Punishment aka What Is Mine

THREE

Emilie had gone missing before. Never for long, though once-it must have been just after Grete died-he hadn’t found her for three hours. He looked everywhere. First he’d made some irritated phone calls to friends, to Grete’s sister who only lived ten minutes away and was Emilie’s favorite aunt, to her grandparents who hadn’t seen the child for days. He punched in new numbers as concern turned to fear; his fingers hit the wrong keys. Then he rushed around the neighborhood, in ever-increasing circles, his fear growing into panic, and he started to cry.

She was sitting in a tree writing a letter to Mommy, a letter with pictures that she was going to send to Heaven as a paper airplane. He plucked her carefully from the branch and sent the plane flying in an arc over a steep slope. It glided from side to side and then disappeared over the top of two birch trees that thereafter were known as the Road to Paradise. He did not let her out of his sight for two weeks. Not until the end of the holidays, when school forced him to let her go.

It was different this time.

He had never called the police before; her shorter and longer disappearing acts were no more than was to be expected. This was different. Panic hit him suddenly, like a wave. He didn’t know why, but when Emilie failed to come home when she should have, he ran toward the school, not even noticing that he lost a slipper halfway. Her schoolbag and a big bunch of coltsfoot were lying on the path between the two main roads, a shortcut that she never dared take on her own.

Grete had bought the bag for Emilie a month before she died. Emilie would never just leave it like that. Her father picked it up, reluctantly. He could be wrong-it could be someone else’s schoolbag, a more careless child’s, perhaps. The schoolbag was almost identical, but he couldn’t be sure until he opened it, holding his breath, and saw the initials. ES. Big square letters in Emilie’s writing. It was Emilie’s schoolbag and she would never have just left it like that.