LATER THAT DAY, a technician rolled in an ultrasound machine to check up on the baby. The baby’s heartbeat came loud over the speaker, chugging insistently like the wash cycle on the McLellens’ washing machine. My own heart lurched in response, and I peered over my shoulder at the screen while the technician tapped measurements into her keyboard with one hand.
Afterward, my midwife, Freyja, sat down with me for a long, cozy talk. While I was in a daze, holding a little black-and-white photo of the baby, she talked about vitamins and diet, Kegel exercises, and the importance of regaining my strength as soon as possible, for the baby’s sake.
“This is real, isn’t it?” I said.
Freyja smiled and pressed her warm hand to mine. “Yes, it is. You’re due in seven weeks, Althea. April twenty-fourth, plus or minus two weeks. That’s in no time. We need to keep you and the baby healthy until then, and after. Dr. Fallon’s concerned about how the childbirth might impact your blood pressure and stress your brain. You’re high risk. It will probably be safest for you if we schedule a C-section when we get closer to the time.”
That sounded scary, too. I ran a hand over my abdomen. Freyja had kind eyes and big, steady hands. With her fresh-scrubbed complexion, funky, super-short blond hair, and blue-rimmed glasses, she seemed a little out of place in the antiseptic Chimera Centre. It turned out she’d been hired to come to the island just for me.
“I wish you could come to the U.S. with us,” I said. “I don’t want to still be here in seven weeks.”
She smiled. “Your parents already offered me a fortune to come with you,” she said. “I’m thinking about it, but my family’s in Reykjavik, and I’m not licensed to practice in the States. You’d need a local midwife or doctor to oversee your case.”
“My parents could arrange that.”
She smiled. “I’m aware.”
When I didn’t smile back, she gave my shoulder a light squeeze.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked.
At her kindness, I blinked back sudden tears. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “How am I going to be a mom?”
“Take a deep breath,” Freyja said. “You’re just going to live it. You’re going to keep it real, day by day. Your baby’s fine right now, and so are you, right? That’s enough, right?”
I nodded. I felt miserable.
Freyja smiled gently and came around to give me a hug. “You’re so young,” she said. “Have you talked to the dad yet?”
“No.”
“Maybe that’ll help, elskan,” she said.
I doubted it would. I didn’t know him from a doorknob.
“Have you thought about names?” she asked. “Maybe a nice Icelandic name?”
She made me laugh and gulp at the same time.
Later, when I mentioned this to Diego and Madeline, they had plenty of name suggestions, especially family names, and Madeline happily jotted down lists for a boy or a girl. Since they had declined to know the gender of the baby, preferring to speculate, I decided not to find out, either. They seemed delighted to talk about the baby as long as nobody brought up Tom. It was also increasingly difficult not to blurt out to them that I wasn’t their daughter, especially when Diego would give me a quiet, curious look.
When Madeline eventually led a prayer and they said good night, I was worn out. She straightened the rosary next to the flowers.
“Are we Catholic?” I asked.
Madeline touched her thumb to my forehead, drawing a cross for a blessing. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Now rest easy.”
My need to talk to my own mother was stronger than ever. Something about hearing the baby’s heartbeat and seeing the ghostly figure on the ultrasound had thrust my pregnancy into reality, and turning into a mother made me miss my own. So much had happened to me, and she didn’t know any of it.
After the nurse turned my lights low, I huddled down in my bed and calculated seven hours earlier to Arizona. It was Saturday around two in the afternoon there. Ma might be home. I tapped my home number into my phone. I knew Ma wouldn’t recognize my new voice, but I’d find a way, somehow, to explain who I was. Ma would believe me. I stared absently out to the hallway as I waited through the rings.
“Hello? Who’s calling?” Ma said.
Her mumbly, sleepy voice made my heart soar. I could picture her taking a nap on the couch.
“Ma? It’s me. Rosie.” My voice choked off. “Did I wake you?”
“Rosie?” she said slowly. “You sound different.”
