The Lost Daughter

“Would I have to keep her tied up or something?”

“No,” Tim said. “I mean, we might have to cuff her in order to transport her if she doesn’t … cooperate. Once she’s in the cabin, there are dead-bolt locks and you’d have the keys, so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“She could scream, though. Neighbors could hear her.”

“It’s a very isolated area,” Tim said.

“Ain’t nobody for miles.” Marty took a swallow of beer. “Might be bears, though. How d’you feel about bears?”

“Shut up, Marty,” Tim said. “You’re not helping.”

“What if I fall asleep?” She couldn’t believe she was asking questions as though she might actually agree to help them. “If it turns out to be two or three days, I’ll have to sleep sometime.”

“Well, yeah, you’ll need to sleep,” Tim said. “She might have to be handcuffed to something then. To her bed or something. You’re smart enough to be the judge of what you need to do.”

“She’d fight me, though, wouldn’t she?” She could just see herself getting into a fistfight with the wife of the governor of North Carolina.

“You’ll have a gun,” Marty said.

Tim shot his brother a look. Marty had crossed some kind of line.

“I don’t want a gun,” she said.

“We’ll give you an empty one,” Tim said. “Just to use as a threat.”

The fact that Tim had a gun bothered her more than anything. She didn’t want to lose sight of who he was: the man she was sure had given her five thousand dollars and who treated her like a gem and who loved her more than anyone had since her mother was alive. The serious graduate student who wanted to advocate for people who had no power of their own. Suddenly she gasped.

“Your degree!” she said. “If you do this … underground thing, how will you finish your degree?”

“Some things are more important.”

“But you’ve worked so hard.”

He smiled at her as if she were too young or too naive to understand. “It really doesn’t matter all that much, CeeCee,” he said. “It’s a piece of paper versus my sister’s life.”

Marty leaned toward her. “The government kills innocent people all the time,” he said. “Andie got fucking railroaded, and we’re not going to let her be one of them.”

“We won’t be in this alone, CeeCee,” Tim said. “Some other SCAPE people know what we’re planning and are behind us one hundred percent and are ready to help. They live underground, so I’m not going to tell you much about them yet. Not that you’d tell anyone,” he added quickly. “I know you wouldn’t.”

She shook her head.

“They live near this cabin we’re talking about, so we can stay with them ‘til we’re ready to move on the whole thing,” Tim continued. “We’ll make sure the cabin has food and everything you’ll need. They have an old car you can use, so the day of the.” He seemed suddenly hesitant to use the word kidnapping. “The day we do it, you’ll drive to the cabin and we’ll drive to Jacksonville where the house with the phone is and then meet you back at the cabin. Make sense?”

“How will you do it?” she asked. “How will you be able to get to her?”

“We know her schedule,” Marty said. “She teaches an evening Spanish class at Carolina. It’s dark when she gets out, so we’ll nab her in the parking lot.”

She pictured the scene: a woman walking alone to her car at night, two men jumping out of the darkness, muffling her screams with a hand over her mouth as they drag her into the rear of a van. “You’ll terrify her,” she said.

“Well, yeah.” Marty laughed. “Brilliant deduction.”

“We’ll make it as easy on her as we can, babe,” Tim said. “We won’t hurt her. Our whole objective is to prevent people from being hurt.”

She looked down at her plate, translucent with grease around her uneaten slice of pizza. Both men were quiet, as though they knew she needed a minute to absorb what they’d told her.

“When would you do it?” she asked finally.

“A few days before Thanksgiving,” Tim said.

“And what if the governor says he’ll commute Andie’s sentence and then goes back on his word once his wife is home?” she asked.

“He’d damn well better not,” Marty said in a threatening voice. “Or then we go to plan B and I don’t think you want to know about that.”

Alarmed, she looked at Tim. “What’s plan B?”

“He’s jiving you,” Tim said. “We’re not going to need a plan B. Plan A is foolproof.” He pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. “Don’t decide right now, CeeCee,” he said. “We’ll finish up here, then have a nice relaxing night. In the morning, you can see how you feel about it.”

