Here She Lies

“is how your daughter factors into this.”
    “You’re married, Detective,” I said, “and so I assume you’ve been in love.”
    He stopped and looked at me. “Still am, actually.”
    “So you know how deeply love can move a person,” I said.
    He nodded. “Go on.”
    “Julie loves Lexy in a really special way, particularly since she’s my daughter.” I wiped nascent tears away with my fingertips. It was awful thinking thisway, but too late to pull the thoughts back in. “Julie can’t have children of her own.”
    “So she’s jealous?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “Essentially. Lexy’s like the baby she can’t have herself, but it’s more than that. Lexy is my baby, and Julie wants what I have. When our parents died we were left very much alone together, and when I had my own family, I stepped out of our bubble. She wants Lexy, so she took her.”
    “And the rest of it?” Lazare stepped forward, his eyes pinned on me now. “Stealing your identity. Why?”
    “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe hurting me first would make it hurt less for her when she stole my baby. I really don’t know.”
    “Or maybe it’s just what she does,” Bobby said. “If she did it to Thomas Soiffer, and she did it to Annie, then she probably did it to other people, too.”
    It was hard not reacting to that. Julie was still my twin and loving her, defending her, was sewn into my being. At this point I would have been willing to take Lexy back and walk away from the rest of it — but would I ever have that option?
    “It’s a wait-and-see game now.” Lazare opened his cell phone and dialed a number from memory, saying, “Let’s see what gives.”
    But nothing gave. The Amber Alert had netted no information and, more significantly, no Lexy. Once the police finished searching the downstairs, they worked their way through the bedrooms and finally went upstairs to Julie’s suite. Lazare worked his phone. Bobbyand I retreated into the living room and sat together on the couch.
    “Now what?” I asked.
    “We wait, I guess.”
    “For how long? It’s torture just sitting here in this house, Bobby.”
    “Do you want to take a drive?”
    “I do and I don’t. If we leave, I’m afraid we’ll miss something. And if we stay, I’m afraid we’ll miss something. Every place I am right now feels like the wrong place.”
    He took my hand and squeezed it so hard it hurt. His eyes were full of turmoil when he looked at me and started to say, “Listen, Annie, I—” But he stopped when Detective Lazare walked through the French doors to announce that he was returning to the station but would be back soon. When we were alone again, Bobby did not finish his broken sentence. What had he been about to say? I’m going crazy, too. I love you. I will move with you to New York when this is over. I want you to come home with me. It could have been anything.
    On the coffee table lay Identity Theft in a New World, the book Bobby had bought at the airport. I reached for it, stretched out on the living room couch, plunked my feet in Bobby’s lap and opened to the first chapter. I was a fast reader and as the afternoon waned I was increasingly astounded by what I learned. It seemed that identity theft was more than just a new hazard to beware of. Its practitioners had, somewhat silently, multiplied into a small invisible army with potent, far-reaching tools that had already devastated agrowing number of victims. Because most targets of identity theft never learned who had victimized them and because the thieves usually got away, the victims shared a sense of fragility, realizing that it could happen again at any time. You no longer knew who to trust. Identity theft had destroyed careers, broken up families, ruined lives. The book even went so far as to liken it to a tsunami, whose imminence might come in a warning but whose arrival could not be stopped once it was set in motion.
    As I read, I saw myself in every word, except that in my case there was more at stake than financial losses. There was Lexy. At every thought of her, panic blossomed in my chest. And so I read and read and read to pass the time and fill my brain with something other than raw worry. Up until now, I had shouldered every burden life had thrown me. I could even handle the theft of my identity — but not the theft of Lexy.
    Bobby rubbed my feet as I read, disappearing occasionally and then returning, dozing at his end of the couch. As twilight swallowed