She's Not There (2 page)

The line went dead in Caroline's hand. She dropped the phone to the bed, watching it disappear amid the rumpled white sheets. “Damn it.” Was Michelle right? Her daughter had always had a lot of friends, although none of them seemed to stick around for very long, making it hard to keep track. Something else to feel guilty about.

She checked the clock, noting it was closing in on eight-thirty. She had to be in school in half an hour. She pushed herself to her feet, already exhausted by the thought of twenty-three less-than-eager students slouched behind their desks, glazed eyes staring up at her, their dislike for the subject obvious and unequivocal.

How could they not love math? she wondered. There was something so glorious, so pure, so true, about mathematics. Her father had been a math teacher and had passed his passion for it down to her. It was about more than just solving puzzles and finding solutions. In an irrational world so full of ambiguity, so fraught with happenstance, she'd basked in the absoluteness of it, taken comfort in the fact there was no room for either interpretation or equivocation, that there was always only
one
right answer and its rightness could be
proved
. Another sign, Michelle would undoubtedly argue, and had on more than one occasion, that mathematics bore absolutely no relationship to real life.

Caroline returned to the bathroom and finished drying her hair. Then she put on the navy skirt and white silk blouse she'd laid out the night before. “Don't you have anything else to wear?” Michelle had once asked.

“Don't you?” Caroline had countered, indicating her daughter's standard uniform of skinny jeans and oversized T-shirt. Like many young women of her generation, Michelle was an ardent follower of the latest trends in fashion, fad diets, and exercise regimens. “Everything in moderation” was a concept as foreign to her as algebra.

“Okay,” Caroline said to herself. “Time to get moving.” She was already running late. She said a silent prayer there'd still be a pot of coffee brewing in the staff room. She could tolerate a lot of things, but a day without coffee wasn't one of them.

The phone started ringing just as she was heading out the door. The first ring was immediately followed by two shorter ones, indicating yet another long-distance call, likely the same person who'd phoned earlier. “Don't answer it,” Caroline said, this time out loud. But she was already walking toward the kitchen, pulled toward the sound as if by a magnet. She picked the phone up in the middle of its fourth ring. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

The sound of breathing.

Great,
Caroline thought.
Just what I need—an obscene caller. Long distance, no less.
“I'm going to hang up now,” she announced, lowering the phone.

“Wait.”

She brought the phone back to her ear. “Did you say something?”

Silence.

“Okay. I'm hanging up now.”

“No. Please.”

The voice belonged to a young girl, possibly a child. There was an urgency to her voice, something at once strange and familiar that made Caroline stay on the line. “Who is this?”

Another silence.

“Look. I really don't have time for this…”

“Is this the home of Caroline Shipley?” the girl asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you Caroline Shipley?” she continued.

“Are you a reporter?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“Are you Caroline Shipley?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

Yet another silence.

“Who is this?” Caroline repeated. “What do you want? I'm hanging up…”

“My name is Lili.”

Caroline mentally raced through the class lists of all her students, past and present, trying to match a face to the name, but she came up empty. Could this be another one of Michelle's friends she didn't remember? “What can I do for you, Lili?”

“I probably shouldn't be calling…”

“What do you want?” Why was she still on the phone, for heaven's sake? Why didn't she just hang up?

“I think…”

“Yes?”

“I've been looking at the sketches on the Internet.” Lili paused. “You know…of your daughter.”

Caroline lowered her head.
Here it comes,
she thought. It happened every year at this time. Five years ago, a man had called from Florida, claiming his new neighbor's daughter bore a suspicious resemblance to recent sketches of Samantha. Caroline immediately took off for Miami, missing all three of Michelle's performances in her high school's production of
Oliver!,
only to have her hopes dashed when the man's suspicions proved groundless. The following year a woman reported seeing Samantha waiting in line at a Starbucks in Tacoma, Washington. Another wasted trip followed. And now, with the widespread release of the most recent sketches in the papers, on the Internet…“Lili…,” she began.

“That's just it,” the girl interrupted as once again Caroline felt her knees go weak and her breath turn to ice in her chest. “I don't think Lili is my name.” Another silence. “I think my real name is Samantha. I think I'm your daughter.”

“A
re we there yet?” Michelle whined from the backseat of the late-model white Lexus. She tugged on her seat belt and kicked at Caroline's back.

“Please don't do that, sweetheart,” Caroline said, swiveling around in the passenger seat to face her scowling five-year-old. Next to Michelle, Samantha slept peacefully in her toddler seat. And there in a nutshell, Caroline thought, eyes darting between her children, was the difference between her two girls: one daughter a fidgety little mouthful of childish clichés; the other a perfect little Sleeping Beauty. Caroline had always disdained parents who favored one child over another—her own mother being a prime example—but she had to admit that it was occasionally harder than she'd anticipated not to do just that.