After dinner, she and Tim went upstairs to his bedroom. They made love without uttering a word about the kidnapping, and she put it out of her mind as best she could, pretending that things would always be this easy between them. She lay awake after he’d drifted off, though, thinking. Other people were ready and willing to support Tim and Marty in their scheme. She found that reassuring; it made the plan seem less crazy. She thought of the photographs of Andie displayed around the house. Her beautiful smile. The brutal rape that had driven her to murder her attacker. She imagined how frightened Andie must have been during her trial as she concocted alibis to try to save herself. She’d failed miserably. Now it was up to her brothers to do whatever they could to save her. No one would be hurt. The objective was to prevent people from being hurt, Tim had said. And Andie’s life would be saved.

Listen to your heart, her mother had written. Make a decision and dive in.

And that was exactly what she planned to do.

Chapter Eight

I want you to know what happened between your father and me. I met him at a high-school dance my sophomore year and he swept me off my feet. He didn’t go to my school. I didn’t find out ‘til much later, but he was a dropout. He was a good liar and very handsome and charming. He had hair just like yours. Dark and wavy and kind of out of control and beautiful. As a matter of fact, he was kind of out of control and beautiful himself, and I think that’s why I fell for him. He was just so different.

When I got pregnant with you, I was afraid to tell him. I was almost three months along before I got up the nerve. I had this fantasy that when I told him, he’d ask me to marry him and then he’d take care of me. I went over to his house—he lived with his parents—and we were hanging around in the rec room playing Ping-Pong while I tried to figure out what to say. He was in the bathroom when the phone rang. No one else was home, so I answered it. It was a girl asking to speak with him. Her name was Willa, and I knew she was pretty just by her voice. When he came out of the bathroom, I told him about the call and his face lit up. He didn’t even try to hide it. We started playing Ping-Pong again, but I knew his mind was on Willa, because he was hitting the ball any old way. We finished the game and he said he didn’t feel well so maybe I’d better go home. I left, and I knew I’d never hear from him again. I was right.

ONCE SHE TOLD TIM AND MARTY THAT SHE WOULD HELP them, she felt as if she were on a roller coaster. The ride started out nice and easy, as the brothers perfected their plan with little involvement from her, but she knew it was going to speed up quickly and she would have no way to get off.

Her role now was to set the stage for her breakup with Tim, so she began fabricating problems to discuss with Ronnie.

“He got a phone call from another girl while I was there last night,” she confided to Ronnie as they dressed for work one morning. It was very early. Still dark outside.

“How do you know?” Ronnie pulled on her jeans, then peered over her shoulder to check them in the mirror, making sure they were flattering to her backside.

“I answered the phone,” CeeCee said. She tugged a wide-toothed comb through her hair. “There was this pause. Then a girl’s voice asked for Tim. He sounded happy to hear from her and went in another room to talk.”

Ronnie turned to look at her, hands on her hips. “Did you ask him who it was?”

“No.” CeeCee set down her comb. “I don’t want to be clingy.”

“You have a right to know.” Ronnie was indignant. “You’re in a serious relationship, not some fling. You should know everything.”

CeeCee flopped down on her bed. “He seems … kind of distant all of a sudden,” she said.

“CeeCee.” Ronnie sat next to her. “You’ve given him the idea you’re his, no matter what. It’s really time you act like other guys are interested in you. And that you’re interested in them. You’ve got to let him know he can’t take you for granted.”

“I don’t want to pretend I’m interested in someone else,” she said. “I just want Tim.”

She was surprised when tears filled her eyes. It was easy to imagine how she would feel if she lost him, because that was currently her biggest worry. How were they going to continue their relationship with him in hiding? She’d raised the issue a few times since their meeting with Marty, and each time he would hold her close, reassuring her that they would work it out.

“It’s too good between us to just throw it away,” he’d say. If she pressured him for details, he’d get annoyed. “I don’t know the specifics, CeeCee. I don’t even know where I’m going to end up yet. You’ll just have to trust me on this.” She did trust him, but she’d never been comfortable with uncertainty.

He told her that the breakup had to be public. “Did you take drama in high school?” he asked one night as he drove her home after a movie.

She shook her head. “Did you?”

“Yes,” he said. “So I figure, I’ll pretend I’m really pissed at you for something.” He glanced at her with his full-lipped smile. “I can’t imagine what you could do to piss me off, though.”