“It’s really me! My voice has changed, but it’s me,” I said. I sat up, keeping the phone close to my ear, and I tried to pitch my voice lower, like mine had been. “How are you? Are you good? How’s Dubbs? Does she miss me?”
A rolling noise came from her end of the line. “Tell me where you are,” she said. “Are you all right? Is Berg hurting you?”
“I’m okay. I’m in Iceland at a clinic,” I said. “Berg isn’t even here.”
Her voice became doubtful. “Iceland?”
“It’s complicated to explain,” I said. Suddenly I didn’t care at all anymore that she’d messed up my guardianship. I missed her so badly it hurt to breathe. “I want to come home.”
“What happened to your voice?” Then, through a muffling, “She says it’s Rosie.”
“I had a surgery,” I said. I struggled to think how to begin. “A lot about me is different.”
A bumbling noise came from the other end, and then my stepfather’s voice came on. “Who is this?”
“Larry, it’s me,” I said. “It’s me, Rosie. Let me talk to Ma again.”
“You think I don’t know Rosie’s voice? You’ve got some nerve, harassing us in our own home. We can trace your call. We’ll prosecute the crap out of you.”
“It’s me,” I said loudly. “You punched me in the face when I told you to get a job. Remember? Last spring? You told Ma to pawn your gun that same night, remember? So we’d have enough to eat? Dubbs was starving.”
His end went silent. I could picture him frowning by the couch. A faint pounding noise came, like someone was working outside. I heard Ma’s voice in the background, and then she abruptly stopped talking, as if he’d raised a hand to warn her into silence.
“You never got that out of Rosie,” he said.
“We own an orange plaid couch,” I continued, searching my way. “You read a lot of mysteries, and the antlers over the TV came from your brother’s place after he died.”
“Who is this?” Larry asked.
I clenched the phone anxiously. “I said. I’m Rosie. Your daughter. Let me talk to Ma again, please.”
“You mean ‘stepdaughter,’” he said with a bark of a laugh. “You blew it, kid. Rosie always threw that ‘step’ in my face. Now leave us alone.” The line cut off with a slam.
“Wait!” I said, but it was too late. The dead connection shocked my ear. Despair clamped my heart. I had so much proof! I’d thought for sure they would know me, despite my voice. Ma did. Larry was the problem. He was always the problem. I immediately called back again, but they didn’t pick up. Our landline had no voicemail, no answering machine. I was blocked.
I sat in my shadowy hospital room, stunned. A machine made a soft hissing noise behind me, and I stared bleakly at the bumps of my feet under the blanket. What if no one from my old life ever believed who I was inside? The possibility horrified me. How could I prove I was me without my own voice and body? My parents wouldn’t even let me try.
I lay down again and rolled over heavily. I couldn’t bear another night of being lonely, with no one to talk to. I was afraid I’d vanish if I didn’t find someone who knew me as Rosie.
I chewed the inside of my cheek for a minute, remembering how cool it had been talking to Linus at night when I was at Forge. I’d loved trying to guess his expression from the sound of his voice. The rest of the school would be asleep, but I had my walkie-ham in my sleep shell with me, like a lifeline to the outside world. What I wouldn’t give to have that now. I still hadn’t heard from Linus despite repeated tries over the last few days. I hadn’t heard from Burnham, either. In fact, the only person who had tried to contact me was Tom, Althea’s old boyfriend, but I had no idea what to say to him. His messages were piled up on my new phone, unlistened to, like too many valentines from the wrong guy.
What I really needed was Linus’s phone number so I could text him directly. I did a search for Otis, Linus’s friend and landlord, the old guy who worked the camera in the lookout tower at Forge, and found he had a listed number. I tapped it in and listened to the rings.
“Hello?” a man answered.
My heart jumped, and I sat up straight in my bed again.
“Is Linus there?” I asked.
“Thomas Kent runs like a girl,” the man said.
The non sequitur threw me. Then I remembered Parker, Otis’s partner, the guy with Alzheimer’s. I had seen him one night when he was walking in the quad at Forge. He’d paused in front of the dean’s tower to pee on the steps, and Linus had run over to take care of him.
