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“Mom?” Sienna asks, coming up behind me, her hand on my shoulder a comfort. “What’s wrong?”
Nat left. She left this morning sometime after I left for work, taking all of her things with her. She had no intention of coming back, and I wonder when she made the decision to leave, sometime this morning or in the middle of the night?
Or did she know even sooner than that?
She went back to him, to Declan.
Fear grips me from inside.
No good can come of this.
I send her a message on Facebook.
Where are you, Nat? Let me help you.
All night long, I stay awake, worrying about her. I constantly refresh Facebook but she doesn’t read my message. I go to her Facebook page and find myself looking again at her husband, Declan, and, this time, when I see his handsome face, I feel sick inside, my stomach tightening. When I think of all the things he’s done and said to her, he’s not attractive after all, but ugly. Vile. I wonder if he made good on his threat, if, when she came home, he locked her in a room as promised, tied her to a bed or worse. A moan rises up from inside of me as I picture Nat with something like zip ties on her wrists, bound to the spindles of the bed with a fresh black eye, a broken nose, bruises on her neck—retribution for her leaving. A reckoning.
I wonder if when he’s through with her, he’ll come for me because I helped her. I kept her from him.
I think of Sienna in twenty years.
I think of what I would do if a man ever hurt her like that.
I’d kill him, I think.
Night lasts an eternity, but eventually morning comes. The sun rises. Life goes on.
In the morning, I watch Sienna get ready for school. Standing in the kitchen with my coffee, I see her reflection in the mirror through the open bathroom door. She puts on makeup, though not much because she’s perfect without it. Flawless skin, long, thick lashes. The teen years pass by with turbo speed, and I think again of those long, sleepless nights when she was a baby and how I’d give anything to have them back.
Once she leaves, I shower, grateful for the day off. I’d be worthless today if I had to work. Sometime after nine, I bundle up in my coat, gloves and hat and head out into the cold. Christmas is coming and I haven’t even begun to shop. I’m not in the mood for it, but right now I could use the fresh air and the distraction.
I don’t have many people to buy for this year, which is an upshot of divorce I suppose. I won’t be buying for Ben or his family. But there is Sienna of course, my parents, and I like to pick up some small things for a few of the nurses at work. I go first to at a cozy corner boutique, and then I make my way to a cheeky little home decor store with magnets and coasters and vintage art that makes me laugh. I’ll find something there for Luke and the rest of my colleagues.
My phone starts to ring as I open the door to walk into the store. It’s buried in the depths of my bag and is difficult to find. I shove aside a wallet and a cosmetic bag, knowing the search is likely futile. I will never get to it in time.
My fingers make contact on the third or fourth ring. I fish it out of the bag, but as soon as I do, the phone goes quiet. I’m too late. A missed call notification from Sienna appears on the screen. I’m taken aback. I physically stop in the open doorway and stare down at her number on the display. Doubt and confusion fill my thoughts because it’s just after ten o’clock in the morning and Sienna is at school, or rather, she should be. Sienna texts from school sometimes, sneaking her phone when the teacher isn’t paying attention—Can I hang out with Gianna today? I lost my water bottle. Did u buy tampons? My stupid calculator won’t work.—but she doesn’t call. My mind goes in a million different directions thinking how, if she was sick, the nurse would call and, if she got in trouble at school for something, then the dean would call. Sienna wouldn’t ever be the one to call.
I don’t have a chance to call her back. Almost immediately the phone in my hand starts to ring again and I jump, from the unexpected sound of it. It’s Sienna, calling me back.
My thumb swipes immediately across the screen. “Sienna? What’s wrong?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear. I step fully inside the store, letting the door drift closed to muffle the street noise outside, the sound of cars passing by and people on their phones, having conversations of their own. I hear the shrill, unmistakable panic in my voice, and I think how, in the next instant, Sienna is going to ride me for overreacting, for freaking out about nothing. Geez, Mom. Relax. I’m fine, she’ll say, drawing that last word out for emphasis.
That’s not what happens.
It’s quiet at first. I just barely make out the sound of something slight like movement or wind. It goes on a few seconds so that I decide this must be a pocket dial. Sienna didn’t mean to call me. The phone is in her pocket or her backpack, and she called me by mistake. She doesn’t even know she’s called me twice. I listen, trying to decipher where she is, but it’s more of the same. Nothing telling. Nothing revelatory.
But then, a man’s voice cuts through the quiet, his words cold and sparing, his voice altered as if he’s speaking through a voice changer, “If you ever want to see your daughter again, you will do exactly as I say.”
I gasp. My eyes gape. I lose my footing, falling backward into the closed door. A hand rises to my mouth, pressing hard. I can’t breathe all of a sudden. I can’t think; my mind can’t process what’s happening at first. I pull the phone away from my ear, looking down at the display to see if I’m mistaken, if it’s not Sienna’s number that called but someone else. A wrong number. Because this can’t be right, this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening to me.
But it is right. Sienna’s number stares back at me from the display.
“Who is this,” I ask, pressing the phone back to my ear, “and why do you have my daughter’s phone?”
And then, in the background, I hear Sienna’s piercing scream.
“Mommy!” she bellows. It’s high-pitched, frenzied, desperate, and that’s when I know that this man doesn’t only have Sienna’s phone. He has Sienna.
Pure terror courses through my veins. Sienna hasn’t called me Mommy in at least ten years. I can’t stop thinking what horrible thing must be happening for her to lapse back into her childhood and call me Mommy. I’m completely powerless. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know how to get to her, how to help her, how to make this stop.
