Kate

KATE

NOW

Bea and I are in the kitchen when the doorbell rings. I’ve just gotten home from work and am telling Bea about my day while she makes chicken enchiladas for us for dinner. Bea chops a pepper while the chicken browns in a skillet on the stove. My mouth waters. My day, as always, was incredibly busy so that I didn’t have time to sit down for lunch; I ate on the go instead, a nibble here, a nibble there, between patients.

Today was difficult. I had to put down a dog I’ve been treating for a long time. No matter how many times I do it, it never gets easy or routine. I euthanize patients almost every day. Even harder than that are the days I get vilified by clients. The animals I adore; their humans are another story.

“Are you expecting someone?” I ask Bea at the sound of the doorbell.

“I don’t think so,” she says, turning the heat off under the chicken. I carry my wine with me, following her to the front door.

It’s early evening, just after five o’clock. Outside the day is still bright. Bea pulls the door open and there stand Josh and Leo on the porch, a couple of uniformed police officers on the porch step below them. Concern lines their faces. There are tears in Josh’s and Leo’s eyes. The likeness to that night eleven years ago renders me momentarily speechless as I picture Josh with little Leo by his side, arms wrapped around Josh’s leg, the storm raging in the background. The night their nightmare began.

Eleven years later, it’s still ongoing.

“What is it?” Bea asks. “What’s wrong?”

I set my wine on the coffee table. Josh says, “She’s gone. She’s run away,” and it’s all so similar to the night Meredith and Delilah first disappeared that I’m caught off balance, left openmouthed. Josh doesn’t look like himself. He hasn’t in quite some time. Our friendship has waned over the years. We see each other far less. When we do, Bea and I have to be cautious to censor what we say. We don’t ever mention Meredith or Delilah.

It’s been just about a week since we heard the incredible news that Delilah had finally, after all those years, made a safe return. I’d given up hope of her ever coming home. For as much as I wanted to see her, I didn’t want to impose on Josh. Bea and I had made the decision to wait until the media left, until the hoopla died down, to go and welcome Delilah home.

But now Josh is here in our doorway telling us she’s gone, that she’s run away, and all I can do is stare openmouthed while Bea does the talking. My heart is breaking for him inside. Not again. Please, I silently plead, don’t let him lose her again.

“Delilah ran away?” Bea asks.

Josh says, shaking his head, “Yes, no, yes. It’s a long story. Have you seen her? The girl?” and that’s the moment I know that this girl, living inside Josh and Leo’s house for the past week, is not who she claimed to be. Josh has been duped again. He looks broken.

Standing beside Josh, Leo looks lost. “Carly,” he utters beneath his breath. And then, more pronounced: “Her name is Carly.”

One of the police officers steps forward. “Would you mind if we take a look around your property for a missing child?” he asks.

“Of course,” Bea says. “Whatever you need.”

Bea and I slip into shoes and follow them out in case we can be of any help. The reporters, I see when we do, are having a field day with this. They don’t step onto our property, but they stand at the edge of it, camera-ready in case something newsworthy happens, which it already is.

I catch up with Josh and take his hand into mine. I can’t imagine what he’s going through, after all these years of searching, to think he’d found his daughter only to have her taken away again. For the past eleven years, he and Leo have lived a quiet life, a private life. I wish I’d been a better friend to them over the years. We tried early on, but Josh was so snowed under by grief that it was hard. He pushed us away. We gave up. We didn’t even invite him to our wedding because it didn’t seem right to force our happiness on him, who was sad.

I should have tried harder. I should have done more.

There are police cars outside Josh and Leo’s house. There are a half dozen officers on foot, each searching in a different direction for this missing girl.

We walk our property. It’s not large by any means, but there are towering trees with branches and leaves that hang low. There are also hedges where a person, if she wanted to, could conceivably hide. The police officers search the hedges. She’s not there. We make our way around the side of the house, following the concrete walkway into the backyard. One of the officers investigates the shrubs. Another asks, “Mind if we search the garage?”

