Читать книгу Searching for Rose - Dana Becker - Страница 7

Chapter One

April wasn’t the type to call the cops. She took care of her own business, didn’t need to rely on anyone. That, at least, was the story she liked to tell about herself. But here she was, standing at the bustling center of Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philadelphia, talking openly with two uniformed officers as a small crowd of curious onlookers gathered around.

She was trying to explain, for the hundredth time, what had happened: her sister, Rose, was gone.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” one of the cops asked.

“Gone,” April replied, already regretting this conversation. “As in disappeared.”

Nobody had heard from Rose in about two weeks. She hadn’t shown up to her job at Walgreens. She had, by all appearances, vanished into thin air. Wasn’t it difficult enough for April to deal with this emotionally? Why did she have to explain it, too?

And there were things April wasn’t saying. Things she’d barely admit to herself, much less tell the police. But here’s what she did reveal: her sister’s last words to her, before she disappeared. I’m going to Reading. I’m going to that bakery. Well, April was now at Reading Terminal Market, at that bakery, doing her part. She was talking to the cops, trying to make them understand.

“So you met her here?” another of the officers asked.

“No,” April said, with a big sigh. “I didn’t meet her here. But she said she was coming here. That was the last thing she told me.”

“So you don’t know if she actually came here that day?”

“No,” April replied, grimly.

A heavy wave of hopelessness suddenly overwhelmed her. Her patience with the cops’ questions was beginning to wear thin, revealing the truer emotion underneath it. It was the feeling she had been trying, for weeks now, to avoid: raw despair. That was the exact moment she heard a voice from inside the small crowd of onlookers.

“I saw her,” the voice said.

It was a man’s voice. April and the police officers, and a few stragglers standing around in front of Metropolitan Bakery, suddenly turned around to see who’d spoken. Before April spotted the man, she saw the faces of the people who had seen him: the looks were of startled surprise, curiosity, even amusement. And then she saw what they saw. A young Amish man, with wide shoulders and long limbs, stepped confidently forward. April had seen him before, around the market, but never up close.

“Yes,” he said, pointing to the photo that one of the officers was holding in his hand. “Her,” he continued. “I remember seeing her. I saw her last week.”

For a moment, nobody, not even the police, said a word, as though waiting to hear what else the man might have to say. But, for the moment, he said nothing more.

The cops eyed him warily, skeptically.

“You sure?” one of the officers said.

“Yes,” the Amish man replied. “I am certain.”

And he really did seem certain. As he answered the officers’ questions, April watched him closely. When they asked his name, he turned to April, as though addressing her, looked deeply at her, and said, “Joseph. Joseph Young.” He pronounced his own name as though he were delivering a piece of dramatic news. To April, that’s exactly how it felt.

His demeanor was unlike anything she’d ever seen in a man. Especially in one her own age. He seemed entirely in control, but without the need to assert his control over the situation. He held immense power in his large body but didn’t bother wielding it, didn’t seem to feel the need to show off. He seemed even more powerful for his restraint, more charismatic for his ability to master his charisma. To the police, he delivered strong, clear answers that were direct and sincere. He answered with a crisp “yes,” never “yeah” or “yup.” He wasn’t trying to conceal something or compensate for anything. He was, in short, perfectly comfortable in his skin.

And what a skin it was. This man was head-turningly handsome. His serious face allowed for a quick smile, and April noticed he had dimples.

April was noticing, too, that she wasn’t the only one seeing this. The eyes of the cops, and everyone who lingered in front of the bakery, were glued to this strange, beautiful man. Nobody wanted to interrupt him or let him go. Unless it was her imagination, it seemed that the cops were now only asking him questions as an excuse to keep him in front of their eyes.

And then there was his gaze. At various moments, he looked directly at April with intense green eyes—but why was he so interested in her? Maybe it was because she was the sister of the missing girl. Or was it because April herself was staring at him? Could it be because he was as taken with her as she was with him? Whatever the reason, the effect of that gaze on April was immediate, and it registered bodily. It felt as if she was standing in the hot beam of a theater spotlight. It was the same sensation she’d felt when she used to act in school plays. And, just as his eyes warmed her skin like hot stage lights, she felt the need to perform, to make a speech, to undertake some grand gesture—and increasingly the gesture she wanted to make was a dramatic exit. The heat was too much. She needed to do something, anything, not to seem like a deer caught in the headlights.

