I first met Linda at our annual holiday party, when Regina was seven and Isaac and I were in the early stages of discord, before I started working longer hours and he started sleeping with Anna. Anna. She could have been the sixthAin our book club, if she hadn’t shacked up with my husband. I was less upset that he’d cheated than I was that it had been with my friend. To be honest, I felt more grief over the loss of Anna than of Isaac. Linda knows all about the divorce, the ways it affected Regina.
In my car, I run my hands along the steering wheel, trying to determine why Regina hasn’t called. Doesn’t she know I’m waiting for her? My therapist would tell me that games don’t help relationships. If I want to talk to my daughter, I should call her. If I’m upset she forgot my birthday, I should say so.
I hold my phone and stare at Regina’s name. My heart races. This is silly. I’m being silly. It’s my daughter, not some date, some new friend. I hit Send before I lose my nerve.
The blood rushes to my ears, and I can hardly hear the ringing as I wait for her to pick up. This is foolish. Why did I call? I’m about to hang up without leaving a message when she answers.
“Hey, Mom,” she says. I hear her give someone her name after they ask for ID. Then her voice grows clearer on the line. “Listen, I can’t talk right now.”
“Where are you?”
She hesitates. “A meeting. I’ll call you later, all right?”
I stare at her name on my phone as it blinks the eleven seconds we spoke. Clearly she’s forgotten my birthday, but she isn’t avoiding me. She’s just busy. And she’s going to her meetings. That’s good. That has to be her first priority. Later, when she realizes the date, that she rushed me off the phone on my seventieth birthday, she’ll be apologetic. I’ll get to tell her it’s no big deal. It won’t have to be a big deal because she will have remembered, if a bit late.
Once I’m home, I can’t fight a nap. I plug in my white noise machine, drape a silk mask over my eyes, and fall into a deep slumber. When I wake up, the sun is still high in the sky. It’s later than I expect, though: 5:32. 2:32 in LA. Her meeting must be over by now. Regina hasn’t called back.
For the rest of the evening, I play the tricks of young lovers. I leave my phone at home when I go for a sunset stroll with my next-door neighbor. I linger in the shower, knowing I won’t hear the phone if it rings. It doesn’t ring when I’m in the shower. It doesn’t ring as I watchJeopardy!, when I cook dinner for one, when I decide to start in on our book club selection. By the time the words on the page blur, the phone still hasn’t rung. I call her again and get her voicemail. I start to text her instead. Everything I write sounds hurt or resentful. I’m both those things, but I don’t want her to know.
As I start my nighttime skin-care routine, I remind myself that Regina’s never been a good multitasker. If her attention is elsewhere, it won’t return to me until she’s completed whatever is consuming her.You have to accept people on their terms,my therapist tells me whenever Regina disappoints me. These are her terms. While it may be my birthday, it’s her busy day. I can be disappointed. Feeding that emotion, however, only hurts me.
“Let it go,” I say to my reflection, shiny with layers of cream. “Just let it go.”
As soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind starts spinning tales of what I might have done to make her mad at me. My knees crack as I get out of bed and shuffle over to the dresser to check my phone—no message—then back to bed, chiding myself for getting so worked up. Finally, I pop an Ambien, because despite being so tired I feel it in the bones of my feet, I will never fall asleep, not when I’m waiting for the phone to ring. It’s 12:32 a.m. in New Jersey. 9:32 p.m. in LA. I try her one last time. That familiar message picks up. The pill starts to set in, leaving my eyelids heavy, my brain quiet. The last thought I piece together is an assurance that I will have a remorseful message in the morning.
At 5:45, I startle awake, gasping for breath. The Ambien should have kept me asleep for another hour, but the pain is overwhelming. It isn’t the aches of old age. No, this pressure is panic. I’m not an anxious person. Through my divorce, the estrangement, the forced retirement, I never had anxiety. That’s why I know to trust the worry my body senses now. I check my phone. No calls. No text messages. I lean against the dresser, barely able to stand. Call it instinct, intuition, survival skills. I feel it everywhere. My daughter isn’t busy. She hasn’t lost track of time. Something terrible has happened to her.
