I scramble away unsteadily, aware only of the crash of things breaking as I crawl frantically to the other side of the room.  I lean into the corner near the door and I watch Cole silently, viciously beat the blood and breath out of Ryan.

He’s straddling him, pummeling him with first one fist and then the other. Back and forth, never stopping.

Blood starts to spatter the walls, Cole’s shirt and face. Ryan stopped moving several punches ago and his visage is completely unrecognizable.  Some part of me relishes what’s happening in front of me, but there’s another part that realizes this won’t end well.  As much as I’d like to know Ryan is gone, as little as he deserves to live, this can’t happen. It just can’t.

“Cole, stop,” I say in a hoarse croak.  He doesn’t even pause.  “Cole, stop!” I call louder.

This, he hears.

When he turns his head to look at me, it’s as though he’s still seeing Ryan. For just a second. Maybe two.  He looks murderous. Confused, almost, that he’s seeing me.  And then his expression softens. It softens into something that makes me want to cry and curl up in his arms and never move.

But then he looks away. Back to Ryan, who is unconscious beneath him.  He climbs off him, kicking him once in the ribs for good measure, before he reaches into his pocket for his phone.  “I’m calling the police.”

And so he does.

As he speaks to the 911 operator, I stand to shaky legs and make my way to Emmy’s room. I knock on the door.  “Emmy?  Unlock the door, sweetpea. I want to come in.”

I wait, listening for rustling or crying, afraid of what I might find.

I hear nothing.

I knock again, a little harder this time.

“Emmy, open up, baby, it’s Momma.”

I wait. I listen. Nothing.

I try the knob. It won’t turn. It’s definitely locked.

“Emmy, you’re scaring me. Please open the door. You’re safe now. I promise.  Cole is here.”

My heart picks up the pace again, my soul coming into the clutches of some nebulous fear.  I knock again. Try the knob again.

“Emmy, please. Open the door.”

I sense Cole’s presence before his arm shoots out past me to try the knob.

“It’s locked,” I explain unnecessarily.  “She locked it when I told her to stay in her room and not come out until I came to get her.”

“Emmy, can you open the door please?” he asks, pecking with his knuckles.

No response. I press my ear to the door.  No sound.  Not one.

“Ohgod ohgod ohgod,” I mutter, racing into the bathroom for a hairpin that I can use to pick the lock.  When I return and bend to push it into the tumbler, Cole moves me back with one hand and kicks the door in, startling a shriek out of me.

The first thing I feel when the door flies open is cold air.  That’s when I see her open window.  And my whole world comes crumbling down around me.

TWENTY-NINE

Cole

I SEE IT register on her expressive face–that fear that everything you love, everything you live for is hanging in the balance.  In a balance you can’t see, in scales you can’t find.

Panic clouds her vision. It’s there in the way her eyes dart around the room in confusion and circle back to the open window, around the room again and then back to the open window.

“Emmy!” she cries, flitting through the space as though she’s missed something.  “Emmmmy!” she screams, nearing the window.

A hollow pit opens up in my stomach as I watch her, this woman that I love.  She’s trying to understand one of life’s most terrifying possibilities.  But also trying to deny it.

I want to say something, but I know that even if there was something comforting to say, it would fall on deaf ears. The only thing that will help Eden right now is to find her daughter.

So that’s what I’ll do.

“Stay here. I’ll find her,” I tell her calmly.  My voice, my expression, my presence is solid. Steady.  But my insides are clamped down, the fear in the air an all too familiar black cloud.

“I’m coming with you,” she says, not even meeting my eyes.  The devil himself is nipping at her heels.  I know that feeling well.  And I know there’s no use in arguing.

I step out of the hallway and reach for Eden’s coat.  I hand it to her as she scrambles for her boots.  Before we head out the door, I grab the blanket that’s folded along the top of the couch.  Emmy will need it when we find her.

And we will find her.

I promise myself that much.

We strike out, leaving an unconscious asshole in the middle of Eden’s living room floor amidst the wreckage of busted furniture and broken things. He’s the least of my worries right now.  Hopefully the Sheriff will get there and keep an eye on him until we get back.  This is more important.

This is more important than anything.

Eden can’t lose Emmy. I know what that does to a person and I can’t let that happen to her.  Besides that, I can’t lose Emmy either.  She needs me.  And I need her.  We all need each other.

We walk along the road from house to house, both of us calling to Emmy.  The wind is whipping off the ocean, howling through the streets, carrying our voices out to sea before they can get very far.  I hear the panic rising in Eden’s tone.  The way she says Emmy’s name is becoming more and more shrill, more and more desperate.

My heart is thudding heavily in my chest and I try to imagine where a little girl might go when a monster from her past pops up on her front porch.

Icy fingers of dread grip me when I think of her love of the beach, when I think of how the empty stretch of dark sand might seem like a safe place to hide to a scared child.  A place no one would look for her.  I push the thought away. I refuse to consider it as a possibility, even as my feet turn in that direction.

We call her name.  Still, there is no answer.  No small forms hiding in the shadows or running toward us in the pools of yellow light shed from the street lamps.

“Let’s check the house I’ve been working on,” I tell her, steering her toward the sidewalk.  “Maybe she hid there.”  I pray that she did, but some strong sense of foreboding tells me she didn’t. Or that if she came here and found it empty, she moved on.

I unlock the door and push it open for Eden.  She walks through, shuffling from room to room calling for her daughter as I walk around the outside, repeating her name over and over and over.

“She’s not here! She’s not here!” Eden whimpers when we meet at the door.  She clutches my biceps with shaking fingers as her anxiety rises.  “Where could she be?  Where would she go?” she asks.

“Maybe she went to my house,” I tell her, praying that she did exactly that.  That she could find it in the dark.  That she was level-headed enough to think that way.

“OhgodOhgodOhgod,” Eden mutters, her voice trembling as we start around the curve that leads toward the beach.

We both scan left and right as we walk, calling, calling, calling.  My pulse pounds faster as we draw closer to the beach.

Patches of snow still cover long swaths of sand.  They gleam silver in the moonlight.  Everything else is nearly black in contrast.

Above the gust of the wind, I hear Eden’s gasp. I hear her following sob, trailed by the sad song of her daughter’s name from her lips.  My stomach knots for her.  My heart bleeds for Emmy. So much like my own child.  So damaged in her own way.  She doesn’t deserve this. Neither of them does.

We walk quickly along the beach, drawing closer and closer to my cabin. It’s when I’m doing a left-to-right sweep that I see the object.  It’s floating just off the shore, just beyond where the waves begin to break.  It bobs in and out of the slice of moonlight that slants across the ocean.

Without thought, I take off at a dead run down the beach toward the water’s edge.  I focus on the object.  The waves rise and obscure it.  Then they break and reveal it.  I see a tiny pale hand floating on the surface and I know that it’s her.