But the more April watched him, and the more she detected how intensely controlled he was, the more she also sensed that he was, just maybe, a bit too controlled. He would be hard to reach. A fortress. An impressive fortress, no doubt. But a fortress.

So mesmerized was April by this man that she hardly noticed that the police had stopped talking to him and had turned back to her, with some additional questions. She tried her best to focus on what she was being asked. But, in doing so, she lost track of the beautiful man. And before she knew it, when she looked around, he was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

That was the first time April paid close attention to the mysterious Joseph Young. But it wasn’t the first time he’d studied her. In fact, he’d had his eye on her from the moment she’d made a dramatic entrance at the bakery in Reading Terminal Market almost a week earlier.

Joseph had witnessed the whole scene that day. From his own corner of Reading Terminal Market, at the Amish-run diner next to the bakery, he’d watched it unfold. That day, a Friday, he could tell that something was very wrong even before he knew what it was. He sensed trouble. And he wasn’t the only one. The bakery’s owner, Carmen, also sensed it.

Standing at her shop counter, carefully arranging the day’s assorted delicacies—brioches and tartes Tatin, fresh out of the oven—Carmen sensed a commotion outside the bakery, somewhere out in the sprawling mass of Reading Terminal Market, which was packed with crowds shopping for a summer weekend. Carmen and Joseph, both, detected it as a minor disturbance of air, like the early breezes of an impending storm.

Just as Carmen rose to her tiptoes to peer over the crowd and investigate the situation, April lunged out of the mass of people, elbowing her way forward—seeming, as Carmen would later remember it, as though she weren’t walking but somehow spinning, like a drunk ballerina pirouetting wildly. April sped headlong through the doorway of Carmen’s bakery, tripped over one of the café chairs, and braced her body against the counter. Joseph, who happened to be standing nearby, saw this and followed her into the shop, where he witnessed the whole exchange.

“I need your phone,” April had said, staring directly at Carmen. “I gotta make a call.”

April was not blinking.

Carmen drew a long, loud breath through her nose.

“Sorry, hon,” she said, straightening her back. “Can’t do that.”

Carmen wasn’t from Philadelphia. But she’d lived there long enough, almost twenty years now, that she’d seen all of the mischief and misery the city had to offer. Half of the city, it seemed, needed her phone, or something of hers, at some point. Did a day go by when someone on the street didn’t try to hustle her out of something?

Carmen quickly sized up the young woman standing in front of her. To survive in the city, a pretty girl like this would have to project an aura of danger. High and tight ponytail, hoop earrings, fire engine red lipstick to contrast with straight black hair and green eyes, high-waisted slightly baggy jeans, ripped at the knees and dotted with flecks of paint, red Air Jordans on her feet, a short, purple-black faux leather jacket, and a grimy fraying gray T-shirt. Philly was full of young women like her, Carmen thought. They’re tough, sure, but mostly they want you to think they’re tough. In other words: they’re hiding something. Carmen tried to remain unmoved.

What gave her pause was the look on the young woman’s face, the same look that had brought Joseph into the shop behind her: it was a look of genuine distress.

A memory flashed in Carmen’s mind. Childhood. The farm. That girl.

Carmen came from country folk, who only went to hospitals if they needed surgery. Otherwise they used their own home remedies. Once, when she was really young, maybe eight or nine, she’d seen the most awful thing. Without any warning or previous sign of illness, a teenaged neighbor girl dropped dead one day while doing her chores in the dairy. Within days, the family buried the poor girl in the family plot. There was only one problem: she wasn’t dead.

She’d fallen prey to a rare form of catatonia, which closely mimicked signs of death. When they’d checked for a heartbeat, they didn’t hear it because the beats were so faint and so infrequent that her heart truly might not have been beating during the moments when they listened. She was, to all appearances, dead. And so they buried her.

The girl’s younger brother, however, was so distraught at her loss that he’d spent all of his free time at her graveside, refusing to believe that she was gone. Incredibly, he heard clawing sounds from her tomb, and set out desperately to dig her out. In the end, they rescued her. But she was never the same.

Carmen had seen the girl after she’d been unburied. She remembered seeing her walk around town, at the market, so skinny, and with this doomed look on her face. Could the girl speak? She must have spoken. But Carmen never once heard her say even a single word. A ghost of a ghost.