“Is this Parker?” I asked.
“Parker here,” he said. “I’m busy. I’m on the telephone.”
“Hi, Parker. This is Althea. I’m a friend of Rosie Sinclair’s. Is Linus there?”
“I’m on the phone,” Parker said.
A man spoke in the background, and when a new voice came on, I recognized Otis. “Hello? Can I help you?”
I introduced myself as Althea once again. “I’m trying to reach Linus.”
“You want the hotline for Found Missing,” Otis said. “Try this.” He rattled off a number. “Good luck to you.”
“Wait!” I said. “Please don’t hang up. Rosie’s been trying to email Linus at Found Missing, but he doesn’t answer her. She asked me to call him. Does he even see that email?”
“That’s the one. They’ll route you where you need to go.”
“Otis, I really know Rosie. I know about Molly, your dog, and the way Linus used to carry her up the lookout tower for you every day. Don’t hang up on me. I really need a way to reach him.”
His voice came slowly. “You’ve just watched the show.”
I scanned my brain for anything I could have seen that was off camera. “You have a toilet behind a curtain up there in the lookout tower. And a begonia. You have a picture of you and Parker tacked to the beam with the hammock. You’re never on screen yourself, but I know you like to wear a gray hat with a visor.”
I held my breath, listening to the silence of his uncertainty.
“Okay, if you know Rosie, where is she now?” Otis asked. “What’s her phone number?”
A distinct click came from his end, like another line picking up, and then a third voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”
It was Linus. My breath caught and my lungs squeezed tight. I didn’t know how to speak to him now, when my voice wasn’t my own.
“This is Linus Pitts,” he said. “Who’s calling?”
Miles vanished. His words were in my ear again, just like before, with his distinctive Welsh accent. I could picture his gaze deepening with a frown, and the suspicion hovering just behind his polite curiosity.
“I’m Althea,” I said thickly. “A friend of Rosie’s. She asked me to call you.”
Distance hummed between us, and I heard him weighing whether to believe me.
“I’ll take this one, Otis,” Linus said.
“Your funeral,” Otis said. A click sounded as he hung up, and the connection became slightly clearer.
“Is Rosie with you?” Linus asked.
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“Put her on.”
“I can’t. She has trouble with her voice. She asked me to talk to you for her.”
A shifting came from his end of the line. “Okay, so here’s the thing. We get a ton of calls here, and I keep telling the guys to let the machine take them, but Parker has this misguided sense of gallantry that makes him pick up the ruddy phone, and then he gets worked up, and Otis has to step in, and now you’ve worked up Otis, too, and I’m going to have to ask you to please leave us alone and go through the normal channels to reach the show. All clear now?”
“You paid Otis in blood for your rent,” I said quickly. “You did it every six weeks.”
I held my phone tightly, fearing that the next sound would be a disconnection.
“I told her that in confidence,” he said finally.
“I know, and she’s sorry she had to tell me, but she wants you to know she’s really here, listening in.”
“But she won’t talk to me.”
“Right. She can’t. I’m talking for her. Ask me anything. I’ll prove it.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “What does Cyrano have to do with anything?”
My heart thumped, and I paused before answering again, as if I were interpreting something from a companion in the room. “You and Rosie could talk for real at night on the walkie-hams, and touch each other during the day, but you could never do both at the same time. You said it made you think of the Cyrano de Bergerac story, but twisted, as if both guys were combined into one person.” I gave a brief laugh. “Here I am talking for Rosie. It’s sort of another Cyrano thing. Right Rosie?” I paused. “She’s agreeing.”
A moment later, his voice came again, more softly. “Is she writing answers for you? Is that it?”
I could go with that.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then she should just email me.”
“She tried. Many times. You didn’t reply.”
“Maybe because I get dozens of emails every day from people pretending to be her.”
“But I can prove she’s right here. I’m not pretending.”
“Okay. Ask her why she broke up with me. Ask her that.”
His question was ridiculously layered and complicated.