“I'm tired of driving.”

“I know, sweetheart. We'll be there soon.”

“I want some juice.”

Caroline glanced toward the driver's seat. Her husband shook his head without taking his eyes off the road. Caroline's shoulders slumped. She understood Hunter didn't want to risk getting juice all over the buttery leather seats of his new car, but she also knew it meant another twenty minutes of pleading and kicking. “We'll be there soon, sweetie. You can have some juice then.”

“I want it now.”

“Look at the ocean,” Hunter said in an effort to distract her. “Look how beautiful—”

“I don't want to look at the ocean. I want some juice.” Michelle's voice was getting louder. Caroline knew the child was working her way up to a full-blown tantrum, that it was only a matter of seconds before there would be an eruption of seismic proportions. Again she glanced at Hunter.

“If we give in now…,” he whispered.

Caroline let out a deep breath and stared out the side window, knowing he was right and deciding to concentrate on the spectacular, unblemished view of the ocean running alongside the well-maintained toll road. Perhaps Michelle would follow her example.

“I'm thirsty,” Michelle said, quickly scuttling that hope. Then a full octave higher, her voice trembling with the threat of tears. “I'm thirsty.”

“Hang on, sweetie,” Hunter said. “We'll be there soon.”

There
was Rosarito Beach and the Grand Laguna Resort, a luxury hotel and spa complex that Hunter had selected as the perfect place to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. Located between the Pacific Ocean and the foothills of Baja's Gold Coast, Rosarito was only thirty miles south of San Diego, and its proximity to the U.S.-Mexican border made it a popular tourist spot for Southern Californians, providing them with the opportunity to visit a foreign country and experience a different culture without the inconvenience of having to travel very far.

Seventeen miles of stunning ocean road led into the main urban district of Rosarito, a four-mile stretch of beach consisting of condos, gift shops, restaurants, and fabulous resort hotels. They'd selected the Grand Laguna over the others because not only did its website promise romantic settings and breathtaking sunsets but it also boasted of a daily afternoon program for children under the age of ten. The hotel also provided an evening babysitting service, which meant that Caroline and Hunter could have some much-needed time for themselves. Her husband had been increasingly distracted of late, mainly because the law firm in which he'd been hoping to be named partner had recently merged with another firm, throwing his status into limbo. Caroline knew this was another reason that Hunter had been so keen on Rosarito. If work summoned, he could be back at his desk in a matter of hours.

The trip had started out well enough. Samantha had fallen asleep almost as soon as the car was out of the driveway, and Michelle had seemed content playing with her new Wonder Woman doll. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes into the drive, an ill-advised attempt to get the doll to fly had sent Wonder Woman crashing to the floor, where she disappeared under the front seat, unleashing Michelle's first flood of tears. Then heavy traffic along Interstate Highway 5 coupled with a delay at the San Ysidro border crossing at Tijuana had stretched the thirty-mile drive into a ninety-minute ordeal. Caroline wondered if she should have listened to Hunter when he'd suggested leaving the girls at home for the week. But that would have meant entrusting them to her mother, something Caroline would never do. Her mother had made enough of a mess with her own children.

Caroline pictured her brother, Steve, two years her junior, a handsome man with sandy brown hair, a killer smile, and gold-flecked hazel eyes. His easy charm had made him their mother's pride and joy. But what he had in charm, he lacked in ambition, and he'd spent most of his adult life shedding careers as regularly as a snake sheds its skin. A year ago he'd gone into real estate, and much to the surprise of everyone—except, of course, his mother, in whose eyes he could do no wrong—he seemed to be prospering. Maybe he'd finally found his niche.

“I'm thirrrrrsty,” Michelle wailed, the word threatening to stretch into eternity.

“Sweetheart, please. You'll wake the baby.”

“She's not a baby.”

“She's asleep…”

“And I'm thirsty.”

“Okay, that's enough,” Hunter snapped, spinning around in his seat and waving his index finger in the air. “Listen to your mother and stop this nonsense right now.”

Michelle's response was immediate and complete hysteria. Her shrieks filled the car, bouncing off the tinted windows and pummeling Samantha awake. Now two children were screaming.

“Still think kids were a good idea?” Hunter asked with a smile. “Maybe your brother is right after all.”

Caroline said nothing. Hunter was well aware that her brother and his wife, Becky, had been trying unsuccessfully for years to have a family of their own. Their failure to do so was a constant source of tension between them, a situation Caroline's mother took great pains to exploit, chiding Becky regularly for not providing her with more grandchildren and causing unnecessary friction between her daughter and her daughter-in-law.

Divide and conquer,
Caroline thought. Words her mother lived by. What else was new?

“How much longer?” Caroline asked.

“We should be there soon. Hang in there.”

Caroline leaned her head against the side window and closed her eyes, her daughters' cries piercing her ears like overlapping sirens. Not exactly an auspicious start to their vacation.
Oh, well,
she decided.
It can only get better.