He goes to it, sizing up Bea’s music studio from the outside. The studio is a near-replica of our house. It’s smaller, of course, a story and a half tall with a storage space on the upper floor. We don’t use that storage space; we don’t need to. If anything, Bea keeps old recording equipment in there. Between Bea and me, we don’t have many belongings, and what we have can easily fit into the spare bedroom in the house.

Bea goes to the studio and jiggles the door handle. She stands taller than the police officer by an inch or two. I stand, watching her in her jeans and her black T-shirt and her sneakers. She looks troubled. Like Josh, Bea changed significantly after what happened to Meredith and Delilah. I suppose we all did. Bea became less relaxed, less carefree, more overburdened. She spent more time in solitude working on her music, though she never produced much. She lost interest in having kids.

“The door is locked,” she says to the police officer. Bea always keeps that door locked. She has expensive equipment in there, and nearly everyone in the neighborhood knows exactly what she uses the space for. It isn’t so unlikely to think someone might try to make off with her equipment when no one’s looking.

The officer asks, “Do you mind opening it for us?”

Bea says, “It’s been locked all day, Officer. No one could have gotten inside.”

There’s something about Bea’s response that lies heavy on me. Bea is right; short of telekinesis, there’s of course no way a person could have gotten through the locked door. There’s one window on the building, and it’s upstairs. There’s no easy way up, aside from scaling the yellow siding.

And yet, if I was Bea, I’d open the door and let the police officer see for himself that no one is there.

“Are you saying you won’t open the door?” he asks, staring Bea down. Josh no longer holds my hand. He’s let go, moved closer to Bea and the officer.

“That’s not what I said. I just don’t see how anyone could have gotten inside. I’m worried you’re wasting your time,” she says, and then I realize that she’s not being insubordinate and unwilling; she’s trying to save them from a pointless search. Bea is helping.

“Bea,” Josh says. “We don’t know how long the girl has been gone—”

“Carly,” Leo interjects again. He hovers somewhere behind me. “Her name is Carly.” This time when he says it, he enunciates each word at a time.

Josh swallows hard. “We don’t know how long Carly has been gone,” he says, putting emphasis on her name, “or how far she could have gotten by now. Please, Bea, please just open the door and let them see, so we can get on with the search.”

“Of course,” Bea says, offering Josh a faint smile. She looks embarrassed. Bea doesn’t embarrass easily. She didn’t mean to be a burden, but from the looks of things, she has been. I offer her a sympathetic smile, knowing she was only trying to help. “Of course,” she says again, dropping her eyes. “I was just trying to save you time. I’m happy to open the door, if that’s what you need. Just let me go get the key,” she says as she steps past the rest of us and makes her way to the concrete walk, rounding the side of the house for the front door, which we left unlocked. The rest of us wait, unspeaking. The day is hot. Sweat drips from me, from all of us, though we’re standing still. The trees block the sun, though there isn’t the slightest hint of a breeze. It’s stifling hot, a muggy Indian-summer day. The mosquitoes and bees buzz around, attracted to our sweat.

It takes an eternity for Bea to come back. Josh and the officers get anxious. “What’s taking her so long?” someone asks, looking to me expectantly, as if I have the answer.

“Maybe she’s misplaced it,” I suggest. There’s a mirror in our entryway with brass pegs where we keep our keys. It wouldn’t be hard to find. “I’ll go check on her.”

I head in the same direction Bea went. The front door, when I get to it, is open a couple of inches as if she tried to slam the door closed behind herself, but it didn’t latch. I gingerly push the door open. I step inside the house and close the door behind me, feeling like a fish in a fishbowl with the reporters watching from just outside.

I call out for Bea. There’s no response.

I try again. “Bea!”

Only silence follows.

My eyes go to the brass pegs that outfit the bevel-edged mirror in the entryway. Only my keys are there.

I slip out of my shoes, dashing up the stairs in my bare feet. I try our bedroom first. It’s empty, though one of Bea’s dresser drawers has been pulled clear out and overturned on the floor. She was looking for something. I check the bathroom, the spare bedroom. All empty.

Running back down the wooden steps, I slip, my feet sliding out from beneath me. I land on my backside, feeling the pain of it radiate through my tailbone. I curse out loud at Bea, blind to what she’s doing, but knowing it’s something reckless and rash, something that leaves me in a bind.

