“She lied to me so much!” I wailed. “She lied so much. It’s like a nightmare that won’t end, that keeps stretching and stretching.” I wobbled as the tears came. I’m sure I looked like I might topple down the steps.
He rushed to embrace me. “Take it easy. Think. Where else could the phone be? Someplace in the house?”
“I don’t know now. Maybe, maybe she did have hers with her when we went to the movies and was going to use it to contact him. It was another secret from me,” I said, now sounding angry. “I’ve got to get mine and copy down all my contacts for the police.”
“Go on,” he said. “Don’t say anything to your mother if she hears you and gets up.”
I nodded and went to my room. I found my phone and then hurried out but paused for a moment and went to peer into Mother’s bedroom. She was lying on her back. Her eyes were wide open, and she was staring at the ceiling. Was she thinking, or was she in some sort of daze? Did she blame herself for what was happening? Maybe she would lock herself in the pantry like she used to lock us in when we disobeyed her. I should feel sorrier for her, I thought, but right now, I couldn’t.
I tiptoed away and then descended and entered the living room.
“You think your sister might have had her cell phone when she left the movie theater to meet this guy?” Lieutenant Cowan asked as soon as I stepped into the room.
“Maybe. I guess I can’t swear about anything she said or did when it came to him,” I added. “If she didn’t trust me, she didn’t trust anyone. I was always her best friend, and she was always mine. It’s how my mother taught us to be.”
I sat and began to copy out my friends’ names and numbers. Daddy went through drawers and looked around in case Kaylee’s phone was somewhere other than her room.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Fitzgerald. We’ll get into the phone records,” Lieutenant Cowan told him when he returned empty-handed. The policemen stood.
“Call us if you think of something else or find anything that would help,” Detective Simpson said after I handed my list to him.
“I don’t want to leave the house,” I said. “But if you’d like me along when you do another search . . .”
“Better just help your parents deal with it all,” he told me. I thought he was going to smile, but he walked away before he could.
Daddy followed them to the front door. I sat and waited for him.
“I feel like I’m peeling an onion here,” he said when he returned. “The last thing I suspected was that one of you would do anything so weird without your mother discovering it. Meeting boys secretly? In Kaylee’s case, a man?”
“It’s not Mother’s fault. She was trying to have a new social life, Daddy,” I said. “You know how that can take up so much of your time and attention that you hardly have any left for anyone else.”
I thought I could see the sting in his eyes. Before he could say anything, I started to cry. He walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Where is she? Where is she?” I moaned. “What is he doing to her?”
“Easy,” Daddy said. He sat on the arm of the chair and put his arm around me, pulling me closer so I could lay my head against him. “Try not to think of the worst things. Stay hopeful. It will help us all if we stay hopeful.”
“I’ll try,” I said, my voice cracking.
I felt him kiss the top of my head, and then I quieted and we just sat there together in a way we never had.
It occurred to me that for the first time, I really felt like almost everyone else in my school.
I believed I had a father.
6
Kaylee
After dinner, Anthony brought out the cake for our dessert. It was a large, round chocolate cake, and he’d had the baker write Anthony and Kaylee Forever in the center of a pink-framed heart in green letters. It reminded me eerily of Haylee’s and my last birthday cake. Mother had ordered the same cake, and it even had a heart on it, with our names and Happy Birthday.
“I told him it was an anniversary,” he said when he placed it on the table. “I suppose anniversaries begin a minute after you say ‘I do,’ right? We’ll keep track of every minute, every hour, and every day. I love celebrating happy things. Yeah, I know you do, too. Don’t be surprised if I bring you something extra special and very expensive after only a month. I had nothing to spend my money on before. You can just imagine what I’ll do after our first year together.”
His face lit up like a little child’s on Christmas Day. The way he spoke about how long we would be together made me feel like a condemned prisoner in front of a judge, hearing herself being given a life sentence without parole. Who would hear my appeal? I stared down at the cake as if it spelled Doom instead of his name and mine with the word Forever.
Somewhere deep down inside me, where hope still lived and tweeted like a baby bird, helpless and dependent, I thought that perhaps my name was being circulated in newspapers and on television, and perhaps the baker thought, Kaylee . . . that’s unusual. Maybe he mentioned it to someone, who then said, “That’s the name of the missing girl.” I could imagine both of them going to the police and the baker describing Anthony, maybe even knowing enough about him to give them his address. Perhaps they were on their way here this very moment.
“Like it?” Anthony asked proudly.