Page 40

40.

After Pete storms out, I call Phil downstairs. I confirm that mediation is over and our lawyers will take it from here. By the time I get outside, a car is pulling up for Pete.

“Wait!” I want to discuss logistics. It would be easiest if he could stay somewhere else tonight and give me a chance to reunite with Stella and pack our things. That way I won’t have to come back to the house. But he jumps in without looking at me.

I’m desperate to see Stella, but when I check my phone, the next Uber isn’t for fourteen minutes. It’s just over a mile to our house, so I run. It’s hard to sprint, only a few days after giving birth, and I didn’t consider how much of the route is uphill. But the thought of seeing Stella—as herself, at last—makes me fly.

The front door is double-locked. My stomach lurches: we only double-lock if nobody’s home. My cold fingers are clumsy as I fumble with my keys. Inside, the overhead lights are on, as are the copper cluster lights on the Christmas tree. But the house is empty. I run from room to room, calling her name. A tangle of socks and underwear lies on her bed, the drawer upside-down on the floor. Her wardrobe door is ajar, and when I open it, the child-sized boogie board is gone, the one that looked like a blue fish with yellow stripes. I press one of her little socks to my face.

I call Pete: no answer. I call him again and again. I don’t have Kia’s number. No answer from Nathan. I run downstairs to Pete’s office and check the drawer where he keeps our passports. Empty, except for mine. “No,” I say, over and over until the word becomes meaningless.

Yet again, I’ve failed to anticipate what my husband is capable of. If only I had his ability to think several moves ahead, I would have found a way to hide Stella’s passport before the mediation session. There’s only one place he could be taking her: California. Five thousand miles away. He will get a lawyer. I’ll get one too, but his will be better. I might get her back, but it will take months, or even years, and before then, Blanka will end Stella’s life. She’ll drown Stella to get revenge on Pete because I couldn’t pull it off. On their first father-daughter surfing trip, Blanka will pull Stella under the waves, let an undertow drag her away.

My breath comes in little gasps. I have to stop shaking and get it together. Barely an hour has passed since Pete left the mediation session: enough time for him to jump in a cab to Heathrow, but not enough for him to board a plane. I still have a chance. I check Heathrow departures for flights to San Francisco, and for a moment I breathe more deeply: the next one isn’t until 7:05 a.m. tomorrow.

But I have to start thinking like him now, shuffling possibilities. He needs to get her out of the country as quickly as possible, which means the next flight that goes anywhere in the US. No, the next flight out of the country: Milan, Vilnius, Abu Dhabi. The nearest airports with international flights are Heathrow and London City.

I think about going to the police and explaining that my child-abusing ex is attempting to take our daughter out of the country, could board any flight at either airport in the next two hours. But how long will that take? I have to pick an airport and go there now. My gut tells me Pete is planning to go straight to the US, so he can lawyer up, and you can’t fly there from London City Airport. I call Irina because her crazy driving is the fastest way to get to Heathrow. When she arrives, for once she doesn’t tell me she’s not a taxi service. She just squeezes my hand, hard.

···

At Heathrow, Irina has barely pulled up to the curb before I leap out of the car and hurl myself towards the revolving doors. Inside, it’s painfully bright and busy. Queues snake through the airport: people in puffy winter jackets with ski bags over their shoulders, families on their way home from Christmas visits. Every check-in desk is crowded. But the rich don’t have to stand in long queues: he’s probably already at security.

I take the up escalator two steps at a time, then sprint towards security, lungs burning. The queue zigzags between belt barriers and then through a doorway in a smoked-glass screen. I thrust myself between and around people, leaving yelps of outrage in my wake. When I reach the official who is checking documents at the doorway, I have my passport ready. “My husband is taking my child out of the country without my permission.”

“Boarding pass?”

I stare at her. “I’m not here to get on a plane.”

“You need a boarding pass to enter the sterile area.”

She’s in her late twenties, wearing makeup so thick that her skin resembles that of a mannequin. It looks like it would be hard to the touch.

“Please. This is an emergency.” I peer over her shoulder, searching for Stella.

“You still have to be processed through passenger security screening.”

