Page 8 of Her Submission (Monica & Henry #2)

Gone

“That was Eva.”

Henry put his phone back down after his and Monica’s nap were interrupted. Their car carefully meandered down the mountain back toward town.

“She says that they’re arriving around the same time as us. Abigail should be delighted.”

Monica yawned.

“She’ll think we all went somewhere without her.”

“I mean, in a matter of speaking.”

Already, Monica was half-asleep again. She leaned her head against Henry’s shoulder and entwined her hand with his.

“Back to the grind,” she said.

Henry was too alert to join her in dreamland.

“Rather strange we haven’t heard from my mother. She checked in at the strangest time after we went to bed last night. Acted like we were already up this morning.”

“Sometimes I wonder if your mother is losing her mental faculties.”

Yet something Henry said was also keeping Monica up as she attempted to fall asleep on his arm. Wish I could blame the rocky part of the trip down, but… It was unusual for them to not hear from Isabella and Abigail at least once a day. Both Monica and Henry had fired off texts to Isabella in a vain attempt to check-in. They’re probably at church or something. Granted, it was the afternoon now, but…

There was no point thinking about it. They were halfway home, already.

Monica was jostled back awake when the car pulled in front of Warren Manor. Henry already gathered their things in the backseat and didn’t wait for the car to stop idling before unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door.

“What’s wrong?”

Monica asked.

He hesitated. The driver opened Monica’s door, but she wanted to hear what her husband had to say first.

“Do you ever suddenly have a bad feeling in your stomach?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. Henry was already out of the car, taking only what he could carry up to the house.

Another car pulled up behind them. Monica was so distracted by everything going on that she forgot the driver was patiently waiting for her on the other side of her opened door.

“How about that?”

Eva leaned against her Jaguar, the car parked behind Monica’s. Nearby, Nadia adjusted her belt and sunglasses as she assessed the bags in the backseat.

“We got home at the same time. Almost like we planned it.”

The driver closed Monica’s door when she stepped out. “Did we?”

“Pfft. No.”

Eva stretched both arms above her head.

“We’re not that cool.”

“Do you have any idea why Henry is hauling ass inside?”

Eva regarded her sister-in-law with bemusement.

“Was he? Didn’t notice.”

“Said he had a bad feeling. Have you heard from your mother since yesterday?”

“No! Thank God. That’s part of my plan.”

“Right. She’s not watching your daughter.”

Eva lowered her sunglasses.

“You think there’s something wrong with Abby?”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, I’m heading inside. Hope you two had a pleasant trip.”

“Will be officially over when your driver moves the damn car so I can park…”

Monica ran into Nadia when they both entered the main house at the same time. This was Nadia’s second trip to carry things out of the car since she was the type to insist on doing it herself instead of letting the staff help.

Not that Monica had seen most of the staff…

“Where is everybody?”

Nadia asked, arms laden with travel bags.

“Usually I can’t go two feet without someone in a drab uniform trying to haul away my stuff.”

“It is rather strange.”

Monica had also noticed a distinct lack of people in her house.

This was a woman who was used to encountering at least five whenever she entered Warren Manor or Le Chateau.

Because the manor could be just as bad as her place of business.

The Warrens are used to a certain standard of living.

Nadia joked that the family employed half of the middle-class people in the neighboring town.

As the woman who went over their paychecks and benefits, Monica was inclined to agree.

Chefs, butlers, maids who clean all day, drivers, gardeners… They didn’t directly employ plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, but they kept many on retainer in case of emergency.

That was something Monica had to get used to when she married into the family.

“Genie!”

Monica flagged down one solo maid who dusted the credenza lining the back hallway between the two family wings.

“Ms. Kennedy!”

Sure enough, the young Genie Kennedy looked over her shoulder when the mistress of the house approached.

“Oh! Mrs. Warren!”

One of the more recent hires at the manor, Genie was a weekend maid who lived off property and worked part-time. While it wasn’t unusual to see her bustling about on a Sunday afternoon, it was strange to not see her with her supervisor.

“You’re home earlier than I expected.”

Monica was already suspicious.

“What do you mean? Where are the others?”

“The others, ma’am?”

“Your coworkers. So far, you’re the only one I’ve seen here.”

“Of course! You gave everyone else the weekend off.”

Don’t. Panic. Oh, Monica wanted to panic. Every alarm bell rang in her head, screaming at her something was wrong! Something was very wrong!

Where was Genie’s supervisor?

Where was Elson?

Where was anyone?

“Explain to me what you heard. Kindly, please.”

