Look Again Part 3

"Sure is." Ellen thought of the Bravermans and the million-dollar reward.

"I'll never forget the day he took them. It was October, a week before Halloween. Lynnie was going as a fish." Susan's smile reappeared. "We glued glitter to a piece of blue oak tag, and she was going to wear it like a sandwich board. It was from The Rainbow Fish The Rainbow Fish."

"I know the book."

Susan's eyes lit up. "Oh, right, you have a son now. How old is he?"

"Three."

"Goodness, already?"

"I know, right?" Ellen didn't have to say, time flies, time flies, though it was her favorite mommy conversation. Some things never got old. though it was her favorite mommy conversation. Some things never got old.

"I read that. I loved the articles you wrote about his sickness."

"Thank you. Anyway, you were saying."

"Yes, well, Sam Junior was going as a turtle. He had this chicken-wire sh.e.l.l we made"-Susan stopped herself-"well, never mind about the costume. My ex picked the kids up, loaded them in the car, and I never saw them again."

"I'm so sorry." Ellen lost her bearings, momentarily. Now that she'd become a mother, it was even harder to imagine. Maybe her mind simply refused to go there. "Does it get easier with time?"

"No, it gets harder."

"How so?"

"I think about all that I'm missing with them. All that time, with each of them. Then I start to think that, even when I get them back, I'll never be able to catch up." Susan paused, a stillness coming over her. "I worry they won't remember me. That I'll be a stranger to them."

"Of course they'll remember you," Ellen rushed to say, then switched tacks. "Is it easier because at least you know they're with their father? That they're not abducted by some stranger, who could be doing them harm?" She was thinking of the Bravermans again.

"Honestly, no." Susan frowned. "Sam was a terrible father. He lost the custody battle and he didn't like the settlement, so this is the way he got me back. At the end of the day, they need me. I'm their mother."

"So you're hopeful."

"I am, I have to be. The FBI thinks like you do, that it's less of a priority because it's family. Not all victims are alike." Susan pursed her lips. "Anyway, the theory is that he took them out of the country. His money is all offsh.o.r.e, and they think he told the kids I died."

"Would he do that?" Ellen asked, aghast.

"Of course, he's an egomaniac, a narcissist." Susan sipped her soda, and ice rattled in the tumbler. "I don't agree with the FBI, and if I tell you what I think, it'll sound crazy."

"No, it won't, and honestly, I don't even know if this will run. It depends on my editor."

Susan frowned. "Any press at all could help find them. You never know."

"I'll try my best. Please, go on."

Susan shifted forward on the cushion. "I believe my kids are in the country, nearby even. Maybe not in Philly, but in Jersey or Delaware. Near here. I think it because I feel them, inside. I feel my children, close to me." Certainty strengthened Susan's voice. "When they were babies, if someone took them out of my sight, I felt nervous. When we were in the same room, I knew it. I feel feel them here, still." Susan put a hand to her heart. "I carried them, they were them here, still." Susan put a hand to her heart. "I carried them, they were inside inside me. I think it's a mother's instinct." me. I think it's a mother's instinct."

Ellen reddened. Was there such a thing? Could she have it if she had never been pregnant? Evidently, not everything came with the ovaries.

"I've posted their photos everywhere. I had somebody design a website and made sure it comes up first if they ever search their own name. I go on the Internet all the time, checking out all the sites where they might go, even the gamers' sites, because Sammy loved Nintendo."

Ellen watched Susan, who slumped in the soft couch as she continued.

"I drive around the neighborhoods, the schools. I check out the Gymboree for Lynnie and the T-ball leagues for Sammy. In summer, I troll the beaches in Holgate and Rehoboth. Sooner or later, I'll spot one of them, I just know it." Susan needed no encouragement to keep speaking, her words flowing from a pain, deep inside. "There's not a minivan that goes by that I don't look in the backseat, not a ball field I don't look on the bench and the bases. I stop by pet stores because Lynnie liked kittens. If a school bus pa.s.ses, I look in the windows. I drive around and call the kids' names at night. Last week I was in Caldwell, in New Jersey, calling them, and a woman asked me what kind of dog Lynnie was."

Susan stopped talking abruptly, and a sudden silence fell.

And Ellen understood firsthand that after the loss of a child, a mother would be haunted for the rest of her life.

Chapter Eleven.

Back in her car, Ellen stopped at a traffic light, dwelling. She'd had a glimpse of Susan Sulaman's world, and it made her want to drive home and hug Will. Her BlackBerry rang in her purse, and she rooted in her bag until she found it, then hit the green b.u.t.ton.

"Elly Belly?" said the familiar voice.

"Dad. How are you?"

"Fine."

"What's the matter?" Ellen could tell he was upset by the way he said he was fine.

"Nothing. I'm about to have lunch. You free? I just got back from the doctor's."

"Are you sick?"

"Nah."

"Then why'd you go to the doctor?"

"A checkup, is all."

"You had a checkup in September, didn't you?" Ellen remembered because it was near her birthday.

"This was just a thing, a routine thing."

Ellen glanced at the car's clock, then did a quick calculation. Her father lived in West Chester, forty-five minutes from the city. Being closer to her parents was the reason she had come here from the San Jose Mercury San Jose Mercury. "Are you home today?"