“I told Ronnie I thought you were interested in someone else.”

“Brilliant!” He nodded appreciatively. “Except it makes me look like a shithead. I want the breakup to be your fault.”

“Uh-uh,” she said with a smile. “It’s got to be yours.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve already asked enough of you, so I’ll take the heat. We’ll make it my fault. An old girlfriend’s come back into my life and being a typical male asshole, I’m leaving you for her.”

“What’s she like?”

“She looks kind of like Telly Savalas, but she has some kind of hold on me,” he said.

“What?” CeeCee laughed.

“She can be moody, too,” Tim continued. “And she’s hard to get, so I’ve always been intrigued with her. So, now that she wants me, I just can’t help myself.”

He seemed so absorbed with the fantasy that CeeCee felt uncomfortable. “This is all made up, right?”

“Oh, babe, do you think I could ever leave you?” Was there a trace of annoyance in the question? She was afraid she was starting to sound as insecure as she felt. “No other woman compares to you,” he said. “You’ve got the world’s most amazing hair and you’re smart and you’ve organized my entire house and won my brother over. Plus, you’re dynamite in bed.”

She blushed at that. She was not dynamite in bed; she’d still not had an orgasm with him inside her. Maybe she didn’t move enough or something. His fictional girlfriend was probably multiorgasmic. No wonder he wanted to go back to her. In her imagination, she named her Willa.

As planned, Tim came to the coffee shop two weeks before Thanksgiving. Instead of sitting in his booth, he asked CeeCee to walk outside with him. He looked appropriately troubled.

Ronnie was headed for the kitchen, and CeeCee caught her arm. “Tim wants to talk to me in private,” she whispered. “Could you cover my tables for a few minutes?”

Ronnie glanced at Tim. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” CeeCee shrugged. “Nothing, I hope.”

“Go ahead,” Ronnie said. “I’ll cover.”

She and Tim walked outside and stood on the sidewalk by the coffee-shop windows. Students walked past them in either direction, crowding them, brushing up against them, but they held their ground. This was to be a show, primarily for Ronnie’s sake.

“Just remember I love you,” he began.

She nodded. The sunlight gave him a halo of golden curls. She wanted to touch him but kept her arms folded rigidly across her chest.

“My old girlfriend’s come back,” he said. “And she made me realize that I was never really in love with you. I’m sorry. I need to break up with you.”

“I knew it!” She stomped her foot on the sidewalk. “I knew there was someone else.”

Tim started to smile at her false anger, but caught himself. “It only just happened,” he said. “It’s not like I’ve been with her all along or anything.”

“How can you do this to me?” she shouted, louder than she’d intended to. A guy walking past her told her to “settle down.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Tim said. He hadn’t shaved that morning; she could see the pale stubble on his cheeks.

“Well, you’re doing a good job of it,” she said. “What does she have that I don’t have?”

“It’s not you, CeeCee. It’s me,” he said. “You’re wonderful and I just … it’s completely my fault.”

“Damn straight,” she said.

“I’m really, really sorry.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but she raised her arms quickly to cast him off. “Can you cry?” he asked.

She put her hands to her face and let her shoulders heave.

“That’s better,” Tim said. “I’d like to think that losing me would tear you apart. Like losing you would do to me.” He pulled her toward him. “Okay, now I’ll comfort you tenderly for one last time.”

She buried her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Tim, I don’t like this,” she said.

“I know, babe.” He patted her back in the halfhearted manner of a lover who’s already moved on. “Me, neither. But you and I know what’s really still between us. Come over tomorrow night, okay? Just be sure to show up after dark so no one sees you. And come around to the back door.”

“Okay,” she said.

He pulled away from her. “Now look pissed off before you go back in,” he said.

“Pissed off isn’t good enough.” She wiped her dry eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going for complete devastation.”

“Don’t forget who loves you.” He winked at her.

“Ditto,” she said, and without thinking, she drew back her hand and let it fly, her palm connecting with his stubbled cheek in a slap that turned every head on the street.

He looked at her, wide-eyed with shock as he raised his own hand to his crimson cheek.

“Oh, my God, Tim, I’m sorry.” She tried to reach for him, but he backed away.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’ll put your things out on the curb for you.”

