Five Days in Summer

her children needed her. Especially Maxi; just a baby; she needed her medicine.
    She recalled the feeling from childhood dreams in which she could fly, summoned the feeling into her muscles and projected herself onto her knees.
    His hand clamped onto her arm and squeezed so hard she felt he would break skin. He pushed her back to the floor like a rag doll.
    Then she felt it: a sharp prick in her arm, a hot flow into her muscles.
    If only, if only...
    Her body floated away like a piece of wood, no longer a part of her. And in what felt like staunch objection, her mind turned hyperaware. She sensed everything without gravity; she was an unearthed mass.
    The swoosh of movement, water pressing against the surge of the boat. She was moving. Going somewhere. Being taken.
    Where was he taking her?

Chapter 7
    The house was quiet, the sun barely up. All the children were still asleep. Through the windows Sarah could see splinters of light on the tranquil surface of the lake. In their later years, she and Jonah were often up at this hour, and would carry their tea to the beach. They would sit on matching green recliners, a small, rotted tree-stump table between them holding their mugs, and face the water. Together they would watch the sun begin its arc across the sky, pushing orange-rose light into the fading blue darkness, easing open the morning. They finished their tea, recalled their lives, and discussed their day. It had been Sarah’s favorite way to start the morning.
    She sat at her desk in the loft above the kitchen and looked at the picture of Emily she had faxed to the police station at Will’s request. It had been taken when she was pregnant with Maxi and Emily’s face was rounder than usual, but Sarah felt it captured her. Her face was angled away, looking at the boys pressed together on the couch as David read aloud to Sam. Her expression showed delight in their closeness, in David’s lovingness toward Sam, then five, and in Sam’s awe at the capabilities of his big brother. Sarah had been struck by the moment, and as her camerahad by chance been on the counter next to where she stood, she had quickly turned it on and aimed it at her daughter. Emily’s eyes had pivoted toward the camera just as Sarah snapped the shot. Her hazel, almond eyes. The eyes Sarah had gazed into when her newborn daughter was first brought to her, the eyes that over years had questioned and adored and accused. They were the eyes of pure love, purer even than her love for Jonah. Every mother knew, when she looked into the eyes of her first child, that until that moment she had not experienced the kind of true love that claimed you forever.
    Sarah ran a fingertip over the slick photograph. Where was her baby now? What was she going through? Was she afraid? Was she in pain?
    If only Emily hadn’t gone shopping. They hadn’t really needed anything.
    Sarah couldn’t wait through the morning doing nothing; she had to do something to help find Emily. There was a copy shop in the new set of stores next to Ricky’s Market. She could call her neighbor Barbara as early as eight o’clock to ask if she could watch the boys. Maxi wouldn’t be too much of a bother while Sarah made her copies.
    She took a piece of plain white paper out of the fax machine and taped Emily’s photo in the very center. In bold black marker across the top, she wrote MISSING. In the space below the photo she elaborated: Emily Parker, missing since the afternoon of Monday 9/3/01. Last seen at Stop & Shop by the Mashpee Rotary. 39 yrs., 5’ 6”, 135 lbs., sandy blond hair, hazel eyes, freckled complexion. Sarah wished she knew what Emily had been wearing, but she could at least describe her bracelet, which she only took off to shower and sleep. Wearing silver charm bracelet with swimmer, cello, sword, coin, heart, three babies.
    She put the pen down and looked at her sign. When Jonah had died, after a short bout with cancer at the age of seventy-seven, his sudden absence had seemed impossible, but not wholly unexpected. This void, Emily’s, was unreal. It couldn’t be happening to her daughter, or to her, or to her grandchildren. Sarah had worked so hard all night to stave off tears for fear of waking the children and frightening herself even more than she already was. But now she couldn’t stop them and they came in a flood. Her stomach ached she cried so hard, nearly choking on her breath as she struggled to hold it. One hollow wail escaped her and seemed to