Chapter Three
Tessa
Light bleeds through the curtains. I reach over to Gabe’s empty side of the bed. He’s already left for his morning surf. Last night was an unprecedentedly good night of sleep, free from the early-morning wake-ups that have plagued my third trimester. Somehow, it makes me even more exhausted. I roll onto my side, trying to squeeze in a little more rest. Immediately, a whine echoes down the hall. I ignore it, hoping Jasper will fall back to sleep. He starts screaming, and I groan exaggeratedly, even though Gabe isn’t home to hear it. It’s my gift to him, these mornings. Once the baby’s here, Gabe won’t get to surf each day.
In his crib, Jasper stands in a sleep sack, bouncing his knees, eager for an escape. He casts me one of his toothy grins.
“Mama.” He reaches for me, and the frustration dissipates.
We head downstairs for breakfast. Outside, a crowd has gathered on the walkway beyond our garden. Normally, the canals are empty this time of morning. More surprising, Gabe’s still here, the top half of his wet suit unzipped and hanging from his waist, his hair and smooth back dry. He faces away from us, along with everyone else on the path, monitoring the canal. Right away, I feel dread. Something’s happened.
I carry Jasper, still in his sleep sack, outside and stand behind Gabe. There are too many people gathered to see the canal’s basin.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“They found something in the canal.” He snaps out of his trance. “What time is it?”
I squint to read the clock in our kitchen. “Six forty-five.”
“Too late for a surf now.” Gabe locks his surfboard in the storage shed, kisses my forehead, then Jasper’s, then mine again, a back-and-forth that makes Jasper giggle.
After Gabe bounds into the house, I carry Jasper through our gate onto the walkway, where the surfers who live in the wannabe frat house next door huddle together beside the always-shorts guy with his Yorkies, the wispy-haired woman who paints the waterways most days, her easel propped under her arm, and others I don’t recognize. Across the canal, our neighbors on the next island have collected too. I don’t know any of them other than Claire, who holds Summer, and her husband, Dan, standing possessively at her side. He always hovers over her. It bothers Gabe—part of why, as close as Claire and I are and despite Jasper and Summer sharing a part-time nanny, we aren’t family friends. I shrug my shoulders at Claire, and she shrugs back, equally unsure what’s happened. The police have laid yellow tape along the saltbushes.
Half a block up, two cop cars obstruct both sides of the bridge over Linnie Canal, forcing commuters to reverse and retreat. The sirens on the cruisers are off. The lights are blazing. The three men who clean the canals stand in the flashing lights, talking with a police officer.
“Mama,luz. Luz.” Jasper points at the police cars. Jasper’s nanny, Marisol, speaks to him in Spanish. He’s latched on to the words that are easier in the Romance language than they are in English.Luz. Agua. Más, más, más.
“The lights are pretty, aren’t they?” My tone is upbeat as I try to hide my worry. There’s no broken glass, no signs of a robbery at any of the houses. The cops wouldn’t show up if a dolphin got caught in the basin. They wouldn’t block off the bridge if someone’s boat was stolenor their dock was vandalized. There are police officers guiding traffic, police officers monitoring the crowds, police officers wading knee-deep in the drained but not fully empty canal. A man in white disposable coveralls stands at the center of the basin. He bends down to inspect something at his feet.
On the periphery of the crowd, our next-door neighbor Judy leans against her dilapidated gate. Judy’s been here since the ’90s and hasn’t done a thing to her house other than let the paint peel, and has instead devoted her days to pacing the walkways from Carroll to Sherman. Every island along the canals has one: a local busybody. But Judy is in a league of her own. If anyone knows what’s going on, it’s Judy.