I’m mad. I’m scared and confused.

I press myself up from the steps, rubbing my backside. I limp to the kitchen, where our half-made dinner sits abandoned. Through the glass door I see Josh, Leo and the police officers in our backyard, still taking stock of Bea’s music studio.

My cell phone sits on the kitchen counter. I pick it up and try calling Bea. She doesn’t answer.

Only seconds after I’ve ended the call does she text.

Forgive me. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.

My heart races wildly inside me.

Forgive you for what?I type immediately back, punching each letter into the keypad.

My question goes unanswered.

Where are you?I ask.

She doesn’t reply.

I try calling again. It rings once before going to voice mail. I call again and again, feeling frantic now, wondering what Bea has done that she didn’t mean to do. What am I to forgive her for, other than leaving me in the lurch like this?

What is she running from?

I hurry barefoot, back around the side of the house, my bra strap sliding out from beneath a sleeveless shirt, falling down my arm. I force it up. It falls again. My heart is beating hard inside my chest. My mind is restless, reeling. Where did Bea go? What is she up to?

My hair hangs in my eyes, wet with sweat. “She’s gone,” I tell them, breathless, when I return to the backyard. My chest hurts. I can’t catch my breath.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Josh asks.

“I don’t know, Josh. I don’t know. The house is empty. I looked everywhere for her. I tried calling her. She texted this,” I say, forcing my cell phone into Josh’s hands.

He looks at it, at Bea’s disclosure, and asks, “What does this mean?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

Josh passes the phone to the officers. Bea’s car is parked in the alley beside mine. Wherever she went, she went on foot. She can’t be far.

“Can you let us inside the garage, ma’am?” one of the officers asks. There’s something in there that Bea doesn’t want the police to see. Stolen audio equipment is all that comes to mind. But Bea and I have enough money. She could buy anything she needs.

“I don’t know where the key is,” I admit. “There’s only one. It’s gone. Bea must have taken it with her when she ran off,” I say, ashamed for many reasons, but mostly that Bea cut and run and left me in the dark like this. It’s so unlike Bea.

I go on to explain, my eyes moving between Josh and the officers, “I never go in there. It’s Bea’s space. It’s where she works. I don’t like to intrude.” I’m spinning, remembering how I used to have a key to the studio. But then many, many years ago, Bea told me how she thought someone had tried to break in; she installed a new handle on the door herself, something more secure and foolproof. She boarded up the one window with plywood, though the only person getting up there without a ladder was Spiderman. It seemed excessive and a bit paranoid, if I’m being honest. But I told myself at the time that, if it made Bea feel more safe, so be it. I didn’t argue. It was shortly after all that happened with Shelby Tebow, Meredith and Delilah. The whole neighborhood was on edge. It was understandable that Bea might want to take extra security measures to feel safe.

The new lock, she said, only came with the one key. She told me she’d have another made for me. Now that I think about it, she never did.

One of the officers asks, “Do we have your permission to knock the door down?”

Without hesitation I say, “Yes. Of course.”

I need to know what Bea has been keeping from me.

The officer goes back to his vehicle. Minutes later, he comes back with a battering ram. It doesn’t take long. The door busts violently open, ricocheting off the wall. From where we stand, I see Bea’s equipment. Nothing looks amiss.

I release my pent-up breath.

The officers step heedfully inside the studio. One has a hand on the weapon in his holster. Josh makes an attempt to follow.

“Sir,” one of the officers says firmly. “You need to stay put.”

Josh does as he’s told. He, Leo and I stand together, waiting. It’s all so like that day they found Meredith, when the female detective told Josh, there in the parking lot of that seedy motel, that Meredith was dead of an apparent suicide, which was later confirmed by autopsy. He fell to pieces on the concrete lot. The rest of the day was a blur for all of us. I don’t remember much.

From where we stand, I just barely see the officers probing around Bea’s space. It doesn’t seem like they’re finding anything of interest to them.

