Melissa Foster - Chasing Amanda

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t show a photo that night. I, uh, I just talked is all.” Straightening the papers, he slipped the photo in between. “It’s nothing, really, probably an old photo that fell out of one of the old albums.”

“Okay,” Molly stepped out of the car. “Thanks for the ride. I’m not sure what I would have done if you hadn’t come by. I might have curled up in a little ball and slept on a picnic table!” she laughed, turned to her van, and heard Newton’s relieved sigh as she walked away.

Once in her van, she scribbled the visions she’d just had in her notebook. “Where is this child?” she wondered aloud. She put the notebook and her iPod in her backpack and retrieved her phone: seven missed calls. She scanned the numbers: Cole, Hannah, and several from a number marked Private. What now ? She clicked on the voicemail icon to retrieve the five new messages.

“Hi, babe, just checking on you. Love you,” Cole’s voice soothed over the recording.

“Molly, it’s Hannah. I just noticed your vehicle in my driveway. Are you out running?” She paused. “Well, I guess I’ll see you sometime soon. Have a good run.”

The next message was garbled with heavy static which continued for almost a full minute. Molly debated hanging up, but curiosity got the best of her, and she remained on the line. Just as she was about to delete the message, a scratchy voice said, “He knows.” More static punctured the air like bullets. Molly pressed the phone harder against her ear, hoping to make out more words, to recognize the voice. When the words finally escaped the static, they made her dizzy. She leaned back in the driver’s seat and pushed the number one on her phone to replay the message. The words, “Save...Tracey,” were just as painful the second time around. Molly’s fingers shook as they hovered over the number nine on her phone, checking it again and again before pushing the number, making sure she was saving the message rather than deleting it. Molly’s heart skipped a beat as the next message began with the same sinister static. She listened intently for three minutes, hoping to hear a few words, a hint of who had called. She was met with the spine-chilling noise of cellular airways unwilling to release the voices that they were paid to carry. Just as she was about to give up, there were two voices in the background—one male and one female. The symphony of their conversation rose and fell—an argument, though what about, Molly could not decipher. The voices were muffled, the words unclear. Her heart pounded in anticipation of a clue, some hint to who had been calling her. The message clicked off, and Molly pulled the phone from her ear.

Tracey awoke frightened and cold. “Mummy?” she called out, hoping she had returned while Tracey had napped. There was no answer. The candle had gone out, leaving the room pitch black. Tracey rose hesitantly from her mattress and felt her way along the dirt wall to the makeshift table. She fumbled for the matches and nervously fingered the rectangular match box. She didn’t want to get in trouble for lighting the match, but she was terrified of the darkness. She bit her lower lip and withdrew a wooden match. Her fingers felt their way along the thin match, recognizing the bulbous head, and then gripping the opposite end. Tracey trembled as she struck the match along the side of the box, just as her father had showed her the last time they had made a campfire. A tiny spark flittered in the darkness. Tracey released the breath she had unconsciously been holding, and a frustrated, strangled sound followed. She removed another matchstick from the box, again she searched with her fingers for the swollen end. Please, please, she prayed. She instinctively stepped back when the flame came to life, then she lowered it quickly against the candle wick.

Tracey squinted into the lightening room, noting the wooden plank, still in place, the ghostly shadows dancing on the wall behind the candle. She felt a presence behind her and turned slowly, frightened, her body covered with goose bumps. She stood rigid while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Her gaze dropped to a bulging image that lay on the other side of the room—they hadn’t been there when Mummy had gone—a tall figure loomed beside them. Tracey was not alone.

Nineteen

Molly threw her backpack on the kitchen table, glad the dogs were in the yard and not at her feet. The Washington Post sat folded before her. Cole, she sighed. Tracey’s smiling face covered the upper right quarter of the page, and around her neck, sparkling like a flash of metal at sea, sat the necklace that Molly held in her possession. Molly withdrew her notepad from her backpack with a sigh. She took it into the family room and sat on the couch, exhausted. Her head flopped back onto the soft cushion. She let her eyes fall closed and took a deep, relaxing breath, wondering why she had ever stopped meditating. She thought about how quickly her life had changed. It seemed to her that one day she was trying to keep up with a three-year-old, her every second wrapped around his needs, the days weaving in and out of each other, some blending so smoothly that it was hard to tell when one ended and the next began, some so terribly hard that she couldn’t wait for a reprieve—a little breathing space, a few minutes to think her own thoughts, accomplish her own grown-up tasks. And then her life had been interrupted. There had been Amanda, and the years when functioning became a goal rather than a given—the lost years. Molly sat up and sighed, remembering the therapy, the fights, the fear in Erik’s eyes when he realized that he couldn’t count on his mother for her strength or safety, and the way that look felt like a knife in her gut, initially sinking her further into depression. Eventually, that pain became the catalyst to her lifeline, her reason for pulling herself toward solid ground. And now that she had it all together—direction, confidence, her son’s trust—she was throwing herself right into the heart of an investigation.

“What am I doing?” Molly curled her legs up beneath herself and skimmed through her notepad. Visions, she wondered, or just scenes made up by a delusional mother’s subconscious? She was too tired to deal with Cole’s suspicion that her visions were just her mind working overtime, a thought she could not make go away, no matter how hard she tried. She put the notepad down and withdrew the folded messages that she’d tucked in the back of the pad. She stared at the creased pages, pages she knew she had not fabricated. They were tangible evidence that someone, somewhere, knew she was trying to find Tracey. She wondered why the person wouldn’t come forward and simply go to the police. She folded the papers, frustrated, knowing she had memorized them the first time she had read them. Molly was too irritated to relax. She wondered if Cole was right, if she should go back into therapy, try to deal with the remaining guilt of losing Amanda. The dogs barked and pawed at the rear door. Molly walked through the house feeling useless. She let the dogs in and walked back out the front door to retrieve the mail.

She leafed through the junk mail and set the rest in a pile on the counter. She let out a sigh, her hopes of finding a catalogue, or something distracting to leaf through, dashed. She’d have been happy with a coupon flyer. She fed the dogs and felt as if she were moving robotically through the motions.

Molly ran a warm bath, pouring in extra bubbles so she wouldn’t have to see her aging body distorted through the water. She pulled off her jeans and felt the unfamiliar bulge in her pocket. She gently removed the necklace and candy wrapper, and sat down on the edge of the tub in her underwear. She laced the necklace in and out of her fingers, dragging the chain across her palms. The cold metal felt lonely, hollow. The heart trinket was smeared with dirt. She walked into her bedroom and placed it, along with the candy wrapper, under her pillow. Molly finished undressing and lowered her body into the warm bubbly water, a consolation for a hard afternoon’s… What? she wondered. Work? Research? Search? She quickly decided that she had no idea what to call the way she had been spending her time lately but reassured herself that the bath was still her due. She lay back and closed her eyes. She had been drifting toward sleep when the phone rang. “Damn it,” she said, opening her eyes and bracing herself to stand up. “I got it!” Cole yelled up the stairs.