4
Harper
“Monday? They can’t tell us anything until Monday?” I’m pacing my tiled kitchen floor. Pacing and gesturing. And I’m sounding a bit manic, as if I need a Xanax. Honestly, I’d probably take one right now if I had one. Which is why I don’t keep them in the house. I went down that road after Georgina disappeared. It was a road too often taken by women like me, neither grassy nor wanting wear. And a bad choice. “And they say that would be the earliest.” I go on with my rant. “It may be Tuesday. Possibly even Wednesday.”
“Why so long?” Ann’s tone is patient. She’s always patient, particularly with me. Saint Ann I like to call her.
Ann’s my best friend. Who am I kidding? One of my only friends. I’m too sad for friends. Too intense. Too neurotic. I’m just . . . too much. Not that I blame anyone; I’m too much for myself sometimes. Ann’s lived down the street for years. She and I were in a birthing class together when we were pregnant with Jojo and her Makayla. That’s where we met. She’s the only person I still see regularly, other than Rebecca at the office, who knew me when I was the mother of two. I’d argue that I’ll always be the mother of two, even if my Georgina really is dead. So I suppose I just mean she knew me when I was whole.
“The police picked up Georgina from the house where she was . . .” I take a deep breath. “Being held.”
I don’t allow my mind to go in the direction of what that could potentially mean. I don’t think about Jaycee Dugard or Elizabeth Smart and the hell they endured as female captives. On January first, I started a fifty-four-day rosary novena as I do every year, praying for the return of my Georgina. I used to pray to keep her safe and bring her home, but over the years, my prayers changed. I’m not even sure if this year I was praying she come home alive, or if I just wanted closure, even in the form of remains. Now that I’m realizing my prayers may have been answered, I’ll take her any way I can get her. Whatever trauma she’s suffered, we’ll deal with once she’s home.
“They picked her up an hour ago,” I continue. “They didn’t give me details, but I got the feeling . . .” I halt in front of her. Ann’s seated on the other side of the granite island, sipping coffee from a blue mug. Mine’s green. I reach for it. It’s my fourth or fifth cup, so I’m wired. Though maybe it was being up all night that’s wired me. “Ann . . . I think the police might have gotten some kind of confession.”
“From Georgina?” She’s got milk foam above her upper lip. She comes to my house most mornings that I don’t have to work, after the girls have gone to school, to have a cup of coffee. She teases me that she comes more for the fancy coffee from my fancy coffeemaker than for the company.
I touch my lip. Our signal. She reaches for a napkin and wipes her mouth.
“I don’t think so.” I try to recall what the police officer who called said. It’s all a blur. It was a woman who called. She told me her name, but I was so excited, so scared. I don’t remember who she said she was, only that she was with the New Orleans Police. And she had a British accent. I remember that because you don’t hear it every day. “If Georgina knew she’d been kidnapped, wouldn’t she have told someone before this?” I think aloud. “A sixteen-year-old girl who’s allowed to work in a coffee shop would have had the opportunity to tell someone. And she goes to school. She was on her way to school when the cops picked her up. She was living in Bayou St. John. I don’t think the policewoman was supposed to tell me that, but she was almost as excited as I was when we spoke on the phone.”
Ann adjusts a chandelier earring. One she’s made herself. An intricate copper-and-bead sculpture. She’s an artist and works with whatever medium strikes her fancy. She paints, she sculpts, you name it. And while she does make money on the sale of her artwork in its various forms, she doesn’t do it for a living. She says she has no problem being a kept woman. It’s every woman’s dream, according to her. And man’s. “Did the police say who had her? Was he the man who kidnapped her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any details?”
“The police said they couldn’t tell me anything because nothing has been confirmed yet. Even that she’s really Georgina.” My hand shakes a little as I set down my mug. “But it’s her, Ann.” My eyes fill with tears. “I know it’s her.” I look down at my hands on the counter. Artist’s hands, Remy used to say. He always thought I should have been an artist. The fact that I have no artistic ability never seemed to bother him. “It’s her,” I whisper.
“Okay, so where is she now? Will they let you see her?”
“She was taken to . . .” I push the damp hair out of my eyes. I jumped in the shower as soon as Jojo left for school. After I stood on the front porch and watched her turn the corner onto St. Charles to Makayla and Ann’s. She’s supposed to text me when she gets there. The four minutes she’s out of my sight before she texts me are the longest four minutes of my day. I’d prefer to walk or drive her to Ursuline where she goes to school, but there was a big brouhaha when she started high school in the fall. An intervention of sorts. Jojo, Remy, Ann, her husband George, and Makayla all ganged up on me and insisted it was time the girls were allowed to walk to school together alone. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. To let Jojo out of my sight in a public place.