Genie placed her feather duster on the credenza and pondered Monica’s words. Poor thing thinks she’s in trouble. Already, though, Monica’s thoughts blew by at a hundred miles an hour, oscillating between a simple miscommunication and something more sinister at play. Had Isabella fired most of the staff while the other adults were gone?

“Mrs. Warren… I mean the other Mrs. Warren… gave everyone but me the weekend off. Handed out gift cards to apologize for the inconvenience of getting ready for work, you see. I mean, I also got one! She’s very generous, the other Mrs. Warren.”

Monica was too wide-eyed with shock to properly speak.

“Wh… where is she now?”

“The other Mrs. Warren? She…”

“Monica!”

Henry’s voice boomed from the stairs leading to the second floor of the east wing.

“Abigail’s gone!”

There may have been a million explanations for what her husband just said, but the result was the same: everyone in the foyer, from Monica to Genie to Eva, stopped what they were doing to watch a giant of a man thrust himself against the railing with nothing but anxiety crushing his paling face.

“No…”

Monica rushed toward the stairs.

“What do you mean, Henry?”

He was almost out of breath when he said.

“Abigail. Mother. They’re both not here. There’s no sign of them, and I found this!”

Monica helped save him from almost dropping the large phone he pulled out of his pocket. It wasn’t his. This one sported an apricot case with a faint lilac outline. The only person who loved pastels more than Monica’s interior decorator was Isabella Warren.

“Where are they!”

she snapped at Genie, who suddenly donned the countenance of a woman who realized something serious was afoot.

“Where’s my daughter!”

The maid spun around, hand on her chest and words futilely sputtering from her mouth.

“I’m sorry?”

Monica was the shortest person in the house. Not just among her family, barring her growing daughter, but the staff as well. Yet she had the constitution to bear down upon the young woman holding her hand to her chest and looking like she was about to jump out of the window. That was the power of the panic welling up inside her and threatening to destroy the world.

“Where…”

Deep down, didn’t Monica know? “Is…”

Didn’t some not-so-hidden part of her see this coming? “My…”

She was shaking so hard that she didn’t think about the spit flying from her lips.

“Daughter?”

The whole family stood behind her, Henry coming the closest as he towered over Genie. She looked fit to faint.

“She left with Mrs. Warren… I mean, the other one… last night.”

Genie braced herself against the credenza, her face so pale and her lips so dry that Monica could have disintegrated the girl with one poke.

“They took luggage with them. Mrs. Warren excused everyone but me from our jobs this weekend because she said that nobody was in residence.”

Monica grabbed her by the arms.

“Where the hell did they go!”

Genie didn’t have the answer for that. Monica feared nobody did.

The chaos of the evening required Monica to be absolutely on, but she didn’t have the wherewithal. Everywhere she went, she searched for Abigail; everywhere she existed, she wanted to throw up in fear.

All they knew upfront? Isabella had taken Abigail somewhere. Without word. Without permission.

Henry was the one who dissuaded Monica from immediately calling the police.

“We need to find out some things before we do that.”

Monica didn’t understand. She wanted to wring necks, cry, and drive a kitchen knife into her stomach to make this heinous reality go away.

Then Eva agreed with her brother, and Monica soon understood why. The two Warren-born siblings were more formidable to the staff than any police officer could be.

“I promise I don’t know anything else!”

a teary-eyed Genie claimed when she was interrogated in Henry’s office.

“I told you everything I know!”

“This is insanity,”

the driver said when Henry dragged him in from the garage, where he had missed most of the drama while servicing Monica’s car.

“I was with you all weekend! Did someone take Abby? Who? Who took her? Lady Warren? Jesus…”

“I assure you that Lady Warren gave no inclination of going somewhere, let alone with Miss Abigail,”

Elson claimed when Monica called him and told him to get his ass back home from whatever social club he visited that night.

“Have you two called the police yet? I really suggest you call the police, Mr. and Mrs. Warren. That woman hasn’t sat right with me the last few times she’s been here.”

There were only two other people who might have immediately known something.

“I swear it’s exactly as I said.”

Matilda, who looked like she was on the verge of a heart attack, paced back and forth in her room when she returned at Monica’s bidding.

“Isabella insisted that I take the weekend off. She even gave me a reservation at The Grand in town, because she thought I should ‘have some time to myself.’ Well, you know, it’s been a while since I was treated to something, so…”

She stopped. Henry urged her to continue.

“Was my mother acting strange in any way?”

He coughed his own words.

“Besides the usual.”

Matilda shook her head until something dawned on her.

