From Pharaoh's Hand (4 page)

             
Ten minutes later Crystal pulled up in front of the Merriweather’s home.  He fidgeted a bit, shifting his weight from foot to foot before reaching to ringing the bell.   John was puzzled when he opened the door to find both Crystal and Chris at the door.

             
“Um…may we come in for a moment?”

             
              “Okay.” John said slowly.  “Where’s Beth?”
              Chris took the lead. “We don’t know, Mr. John.”

             
              “She didn’t spend the night with me like she told you,” began Crystal.

             
     “What?”

             
“She told me she was going to Chris’s and to cover for her.” Crystal looked down at the floor, her face flushed with dread and embarrassment.

             
              “What!” He yelled for Carolyn; his eyes widened, his face flushed in anger.  “She told you what?”

             
“She said she was going to spend the night at Chris’s and not to tell you if you called. Then, they were going to spend the day shopping.”

             
              “Well, where is she then, Chris?” Chris shook his head in helpless angst.

             
“I have no idea; I haven’t seen her since school yesterday. Honest. She didn’t call me from Wal-Mart either last night.”

             
              “What’s going on, John. Why are you yelling?” Carolyn asked as she entered.

             
“Beth didn’t spend the night at Crystal’s. She told Crystal she was spending the night with Chris. Chris says he hasn’t seen her since school yesterday.”

             
              “Spend the night? With Chris?”

             
“How long have you been sleeping with our daughter?” John demanded, taking Chris by the collar.  “Since when does she lie to her mom and me—never-- until she started dating you. She never even stayed out past curfew until she met you. She’s an Honor student. She wouldn’t lay out all night and worry us. What have you done to our daughter?”

             
“Please Mr. Merriweather. Please don’t do this. We have to find her.”

             
      “John, please,” Carolyn said,  “This is not helping find her.  Right now we have to find her. Crystal, start calling her other friends. John, call Wal-Mart. Find out what time she left last night--or if she even went in.”  Someone had to take charge. Carolyn tried to appear collected and calm.

             
“I’ll call Dana and Samantha, and mom. Maybe she showed up at the house this morning,” Crystal said.

             
  Suddenly the horror of what could have happened dawned on Carolyn.  Suddenly visions of her daughter lying dead in a ravine in a tangled mass of wreckage crossed her mind.  Visions of her bleeding and calling out for help flashed before her.  “Something bad has happened, John. I’m calling the police.” Carolyn’s voice trembled.

             
“
My child has never lied to us. She has never gone somewhere without telling us. She’s a good kid. Something’s...Hello? Yes, this is Carolyn Merriweather, at 416 Harmony Drive. Our daughter did not come home last night...what? She’s seventeen...yes...no...I don’t know...” There was a long pause as Carolyn listened to the dispatcher on the other end of the line.

             
Then, “Please hurry. This is just not like her. She’s not a runaway. Please, come quickly. We have to find her.” She stood staring at the phone in her hand for a few seconds, as if it were going to ring on cue and it be Beth calling.

             
              “John, where could she be?” And then she began to tremble as if she were standing bare armed at the North Pole. John took her in his arms, took the phone from her, and held her.

             
“I don’t know honey, but we’ll find her. She’ll be home any minute. Then you can ground her for life--right after I do.”

Carolyn pulled back from him. There were tears streaking her face.

                   “I’m going to check her room. Maybe there’s a note or clothes missing. Something...” Carolyn’s voice trailed off as she headed upstairs trying to quell the thought that every mother’s nightmare had just become her reality.

             
Beth’s room looked like every other seventeen-year-old girl’s room, decorated with American Idol posters, concert souvenirs, football items including a warrior headdress with blue feathers, and stuffed animals, mainly teddy bears of all sizes and colors. Her closet door stood open. Clothes were hanging askew from the racks. Shoes were piled in a wild pile in the floor. Makeup was spread out on her vanity; none of it appeared missing, but then Beth had so much that it was hard to tell. Carolyn got on her knees and looked under the bed. Beth’s luggage was still there, including her overnight bag. She would have packed that to go to Crystal’s. Maybe she hadn’t intended to be gone all night. But she had told Crystal she was spending the night with Chris. 

             
Overall, her room looked exactly as it had on any normal day. It was clear that she intended to be home before she was ever missed. Maybe she and another girlfriend had decided to go somewhere.  Some concert or something.  Something forbidden.  But she would have said something.  She would have told me.  Left me a note, something.  Carolyn would never agree to two teenage girls going anywhere overnight without a chaperone, and Beth knew that
.  
That stinker!  But where would she have gone? And why would she have used Chris for an excuse with Crystal? Crystal was her best friend. Why wouldn’t she have told Crystal what she was really up to?

             
Carolyn thought back over the last few weeks. Other than Beth missing curfew a couple of times during the holiday break, there was nothing out of the ordinary about her behavior. She had gotten a good scolding from her father the first time it happened. The second time it happened, she was an hour late, and Carolyn and John were both awake. Beth had taken her grounding from the next holiday party in stride. Beth was not a rebellious child. Carolyn wondered about a side of Elizabeth that she never saw.  Her eyes went to the computer.  Surely she wasn’t one of those girls that gets caught up in one of those internet chat rooms, chatting to strangers about God knows what.  Surely not. Yet, there were reports in the paper more and more frequently about predators stalking teenage girls on the Internet.

