Lena is much lighter outside of the house. Although Rex and she are sleeping together, there’s still tension between them, and they haven’t properly discussed how she lied to him about Mia or how he feels about being a father. Rex fucks her, or watches her being fucked, and then immediately leaves. Outside of the bedroom, he barely talks to her, and it makes the atmosphere in the house tense. If he doesn’t speak to her soon, we’ll have to intervene. That’s another reason we wanted Lena out of the house today so that the others could talk to him about it. We’re meant to be giving this relationship a real chance, but we can’t if Rex treats Lena like it’s only sex to him.
“He’ll come around eventually, you know,” I say to her.
Lena sighs. “I’m not so sure. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea…” The light, jovial atmosphere is gone, replaced by Lena’s anxiety and sorrow.
I want to yell at Lena that it’s not. To tell her that I love her and that she can’t leave us just because of Rex. But of course, I don’t.
“But it’s not just Rex you’d be ending things with.”
“No, it isn’t,” she says sadly. “But I’m not sure I can stay if Rex continues to punish me.”
I feel her slipping from me, falling through my fingers like sand. Instead of saying how I truly feel, I resort to my default: hiding my feelings behind humor.
“You seem to enjoy his punishments.”
I waggle my eyebrows and smile at her, but she doesn’t smile back.
“This is more than sex to me,” she says sadly.
“I know, it is to us, too.”
“Is it? Sure as hell doesn’t seem to be with him.”
“Give him time.”
“That’s what you all keep saying.” She looks out of the window, saying nothing further.
I don’t know what comfort I can offer her. I curse Rex inwardly for making her feel this way. The opportunity is lost as we reach the playground.
There are many cars parked and children already playing. To one end of the parking lot, there’s a diner. “Drop me and Mia near there before you park up, I gotta change Mia,” Lena says.
I do as she asks and park up toward the other end of the lot, nearer to the playground. I sit waiting in the car, lost in thought, wondering how I can keep her and how I can fix things with Rex and her. If one of us loses her, we all do.
Ten minutes pass.
Fifteen.
I start to worry. Lena and Mia should be back by now.
I get out of the car and head over to the diner. There are just two toilets inside. Both are unoccupied. “Did you see a woman and a little girl, about two years old, come in to use the restroom?” I ask the server.
“Sure, they left about ten minutes ago. Something wrong, hon?”
I don’t bother to reply as I rush outside to look for them. With a sinking feeling in my heart, I know that they are gone, but I still try to find them. I search everywhere, calling out their names. When it’s clear that they’re gone, I start asking people if they’ve seen them. I desperately hold out my phone and show everyone photos of them. Most people say no. Some say they saw them entering the diner. Finally, I find someone who claims to have seen them leave. An old man, maybe in his seventies who’s sitting by himself at a table near the door.
“They got in the back of an SUV,” the man says.
“Did you see the driver? The license plate? Anything?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“How did she seem?” I ask. “Did she shout for help?”
Surely if someone were kidnapping them, Lena and Mia would have screamed?
“No. She just got in the car with the woman.”
“Woman? What woman?” I ask, frustrated that I have only just now discovered that there was another person in the vehicle.