I can’t get her to meet my gaze. “My daughter’s being abducted. Please help me. My child.”

“Ma’am, in that case, you need to call the police.”

I draw myself up straight, smooth my hair. I need her to see that I’m just an ordinary respectable person who happens to be in a terrible situation. “Please let me see if she’s there. You can watch me. I don’t even have a bag. I’m not going to try and sneak a bomb through.”

I know what I’ve done wrong as soon as the word leaves my mouth. She flings her arms wide across the doorway and starts barking into her radio, calling for support. I raise my hands to show I’m backing down, stepping meekly away. Then I duck underneath her arm and into the throng of people on the other side.

The blue-and-yellow boogie board is about to pass through the baggage scanner. Stella is shuffling through the metal detector nearby, head bowed. Pete must have already gone through—he didn’t think to let his daughter go first.

“Stella!” I gasp. “Stella!” She doesn’t turn. I throw myself towards her, knocking over a stack of grey plastic bins. As I stumble to my feet, two police officers in fluorescent vests grab my arms. All around me, people are raising their phones to record, but why won’t anyone help me? The baggage scanner has swallowed the blue fish. I can’t see Stella anymore.

“Blanka!” I scream so loud it makes my jaw hurt.

“Ma’am, you need to come with us,” one of the police officers says, a young man with a carefully shaped goatee.

“That man is taking my child!” I struggle to wrench myself free.

“What does she look like?” says the woman. Her mouth turns down at the corners, like a disappointed head teacher. She doesn’t believe I really have a daughter.

But the man is listening to his radio. He nods at the woman, and they escort me to the other side of the screening area. Pete’s standing there with another police officer while a woman with a Fair Isle cardigan and a security lanyard attempts to distract Stella with a bear in a Santa hat. “Stella!” I shout, but she won’t look at me: she asked me to do one thing, and I failed. The police officer is talking to Pete. No sign of Kia: he left her behind. Even she wouldn’t condone him taking Stella out of the country without telling me. He blinks as people point their phones at him, whispering to each other: he must have done something bad if the police are detaining him. His arms are rigid by his side. I stare at him. I’ve never seen him like this, without a plan.

Then the police officers are rushing us down one fluorescent-lit corridor after another, until we reach a windowless room with two sofas, a coffee table, and several chairs. It’s the room of last resort, where the news is so bad that it’s pointless to provide a potted plant or a magazine. The police officers introduce themselves as Constables Lynne Rolfe and Ajay Grover. The woman with the lanyard is Mandy.

“I want a lawyer,” Pete says.

“You’re not under arrest,” says Rolfe. “Currently. Let’s try to get to the bottom of this situation.” She gestures at us to sit down. Stella won’t. Mandy wants to take her to another room, murmuring about juice and crayons.

“Please keep my daughter where I can see her,” I bark, and Mandy subsides. Grover checks our passports, studying our faces, frowning.

“What’s your daughter’s name?” asks Rolfe.

“Stella,” Pete says.

Rolfe raises her eyebrows. “That wasn’t the name she answered to earlier.”

Mandy crouches down and asks Stella in a soft voice, “What’s your name, sweetie?”

Stella stares straight ahead.

“Is she hearing-impaired?” says Mandy.

Pete sighs. “For Christ’s sake, you have her passport. You don’t need her to say her name.”

Rolfe glances at Grover, and he shrugs and shows her Stella’s passport photo, taken two years ago, when her skin was still pale and her curls unruly. I loved that picture—her high forehead, her precise, delicate features—like a face you’d find inside an antique locket.

“This doesn’t look like her,” says Grover, staring at Stella. Since that photo, her hair has darkened and lost its curl, and her face is rounder.

But Pete scoffs. “She’s grown, that’s all.”

Rolfe asks Stella if she can point out her dad. Stella says something incomprehensible, her mouth twisting around strange sounds.

“What did she say?” Rolfe asks Mandy. Mandy squats down next to Stella and points to Pete.

“Is that man your father, sweetie?”

This time I recognize Stella’s words.

“Yes atum yem ayd mardun,” she says.

