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It’s why she left California. It’s why she came suddenly back to Chicago, without letting anyone know, because he’d been released from jail and was looking for her. It explains the voice mail she left on Mr. Beckett’s phone, the last-ditch, pleading, Daddy. I’m in trouble. I need your help. Because this man was after her, because he had tracked her all the way across the country from California to get revenge, to take back everything she took from him—his life.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. I don’t feel afraid anymore.
“Because there is no legal recourse for what she’s done. I can’t prove it and I can’t get my life back. But if there is any justice in the world,” he says again, “she will die.”
From the way he looks at me, I can’t help but think he’s asking me to kill her.
“Mom,” I hear from behind then, a lilt to the end of it suggestive of a question. Mom? I spin around, seeing Sienna’s bemused face in the entrance to the alleyway, spotlighted by a beam of light from a nearby streetlight. She clutches our bag of food in her hands, her head cocked, her posture slouching and uneasy.
With my back to him, he leans in to breathe into my hair, “There is nothing worse in the world than losing a child,” and I go rigid. “If there is any justice, that woman will die.”
He brushes past me as he leaves, giving Sienna a wide berth.
I catch my breath and then go to her. “Who was that man?” she asks, her eyes following him as he moves down the street.
I take out my phone to call 911, to tell them where he is, so they can find and arrest him. If nothing else, he’s violated parole. The police are looking for him. I start to dial, pressing the nine before my conscience stops me. Milo Finch violated parole over a crime he didn’t commit. He did time and he lost his family as a result, which is far worse than any punishment the police or a jury could ever pass down.
I put my phone away, watching as his figure disappears in the night.
“Just someone from work,” I say, refusing to look at Sienna because I don’t want to lie to her face, but I also don’t want to tell her the truth, how that man wants to kill a patient of mine and I don’t blame him.
Eighteen
I haven’t stopped thinking about Nat. Every minute of the day, she’s still on my mind.
Sometime after midnight, I pull up Facebook on my phone to see if she has messaged yet, but she still hasn’t. I don’t have any new messages, and the last message I sent to Nat, I notice, isn’t there. It’s gone. In fact all the direct messages between Nat and me are gone.
I decide to go to her Facebook page. I want to see the pictures of her and Declan again. I want to see his face, his eyes. I look up her name but the search yields no exact results. There are Natalie Cohens and Natalie Roches, but no Natalie Cohen Roches, and all of these profiles want me to add this person as a friend, meaning we aren’t already friends. I search each of the profiles, looking for that image of Nat standing beside Niagara Falls, but never find what I’m looking for.
Either she or Declan deleted her Facebook page.
Someone doesn’t want me to find her.
In the morning I reluctantly let Sienna go to school, though I ride the bus with her and walk her inside, where I get assurances from the school principal that the school is safe and that my daughter is safe. Sienna herself looks at me and says, “It’s okay, Mom. I’m fine,” and I give in, knowing that despite these assurances, I’ll still worry about her.
As I walk away from Sienna’s high school, I look back twice, wondering if I’ve made the right decision in leaving her there.
I think about Nat then and the things she told me about herself, like how she works as a teacher at the cooperative nursery school in Lincoln Park, and that her husband, Declan Roche, is an associate with the law firm Tanner & Levine in the Loop.
I can’t go home because I’ll sit there and worry about Sienna all day. Instead I pick up coffee and head to Nat’s nursery school, where I stand outside on the snowy street, watching as students arrive with their parents and nannies before rushing giddy and laughing into the building, happy to be at school—quite unlike at Sienna’s high school, where the students moped in, tired and crabby.
I stand on the other side of the street, waiting until everyone has gone in, and then I cross the street, doubting Nat will be here—doubting Declan would ever let her leave—though I try anyway, because maybe someone at the school knows where she lives or knows some way to get in touch with her. I try pulling on the door handle but the school, like Sienna’s, is locked. There is an intercom on the outside of the building, which I step up to, pressing the button, hearing it buzz.
A woman answers. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes,” I say. “I was hoping to speak with Mrs. Roche. I’m a friend.”
“Who?” she asks, unable to hear me over a passing truck.
I lean into the microphone, saying louder, “Mrs. Roche. Nat. Natalie Roche.”
“And you said she’s a teacher?” the woman asks, though I hadn’t said that, and as she does, a knot forms in my stomach. I wouldn’t think that there were more than ten teachers here and maybe only a few more support staff, not so many that it would be hard to know or remember them all.
“Yes,” I say. “She’s a teacher. Four-year-old preschool.” And then it occurs to me that teachers don’t always change their name when they get married. “She might go by Nat Cohen or Natalie Cohen,” I say, wondering if she goes by her maiden name at school.
If Nat’s Facebook page hadn’t been deactivated, I would have a photo to show this woman. But as it is, I have nothing.
It doesn’t matter. The woman’s voice comes to me again through the intercom, saying, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a teacher here by either of those names. Are you sure you have the right school?” and with that, I start to doubt myself, to wonder if I’ve somehow made a mistake. Because there are other cooperative preschools in the neighborhood plus other Lincoln Park preschools that are not part of a cooperative. Nat could teach at any of them.