“I don’t know why,” I said softly. “She shouldn’t have. She says she’s sorry.”
His next pause was longer.
“Who is this?” he asked.
For the first time, he sounded like he might believe me. A strangling loneliness lodged in my voice box. “I’m Althea. Rosie’s friend.”
“Althea who? Where’s Rosie?”
“We’re out of the country,” I said.
“Both of you?” The doubt was back in his voice. “Tell me where and I’ll come get you.”
I turned toward the dark window. “You can’t come for us.”
“Then why did you call me? I can get anywhere. I have resources for the show,” he said.
I felt a twinge of caution. “You’d come to shoot a segment for your show?” I asked.
“Althea,” he said. “Why do you think I have the show? The point of it is to locate missing children. I’ve been trying to find Rosie since she disappeared in October.”
He wanted to locate me for his show, not for us. The truth stung. “She’s not interested in being featured on some show,” I said. “She’s had enough of that.”
“Then what do you want? Why’d you call?”
“I just wanted—” I stopped. What had I thought? That we’d be friends again? I wasn’t even in my own body. “Rosie thought you’d want to know she’s alive.”
“Of course I want to know that,” he said. “But you haven’t proven anything. You know some private facts about us, but she could have told them to you weeks ago. You could have forced them out of her.”
I clutched my fingers into a fist. “I haven’t forced anything out of her. I’m her friend,” I said. “Look. I thought when you went down the pit to look for Rosie it meant that you still cared about her. You at least owe it to her to listen to me now.”
“Down the pit. What are you talking about?”
“You know!” I said. “You went down the clock tower pit. You went looking for Rosie that last night at Forge.”
“Put Rosie on,” he said. “Put her on now. Rosie? Are you hearing this? If we’re on speaker, say something.”
I closed my eyes and kept the phone pressed tight against my ear. “She can’t talk to you.”
“Then listen closely, Althea,” Linus said, turning the name into something ugly. “If Rosie’s really there with you, which I seriously doubt, then let her know this. She has a lot of fans who care about her. They want to know if she’s okay, and they want an explanation for where she’s been all this time. If she’s not okay, they want justice for her sake. That goes for me, too. If you’re working for Sandy Berg and you’ve got her locked up somewhere, I swear we’ll get you.”
“I’m not working with Berg,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“And one other thing,” he said. “If I find out you’re using me or my voice to tease her or test her in any way, I’ll come for you, personally. Get that?”
“That’s just sick,” I said. “You’re starting to sound like Berg yourself.”
“Then where are you? Tell me.”
I stared, unseeing, at my dark window. This call had gone nothing like I’d expected. I pressed my fist under my chin. I was lonelier than ever.
“She’s changed so much,” I said. My voice squeaked closed again. It wasn’t a proper answer to his question, but it was the best I had.
“We’ve all changed,” Linus said, and his voice was hard. “Tell her that doesn’t matter. Tell her I want to see her again. I want to cover her story for my show. Go on.”
I pinched a fold of the blanket. “She heard you,” I said.
“What does she say?” Linus asked.
I closed my eyes. “She says she won’t be on your show.”
“Then tell me why you really called.”
I wished I had a good lie, but what came out was painfully true. “Rosie just wanted to hear your voice,” I said.
The long distance spun for a moment, and when he spoke again, it was in a calm, quiet voice. “I am not doing this.”
I didn’t know how to answer. “Please, Linus.”
“No. Not happening,” he said, still too calm. “If Rosie ever wants to talk to me herself, directly, have her call me. Otherwise, leave me alone.”
“But she needs you!” I said.
He gave a sharp laugh. “Did it occur to you how mean this would be? Making me believe you know her. Never mind. I’m hanging up now.”
“Linus!”
But he was gone.
I’d done nothing to convince him. If anything, I’d gone backward. I slammed my phone against the table. I had to get out of this crazy place. I had to get back to some version of my own life because if I couldn’t, if I couldn’t—
The yawning possibility stopped my heart cold. I buried my head in my pillow and squeezed away all the light and sound, but the dread still followed me.
I would have to become Althea.