“She’s saying, ‘I hate that man.’?” I clear my throat. “In Armenian.”

“Come again?” says Grover

The grooves at the side of Rolfe’s mouth deepen. “You should have told us she doesn’t speak English.”

“She does,” Pete says.

Rolfe frowns. “Can one of you try speaking to her?”

I scratch my arms. “We don’t speak Armenian.”

Rolfe looks from me to Pete to Stella, as if formulating a new theory about what is going on here. I scratch harder. This is going to end up with both of us getting arrested. God knows what will happen to Stella.

“Stella, please,” tries Pete. “This is not a game.”

Stella gives him a polite, puzzled look. Like he’s a foreigner struggling to ask for directions. She’d like to help him—if only he could make himself clear. Pete takes a moment to clean a smudge off his glasses. Then he gets up and lays his hands on her shoulders. “Stella, this is not the time to show off.”

“Yes atum yem—”

“Jesus Christ !” Pete yells. He places his hands over his face, then chops at the air. He paces back and forth. I realize something: He doesn’t want to be Stella’s full-time parent. He doesn’t have the patience. He likes her better as Blanka, but she’s still not his perfect daughter. She’s never going to be a crown-braided cartwheel-turner like Lulu. She’ll never be simple, easy. He just wants Stella because he doesn’t like to lose. I store this realization away. Maybe I can use it. Because the video didn’t work, I have to come up with something else, and quickly. Rolfe is fed up.

“You both say this child is your daughter, yet you”—she points to me—“call her by a different name. Furthermore, she doesn’t resemble her passport picture, and neither of you speak her language.”

“Hold on!” I say. “Her grandmother speaks Armenian. She’s just parking the car.” I send a quick text telling Irina to ask for us at security. On second thought, I send an urgent question too.

“I would like to talk to my wife privately,” Pete says.

Grover looks at Rolfe, and they nod. “Five minutes.”

I follow Pete into the passage outside. “Make Stella stop this charade,” he tells me. “Otherwise, I promise you, Charlotte, I will make sure we both lose. I will not rest until child protective services know all about your mental illness. We’ll both lose custody. She’ll go to her nearest living relative.” He pauses. “My mother.”

“You don’t even want her,” I hiss. I thought I’d come up with the ultimate trick to defeat Pete, but it didn’t work, because I didn’t let myself see what he is capable of. I never dreamed he’d try to abduct Stella, or that he’d send her to his mother rather than let me have her. Now, to defeat him, I have to truly see him, as I’ve never let myself before. His eyes look bloodshot in the harsh light, and his beard hides his firm jaw, his best feature, and somehow makes his mouth look greedy. How did I ever think this man was gorgeous?

He looks preoccupied, like he’s already conducting cost-benefit analyses, formulating a new plan. But just now, in the security area, when the police officer apprehended him and people held up their phones to record the scene, Pete froze. People profile him for business magazines. Antiplastic campaigners give him awards for his good work. Women hang on his every word. The taste of public disapproval is new.

His mother once told me that when Pete was little, if he hit another kid, she never scolded him in public. She got down on his level and asked him why he did it. According to her, his explanations always made sense. Pete believes that he always has a good reason, and he convinces other people of it too. But if that stopped—if people started judging him, instead of applauding— that would be the worst thing. Worse than losing his daughters.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m not going to show that video to the police.”

“Thank you for being reasonable.”

“I’m sending it to Nathan. In fact, I’ll send it to everyone in Mycoship. Maybe the video won’t stand up in a court of law, but you’ll be judged in the court of public opinion. You won’t be able to keep your job, and I doubt Nathan can keep the company going without you.” Pete looks clammy now. I am a step ahead of him. At last. “I’ll send it to the press too. Everyone loves the story of a fall from grace. From green business mogul to child abuser—that’s a pretty big drop.”

Pete rakes his hands through his hair. When he talks, it’s not really addressed to me. It’s like he’s forgotten I’m there. “I put everything into that company,” he mutters. “Plastic is wrecking the ocean, but our packaging actually enriches the soil. It’s a revolutionary solution. A game changer.” His voice steadies. He’s convinced himself: he’ll give Stella up, because it’s for the greater good. He’s safely back on the moral high ground. He fixes me with his bloodshot blue eyes. “You get her. For now.”

