Sherburne has said more than once, in regard to Lisbeth: “It’s not so easy to find someone who really doesn’t want to be found.”
Emma’s face stares back at me from Jake’s T-shirt. To me she looks like Emma, with her low, long-winded laugh, Emma who can go from happy to moody in five seconds flat, Emma who loves peanut butter and honey sandwiches on toasted sourdough bread; but to strangers she must look like any number of black-haired, green-eyed, dimpled girls. Do the phone calls draw us closer, or do they lead us farther away? Emma could be in Pescadero or Oakland or Yosemite, or she could be twenty yards from here, locked in someone’s apartment, drugged and dizzy. The flyers say “Black hair. Green eyes. 4'0''. Last seen wearing a red sweatshirt, blue pants, and blue Paul Frank sneakers with EMMA stitched onto the toe.” But the kidnapper could have easily cut and dyed her hair, changed her clothes. She could be with her mother, frightened but relatively safe, or she could be with some psychopath.
Jake surveys the room, then sits down on a desk and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. He must wish he’d never met me. I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him that I’m sorry, that I know we’re going to find her, but there are too many people, too much noise. As the hours drag on, as the search area grows, so does the distance between us.
When we first met, we were both astonished by the number of things we had in common. It went far deeper than a mutual affinity for the Giants and our ability to quote Woody Allen films. We each lost a mother to cancer. We each had a father who dropped off the map, albeit for different reasons: Jake lost his to alcohol, while I lost mine to his new wife and young family, his overwhelming desire, following the ugly divorce from my mother, to start over again.
On our fourth date—a visit to a William Eggleston exhibit at SF MOMA followed by dinner at the Last Supper Club—Jake and I talked in depth about our families. “When you’re an adult, you’re supposed to just accept that your parents are gone,” he said, “but it was never easy for me to do that. Being a grown-up doesn’t exempt you from feeling like an orphan. I think that’s one reason I was so devastated when Lisbeth left. I decided a long time ago that family was going to be my first priority, and when she left I felt like a failure. There Emma was, three years old without a mother, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was my fault.”
Looking back, I think that night was the first time I allowed myself to consider the word
love,
the first time I accepted how deep my feelings for Jake were. After that, everything moved so quickly, and suddenly we were talking about marriage, and it seemed like the most natural step in the world.
In the weeks before all of this happened, the wedding was foremost in my mind. Now, of course, it no longer matters. Yesterday, the subject came up for the first time, and Jake and I agreed that the wedding should be postponed. The word neither of us spoke aloud was
indefinitely
. All of our hope is concentrated on some unfixed point in the future, the precise dot on some invisible timeline when Emma is found. In the moments after she disappeared, I was certain that point would come within minutes. As the day stretched on, I amended my hope to allow for hours. By the next morning, I had prepared myself for days of desperate searching, days of unknowing. And now, as those days proceed with no sign of her, no clue, we are left with the unfathomable possibility that this horror may go on for weeks.
As I leave the command post, a stack of flyers tucked into my bag, a song comes on the radio, some catchy number I can’t get out of my head, a Wilco tune that’s been everywhere the past couple of weeks. Even though I’ve been humming the melody, I never before noticed the lyrics.
“Every song is a comeback,” the voice sings. And then the chorus repeats over
Emma’s face stares back at me from Jake’s T-shirt. To me she looks like Emma, with her low, long-winded laugh, Emma who can go from happy to moody in five seconds flat, Emma who loves peanut butter and honey sandwiches on toasted sourdough bread; but to strangers she must look like any number of black-haired, green-eyed, dimpled girls. Do the phone calls draw us closer, or do they lead us farther away? Emma could be in Pescadero or Oakland or Yosemite, or she could be twenty yards from here, locked in someone’s apartment, drugged and dizzy. The flyers say “Black hair. Green eyes. 4'0''. Last seen wearing a red sweatshirt, blue pants, and blue Paul Frank sneakers with EMMA stitched onto the toe.” But the kidnapper could have easily cut and dyed her hair, changed her clothes. She could be with her mother, frightened but relatively safe, or she could be with some psychopath.
Jake surveys the room, then sits down on a desk and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. He must wish he’d never met me. I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him that I’m sorry, that I know we’re going to find her, but there are too many people, too much noise. As the hours drag on, as the search area grows, so does the distance between us.
When we first met, we were both astonished by the number of things we had in common. It went far deeper than a mutual affinity for the Giants and our ability to quote Woody Allen films. We each lost a mother to cancer. We each had a father who dropped off the map, albeit for different reasons: Jake lost his to alcohol, while I lost mine to his new wife and young family, his overwhelming desire, following the ugly divorce from my mother, to start over again.
On our fourth date—a visit to a William Eggleston exhibit at SF MOMA followed by dinner at the Last Supper Club—Jake and I talked in depth about our families. “When you’re an adult, you’re supposed to just accept that your parents are gone,” he said, “but it was never easy for me to do that. Being a grown-up doesn’t exempt you from feeling like an orphan. I think that’s one reason I was so devastated when Lisbeth left. I decided a long time ago that family was going to be my first priority, and when she left I felt like a failure. There Emma was, three years old without a mother, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was my fault.”
Looking back, I think that night was the first time I allowed myself to consider the word
love,
the first time I accepted how deep my feelings for Jake were. After that, everything moved so quickly, and suddenly we were talking about marriage, and it seemed like the most natural step in the world.
In the weeks before all of this happened, the wedding was foremost in my mind. Now, of course, it no longer matters. Yesterday, the subject came up for the first time, and Jake and I agreed that the wedding should be postponed. The word neither of us spoke aloud was
indefinitely
. All of our hope is concentrated on some unfixed point in the future, the precise dot on some invisible timeline when Emma is found. In the moments after she disappeared, I was certain that point would come within minutes. As the day stretched on, I amended my hope to allow for hours. By the next morning, I had prepared myself for days of desperate searching, days of unknowing. And now, as those days proceed with no sign of her, no clue, we are left with the unfathomable possibility that this horror may go on for weeks.
As I leave the command post, a stack of flyers tucked into my bag, a song comes on the radio, some catchy number I can’t get out of my head, a Wilco tune that’s been everywhere the past couple of weeks. Even though I’ve been humming the melody, I never before noticed the lyrics.
“Every song is a comeback,” the voice sings. And then the chorus repeats over
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