She rarely thought about the unburied girl from her childhood. But that girl, her face, came to Carmen suddenly when she saw this stranger—the look in her eyes—as she leaned against the bakery counter. The memory came with a startlingly vivid flash.

“Phone,” April was saying, almost panting. “Please.”

Carmen felt her defenses weakening.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“My sister, she’s . . .” said the girl, in an odd, absent sort of way, “gone.”

Carmen retreated into the back to find her phone. As she rummaged through her purse, she saw April standing at the bakery counter, eating the bread samples, ravenously, until the plate was empty.

Why me? Carmen thought, then felt a bit guilty.

When Carmen returned to the counter, April was in tears. She was holding a photo of her missing sister, printed on a piece of office paper.

“This is the most recent one I got,” she said. “Have you seen her? Her name is Rose. She comes around here a lot.”

“Here?”

“Here,” April said, “to this bakery.”

“Oh,” said Carmen, feeling a sudden knot in her throat. “I see.”

She examined the photo. The missing girl had boy-short, bright red hair and big, mischievous eyes. She appeared to be a bit younger and a bit more punk than April. In the picture she was shown in a booth at a Chili’s, intentionally leaning in front of another girl, impishly blocking her out of the photo. Her mouth was slightly open.

“What was she saying?” Carmen suddenly asked.

“Saying?” said April.

“Yeah,” Carmen replied, handing the photo back to April. “In the picture. It looks like she’s saying something.”

April looked at the photo and smiled a tiny bit. “Probably something dumb.”

“Well, she does look familiar, I think. That red hair,” Carmen said. “But I can’t remember when I might have seen her last. Not this week, I don’t think.”

Carmen handed her phone to April. She wiped her hands on her jeans, pulled out a piece of paper with a number on it, and began furiously dialing.

“I’m calling her friend,” she said to Carmen. And then, a moment later: “Ugh.” There was no answer. She left a breathless message.

Uh, hey, it’s me . . . I’m calling from someone’s phone because mine got cut off. Look, Rose’s gone. I don’t know where she is. I haven’t heard from her for more than three days. You know she’s not like that. I’m really scared. I don’t need to tell you what I’m afraid of. I know you know. I’m at Reading now. Please call me back at this number or come here as soon as you can. I’m at . . .

She turned to Carmen.

“Metropolitan Bakery,” Carmen said.

The Metropolitan Bakery, April said into the phone. Reading Terminal Market.

April put the phone back on the counter and looked helplessly at Carmen.

“I think you should call the police, hon,” Carmen said.

“No,” April replied with a vehemence that startled Carmen.

“I just think . . .”

“I’m not calling the police.”

“Okay, hon,” Carmen said. “Just keep it in mind, okay?”

* * *

For the next few hours April waited in the bakery, sitting at the table next to the door, staring out into the marketplace. Carmen made her a sandwich, which the girl at first ignored and then, in four rapid bites, devoured. At noon, when the bakery got crowded, a young woman about April’s age approached her table and, seeing that she’d finished her meal, asked if April was about to leave. With teeth clenched in rage, April said loudly, “How about you keep walking.” Carmen overheard this, sighed, dropped a croissant on a plate, walked briskly over to April’s table, and slid the croissant in front of her.

“You will not talk to my customers like that,” she said. “I’m running a business here.”

April glared at her.

“Do you understand? Answer me.”

“Yeah,” April said. “I got it.”

Even as Carmen handled long lines of customers, she’d turn an eye toward April. For hours, the girl sat in the same spot, almost motionless, just staring. Occasionally, she would stand up, look intently out the window, as though recognizing someone, and begin to walk toward the door, only to discover that it wasn’t the person she thought, and then retreat back to her seat.

Joseph Young had watched all of this from afar. Whenever possible, he’d drift over toward the bakery, to see what was happening with the girl whose sister was missing. He considered going up to her and saying something. But what? And anyway, she seemed agitated, and not in the mood for company. Joseph decided to let her be—for now. But he was keeping an eye on her.

By the end of the day, April was still sitting there. As Carmen began to mop the floor, April suddenly jumped up.

“I gotta go,” she said and made for the door.

“Wait!” Carmen called out. “What if your friend calls me back?”

