Erin
“Hello? Hello?” A woman answered the phone. “Mrs. Felker? My name is Erin Roberts.”
I heard an intake of breath at the other end of the line. Then she said, “The man from the FBI asked me if you could call. He explained everything yesterday afternoon.” She had a rich Southern Virginia accent, subtly different than what I’d grown up around in North Carolina. But there was something different about it. The same thing that was different about me. A part of her was missing. A part of her had died, and I could hear it in her voice.
I closed my eyes. A long silence stretched out between us. Finally she said, “What can I do for you, Mrs. Roberts?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know why I’d wanted to call her. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I whispered, “I just … I-I thought maybe we should talk. There’s a chance we’ll get our daughters back tomorrow. And … I don’t know, I guess…”
I trailed off. I had no idea what to say. But her response made me sit up straight.
“Mrs. Roberts, my Laura is dead.”
“What? I don’t understand. The police think she’s with—”
“I don’t care what the police think. They tell me she’s been selling herself all over the Internet, all over the country. That she’s been whoring. That’s not my daughter. Not anymore.”
I found myself standing up as I listened to her hateful words. “How can you say that?” I asked. “She was abducted. Both of our daughters were abducted.”
In a dead, sad tone, the woman said, “She’d be better dead. She should have died instead of allowing herself to be used as a harlot. Now she’ll burn in hell.”
I wanted to puke. Surely she didn’t mean this … was this woman mentally ill? Brainwashed? How could she say this about her child?
“How dare you?” I spoke in a savage tone. “How dare you judge her like that? Hell is where she’s been!”
I hung up the phone. I couldn’t bear to talk with that woman any more. Not even for a second.
I looked at the clock. I’d been pacing in my room for hours. It was eleven in the morning, and it would still be hours and hours before the police operation mounted.
I should sleep, I thought, but I couldn’t. Instead, I paced more.
Brenna
I bent over the sink in the hotel bathroom, halfway through doing my makeup. “Oh, God,” I said.
Nialla spoke, her words coming out too quickly. “You okay, baby? Something wrong?”
Rick gave her an annoyed look, then said to me, “The fuck is wrong with you?”
I shook my head. “Stomach hurts.”
He snorted. “Well, get all the shit out of your system now. Because you’re working tonight. You got a full lineup of appointments.”
Nialla said, “Do you ever get tired of acting like an asshole?”
Rick slapped her but not as hard as he could have. “Shut up. You’ve been gettin’ out of pocket lately. Don’t think I don’t notice. Don’t start thinking you’re anything more than a whore.”
She cringed back from him. He walked away, lighting a cigarette. “You bitches get ready.” He let the door slam behind him.
She gave the door a look of naked hate.
Cole
The approach into Portland on I-84, driving alongside the impossibly blue Columbia River, was beautiful. Driving with Sam beside me as she smiled and chattered and took a thousand selfies felt impossibly normal. The pines, swaying in the breeze, whisked past us as the miles disappeared behind us.
Then, almost without transition, we crossed a bridge into Portland. Before the bridge, there was little more than trees, but after, the scene shifted immediately to a suburb that could have been anywhere in America. Large developments, big box stores, chain gas stations. As soon as we crossed into the city, Sam tensed up. She started tapping her fingers on the doorframe, then pulled down the visor to look at herself in the mirror.
She started to fidget with her makeup—which she’d insisted on spending twenty minutes on before we could leave the hotel this morning. Powdering herself. Fixing her eyeshadow. The bruises were still visible on her face, but the swelling had gone away completely by now, and makeup covered the worst of it.
“Nervous?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
I smiled. “I would. But you know what? It’s going to be okay. Mom is going to see exactly the same thing I do.”
“What’s that?”
I took a deep breath. “She’s going to see you smile. That’s all it will take.” I got choked up before I could finish my statement.
Sam blushed. “Have I been smiling a lot?”
I looked almost skeptically at my son. Daughter. “Sam, you’ve smiled more in the past two days than you have in the last four years. It breaks my heart that you were so unhappy … because I’d do anything to make you and Brenna and your mom happy.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to look skeptical. “Even Mom?”
“Especially her,” I replied. “Whatever else happens … I want her back. I’ve loved her since the minute I laid eyes on her twenty years ago. We grew distant. I screwed up and betrayed her in the worst possible way. But I swear to God, I’m going to do everything I can to bring our family back together.”
Sam stared at me, her blue eyes watering. A tear ran down her cheek, and another. “I love you, Dad,” she whispered.
“I love you, Sam.”
We merged onto I-84 as traffic became heavier. Trees on both sides of the road, pines and firs and I didn’t know what all.
Sam took another selfie and started typing. She must be sending a Snapchat to Hayley.
There it was. Exit 19, Division Street and Powell Boulevard. “This is our exit,” I said.
Sam went silent. I felt anxious too. I’d thought about reuniting with Erin for days. Things had been awful between us. She’d been drinking, distant. We hadn’t slept in the same bed in weeks—truthfully, except a few times, in months.
Would she turn me away? I couldn’t blame her if she did. Our marriage had been on the rocks for four years, since well before Brenna’s disappearance, and that was mostly my fault.
As I turned on to Eighty-second Avenue, my phone announced, “In one thousand feet, you will reach your destination.”
I swallowed. We stopped at a red light and I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. And then something crazy happened.
“Dad?”
I looked over at Sam. “Yeah?”
“She loves you too, you know.”
“Who?”
“Mom. She’s always loved you. You can do it. You can win her back.”
My eyes watered uncontrollably. I wiped at them furiously and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”
The light turned green. I began to drive forward and said, “Thanks, Sam.”
She shrugged and went back to looking out the window.
One more red light, and then I was turning right into the parking lot of an awful-looking motel.
It was dirty and old. It had bare metal poles supporting the second floor walk, and a window to one of the guest rooms was boarded up.
I parked the car and took a deep breath.
“At least it looks better than the place we stayed last night,” Sam said.
“That’s … optimistic,” I replied. I got out of the van at the same time Sam did and we walked across the small parking lot.
The door to her room opened. She must have seen us coming across the parking lot.
I stopped for just a second and caught my breath as Erin stepped out of the darkness into the bright sunshine. The rays caught her hair, highlighted red glints. Her blue eyes were flooded with tears.
Sam approached her slowly. She’d dressed carefully that morning in a flowered sleeveless dress. She really did look like a girl. It was hard to watch—but good at the same time. It was so confusing.
Erin didn’t seem confused at all. She looked at Sam with wide eyes and said, “Oh, baby, you’re beautiful.”
Then the two of them were embracing. Erin had her arms wrapped protectively around Sam, one hand on the back of her head. Sam winced—her ribs were still very painful—and Erin eased the pressure.
I approached slowly. I didn’t want Erin to jerk away. Then … I wrapped them both with my arms. The three of us stood there, arms around each other, for a long time.