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Michael stared at the image a moment longer, and then tried to hand the phone back to Erica. But she didn’t take it, and the two of them stood frozen like that, him holding the phone and her keeping her hands by her sides. A string of firecrackers popped up the street, followed by the laughter of children.
“Erica, I think you need to leave,” he said.
“I know you very well, almost as well as anyone else on the planet. I know who you are, Michael. It’s urgent when a little girl is missing like this. You would never turn your back on a child in danger. Your child. Your daughter.”
“She’s not—”
But how did he really know? Yes, they’d had sex near the end of their marriage. And, yes, the timing worked out with the age of the child. Felicity. But Erica was supposed to have been on the pill. And he and Angela had struggled so much with conceiving... .
But she did look like Robyn.
“You’re invoking Robyn to manipulate me,” Michael said.
And he had to give Erica credit—she had always been honest and forthright.
“Yes, I am,” Erica said.
• • •
Michael was the eldest of three children. His two younger sisters were Lynn, the middle child, and Robyn. When Michael was twelve and his sisters were nine and six, they lived in a house on the north side of Cottonsville, Kentucky, Michael’s hometown and where he still lived with Angela. The house was average, certainly not as large as the one his parents eventually moved to, the one they purchased as his father’s home health care company continued to grow and expand.
The first house on the north side of town sat on the edge of a subdivision that backed up to a seemingly endless cornfield. A swing set, one that had been in place before his parents even bought the house, provided hours of entertainment for the kids. But especially for Robyn, the most daring of the siblings.
It happened in summer; Michael remembered that. July 19. They were currently about a month away from the twenty-third anniversary. He still dreamed about it from time to time. He still woke up with his heart pounding, his clothes soaked with sweat at least four or five times a year... .
The sun was bright that day, the sky blue and clear. Michael couldn’t even say why the three of them were playing in the yard together at that point. Michael was twelve, past the age when he could summon any patience or interest in the activities of his two younger sisters. His mom may have been on the phone or showering or tending to something in the house, which explained why the three of them were out in the yard together. Dad would have been at work. Back then and all the way to the day of his death, his dad always seemed to be at work.
Michael grew bored with the girls, with the silly songs Lynn sang and Robyn’s effervescent and seemingly endless chattering. He turned his back on them and started through the cornfield behind the house. He liked to walk up and down the rows, running his hands along the rough green leaves, listening to the way they rustled as he passed. He knew the sweet smell of the stalks, the rich odor of the earth. He could never get lost. The rows were so neat and orderly, the paths so straight and clear, he could always find his way back. He possessed an excellent sense of direction, and he never found himself turned around.
He couldn’t say how far he’d gone that day. Not very. He knew he was supposed to be in the yard, watching his sisters so they didn’t wander away or fight with each other. Even at that young age, he understood the unique place he occupied in their lives. They looked up to him. They worshipped him. They always listened to Michael, even more than they listened to or stood in awe of their own parents. Even Robyn, the baby, the one Lynn always called the favorite. Robyn, Daddy’s little girl ...
Michael couldn’t say why he’d turned around when he did that day.
He didn’t worry about his sisters’ being alone. They were getting to be old enough that he felt he didn’t need to “watch” them all the time. He’d decided that summer that they both acted more like babies when he was around; when they were left alone, they functioned in a more mature manner.
But, still, his mom often asked him to keep an eye on them when she was busy with something else. He knew his mom worried the most about Robyn. Even at age six, she was a daredevil. She climbed on everything—tall trees and playground jungle gyms. She rode her bike as fast as she could, jumped into the deep end of the pool whether an adult was nearby to watch her or not. She made Michael as nervous as his mother. Michael hated heights, hated the sensation of going fast or out of control. But Robyn never flinched from anything, and their dad loved it.
He encouraged Robyn every time she took a risk. He cheered her on at her gymnastics practices when she flipped so high she fell, laughed a little even when he yelled at her for climbing too high in a tree.
It bothered Michael that his father acted that way. He thought his father’s behavior only encouraged more risky acts. And if Michael hated it, Lynn despised it. She always complained to Michael—and occasionally to their mom—about their father’s signs of favoritism toward Robyn. How he let her get away with anything, how he never punished her. Michael accepted that it was the way things went with the youngest child. He had friends at school with younger siblings, and they all shared the same complaint: The baby gets away with everything.
But Lynn never let it roll off her back. She never shrugged off Robyn’s or their dad’s behavior, never simply rolled her eyes and accepted the way things were. She fought against it. She balked at sharing things with Robyn, refused to let her anywhere nearby when her friends from school came over, even as those very friends told Lynn how adorable and funny her little sister was. Michael chalked it up to sisterly rivalry, the difficulty of having a younger sibling of the same gender who seemed to draw a lot of attention.
Michael took his time walking back through the corn. He had baseball practice that night. He looked forward to being on the diamond, to seeing his friends and throwing the ball around despite the growing heat. He loved the feel of standing on the dirt, the cracking of the bat, the shouts of his teammates.
He heard someone screaming in the yard as he drew close.
He recognized the sounds. His sisters were fighting, arguing with each other over some perceived injustice committed by one of them, their voices always shrill and pointed. Someone took a longer turn on a swing. Someone called the other one a name. Someone took something that belonged to the other... .
When Michael emerged from the corn, though, everything grew silent.
A hot breeze blew, but the swings were still.
Robyn lay on the ground, beneath the swing set, her head turned at a funny angle.
He knew one of her favorite things to do was to walk across the top of the swing set, arms out to her side like she was on the balance beam. Except this beam stood eight feet off the ground.
She never fell, never even wavered as she walked, even though the very act made Michael’s stomach clench, made his own head spin like he was sick. The height terrified him.
She laughed as she walked, taunting her siblings. But Robyn never fell.
Until that day.
Lynn stood to the side, her mouth open, her face full of terror.
And then their mom was running from the house, her hands raised in fear and panic.