Heart throbbing in her throat, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge on the porch. She felt a humid blanket envelop her, as was usual in Florida when walking outside from the dry and cold air-conditioning inside. She took in a deep breath to calm herself down and felt sweat spring to her forehead immediately. That was Florida for you. You could get soaked in sweat from the brief minute it took to walk from your house to your car in the driveway.
“Emma?” she said. “I brought you some water, you need to remember to drink enough in order to stay…”
Marissa paused. She looked by the tree where she had last seen her daughter talk to the squirrel. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the bushes behind it or on the porch. Then she turned to look toward the small grass area at the end of the yard, where Emma often liked to play, and where she had hosted a tea party earlier for her imaginary friends, but she wasn’t there either.
“Emma?”
She could hear it in her own voice. The panic that was slowly spreading, eating her up from the inside, like a cancer.
“Emma?”
She rushed down the stairs, into the grass, and let her eyes frantically search for any sign of the little girl. Her voice was shrill as she yelled her name again and again, almost finding it hard to get the word across her lips because of the anxiety rushing through her slender body.
“Emma? Emma?”
Marissa ran to the end of the yard and stopped at the fence. She looked at the gate. It was still locked.
Marissa turned and looked at her small townhouse. Emma could perhaps be on the other side of the house. Marissa calmed down slightly. Of course, that’s where she was.
Marissa ran up to the house, then went around it, and rushed into the front yard. She would have to get angry at Emma for doing this when she knew she wasn’t allowed to. She might even have to put her in time-out. It wasn’t that big a deal, but with the circumstances they lived under, Marissa couldn’t be too careful. She couldn’t risk a car driving by in the street and someone seeing the child.
Time-out it was. Just for ten minutes. Maybe she would serve ice cream for dessert after dinner, as compensation. To make her happy again. Yes, that would work. Marissa didn’t like having to discipline her child.
“Emma? Emma, come here now. You know you’re not allowed to…”
Marissa turned the corner of the house, then paused.
There was no sign of the girl in the front either.
Then where could she be?
Maybe she went back into the house? Maybe she ran inside just as you stormed outside?
It was getting harder for Marissa to calm herself down. She ran around the house and up the back patio, then hurried inside. Sweat was springing from her forehead and upper lip now, and not just because of the high humidity and heat. These were pearls of anxiety.
“Emma? Don’t hide from me.”
Her voice sounded angry, but it was hard to hide the fear.
“Please Emma? I don’t have time for this, come here now.”
She looked through the living room, then the kitchen and ran upstairs. She rushed into Emma’s room, thinking she might be in there, playing, oblivious to her mother’s panic attack. That she would be sitting on the floor and look up at her with those big, beautiful eyes, like she didn’t understand what the urgency was about.
“Emma? Are you in here?”
She pushed the door open, but there were no eyes staring up at her. No cute smile or strawberry blonde hair falling into her daughter’s eyes.
And there was no Emma.
“Emma?” she yelled. “EMMA?”
Could she have been…? Could it be…?
For a moment she dropped her face into her hands. Don’t think like that. I mustn’t.
She lifted her head, unable to stop her torso from shaking. She tried to calm her thoughts.
Think, Marissa. Think!
A small deep growl left her throat as she looked out the window and saw something in the grass. Something pink, left by the fence in the high grass that should have been mowed long ago. Marissa could barely breathe, and she held a hand to her mouth as the realization sank in of what it was she was looking at.
It was her shoes. Emma’s pink shoes.
ONEBILLIE ANN
“You’re an impostor. A liar.”
I whispered the words to the woman staring at me from inside the mirror. To be honest, then I had no idea who she was anymore.
I was in my bathroom, naked after the shower, a towel still wrapped around my hair that had finally grown back to its old length. I stared at my chest and touched the scar where my left breast used to be. It felt strange. My right breast looked the same as it had always been, but I didn’t trust it anymore. Anything could be growing in there. I had learned that the hard way.
It was three years ago today that I had been declared in remission. My latest checkup had shown the cancer hadn’t come back. Still, the feeling never left the body. The first time they had told me it was cancer, it had come as such a big shock and had been so aggressive there was nowhere I really felt safe. No part of my body felt secure. It had deceived me. I had thought I was healthy, but my treacherous body had other plans.
It could come back. It could always come back. There would forever be that threat hanging over me. I was living with an expiration date. That’s how it felt. And that had made me want to change things.
I needed to stop surviving and start living.
I reached into the drawer beneath the sink, then pulled out my husband’s shaver. I took off the towel and threw it on the floor. Then I looked at the impostor with her long wet hair dangling from her head, sweeping across her shoulders.