Suddenly the officers stand at attention. One of them points upward, to where the attic is. The three move to the stairs. They start to climb, their movements in sync. After a half dozen steps, they drop from view. I can’t see them anymore.

There is a door at the top of those steps, I remember. It must be locked. The officers don’t ask this time; instead, I hear the unmistakable sound of them breaking it down.

The scream that reaches my ears as the door bursts open is shrill, terrified, female. A girl. The girl Josh and Leo are looking for. But why? For what reason would Bea shelter this girl in her music studio? I can think of none.

My knees buckle. My legs give. I sag onto the lawn. Josh breaks into a run, but Leo tries stopping him, tries holding him back. Josh is stronger than Leo. With Leo hanging on to his arm, he drags Leo across the lawn and toward the studio door.

I’m frozen to the ground, horror-struck as the police officers return with the girl. Except that when she emerges, she is not the same girl that I’ve been seeing on the news. Bruised and battered, malnourished, skittish.

She is the spitting image of Meredith instead. Flaming red hair, fair skin, freckles, eyes the same as Meredith’s mineral green. She’s Meredith in her mannerisms, in the way she carries herself, in the way she stands. She’s clean, well fed, seemingly unharmed. She is no longer a cherubic little girl. She’s developed into a lovely young lady who takes my breath away.

Josh falls to his knees at her feet. “Daddy,” she cries out, lowering herself to the ground, collapsing into him. Leo, at first hesitant, rushes to them and together they hold each other and cry.

Delilah.

It’s Delilah.

I feel ashamed, deceived, horrified, hurt. Confused. How did Delilah come to be here in Bea’s studio after Meredith killed herself? For eleven years she’s been here, in my backyard, and I didn’t know.

I don’t have to wonder for long. Josh also wonders.

“How?” he asks. “How did you...?” He’s at a loss for words, unable to grasp what’s happening. Meredith left a note when she killed herself. Something to the effect of: Delilah is safe. She is fine. You’ll never find her. Don’t even try.

The realization stuns me. Meredith chose Bea to watch over Delilah after she was gone. She entrusted Delilah to Bea. Bea was making good on a promise to Meredith; she was honoring Meredith’s last request.

But why? Why would Meredith ever keep Delilah from Josh?

My thoughts are derailed with Delilah’s next words.

“I was there,” Delilah says, “when she killed Mommy.”

The world falls silent.

And then I hear, “No,” vehemently at first and then screamed again and again, with more passion, more fury, “No! No! Noooo!”

It’s only when all eyes fall to me that I realize those are my words. That I’m the one who’s screaming.

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Later, after the police have completed their investigation, which includes interrogating me, they let me into Bea’s studio. I don’t know what to expect as I ascend the steps and let myself into the upstairs attic where Delilah was kept for eleven years. The sole window is boarded up with plywood, except for a small circle, carved just big enough for an eye, out of which Delilah could see. For eleven years she watched her father mow the lawn, watched Leo toss a ball to Wyatt the dog until he died. She watched flowers bloom and snow fall, but never felt the sun on her skin.

She wasn’t treated unkindly. Delilah has told the police as much; the stacks of books, of toys, of art supplies, the plentiful clothes suggest the same to me. And yet Bea took her childhood from her. She stole years of Delilah’s life that she will never get back. She took her from her family. She stole her innocence and her freedom. Why? Because Delilah was witness to what Bea did to Meredith.

As it turns out, Delilah didn’t see Bea kill Meredith, though for eleven years she thought she did. What she saw was the commencing act: Bea immobilizing Meredith with a hammer, and Meredith falling unconscious to the ground. As Bea held her hand to Delilah’s mouth and carried her running from the Dickeys’ garage to ours, little Delilah was sure her mother was dead. Bea never told her otherwise. Delilah doesn’t remember much from that day, though she remembers that when Bea came back, after leaving her alone for what felt like an eternity to a six-year-old, she had medicine and ice cream.

The upstairs of the garage is tiny and cramped. With the window boarded up, it’s always gloomy, if not dark. The roof is a gable roof. Only where the edges meet to form a ridge could Delilah, at seventeen years, stand fully upright. When she first came to this place at six years old—an impossibility that devastates me again and again, how Bea kept a child in here for eleven years—it would have been different. Then she would have been able to stand anywhere without hitting her head.