She watched him walk up Franklin Street, losing him quickly in the crowd of students. She looked down at her palm. What had gotten into her? And why had hitting him felt so good?

She was stoic once inside the restaurant, as she pretended to tamp down the raw emotions of a woman scorned. Ronnie was solicitous and comforting, and CeeCee knew that she and their manager, George, were talking about her behind her back. She hated being the object of their pity and she hated that they now viewed Tim as a selfish womanizer. But she knew this was only the beginning of her necessary lies.

Chapter Nine

I wish I could see you now, at sixteen. You’re an amazing twelve-year-old, so I can only imagine you’ll get more amazing as you get older. Yesterday, when the nurse tried to keep you out of my room because I was so sick, I could hear you talking to her through the closed door. You told her, “That’s MY mother, not yours. I’ll take care of her.” Even though I had my head over the basin, it made me laugh. And it let me know how strong you are and that you’re going to be just fine without me.

How did you ever get so brave?

EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE ONLY A FEW MILES OUTSIDE OF Chapel Hill, the tension in Tim’s van was already so thick CeeCee could feel it on her skin. They still had a good hour and a half before they reached New Bern. The bucket seat felt lumpy to her, pressing against her back in the wrong places. Marty sat on a beach chair turned sideways behind Tim’s seat. He held a hand-drawn map on one knee and a beer bottle on the other, and he and Tim had been arguing about which roads to take since pulling out of their driveway. She wanted to tell them to shut up; if they couldn’t agree on something as simple as how to get to New Bern, how were they going to make the more critical decisions that lay ahead of them in the next couple of days? But she said nothing, afraid of making Tim any more agitated than he already was. They were on edge, all of them. These were their last few hours as law-abiding citizens.

The mattress in the back of the van was covered with suitcases, duffel bags and backpacks. It had taken Tim a full day to pack and she’d felt sorry for him as she watched him weigh what to take and what to leave behind. He and Marty would never be returning to the mansion. She, on the other hand, brought only a couple of changes of clothes and her toothbrush. That was all she expected to need. Three days, max, Tim had told her. Then Andie would be safe, the governor’s wife returned to hearth and home, and CeeCee could go back to Chapel Hill.

She was in charge of the cassette tapes on this trip. The Eagles, of course. Creedence and Queen and Chicago and old Stones. None of it very soothing.

“Turn that crap off,” Marty snapped at her when Queen started singing “We are the Champions.”

“Don’t talk to her that way,” Tim said.

“It’s all right,” she said, pressing the eject button. “What do you want to hear, Marty?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded desolate all of a sudden. “Stones, I guess.”

She put in the cassette, and “Under my Thumb” filled the van.

“Turn it down,” Tim said.

She did. She would do whatever she was told to keep peace in the van.

Tim turned onto a highway, and Marty grabbed his shoulder from behind. “I told you not to go this way!” he shouted.

“Let go of me.” Tim’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “It’s a straight shot from here, Marty.”

“Stop it, you two!” she said. “We have to pull together, okay? Y’all told me this would be easy and now you’re at each other’s throats.”

The two men shut up, probably stunned into silence by the fact that she’d confronted them more than by her request to stop fighting. No one said a word for nearly an hour. She put on the Eagles when the Stones tape was finished, then tried to get comfortable as she watched the terrain grow flatter, broken up by miles and miles of tall pines. The small houses were acres apart from one another. Some of them were well maintained, with white wrought-iron railings on the front steps and gazing globes in their yards. Others had sheet plastic over the windows, sloppily patched roofs and weedy, knee-high lawns.

“We’re in the boonies, boys and girls.” Marty finally broke the silence.

“The boonier, the better,” Tim said.

Marty leaned forward between the bucket seats and pointed to an opening in a grove of pines. “Turn here,” he said. She could smell tobacco and beer on his breath.

Tim turned onto a narrow one-lane road.

“Now, watch for a road off to the right,” Marty said. “It’s about a mile down, I think.”

He knew the couple who would put them up for the night, and he’d been to their house once before.

“Is that it?” Marty leaned even farther between the seats to peer out the front window.

CeeCee spotted a road veering off to the right.