They were there, waiting.

At first Caroline thought that she must have fallen asleep in the few minutes between closing her eyes and their arrival at the magnificent Grand Laguna Resort Hotel, and that she had to be dreaming. But after sitting up straight and lowering her window she realized that what she was seeing was, in fact, very real, that there were indeed six people standing outside the main entrance of the hotel, waving in her direction and laughing, their familiar faces looking pleased and self-satisfied. “What's going on?” she asked Hunter as a valet in a crisp white-and-gold uniform stepped forward to open her car door.

“Welcome to the Grand Laguna,” the valet said, his words all but disappearing into the chorus of “Surprise!” that was rushing toward her.

“Happy anniversary,” said Hunter, the smile on his lips spreading to his soft brown eyes. He bent forward to kiss her.

“I don't understand.”

He kissed her again. “I thought you might enjoy having some family and friends along to celebrate our anniversary.”

“Hey, you two,” Caroline's brother, Steve, called out. “Get a room, for God's sake.”

“Good idea,” Hunter said, laughing as he exited the car. He was quickly surrounded by the three waiting men.

“Isn't this the most absolutely beautiful place you've ever seen?” Steve's wife, Becky, asked, rushing forward.

Caroline pushed herself out of the car's front seat, taking a quick look at the ten-story coral-colored horseshoe-shaped building framed by blue skies and palm trees. She had to admit it was every bit as magnificent as she'd been led to expect.

“You're looking a little overwhelmed,” her friend Peggy whispered, coming up beside her and drawing her into an embrace, her curly brown hair tickling the side of Caroline's nose. At approximately five feet six inches and one hundred and twenty-five pounds, the two women were almost the same height and weight and fit together comfortably.

“I'm flabbergasted.” Caroline turned toward her husband. “How did you manage this?”

“Blame your brother. It was his idea.”

“Couldn't very well let you celebrate ten years of wedded bliss without us,” Steve said with a laugh.

Caroline looked from one smiling face to the next: her brother and his wife; old friends Peggy and Fletcher Banack; new friends Jerrod and Rain Bolton. The truth was she'd been looking forward to having her husband all to herself for the week. It had been a long time since they'd had the luxury of intimate dinners for two, time to kick back and relax, to reconnect with each other. But the welcoming committee's collective delight was as contagious as it was obvious, and Caroline's ambivalence quickly melted away.

“Mommy! Mommy! Get me out of here.”

“Coming, sweetheart.”

“Allow me.” Peggy opened the back door and lifted Michelle out of the car. “Whoa. You're getting to be such a big girl.”

“I want some juice,” Michelle said.

Becky had already scooted around to the other side of the car and removed Samantha from her car seat, and was cradling the two-year-old in her arms while smothering the top of her head with kisses. “Hi, there, beautiful girl. How's my little angel?”

“She's not beautiful and she's not an angel,” Michelle protested.

Samantha stretched her arms toward her mother.

“Oh, can't your auntie hold you for a few minutes?” Reluctantly, Becky handed Samantha over to her mother, then stepped back, tucking her short dark hair behind her ears. Caroline thought she looked tired behind her smile, and wondered if she and Steve had been fighting again.

“What took you so long?” Rain asked as the valet removed the luggage from the trunk. “We've been waiting over an hour. I'm positively melting in this heat.”

“Well, melting or not, you look great.”

Rain smiled, a wide smile that revealed just the right number of perfect teeth, and tossed her wavy honey-blond hair over the left shoulder of her floral print caftan. Her eyes were blue, her lipstick red, her bare arms tanned and toned. A former model, she would have been beautiful even without the ton of makeup she always wore. Caroline marveled, not for the first time, that Rain had chosen a man as mousy as Jerrod for a mate. Shorter than his wife by several inches and looking a decade older than his forty years, Jerrod was as nondescript as Rain was striking. They made an interesting couple.

The group approached the tall glass doors that opened into the flower-filled, air-conditioned lobby. Samantha was happily ensconced in her mother's arms while Michelle was glued to her right thigh, pulling down so hard on her white blouse that Caroline feared she might rip it. “Did you all drive down together?” she asked.

“Steve and Becky came in their car,” Peggy explained. “We drove down with Rain and Jerrod.”

“Is your name Rain?” Michelle asked.

Rain laughed, shaking her blond mane. “It is. My mother was very dramatic. And probably more than a little depressed, if you think about it.”

“I think it's a silly name,” Michelle said.

“Michelle,” Caroline cautioned as they approached the front desk. “Don't be rude.”

“I have to pee,” the child announced.

“Shit,” said Hunter.

“Mommy,” Michelle said, “Daddy said a bad word.”

Caroline's eyes drifted across the lobby's Spanish-style decor toward the courtyard situated between the two huge wings of the hotel.