her address. She fought for composure with every syllable as she scanned the surface of the Deschutes.
“Please come as fast as you can,” she said, holding the phone with a vise grip. “He’s three. I think my little boy fell into the river.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MISSING: ONE HOUR
Bend Police detective Esther Nguyen was on her third cup of truly terrible office coffee and working through the least favorite part of her job—paperwork—when one of the department’s newest officers, Jake Alioto, notified her that help was needed on a call.
“Boy missing,” he said. “Mom’s pretty torn up.”
Esther set her cup on a stack of papers. “How long?”
Jake was young, with light brown skin that made his white teeth nearly blindingly so. Esther had a hard time not looking at his mouth when he spoke. So white. Perfect. A somewhat struggling goatee accentuated his look.
“Not very,” he said. “An hour at most.”
“Custody issue?”
He didn’t think so. “Dad’s at work. Mom’s home.”
“Where?”
“Riverfront, near the pedestrian bridge by the park.”