There is no room for a bed. Instead, there’s an air mattress where Delilah slept. It’s covered with pink sheets and a pink comforter, suggesting that Bea was considerate of what Delilah liked, and yet there’s no bathroom other than the folding steel commode, the kind of thing meant for the elderly who don’t have the capacity to walk to and from a bathroom. The space smells of urine. Every so often, according to Delilah, presumably on days I worked, Bea would clean the commode out. She would fill buckets of warm, soapy water for Delilah to sponge bath. She would help her wash and braid her hair.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to sort out this Bea from the one I loved.

That same day that Delilah is found, the other missing child, Carly Byrd, is found hiding out near an abandoned dam in Dellwood Park. She’s safe, she’s fine, waiting at the police station for her family to come and take her home for good.

Three days later, the couple that kept Carly captive is found when they stupidly return to their own home. They confess to her kidnapping and captivity. They’ll be going to jail for a long time. She will never need to live in fear of them again. They were copycat criminals, inspired by Delilah’s story. They wanted the same notoriety that Delilah’s captor—Bea—had. They wanted full media coverage, attention, a nation in fear. I try to understand it but can’t, because what they did falls outside the realm of any rational thought.

A few days after that, Bea is captured by police when she tries to procure a fake ID. At her arraignment, she pleads guilty to first-degree murder, vehicular homicide, concealment of a homicide and aggravated kidnapping. I don’t go to the arraignment. Josh goes and tells me later.

It was Bea’s blood the police found in Josh’s garage.

Bea kept Delilah all those years because she couldn’t bring herself to kill her. Delilah knew too much. Bea couldn’t let her go home to snitch. She had only two choices: kill or hide her. She chose the least bad option.

Nothing will bring Meredith back to life, but perhaps restoring her reputation is the best that we can do. Leo has spent his life feeling neglected by her. Now he knows that his mother loved him fiercely.

With Bea’s confession, Shelby Tebow’s husband, Jason, gets released from prison after erroneously serving eleven years. He goes home to nothing. His wife is dead, and the child he once believed they shared now lives with her real father. It’s tragic. The consequences of what Bea did are overwhelming. She didn’t just hurt one person. She hurt so many. She ravaged so many lives. It deeply disturbs me, not only because I feel guilty by association, but because the woman I loved, the one I thought I knew, the one I made a life with, has turned out to be selfish and cruel. Bea is a kidnapper. She is a murderer. She hid Delilah under my nose for eleven years; she let Josh and Leo search for her in vain; she let an innocent man rot in jail for over a decade of his life.

I cry myself to sleep every night. I don’t cry for me. I cry for all the lives Bea shattered.

Only once do I take her call from prison. “What were you planning to do, keep Delilah there for the rest of her life?” I ask, still finding it unfeasible that Bea kept a human being in there for eleven years. If she hadn’t been caught, would Delilah still be there eleven years from now?

Did Delilah ever try and escape? Did she scream? It wouldn’t have mattered if she did; the garage is soundproof. I wouldn’t have heard.

“I didn’t have another choice. If I let her go, she would have told,” she says, and I’m sorry I asked because knowing this makes it feel worse. Bea takes a deep breath and says, “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I fucked up, Kate. I panicked. It was one colossal mistake that spiraled out of control. I never set out to hurt anyone.”

“But you did,” I say. “You hurt everyone.”

I hang up before she can say more. I refuse to accept any more calls from her.

In the evenings Josh and I share a beer on his front porch sometimes. We watch Leo and Delilah together, doing things that brothers and sisters do. Kids are more buoyant than adults. They’re quicker to bounce back. Even though Josh says there are times that Delilah shows a strange affinity toward Bea—wishing she could talk to her, that she could tell her something—she’s adapted well, slipped right back into her old routine of teasing and taunting her brother. It’s brought life back into Josh’s eyes. Their home is a joyful one.

They say time heals all wounds. Josh, Delilah and Leo are evidence of this.

As for me, I’m patiently waiting, but hopeful that my time will come soon.

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