My phone pings: Irina’s answer to my question.

When I go back into the room, Pete is crouched in front of Stella. “Daddy has a plane to catch, sweetie.”

“You’ll leave once we say so,” says Rolfe.

“Let him go,” I say. “This was a misunderstanding.”

Pete nods and turns back to Stella. “I’ll see you.” A lie, I hope. He opens his arms wide. But Stella stares at Pete, and the look on her face is enough to pin him to the spot. She doesn’t look like a little girl upset that her father is leaving. She looks like a grown woman, filled with righteous, bitter loathing. Blood pounds in my ears, just like the surf the day I learned of Blanka’s death: pummeling, smashing, grinding.

Pete staggers back. When he turns to leave the room, he looks like someone who has just opened a door to discover that his world is a stage set, blackness howling outside. Maybe that’s just the look of a man saying goodbye to his daughter forever. But I think perhaps, at last, he sees Blanka-in-Stella. I didn’t think he was capable of that.

Once he’s gone, Stella crumples to the floor, and I rush towards her.

I croon Irina’s answer to my question: “Im yerekha, im yerekha.”

My baby, my baby.

In answer to Rolfe’s look, I murmur, “I speak a word or two.”

I pull back to look at Stella’s face: her eyes are half-closed, only the white showing. She judders in my arms.

Mandy looks uneasy. “Is she OK? Do we need to call a doctor?”

“She’s fine. She’s going to be fine.” But her skin feels as cold as marble.

“Stella! My little one!” Irina bursts in, having miraculously found us down this maze of corridors. She directs a stream of Armenian endearments at us, and then barely takes a breath before berating Rolfe and Grove for detaining her daughter and granddaughter and letting Pete go. “I am thinking this is safe, nice country where child is well treated,” she snaps. “Maybe now I write letter to my MP.”

Rolfe and Grover let us go after we fill out an incident report, and I follow Irina to her car with Stella in my arms, the sound of her chattering teeth in my ear. On the way back, I take out the ponytail holders with the plastic bobbles, comb out her plaits with my fingers.

When Irina reaches our house, I ask her to stay. I carry Stella up to her room. Irina pulls back her comforter and I lay her down and cover her. Then we sit in the dark with just her nightlight on, listening to her deep, struggling breaths. It almost sounds like the way someone breathes when they are dying. Should I call an ambulance? Maybe Blanka is ready to go now, but she’s taking Stella with her. Perhaps, once a spirit has entered your body, it can’t just exit painlessly. Blanka’s like a knife, pulling Stella’s guts out as she withdraws.

I try to push down my panic. My mother instinct tells me nothing. I don’t think any doctor can help her, but I don’t know that she’ll be OK. All we can do is wait. We sit by her bed for a long time, listening to that terrible breathing.

At first, I’m not sure, but then I am: her breaths are smoothing out. Irina, seated in Stella’s desk chair, grows more and more hunched. At long last, Stella’s breathing is quiet and steady. Irina stands stiffly. “I sleep in my own bed. You take care of daughter.”

When Irina is gone, I listen to Stella inhale and exhale, just like when she was a newborn, and I felt that the only way she would take another breath was if I was there to listen. She’s alive. But is she Stella now? I should let her body rest, but I can’t wait anymore. I press my face into her hair. No meat stew, no chlorine, just the scent of ordinary sleeping child. “Stella, honey?” I whisper.

“I was asleep,” she says groggily.

“Yes, it’s still night. But just look at me for a moment.” We gaze at each other. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. I count. Please let this be the hugging stare. “Quack, there’s a saddle on my back,” I say, my voice trembling.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” she replies, “I’m a kangaroo.”

My heart feels as if it will burst from my chest. My daughter. She’s still gazing at me. “Why are you awake, Mommy?” she says. “Are you having trouble sleeping?” She sighs deeply, as if forgoing something very precious. “You can borrow my book on aviation if you want.” I clench my fists with the effort of not hugging her.