“She’s not my friend,” April said over her shoulder.

And then she was gone, swallowed up in the crowded market. On her way out, she’d walked right past Joseph, who had drifted back toward the door of the bakery—possibly for the twentieth time that day—to keep watch over April. In her haste, she had bumped into him, and the contact had jolted him far more than he expected. The aroma of her perfume had reached him quickly and lingered powerfully for a moment before thinning out into the ether. Its fragrance was unmistakable. As Joseph watched April disappear, he named it aloud, letting the word pass over his lips like a gently felt secret.

Roses, he whispered.

* * *

Joseph had been so antsy to see April that he barely slept. But April did not show up at all the next morning, or during lunch. By 3:00 P.M. Joseph was losing hope. By 5:00 P.M., he was fairly certain he’d never see her again.

Carmen, too, was preoccupied with thoughts of this troubled young stranger. On her postwork walk home, Carmen kept her eyes wide open, looking for April’s missing sister—but she was also looking for April herself. The search went on for two days. During this time, Carmen called and re-called the number April had dialed, but never got a response. Had it all been a dream? Maybe April and her missing sister were just figments of her imagination?

But then, on Monday morning, shortly after opening time, as Carmen set out a display of fresh rosemary rolls—and Joseph was fielding the breakfast crowd over at the Amish diner—April was suddenly back, standing at the bakery counter, helping herself to samples, gobbling up little bits of bread as though she hadn’t eaten anything in days.

“Hey there,” Carmen said, trying to act casual. She slid a plate with a cranberry-walnut roll on it to April. “It’s hot out of the oven. Want some butter?”

April nodded.

“Any luck with your sister?” Carmen said as she buttered the roll.

“Her name is Rose,” April said. “And no.”

“Have you considered calling the cops?”

“Not doing it,” April said, with a mouth full of bread.

“Listen,” Carmen whispered, leaning over the counter, “the cops are going to find out that there’s a missing person. And if they find out you knew and didn’t report it, they’re going to suspect you.”

Carmen had no idea what she was talking about. Everything she knew about police procedure came from TV and movies. But it didn’t stop her from speaking confidently. She figured the kid needed a push.

“You listen to me. You’re gonna have to deal with cops, one way or the other,” Carmen found herself saying, mimicking the shows she watched. “The question is: you gonna be the worried sister or a suspect? Your choice.”

April nodded slowly.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” Carmen said, switching back into her real voice. “Now . . . how are you doing?”

“Me?” April said, and made a sound that was either a laugh or a whimper—Carmen couldn’t tell. “I’m a complete and total mess.”

April told Carmen a story that made her head spin. April was doing a court-ordered Narcotics Anonymous program; if she missed any NA meetings without a good excuse, it was over for her. She would be immediately arrested and forced to serve six to twelve months in prison. The judge who’d ordered it had literally pointed at April and said, “Don’t mess up this time, or you’re going to find yourself in a tiny prison cell. I promise you that.”

The words had chilled April to the bone. She’d had a lot of run-ins with the law, from drug possession charges to small-theft charges. So far, she’d managed to avoid jail time. But her luck was running out and she lived in deep fear of prison.

“I can’t go there,” she told Carmen. “I know what goes on in there. I got friends who’ve told me. And I’m claustrophobic. I can’t be in a locked room. I can’t do it. I’ll go insane.”

But, at this point, April was in the system. And being in the system meant there was a force as strong as gravity pulling her toward prison. She hadn’t missed any meetings yet, or the community service that she had to do, but she’d been very close a few times. She’d passed the first urine test. But it had been a huge battle for her. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep up for six months.

“And it’s not just ’cause I’m messed up,” April told Carmen. “I mean, okay, I am messed up, right? But it’s more than just that.”

Last week, for example, April had had a chance to get a job—making sandwiches at a Subway—but the manager had wanted her to start on a night when she had to do community service work and he wasn’t willing to be flexible. So she lost that chance. And another prospective employer, in another shop, almost physically kicked her out when she said that she’d have to work around her NA meetings and community service work. A temp agency laughed in her face when she arrived underdressed and without a resume. April was broke and becoming desperate.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” April said.

Everything, Carmen thought to herself. You are doing everything wrong.

And then, of course, there were her problems with men. April had a type: beautiful boys, who were incompetent criminals. And who were just generally incompetent. “This kid didn’t even know how to tie his shoes,” April told Carmen of her last boyfriend.

