Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

thought about Leon and Madison, living as if they were roommates as much as parent and child. And I thought about Sally, wondering again if she’d left or if she’d been taken away.
    When I got home, I fed Dashiell, then went upstairs and turned on the computer. First I Googled Sally’s name, Sally Spector, and got nothing. Then I tried her maiden name, Sally Bruce. Still nothing. So I tried Sally Madison, Sally Roy, Roy Spector, Roy Bruce, Bruce Madison, even, thinking she might have a sense of humor, Sally Forth. Nothing. I thought about what Ted had said, that I wouldn’t find her unless she wanted to be found. I hoped he was wrong.
    I picked up the pages I’d printed on chronic tic disorder, read some more about the syndrome that had shaped Madison’s life for the last five years and perhaps had helped shape her mother’s life as well. The dopamine blockers that were used to treat the tics, I read, had a limited rate of success and a high level of side effects. Most of the sites I found said that the tics might last into adolescence for some children, or they might last indefinitely. Tics, it reminded me again, grew worse during emotional stress. Unfortunately, I had already seen firsthand that that was so. But when I read on, I found something odd, something that made me curious: the fact that the tics and trembling that characterized the disease were absent during sleep.
    It was late, but not too late. I dialed Leon’s number. When he answered, I asked if he could drop Madison off at my house around four the next day. He said he could. I gave him the address. I asked if he’d send a change of clothes, her pajamas and a toothbrush, too. There was a silence on the line, Leon thinking over what I’d said. Fair enough, I thought, waiting until he was ready to answer.
    “You want her to stay over?” he asked.
    “I do,” I told him. There was another silence and then I heard Leon cough. “Emil/Emily, too?” he asked.
    I don’t know why it was the question about the turtle that made my chest tighten the way it did. For a moment I felt so sad it was hard to breathe. I found myself pulling a Leon, nodding into the phone.
    “Yes,” I said when I could. “Whatever—or whomever— she wants to bring.” And then, “If she’s willing to come at all.”
    “She will be,” he said.
    “How do you know that?”
    “The jacket you found, Sally’s jacket? She slept in it last night.”
    When I hung up I needed some air. I needed to be moving. I grabbed the keys to the Siegal house, and barefoot, Dashiell running ahead and barking, I crossed the garden and entered the town house via the back door, running up the stairs to close the window I’d left open. Then I went back to my own house and up to my office.
    I studied the file cards full of notes I’d tacked up over the desk, adding some new ones, holding Celia Abele’s card for a moment and then deciding not to wait, to call her right away, to try to see her in the morning. It was after ten, late to call a stranger, but I didn’t think Celia would be asleep, and hearing Leon’s voice a moment before, sounding as if he himself was the child I was supposed to save, I couldn’t wait another moment.
    I reached for the phone and then hesitated. Perhaps it wasn’t Leon who needed saving. Perhaps it was someone else. When Leon had mentioned Emil/Emily, for a moment I was back in my mother’s kitchen the day she said she was leaving.
    Was that why this case pulled on me so, because when I looked at Madison, I saw myself as a little girl? My mother had come home, but not to me. From that time on, I knew I was alone, or if I wasn’t, I could be at any moment. Isn’t that what Madison knew? Isn’t that why she clung so hard to Emil/Emily, someone that couldn’t run away and leave her?
    Celia answered on the first ring. She agreed to meet me for breakfast the next morning, after she dropped JoAnn off at school. When I asked where she wanted to meet, she gave me her address.
    It was late and I was cold and wanted to go to bed. I decided to check my e-mail before shutting down the computer, to see if there was anything else from Classmates.com. And there was, just one letter. It was from one of the people who had written before, the one who hadn’t bothered with a last name.
    “Your not Sally,” it said. “Who are you?” It was signed “Jim.”

CHAPTER 14

    Eric Bechman, Charles Abele had told me, was thrilled to have a daughter, but not thrilled