“Friday night, when she gave me the weekend off, she did ask a couple of things about Abigail. Namely, she wanted to know where we keep all of her ‘lovely clothes’ and said it so she could dress her for church on Sunday. I showed her the closet across the hall where we keep Abigail’s party dresses. She was delighted. I mean, Abigail…”

Monica latched onto this one piece of hope.

“Abigail was with you?”

“Yes. She never left Isabella’s side. She even said that her grandmother had a surprise for her but didn’t know what yet.”

“Damnit, that tells us nothing!”

Henry rounded on his wife, his stance intimidating but his voice reassuring.

“It tells us that there’s a chance my mother has simply really crossed a boundary but isn’t up to anything nefarious. They might have gone to DisneyWorld for all we know.”

“Without telling us? Without telling anyone? Abigail has school tomorrow!”

“You know how my mother is! When I was Abigail’s age, we would sometimes abscond to places around the country that my mother thought were pertinent to my upbringing or because she wanted a photoshoot. She did the same thing to Eva, too. Ask her about that time our mother took her out of school for a week to tour France!”

Something about the reminder of France gnawed at Monica’s mind, but she couldn’t see reason. Not until she found out where the fuck her daughter was!

The last person to interrogate was Gerald, but he was also nowhere to be found. Yet the staff confirmed that he had left Friday afternoon, shortly after everyone else. The rumor was that he had flown back to Montana early. While Henry called the local airfield to inquire about what the family plane had been up to, Monica marched into the main house, where she found Eva and Nadia sitting at the dining table with microwavable soup and crackers. Right… dinner.

“Any news?”

Eva quickly asked.

“Not much. Only that your father left shortly after us on Friday, and that your mother has apparently taken Abigail… somewhere.”

“I keep trying to message and call her, but then I remember she left her phone here! That’s so unlike her. Unless…”

Nadia looked up from her soup.

“She totally would, Eva. Your mother is a monster.”

“Yes, I know! A fucking righteous monster who would kidnap her own granddaughter!”

A new lump formed in Monica’s throat. “Kidnap?”

“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have suggested it.”

“Monica.”

She turned at the sound of her husband’s voice. Henry hurried forward, phone in hand.

“What did you learn?”

He acknowledged his sister before responding.

“The family plane took my father home to Montana on Friday, as Matilda suggested. It returned this morning after my mother and Abigail probably disappeared. There’s nothing in the flight plan about the plane being anywhere else. So, they didn’t take that plane, at least.”

“So…?”

“If we call the police, they might be able to check commercial flights.”

The moment Monica had dreaded came. The police.

It made it all so real.

The family and staff were reinterrogated. Abigail’s room was cased for signs of a struggle, DNA, anything. Men in uniform and suits treated the whole of Warren Manor as a crime scene and its occupants as suspects and nuisances. Isabella’s phone was confiscated as evidence. For once, Monica struggled to pull rank when it served her the most. She relied on Henry and Eva, both of whom had been raised with the kind of entitlement that allowed them to speak to police officers like.

“What are you waiting for? Don’t you know who we are?”

The most infuriating thing wasn’t the gloved inspector poring over Abigail’s bed for DNA. Nor was it the detective questioning Matilda’s entire work history, as if Monica had lied on her nanny’s behalf. No, it was how little regarded Abigail’s mother was in this entire process. Every time she attempted to assert herself, questions were redirected to Henry, who often answered without consulting his wife. Granted, they knew the same things… but Monica had to do something. Answer something. Get something done.

Yet nobody wanted to deal with her, because she was emotional. Because she was small. Because nobody treated Monica as a real person in this debacle.

When she accepted this, she retreated to her room and sobbed on her sofa.

Nobody checked in on her until midnight, when most of the police had departed and only a couple of detectives remained. Eva knocked on the door and helped herself in. The first thing Monica wanted to ask about was Henry, but she could tell from the look on her sister-in-law’s face that there were no new revelations. Nobody had found Isabella. Nobody had found Abigail.

“They’re sending local police to my parents’ ranch,”

Eva said, politely looking away while Monica cleaned up her splotchy, swollen face.

“To interrogate my dad. Considering how high profile we are and how small the state is… well, odds are good the FBI will get involved.”

“Fuck…”

Eva sat next to her.

“We’re going to find her, okay? Something tells me Henry won’t sleep. I doubt I will, either. My mother… God, I knew something like this would happen. She took Abigail. Henry keeps rationalizing that this might be some gross misunderstanding, but he still doesn’t know Isabella Warren like I do. Nadia agrees with me. This smells.”

“Thank you for your solidarity.”

Monica wiped her nose with a tissue.

“This does nothing to help me right now.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do.”

Monica folded her face in the crook of her arm.

“Neither do I.”

They sat in silence for the better part of the night.