"Yeah, doing email and expenses."

"Why don't I drop by? I'm actually in Ardmore."

"Great. The door's open. Love you."

"Love you, too." Ellen hung up, then slid the phone back in her purse. She cruised to the corner in light traffic, turned around, and headed back down Lancaster Avenue. She felt a pang of guilt, realizing she hadn't been to visit her father in almost a month. She just hadn't had the time, between work and Will. Every week, she mentally shifted the hours of her days, as if her life were a handheld puzzle with tiles that slid around to make a picture. The tiles fit differently every week, and no matter how hard she tried, the picture didn't come together. The lines connected to nothing.

She accelerated.

Chapter Twelve.

"Hi, Dad." Ellen entered her father's kitchen, which overlooked the golf course at Green Manor, which billed itself as a Community for Active Adults. Her father had moved here after her mother died, which was when he got Active, especially in the Adult Department.

"Hi, sweetheart," he said, standing at the counter, absorbed in slicing a tomato onto a plate. His wrinkled forehead knit over his brown eyes, set close together and hooded now, and his nose had a telltale bulb at the tip from the drinking he'd given up, years ago. Even at sixty-eight, her father had enough black in his thinning hair to make people wonder if he colored it, and Ellen was pretty sure he didn't.

"Dad, are you gonna die?" she asked, only half-joking.

"No, never." Her father turned with a broad smile that served him well on the back nine and the road, where he drove a thousand miles a week as a sales rep for an auto-parts company.

"Good." Ellen slid out of her coat and purse, dumped them on a kitchen chair, and kissed him on the cheek, catching a whiff of strong aftershave. None of her perfume lasted as long as her father's aftershave. She fleetingly considered picking up a bottle of Aramis.

"You look nice, honey. Dressed up."

"I'm trying not to get fired."

"Succeeding?" Her father sliced another pink-red tomato. Already on the table sat a plastic tub of Whole Foods tuna fish, a loaf of multigrain bread, and a pitcher of green tea, permanent fixtures in Don Gleeson's Antioxidant Heaven.

"So far." Ellen crossed to the counter, plucked a floppy tomato slice from the plate, and plopped it into her mouth. It tasted like nothing, a winter tomato.

"Don't let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds get you down. How's my grandson?"

"He has a cold."

"I miss him. When am I gonna see him?"

Ellen felt a guilty twinge. "Soon as I can. So, what's up with the doctor? You're scaring me."

"I waited lunch for you."

"I see that, thanks. You're avoiding the question."

"Sit down like a civilized person." Her father carried the tomato plate to the table and set it down, then eased into the chair with a theatrical groan. He always moaned for comic effect, though he kept in great shape, fit and trim in his pale yellow polo shirt, Dockers, and loafers.

"Dad, tell me." Ellen sat next to him, worried. Cancer was the worst sort of coward, sneaking up on people, and her mother had died from lymphoma, having lived only three months after her diagnosis.

"I'm not sick, not at all." He untwisted the tie on the plastic bag of bread, extracted two slices from the center of the loaf, and set them on his plate, open-faced.

"Then why did you go to the doctor?"

"Make yourself a sandwich, then we'll talk."

"Dad, please."

"Suit yourself, but I'm hungry." Her father popped the plastic lid of the tuna, then picked up the serving fork, speared himself a small mound, and patted it onto his bread with the tines of the fork, making crosshatches.

"You're stalling, Dad. It's tuna fish, not rocket science."

"Okay, here it is. I'm getting married."

"What?" Ellen was dumbfounded. "To who?" She had no idea. He was dating four women here. He was Romeo, with an enlarged prostate.

"Barbara Levin."

Ellen didn't know what to say. She didn't even know the woman. Her parents had been married forty-five years, and her mother had pa.s.sed a little over two years ago. Somehow this meant her mother was really gone. As if someone had put a period on the sentence that was her life.

"El? I'm not dying, I'm getting married."

"Why, is she pregnant?"

"Ha!" Her father laughed, then stabbed the tuna with the serving fork. "I'll tell her you said that."

Ellen hid her ambivalence. "This is kind of a surprise."

"A good one, right?"

"Well, yes. Sure." Ellen tried to get a grip, but a hard knot in her chest told her she wasn't doing such a great job. "I guess I just wasn't sure who the lucky lady was."

"Barbara's the one that matters." He picked up a tomato slice with the serving fork. "You gonna congratulate me?"

"Congratulations."

"I needed a cholesterol check. That's why I went to the doctor's."

"Oh. Thank G.o.d you're not sick."

"You got that right." Her father placed his tomato on top of the tuna, added a piece of bread, then lined up the two pieces, leaning over as if he were sizing up a putt. He pressed his sandwich closed, lowering his hand, then eyed her. "You don't look happy, El."

"I am." Ellen managed a smile. She loved her father, but he had spent her childhood on the road. The truth was, everybody had a go-to parent, and with him away from home so much, Ellen's had become her mother.

"El, I'm ent.i.tled to be happy."

"I didn't say you weren't."

"You're acting it."

"Dad, please."

"I don't like to be alone and I'm not getting any younger."