The Missing

37

Stomping footsteps. Someone muttering about gasoline. “I’m sure there was a can out in the shed.” Then I hear Mama’s voice. Surprised and wary at first, then worried and upset. Then it stops, abruptly, midsentence. Minutes pass. Again I lose track of time. Then my eyelids flutter open, and I glimpse a familiar outline. She’s sitting some distance away from me, very still. Mama! You found me, you came! That’s what I want to shout, but my voice refuses to obey. Somehow, I manage to move enough to draw my mother’s attention. She gasps, leans forward. Her whole being emanates concern.

“Greta,” she says. “I’m here now. Are you okay?”

Is she tied up too? Is that why she doesn’t rush to my side? My lips form words, but nothing comes out.

“Please,” my mother begs, turning her head. “Let me go to my daughter and see how she is.”

“So she’s your daughter?”

The voice drips with scorn. I wrench my gaze in the direction my mother is looking and see her. She’s leaning against the wall, no more than a couple of feet from the chair where my mother is sitting. Long blond hair falls over her face in profile. A blue, flowered summer dress and a light cardigan. Ordinary, commonplace. She’d look like any other woman if not for the long black object in her hand. As soon as I realize what it is, my spirits, which had leaped at my mother’s presence, sink again. She found the ax. The one I bought to defend myself. Now it’s easy to see why Mama doesn’t dare move without permission.

“Let me go to her.”

The psychologist feverishly runs her hand through her hair. When her fingers get caught in a tangle, she yanks hard several times until she pulls free. Her movements are erratic, and she seems confused, uncertain. Not at all like when it was just the two of us.

“Why should I?”

When she came to the cabin, I was alone, as she’d expected. Mama’s arrival must have caught her by surprise.

“Do you have children?” Mama asks without the slightest quaver in her voice. “If you do, I know you understand.”

Silence for a moment. The psychologist seems to be deliberating with herself. Finally, she waves the ax in front of Mama’s face.

“Okay, but remember—I’ve got this. If you try anything, I won’t hesitate to use it.”

The next second, Mama is kneeling at my side.

“Sweetheart. What have you gotten yourself into?”

Gently, she takes my face in her hands, moving her cool fingers over my cheeks and down to my throat. She can’t help grimacing, and I think to myself that she must see it. The mark from Alex’s tie. How should I answer her question? Then I remember the branches that scratched at my face in the woods, and the cut above my eyebrow, and the oar that slammed into the side of my head and shoulder. I think about the liquor that spilled over my chest, about the tenderness on my scalp, and my bound hands and feet. A three-day-old bruise is probably the least disturbing thing about my appearance right now. Mama leans close, as if to kiss my cheek. Instead, I hear her whisper in my ear.

“I didn’t know she was here. She attacked me, took my purse and my phone, the minute I…”

Quick footsteps approach. Mama is yanked up. As she’s led away, I hear her pleading, “From one mother to another. All those bruises and cuts… My daughter really needs me right now. And she has a high fever. She’s burning up. At least let me give her some water.”

The talk of water makes me painfully aware of my parched throat. My head feels like it’s on fire. I need to get something to drink soon. I really do. But the psychologist’s patience has apparently run out, along with her uncertainty about taking action. Brusquely, she shoves my mother back into the chair where she was sitting before.

“I don’t have to do anything,” she says coldly. “The only thing I need to do is finish this.”

She leans over Mama to do something, but I can’t tell what it is.

“You don’t need to tie me up,” Mama says quietly. “Even if I did manage to untie Greta, she’s in no shape to go anywhere. And I’m not going to try to escape. I’m not leaving this cabin without my daughter.”

The psychologist pauses for a moment. I can see from her back that she’s hesitating. Then she shrugs and stops what she was doing.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she mutters. “I don’t intend to leave any witnesses.”

Finish this. Witnesses. A shiver ripples through my body. Alarmed, I try to move. I feel the rope biting into my wrists.

“What exactly are you planning to do?”

Mama’s question goes unanswered. There is a stiff quality to the psychologist’s body language. She holds the ax tightly in both hands. My eyes are fixed on my mother’s face. On her upper lip, where tiny beads of sweat have formed. For a long moment, no one speaks. Then Mama slowly stretches out her hand toward the ax.

“Give it to me,” she says. “Give it to me so you don’t do something you’ll regret.”

It’s that tone of voice, controlled and authoritative, that I know so well. I feel a prickling under my skin when I hear it. No, Mama, don’t. Don’t do it.

“You don’t want to do this,” Mama continues coaxing. “Not really.”

“Be quiet.”

The psychologist steps to the side, blocking my view. I can’t see my mother’s face anymore. I can only hear her voice.

“I think that deep inside you’re a smart and sensible woman. You’re extremely angry right now. You know you can’t harm Greta. You know it wouldn’t be right.”

Dread is swelling into a howl inside of me. A tiny muscle in the psychologist’s jaw is pulsing. Don’t you see it, Mama? Don’t you understand?

“Shut up and sit still.”

But Mama doesn’t do as she’s told. She gets up so that she’s standing face-to-face with the woman, both of them the same height.

“Let me tell you about my daughter.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Because if you knew Greta the way I do, if you knew what she’s like, you’d never be able to harm her.”

Something in Mama’s voice touches me, and the dread gives way to something new. But that lasts only a moment. Then the psychologist raises her voice. Her hand jabs out, and as she shoves Mama to the floor, she screams so loud it makes my ears ring.

“I do know. I know exactly what your daughter is. She’s a whore and a murderer!”

She spins around, moving so fast that her blond hair whips through the air. She fixes her smoldering gaze on me. Lifts the ax. And lunges forward.