Chapter 17

1st October 2015: 11:20 am.

She looked at me as if I was poison. The same way she had on my wedding day. The same way she had every since I’d become part of their family.

“Are you sure that you didn’t leave my granddaughter somewhere?” Elizabeth, my mother-in-law asked once again for clarification. She was talking about Barbara as if I was looking after her. A nanny. Child minder or something. I was her mom, a piece of information that she cared to forget whenever I was around.

“I don’t know. The whole thing is confusing.”

“What is, dear? Did you start again..” She nodded, trying to ask the magic question that was on of their minds.

“You can tell she’s clean and has been for years. Just let her be. We have my people, the police and everyone we could think of on the case. We just need to stay positive,” Ralph reassured Elizabeth, the wife that he detested but never left. He’d stayed by her side and no one could ever comprehend how. Ted used to reassure me that we would be nothing like them. His parents had a marriage of convenience he’d warned me from the start, but the more time I spent with them, I never understood who was benefiting who? I’d spent so much time trying to appease Elizabeth that it got to the point that I didn’t even care any more. I just wanted to be accepted as a Rogers and be respected as one.

I always went to the bathroom when they were around, not because I had to pee or anything, but simply because I always found myself in the position that I wanted to cry. Before it was to take some pills when I was on Opioid. That was what had started my addiction. The doctor had said that it would help me through grieving for my mom. But then he’d stopped giving me a prescription and I’d started to get desperate. I’d managed to go to the wrong side of town and found out how to get a dealer, one that could help me, when the good doctor had failed to do so.

I remembered the feeling right then. I was on top of the world and could face anything every time I was high. I had a dying need to be in that state right now, and I wanted to leave them to vent. There were too many officers in the house. My house. My home. They were roaming around like snakes trying to find clues. Evidence about Barbara.

I didn’t understand why it would be in the house, when she was clearly not here, but lost out there with someone else. Elizabeth asked, as her eyes fixated on my movement, “Where are you going?”

I nodded as I whispered, “To the bathroom.”

I was about to say something sarcastic. I wondered if Elizabeth wanted to join me?

She stared at me for a brief moment and then turned to Ralph while saying it loud enough for me to hear, “She’s probably going in there to take something.”

Ralph smiled, something which he rarely did. “We’ll be here, Emma. Don’t worry, Barbara will be home soon.” I turned my head around again to see if he was Ted. It was clear that he was a replica of his son. The same smile, while lying to his wife and having a mistress. Maybe infidelity just ran in the family. I turned to look at Elizabeth as she said, “Yes, my poor grand daughter must be so scared out there alone.”

As I walked out of the living room, I stopped at the door and turned around to say, “That’s the problem. She’s not alone. Someone took her.”

Tears swelled into the ice-cold face of Elizabeth as she looked away. I went to the bathroom, wishing there were drugs or anything to take my mind of how I was feeling low, a desperate need for a rush. I needed a kick to make me feel as if I could live this nightmare with my eyes wide open. I had to focus. Concentrate on the task at hand to find Barbara. Everything else was minimal, nothing more could bring joy to my life at this precise moment.

As I opened the door and sunk on the floor, I had a flashback of what had happened when I’d lost her.

“Think, Emma, think!” I repeated to myself as I thought about her and when we’d got on the train. Maybe that was the point that I’d lost her.

I couldn’t speak to her, as her little hands grabbed hold of my legs.

The train moved and I watched as people spoke, read, some were on their phones, and the temptation to take out my phone from her back pack entered my head.

What had Will discovered?

Curiosity got the better of me as I balanced between the pole and took out my purse and phone. I scrolled through the messages, the ones that Will had left before I’d spoken to him on the phone. He said something about finding out that Ted had been transferring money. I wanted to know how he’d found out. If it was illegal, then we couldn’t use it in court. I needed everything to be in place. I had the photos, the ones that Will and his business partner had taken of Ted meeting his mistress, Li. He had told me that he was in the Far East. I knew that it was a lie. He was with his Asian mistress in some secret location.

He thought that I was stupid to not know that all this time he had been seeing her. Sure, I didn’t at first, maybe when he’d promised to break up with her. He had done for a while, but somewhere along the line, they had started seeing each other again. I knew what he was up to all the time, but I played the dutiful wife and acted as if I didn’t know. At first, I was too emotional to take it all in. Then he had carelessly left his phone at home one day.

That was all it took.

I’d been at home debating whether to turn the blog that I had started over a year ago into a business. His phone had rung and I’d run from my study, where I worked on my blog to try to figure out if it was worth starting something for myself. After all, I’d been to college to become something - and that didn’t involve being a housewife. Especially now that Barbara was at school.

I picked up the phone and heard her voice, the secretary that he had dismissed over five years ago was calling on his phone. She made the mistake of saying, “What you up to sexy?” as soon as I picked up.

I was speechless.

Hurt.

I was destroyed to find out that the man that I had married, the one whose baby I had miscarried only a few weeks before still had the same mistress after all this time.

I knew that his dad had one. His mom had turned a blind eye to it. It seemed to be the norm in the Rogers household to have one. But I wasn’t one of those women. My mom had died after I left college and Ted had been the one to comfort me. My friend had turned into my lover and then my best friend. I loved him more than life itself and the day that he had proposed to me felt as if it was the best day of my life.

My nightmare had become a reality the moment I’d picked up his phone.

I shook my head as I stopped thinking about Ted’s affair. As much as I tried to dismiss it in my head, it always came back to haunt me and stray my thoughts from the task at hand. I saw the screenshots and figures that Will had sent me. Thousands upon thousands had been transferred from his account to an offshore account. He was going to move it in the hope of divorcing me and paying the bare minimum in alimony. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. I had gone through his things whenever he was in the bath, shower, or other place in the house where I knew that he would be occupied for a while. A divorce was on the cards, but what Ted didn’t realize was that it would be an expensive one.

One to go down in the Rogers history as a payment for a debt that entailed ruining my life. I had been told from day one that I didn’t fit into their world by his mom, Elizabeth. She’d even tried to pay me off on our wedding day. She was going to find out that I hadn't fit in back then, but they had molded me into one of them.

I was thinking like them. Cruel. Vindictive and full of greed. Not because I needed the money, but as a payment for the life that they had destroyed inside of me. Ted would pay for the damage that he had caused in our marriage in more ways than one.

I regretted going through my phone. I quickly stuffed it into her backpack and then jumped off the train. I didn’t care who I shoved or hurt in the process. I needed to get off now. Not alone. Safely with my little girl.

I got up off the bathroom floor and washed my face with cold water; it soaked my tears and somehow gave me the strength that I needed to face Elizabeth. I had to get Barbara back, I recited to myself as I stood up and washed my face. I had to put the past behind me. I wasn’t going back to drugs. Not while she was out there. I wasn’t going to let anyone make me feel that I was incapable of looking after my daughter, never again. I took a deep breath, just as I had learned the breathing techniques of yoga and decided to face the music with my head high.

Someone had to have seen something; the press conference reached thousands of people. I knew that it didn’t need to reach thousands, just one person.

Only one call would make sure that we had a lead, the right one. So that my baby girl was safely back in my arms again, where she belonged. With me.