I meet Ann’s gaze. “I think she’s been put in some type of temporary foster care. We’re not allowed to see her. Not until the DNA test comes back, but the sample hadn’t even been taken yet when the police called. There needs to be a court order or something. Which they said they can get today, but . . . Apparently there are rules set in place for how this is done. To protect the kidnapper’s rights, I’m sure.”
She ignores my sarcasm. “Where’s the guy who had her?”
“Hell, I hope.” I pick up my mug, but don’t drink from it. I begin pacing again. “Or the gallows.” I whip around to face her. “Did you know we used to have public hangings here? I don’t remember if it was when we were under French or Spanish rule.”
“We also had public lynchings,” Ann, always the politically correct one, points out. “That doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
I worry at my lower lip, which is already puffy from me gnawing on it. “Okay, so Guantanamo?”
She doesn’t answer.
I go back to pacing; the hand-painted tile is cool on my bare feet. It’s the first week of January and the Louisiana heat has finally let up. I look up to see Ann watching me.
“You okay?” she asks.
I nod, stopping to lean on the island again. I turn my coffee mug in my hands, feeling the weight and warmth of it.
“You’re okay?” she repeats. “You’re sure?”
“They might have found her.” I choke up. My gaze meets hers. “Ann, my baby might be coming home. My Georgina is coming home.”
She reaches out and squeezes my hand. She’s tearing up, too. “You need to prepare yourself, you know,” she says softly. “In case it isn’t her.”
“It’s her.”
“But if it isn’t . . . Harper . . .” She says my name in an exhalation.
I try to let myself go to that place. Just for a second. A place where the girl from the coffee shop isn’t my missing baby. But I can’t do it. Mostly because I know it will be my undoing. If the girl called Lilla isn’t my Georgina, my family will be visiting me on the psych floor at Tulane Medical Center, or maybe in some quiet, private place in the country.
But that girl was my daughter. She is my daughter. I’d bet my life on it. She’s my daughter and she’s coming home to me. Please, God, bring her home to me. Lord, hear my prayer. I brush my fingertips over the tiny platinum crucifix I always wear. A gift from my grandmother on my first communion, which was a gift from her grandmother.
I wonder if Georgina has had her first communion. Which, of course, is ridiculous. Who kidnaps a child and then makes sure she has a sound religious education? As soon as Georgina is home, I’ll make arrangements for her to start preparing for her first communion. Because of her age and circumstances, I know I can convince Father Paul to tutor her privately. And I’ll give her Grandmama’s crucifix when she walks down the aisle in her white dress.
I meet Ann’s gaze as I pull my hand away that she’s holding tightly. She’s still staring at me. Weighing the odds of me stepping over the edge, right here in front of her before she’s finished her first cup of morning coffee.
“I’m okay,” I repeat. I open my arms as if that’s proof. Raise my voice. “I’m okay, Ann.”
“Where’s Remy?”
“Work. Of course.”
“That’s not fair, Harper.” She reaches for her coffee. “Your ex-husband is more attentive to you than any husband I know. More attentive than my husband.”
I point at her. “George is a good man. A good husband and a good father.”
“He is.” She raises her mug to take a sip. “But Remy goes above and beyond. And you know it. Divorced, you’re more married than most couples I know.”
I glance away. She’s right. I know she’s right, but I’m being stingy with my Remy points right now. “He said he’d be over as soon as he could. He had something to do at work first. The comptroller position is going to be open sometime in the next few months and he’s paranoid he isn’t going to get the job. Even though he’s clearly the best candidate. Internally, at least.” He’s been the assistant comptroller for years. And for all those years, he’s worked toward taking over the comptroller position at Tulane University when his boss retires.
“You going to work?”
“I’m on the schedule for a half day. I’m supposed to go in at one. Last appointment is six,” I say. I don’t always work Fridays, but business has been brisk and with Jojo so busy all the time, I’ve started filling up my empty hours with work. It’s what people do as their children get older, Remy explained to me.
“You should go.” Ann gets up, taking her mug with her.
I watch her make herself another cup. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I can . . .” What? Think? Breathe? Care for my patients the way they deserve to be cared for?
