Marcia Talley: Through the Darkness

Emily was crying now, big heaving sobs. “What kind of a mother am I? How could I have been so stupid?”

Close to tears myself, my heart pounding in my ears so loudly I could barely think, I tried to sort it out. Emily’d left Tim alone for two minutes, maybe three. Add the time to find me, call Alison, and search the day care center, another five minutes, tops. If somebody’d snatched little Tim, they might still be in the building.

So I did the only sensible thing.

I pulled the fire alarm.

The state of Maryland can fine you up to five thousanddollars for calling in a false alarm, but it was a price I’d gladly pay if it helped find Timmy.

The clock was ticking for my grandson, so I didn’t waste a moment waiting for the fire brigade. With the klaxon relentlessly hooting, I grabbed Emily’s hand and raced from the day care center into the reception area, where, like some deranged Pied Piper, I picked up Heather, then hurried across the lobby to the gift shop where Alison was frantically closing up.

“Forget that,” I said. “There’s no fire. Timmy’s missing!” I snatched the cash drawer from under Alison’s arm and tucked it beneath a pile of fleece hoodies that had been arranged for sale on a nearby display table. “Alison, I need you to go out to the parking lot. Grab everyone coming out the exits from the kitchen and the fitness suite. Herd them together and keep them in the parking lot until… well, I don’t know until when, just do it! And when Norman Salterelli shows up,” I called after Alison’s departing back, “tell him to get down the drive to the main gate and don’t let anybody leave until I say so!”

I turned to Heather. “You do the same thing on the patio for the folks coming out of the swimming pool exits, okay?”

“Right!” Heather turned smartly on the toes of her brand new athletic shoes and chugged out of the shop. On her way, she laid a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “We’ll find Tim, don’t you worry.”

Emily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, bobbed her head, and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

After Heather left, heading into the Natatorium against the flow of people hustling in the opposite direction, I gathered Emily into my arms. “We will find him, Em. I promise.” Still holding my daughter by the shoulders, I stepped back and looked deeply into her troubled, red-rimmed eyes. “But you need to be strong. Not only for Timmy’s sake, but also for Chloe and Jake.”

Under my hands, Emily shivered. “Chloe and Jake! I almost forgot! I have to pick them up from school at three!”

On the wall over Emily’s head the hands of a brass ship’s bell clock pointed to 1:25. Paul and I had picked it out at the Midshipmen’s Store as our “housewarming” present for the spa. Then, I had thought it was beautiful. Now the clock ticked at me accusingly, each tick reminding me that another second had passed, and Tim was still missing.

A tendril of hair had escaped from Emily’s braid and was plastered damply to her cheek. I smoothed it back gently. “Don’t worry about the children, honey. We have plenty of time. I’ll take care of them,” I said, not having the slightest idea how that would be accomplished, but reasonably certain that the school wouldn’t chuck my grandkids out on the street if Emily didn’t show up at three on the dot. “Now, come with me.”

A few seconds later I stationed myself just outside the main doors of Paradiso. As clients streamed out the door-dripping wet from the pool, or sweating from exercise, some still tying their robes around them-I scanned each face, looking for a sign, but I saw nothing but confusion, fear, and panic that mirrored our own.

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine,” I shouted over the deafening sound of the klaxon, all the time wondering, Where the hell is Paul? “Yes, the firemen are on their way. Please, move on. We’re to assemble in the garden.”

At some point Emily left my side and began grabbing at shirtsleeves, tugging at robes, her eyes wide with panic. “My son is missing! Has anyone seen a ten-month-old boy?”

The sad shake of a head. “No.”

A concerned smile. “I’m so sorry.”

While the crowd in the garden grew.

I had no idea there had been so many people in the building. François, Jimmy, and the kitchen staff would be out back, of course, but Wally and his two shampoo girls, the bikini wax specialist, a half-dozen guides, the guy who’d been introduced to me as Julio the Pilates instructor, and three massage therapists including Garnelle, were already congregating in and around the gazebo, reassuring clients and awaiting instructions.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, the familiar voice of my husband in my ear. “Hannah. What’s going on? I don’t smell any smoke.”

An elderly woman stumbled as she stepped over the threshold. I grabbed her elbow, steadying her, then directed her to the gazebo before turning to face Paul. “There isn’t any fire,” I said. “Tim-” I choked on my grandson’s name.

Paul’s dark chocolate eyes searched mine for clues. Until he wiped my tears gently away with his thumb, I didn’t realize I had been crying. “What, Hannah? What about Tim?”

“He’s missing, Paul. We think someone snatched him from the nursery.”

Paul sucked air noisily through his teeth. “Are you sure?”

“Would I have pulled the fire alarm if I wasn’t?”

“My God, Hannah.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him. I turned, buried my face in his chest, and began to sob. Paul’s here now. He’ll take this burden away. Everything will be fine .

“Where’s the goddamn fire?”

I raised my head, focusing through my tears on my son-in-law as he stood in the doorway, pointing the business end of a large red fire extinguisher in our direction.

Paul grabbed his arm. “Put the extinguisher down, Dante, you won’t need it. Hannah pulled the alarm. Tim is missing.”

“What?” Dante gasped as if he’d been struck in the stomach. “Where’s Emily?”

I nodded to my right, where Emily was leaning against a pillar, her head bowed.

Dante cast the fire extinguisher aside and yelled, “Emily, what the hell?”

Emily looked up miserably, tears streaming down her cheeks, too choked up to say anything. I answered for her. “When Emily went to sign for the exercise bikes like you asked, Tim disappeared.”

“What do you mean, he disappeared?”

“He was napping in his playpen. Five minutes later, he wasn’t.”

In four long strides Dante crossed the veranda. Before I could intervene, he grabbed Emily by the upper arms with both hands and started shaking her. “You left Tim alone? You stupid bitch! How could you do that?”

Emily threw back her head and wailed like a lost soul. Her cries cut through me like a hot knife. My child is in pain .

Paul, too, was struggling for control. He had been hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe, but Dante’s outburst seemed to galvanize him, because he suddenly released me, crossed the porch, clapped a firm hand on Dante’s shoulder and snarled under his breath, “This is your spa; you are in charge here. Now act like it!”

Paralyzed by shock, or grief, or fear, or shame-perhaps all of the above-Dante simply stared at his father-in-law. Paul jerked his head toward the spa employees and clients huddled in the garden. “Well?”

Dante didn’t move.

Paul waited a moment more, then strode to the end of the veranda, stood on the top step, bathrobed and barefooted, and gazed out over the crowd like a Roman orator.

“Okay, everyone, look around you. Is anyone missing?”

A low murmur drifted up from the garden, like a theater audience in the opening moments before the curtain rises.