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Finally, I settled in at my desk and booted up my laptop. I ventured onto the fundraising site to see how much my first donor had given.
I stared. The donation, which had dropped very late last night from an unknown donor, was for twenty-five thousand dollars.
I blinked slowly, rubbed my eyes, looked again. The number didn’t change.
I was having trouble breathing suddenly. I struggled to control myself, closing my eyes and focusing, but my heart just kept pounding. That was more than enough for a private investigator.
My vision blurred. I reached up and felt that my cheek was wet.
Who had done this? Some random rich person, moved by my story? Not likely, most rich people didn’t have hearts to break. But clearly it had been someone with money to burn and an eye for good causes.
“Whoever you are, thank you,” I breathed, the shock still running through me like ice water. At least I felt awake now.
Once my vision cleared and I stopped shaking, I opened up my day’s to-do list with a little smile and added ‘hire a private investigator’ to the top of the list. The depression was lifting a little, hope buoying me. I was one step closer to finding my little girl.
***
I got a huge pile of work done, clearing my schedule enough that I could block out time for making phone calls to PIs. Predictably, most of them were away from their desks, so I left a lot of messages.
When my phone rang, it was from an unknown number that didn’t match any of the ones I had left messages at. I hesitated to pick it up, but finally did.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
“You blocked my phone number!” It was half accusation and half whine, Alan, half drunk, from a new number.
“Of course I did,” I snapped. “We’re through. I don’t want to talk to you. You already took a giant crap in my inbox, I don’t need another in my ear.”
I heard him suck in his breath, but then he said nothing. I guess he was shocked. Our whole relationship, I had never been firm with him. I had been gentle, kind, considerate, and largely soft-spoken. If I got upset, I would weep and plead and struggle to get him to understand.
Not this time. I went on, filling his silence. “You know, I tried very hard to make this work, even though I’m going through the hardest time in my life. My daughter is gone. You cops have completely failed us. I don’t have my baby, and I don’t have justice. And you decided I should just accept all that, be fine with it, and turn into your submissive little fucking homemaker wife instead. Forget my daughter. My little girl, who I miss every day like I’d miss a goddamn limb. You have it in your head that if I just try hard enough, I’ll stop caring about her, forget her, and have your babies instead.”
“Yes!” he finally said. “Yes, that’s what I wanted, because the kid’s dead and you need to accept it. You have to move on, I wanted you to move on with me.”
“You have no proof that she’s dead and not…” bile crept up my throat at just the thought, “…trafficked. There’s been a rash of little girls vanishing in this part of Chicago over the last ten years, no bodies have ever turned up. You dropped the fucking ball on finding my daughter, and then you had the nerve to expect me to forget it. Forget her. You heartless prick.” It was like some deep, primal part of me, stomped down deep inside of me for decades and now enraged, had taken control. My skin was hot. I shook, but not from fear. I wanted to end him.
“Whoa! Jesus, Lissie, it’s not that deep. Kidnapping cases are really hard to clear, and when they do end, it’s usually because we found a body. Nobody has ever found any evidence of thatwoman who claimed to be your sister. We don’t even have security camera footage of her.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it’s because she doesn’t exist? The Ivanovs could have lied.” God, the whole case had been like this. Half the time it felt like I had to do the police’s work for them. I didn’t have the power to make them do what was right. I couldn’t force them to be good cops, any more than I could force Alan to be a good boyfriend.
“Neither one has any kind of criminal record. Not even parking tickets. Besides, why would they take the risk? We looked into the owners and found nothing to suggest anything untoward was happening.”
“They’velostthree children in their care this way, Alan, open your damn eyes!” When I got myself a private investigator, I vowed the first thing I would have them do was investigate the Ivanovs.
“One child—with the other two, one mother admitted she’d collected her, and the other hadn’t actually been to the daycare that morning.” I glared at the phone angrily, he hadn’t told me this.
“Look,” he continued in a soothing tone, “I told you we’d checked out all the leads. The daycare center owners were cleared, but you know how the papers love a good story. You’ve got to let her go, you have to. She’s gone, sweetie. I’m sorry you got upset at what I said, but it doesn’t change the truth. Now, you want me to come over? Patch things up?”
Post-breakup clarity hit me hard suddenly—or maybe the adrenaline had just finished waking me up. I thought aboutwhat he had just said, of things he had been saying. The backhandedness of that apology.
“No,” I said firmly. “I can understand your point of view, and maybe I’ll forgive you someday, but we’re done. We’re not even right for each other.”Always striving to be the reasonable one, I chided myself. But my incandescent fury had settled down enough that I remembered to be cautious. The righteousness of my anger didn’t make him any less volatile. “Besides,youleftme. I’m just agreeing with you.”
I waited, bracing myself for an explosion. I wanted to just hang up, but I knew that if I did, he would be more likely to bring his tirade to me in person.
“Well, of course I left you,” he snapped after a few seconds. “Because you’re a crazy fucking bitch. You’re frigid and you blame me for it—”
I held the phone away from my ear, exasperated and disgusted. His laundry list of how much he thought I sucked went on and on, trying to pick away at my self-esteem, my self-respect, my boundaries, and my belief in my own memory and sanity. Everything in our relationship had actually been my fault, and I was gaslighting him, not the other way around. Two days ago, I had loved him at least a little, and it had hurt unbelievably that he’d left. Now? Everything he said told me more about him, and the way he saw me, women, himself, and the world. And all of it was heavily tainted with both his big ego and a huge load of bullshit.
Finally, he seemed to wear himself out, and I put the phone back to my ear. “So, what now?” he was asking. “You gonna unload some more garbage on me about how I’m a bad cop because I’m not wasting my time on the job looking for yourdead brat? Who the fuck do you think you are? There are way more important people in Chicago than you, sweetheart, and it’s time you figured that out.”