“It’s going to be a long weekend, Harper. You stay home for the next three or four days drinking coffee and pacing, you won’t just make yourself crazy, you’ll make us crazy, too.” She leans against the counter as the coffee machine warms up with a steady hum.
“Need more milk?” I ask.
“I can get my own if I do. I’m not going to let you redirect. I’m serious. Go to work. The girls have basketball after school. I’ll pick them up afterward, get Thai. Come for Jojo at our house after your last appointment. Have dinner with us.”
I hear the back door open. I never heard Remy’s scooter. He walks into the kitchen from the laundry room and I hurl myself at him. He catches me in his arms and holds me tightly. I can’t breathe. But the only place it seems like I can ever breathe is in his arms.
“How you doing?” he asks me, his voice muffled by my shoulder. He’s holding on to me as tightly as I’m holding on to him. Losing a child is such an awful way to bring two people closer. But it pulls you apart, too. Sometimes I think we divorced because we could manage to deal with our own pain, but not each other’s.
I nod, not trusting my voice yet.
He gives me another moment. Another squeeze. Then he kisses the top of my head and lets go of me. I step back, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. When I look up at him, at my handsome, kind rock of an ex-husband, I see that his eyes are teary. I immediately tear up.
“Yeah?” he asks me, his gaze searching mine.
I nod again. Sniff. Turn away, reaching for a paper towel to blow my nose. “Ann’s been keeping me company.”
He walks over and kisses Ann’s cheek. The two of them have had this weird, platonic love affair going on for years. Since Ann and I met, both of us with big bellies. They’re the best of buddies. She always says she would have married Remy instead of George if she’d met him first. The funny thing is that her George always says thank goodness he found her first.
“Coffee?” Ann asks Remy, running her hand down his arm.
“Please.” He walks over to the sink, takes one look at the dirty dishes piled there, and opens the dishwasher.
I watch him begin to unload the clean dishes.
“Did the police think the DNA testing would take place today?” he asks me, sounding very matter-of-fact. At least to someone who doesn’t know him. I know he’s as scared and excited as I am; he just doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve like I do.
“They’re going to try. She . . . Georgina was taken to a foster home.”
“Twenty-four to seventy-two hours for results.” Ann pushes the button on the coffee machine and waits for his cup to fill. “You’re not going to hear anything over the weekend.”
“I knew they wouldn’t just bring her here.” He’s stacking bowls in the glass-front antique cupboard.
I get the idea he thinks I thought that was what was going to happen. That the police would just pick up Georgina, on our say-so, and bring her home. I never said that. I never thought it. I wished it, of course. I hold my tongue. Both of us are too brittle right now for me to be picking a fight with him over something like this. At a time like this.
I watch Remy put away the clean dishes. I feel better with him here in my kitchen. His kitchen, technically. He grew up in this house on the edge of Audubon Park, and his father before him. These are his cupboards, his hand-painted floor tiles. When we made the decision to divorce three years ago, he was the one who insisted Jojo and I stay here. We see him almost as much as we did when he lived here. He has an apartment eight blocks away. He rides his scooter to work at Tulane University, which is nearby. People think our relationship is odd, Remy’s and mine, but it’s been a long time since I cared about what people think about me. That happens when your two-year-old is kidnapped from her stroller while your husband has walked to a friend’s house to use the bathroom and you’re watching the Krewe of Rex floats go by.
“You going to work?” Remy asks me.
I study him for a moment, seeing him the way others see him. He’s tall, six two. Slender, but not lanky. He wears his dark, silky hair that’s just beginning to gray at the temples in a kind of man-bob that falls to earlobe length. And he has a short-cropped beard that I’ve always loved, even in the days before it was in. Today he’s wearing army-green cargo pants and a short-sleeved white polo with the university’s crest embroidered on the breast pocket. Boat shoes. He rarely wears a suit, and then reluctantly. This casual look works well for him. Looks good on him.
“I told her to go.” Ann sets his coffee on the counter next to the sink.
“You should, baby.” He looks at me with that steady, dark-eyed gaze that’s my heaven. And sometimes my hell.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know if I can focus enough to diagnose an obstruction in a Chihuahua right now.” I reach for my coffee mug and then pull back my hand. “I keep thinking about her, Remy. How scared she must be. Alone.”
“The police have social workers to deal with these kinds of situations.” With the clean dishes all put away, he starts rinsing dirty dishes and loading them in the dishwasher. “I’m sure she’s not alone.”