Carmen snorted.

“I’m serious, though,” April said. “He literally didn’t know how to do it right. I taught him Bunny Ears. Like I’m his momma. He got mad at me when I did it but then he totally used it.”

He also didn’t know how to put on his sweatshirt. He would struggle inside of it, like a chick trying to hatch from an egg. April used to watch the process with amusement. It had endeared him to her. She was charmed to see this tough guy vulnerable for a moment. But, later in their relationship, when things had gotten bad, she was far less amused.

He’d developed a pill addiction that ravaged his body, his mind, his life, and, eventually, April’s life, too. Her first major court case came from her involvement with him: she was caught helping him break into a house—the house of his best friend’s mother, no less—to steal some jewelry and electronics to sell to support the habit. April had figured that, if she helped him, he was less likely to get caught. Instead, she was the one who got caught.

Carmen listened quietly to everything April was telling her. Suddenly, without thinking, she said, “How would you like a job here at the bakery?”

Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she found herself thinking: What am I saying? Someone tells me ‘I’m an addict and a felon’ and my response is ‘Hey, come work for me’? Carmen was beginning to doubt her sanity.

But she’d made the offer, and April’s response, she had to admit, was rather winning. April ran around the counter and threw her arms around Carmen’s neck.

“You don’t know how much this means,” she said, as she hugged Carmen. “I’m gonna work really hard. Not gonna let you down.”

Carmen really wanted to believe it.

* * *

April was late to work the next morning. And, the next day, she arrived even later. After a week, it was official: April was incapable of arriving on time. Each morning, she had an excuse. Of course, Joseph, watching from afar, didn’t mind. He was just thrilled that April was suddenly working only a hundred feet away from him. It seemed like a gift.

Carmen didn’t mind April’s constant lateness either—she was just worried about what it meant: what other problems April might bring to the bakery.

The ongoing situation with Rose’s disappearance made Carmen very nervous. What kind of mess was that? At the end of the workweek, April had finally called the cops to report the disappearance. Carmen had made it a condition of her working at the bakery—but she still didn’t know the exact reason April had been so uptight about the police to begin with. Was April concerned about her own legal problems or was there something more? Carmen wanted to know the answer, but she also really, really did not want to know. She didn’t want to hear something that would pull her deeper into whatever kind of mess this was.

Carmen watched, nervously, as April made the rounds in Reading Terminal Market, chatting with the market’s shopkeepers about her missing sister, asking them to help keep a lookout, and giving them an official “Missing” poster. Carmen wanted to help with the search, too. But every time she saw April, wearing a Metropolitan Bakery apron—which April had done intentionally so she would be taken more seriously for these little meetings—Carmen winced. All around the market, April’s troubles, whatever they were, were becoming synonymous with the bakery and, by extension, with Carmen herself. Carmen knew these shopkeepers well, and she knew that they would want no part of whatever kind of trouble was behind Rose’s disappearance. She knew that they, like Carmen herself, worried that this mess would eventually intrude on their businesses.

* * *

One afternoon—the day before the police had come to take April’s statement—Carmen noticed April standing by the door, watching something outside the bakery.

“Come here,” April said, motioning to Carmen. “Check this out.”

Carmen and April watched a young, tall Amish man posting Rose’s “Missing” posters on a wall across the way, next to the Amish diner. They watched as he posted another one on the door to the market itself. And on a pillar in the middle of the market. And, then, on another door. The Amish man, in fact, had an entire stack of “Missing” signs under his arm, and he was posting as many as he could, on any surface he could find.

Carmen sighed.

“April . . .”

“I had nothing to do with this!” April said. “I didn’t even talk to the Amish diner people about Rose. I have no idea where he got the signs.”

Carmen gave April a skeptical look.

“I’m serious,” said April. “I didn’t say a word to them. I’m kind of afraid of them.”

Carmen and April watched for a few more moments as the man continued to cover the market with pictures of Rose.

“I mean, I didn’t say anything to them before,” April said, breaking the silence. “But I guess now . . . I will? I mean, that guy’s weirdly cute, don’t you think?”

Carmen rolled her eyes and drifted over to the bakery counter. “Back to work, kiddo,” she shouted from behind a pile of bread loaves.