Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel by Holly Brown Read Free Book Online

“Did she get drunk a lot?” In other words: Am I the world’s most oblivious parent?
    “I don’t know. She never used to be into it. When we’d go to parties, she barely had anything. But after she moved, it felt like there were all these things she didn’t want to tell me. It felt kind of like she had a secret life.”
    The words every parent is dying to hear. “I was going to ask if there were things on Facebook that she was telling you and her friends, things that I couldn’t see because I’m her mother. You know, private thoughts.”
    “I don’t know her private thoughts anymore.”
    I’m unsettled after I hang up, like a soda that’s been shaken. I take an inventory of all the alcohol in the house. All the bottles of wine are accounted for. I sip the vodka, just to make sure Marley hasn’t replaced it with water, and grimace a little. It’s still the morning, after all, and that’s straight vodka. Then I take another sip, a bigger one. It might be morning, but my daughter’s missing.
    I call Paul but he doesn’t answer. He could be in the middle of questioning some employees at the bus station.
    I tried Paul first. I did. Now I can’t resist the next phone number. I’ve fought with myself for months, and sometimes I lost. I lost bigthe day Marley disappeared; I just didn’t know how big. But no one could blame me for needing to talk to someone right now.
    “Marley’s missing,” I blurt when he answers.
    “Oh, Rachel,” Michael says in that voice like a warm bath. I know he’s glad to hear from me, that he’s been aching to. I also know that he really does care about Marley. I just wish he sounded more surprised by the news. “How can I help?”

Day 3
    THIS SUPER-SCARY THING HAPPENED . It was the middle of the night, and I couldn’t hold my pee anymore. I thought about waking Kyle up and asking him to walk me to the bathroom, but I decided I need to just depend on myself now. I could do this.
    I started to walk back, row by row, talking myself through it. The bus was half-empty, and practically everyone was asleep. A few people had their overhead lights on and were reading, which seemed comfortingly normal. I was almost to the bathroom, and I couldn’t see any smoke or movement in the back seats, so even the trolls under the bridge were asleep. See, I told myself, you’ve got this under control.
    I was reaching for the bathroom door handle, almost home free, when I heard this urgent whispering. “Carolina, Carolina.” I could tell it was directed at me, and the name sounded familiar, but I hadn’t told anyone my name was Carolina. Had I?
    I didn’t want to look over at the speaker, but it would have been really rude to ignore her. So I looked over, and it was Hellma. I remembered that Carolina was her daughter, the one she was going to visit. And I thought for a second that Hellma was just talking in her sleep, dreaming of her daughter. Then for some reason, I glanced down and saw a needle sticking out from between her toes, like Hellma had forgotten it was even there, that’s how high she was,how SOMETHING she was. Lost, maybe. Her eyes were hooded but open.
    “Carolina,” Hellma whispered again. It was like her face had become sunken over just the past couple days. She was more skeletal than I remembered, as if the life had been leaching out of her.
    My heart was going two hundred beats a minute. I didn’t know what Hellma wanted from me. Maybe she was mistaking me for Carolina, but that didn’t make sense. Carolina was a grown woman. But then, it’s not like Hellma was in her right mind.
    “Carolina,” Hellma said, louder, and I didn’t want her waking the other passengers. I didn’t want any of this, I just wanted to pee and get back to my seat.
    So I said, “Yes?” and hoped that was the magic word. I said it like a question, but she could take it any way she wanted. It could be, “Yes, I’m Carolina.”
    It did the trick, and Hellma closed her eyes. She said,