“Yeah,” Marty answered his own question. “Turn here.”

Tim did as he was told. They were on a rutted dirt road, so tightly surrounded by pines and shrubs that the sun was stolen from them and branches scraped the side of the van. It was three in the afternoon, but it might as well have been evening for all the light on the road.

They grew quiet as they bounced along. The cassette tape ended, but CeeCee didn’t even notice. In the silence, she could almost hear her heart beating. In a few minutes, everything would change and their journey would begin in earnest. Guiltily she hoped something would interfere with their plan. The kidnapping was to occur the following night. Maybe the woman would be ill and unable to teach her class. Maybe the people they were going to stay with would talk Tim and Marty out of the whole crazy idea.

She’d told Ronnie and George that she was taking Thanksgiving week off to visit a high-school friend who now lived in Pennsylvania. George was annoyed, but Ronnie was so supportive that CeeCee felt guilty.

“You need to get away,” Ronnie said. “You’ve been so down since the breakup with Tim.”

She wasn’t depressed, but she’d apparently done a good job of acting as though she were. She saw Tim nearly as much as before the so-called breakup. She’d lie to Ronnie about meeting a friend for dinner, then go to Tim’s house for lovemaking and reassurance that everything would turn out all right.

“You sure this is it?” Tim asked now, after they’d driven through the dark tunnel of trees for several minutes.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Marty said. A house suddenly appeared in a small clearing on the right. “That’s it,” he said.

The house was tiny, the white paint peeling. Smoke rose from the crumbling top of the brick chimney. A rusting swing set stood near the woods, and a little girl swung on it, leaning back so far that her long blond hair dusted the ground. Three cars, ancient and rusting, sat in the weeds on the other side of the house, and a truck and an old VW bus were parked next to them.

“Looks like Forrest has a leak,” Marty said, and CeeCee noticed a man on the roof spreading a piece of blue sheet plastic over the shingles. He stood up as they pulled in behind the old cars, and he hesitated a moment before heading for the ladder that rested against the eaves.

Two mangy dogs, barking and baring teeth, ran up to the van as CeeCee and the men started to get out. She was afraid of the dogs, but she didn’t want Tim to think she was a chicken. If she couldn’t handle two dogs, how was she going to handle the task she’d agreed to?

“Hi, fellas,” she said, holding her arms close to her sides. The dogs sniffed her legs, tails rising into uncertain wags.

The man climbed down the ladder from the roof and approached them. He was tall, bearded and big-boned but not overweight. He looked like someone accustomed to physical work. He wiped his hand on the rag hanging from his belt, then reached out to shake Marty’s.

“What’s the buzz, bro?” he asked.

“Not much,” Marty answered. “This is my brother, Tim, and his girlfriend, CeeCee. And this is Forrest.”

The little girl ran from the swing set and grabbed on to Forrest’s leg. “Is this the company?” she asked.

Forrest rested one big hand on the child’s head. “Yes, honey,” he said, then to the three of them, “And this is Dahlia.”

“I’m five,” Dahlia said.

CeeCee laughed nervously, charmed by the little girl’s blue-eyed beauty. “Wow, five,” she said. “Are you in kindergarten?”

“Mommy teaches me,” Dahlia said. “Where does your hair end?” She let go of her father to walk behind CeeCee. “It’s all the way to your bottom!” she said, delighted. “I’m going to grow my hair that long.”

“Leave her alone, Dahlia,” Forrest said. His voice was gruff, all business. “You guys have any trouble finding us?”

“No problem,” Tim said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to get from here to the cabin.”

It was the first time the cabin had been mentioned on this trip, but as much as she would have liked to, CeeCee had not forgotten about it. That was where she would create the prison for the governor’s wife.

“I’ve got a map you can take a look at,” Forrest said.

“Great.” Tim nodded.

They followed Forrest through the front door. The inside of the house was an unexpected contrast to the ramshackle exterior. There was a fire in the small fireplace and the living room smelled of smoke and something else, something savory. The furniture was old and threadbare, but the room was neat and cozy. They walked through the living room into a kitchen, where a woman, dressed in a long pale yellow skirt and blue-trimmed peasant blouse, pulled a loaf of bread from the oven.