             
Feeling a bit queasy at the thought, Carolyn reached down and booted the computer. She hardly knew where to begin. She was familiar with the Internet. She was proficient in Microsoft Office, but she had no idea about chat rooms or personals or instant messaging. She opened the browser and hit favorites. There appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary teen realm: a few fashion sites, a music download site, and the high school site. She tried to open the instant messenger panel, but it was password protected. Carolyn hit the history button. There were no sites visited since Thursday night. Elizabeth had logged on, viewed the Yahoo weather page and viewed a few blogs.   Carolyn opened each site. There was Crystal’s blog, which consisted mainly of cartoons she had drawn and captions
.  Nothing unusual there. 
There was Dana’s blog, which went into every detail of her week from the moment she got up in the morning to the time she went to bed. The only mention of Beth was when Dana mentioned that they worked up a new cheer at cheer leading practice on that day. And finally, there was Beth’s personal blog.

             
Carolyn felt a bit of shame in reading her daughter’s personal journal, but it was on the Internet for all the world to view, she reasoned.
I’ll just take a quick peek.  She shouldn’t have pulled this stunt. 
She scanned the short entries for the week:

             
Monday, January 17, 2005: Out of school for Martin Luther King Day. Slept all day. What a weekend. Posted at 7:00 p.m.

             
Tuesday, January 18, 2005:
  Passed the Chemistry exam, whew. I was sweating bullets over that one. Got to keep that grade point up if I’m going to get into Union. Mr.Bradley makes it so unbearably boring. I about fell asleep in class. I guess it’s because I stayed out so late over the weekend with Chris.  Thought I got caught up on sleep yesterday. I can’t stand to be away from him. I think he loves me too. Posted at 4:00 p.m.

             
Wednesday, January 19, 2005: Just thought I’d post a little note while I had a few minutes before school. I don’t really feel like going today. Must have been something I ate. Do hangovers hang over this long? Posted at 7:08 a.m.

             
That was the last entry for this week. Carolyn cringed at the mention of “hangovers,” then backed up to the entries the week before. There were only three entries for the week; only one interested her. It was Sunday’s post.

             
Sunday, January 16, 2005: We had so much fun last night. Chris snuck some bourbon from his dad’s liquor cabinet and we drank it and did it in my room. My parents would just kill me if they knew. They don’t know what it’s like to be young and in love. I just want to have fun before we go off to college in the fall. Don’t they know that? Posted at 11:55 p.m.

             
Carolyn’s head reeled from reading the post. Her daughter had been drinking and having sex right there in her own home, right under their noses. How could they have been so blind? If she was doing this and they had no clue, what else was she keeping from them? Were there other boys? Was she drinking all the time? Was she doing drugs too?

    
Carolyn thought back to that precious August night in 1988 when Elizabeth was born.  It had been a grueling labor, but Elizabeth worth every pain: 

             
“Push!  Two, three, four... that’s it ...you can do it...seven, eight, nine, and ten.  Relax.” 

Ten long seconds passed as Carolyn struggled through the massive contraction that had rocked her body.  No sooner had it passed than she began to feel the next awful wave.

              “He’s not budging,” she grunted through gritted teeth. “Oh, oh...oh…, it’s coming!  The baby’s coming!”

             
John had been in the birthing room by choice to support his wife during the birth of their first child, and admitted to her later that he almost found himself wishing he were somewhere else.  He had no idea that the labor would turn out to be this twelve-hour marathon.  His arms ached, he said, from helping to hold Carolyn’s legs as she pushed.  Yet he still was so handsome in his rumpled shirt with his eyes bloodshot, and the usual five o’clock shadow sprouting.  How she loved that man.

    
              John had seen her through ten long, desperate years of trying to conceive. She blamed herself.  At sixteen, she had made some unwise choices and gotten into trouble.  And although the pregnancy ended in the first trimester with a miscarriage, it had taken years for Carolyn’s parents to forgive her. 
If I hadn’t moved out into my own apartment, I never would have met him
, she thought. She remembered the Italian restaurant where she landed her first job as a waitress. 
What was the name of that restaurant?  Baudo’s.  That’s it.
  It was there she had met him -- a grad student working on his MBA.  She was 21; he was 23.  It was love at first sight.

             
She smiled as she remembered the night a few months later when John proposed over dinner.  Crying, Carolyn weakly poured out her past to him, but John just sat there and held her hand.  In spite of her past, her faults, her flaws -- in spite of everything, he had chosen to love her.  She was his.  Together they had built a beautiful three-bedroom home on the north side of town while she got her degree, and John worked his way up the corporate ladder.

             
The pastor.  Someone should call the pastor
, Carolyn thought.  After they got married, they had joined John’s home church and begun attending regularly.  It was at this church, West Jackson Baptist that Carolyn had gotten saved.  It was under the pastor’s gentle counsel that she learned to forgive, for although she was back in the good graces of her parents after marrying John, she was still bitter about their response to her in time of trouble.  And she was having an even greater problem forgiving herself for the child she had lost. 

       
Nightmares about the baby would plague her.  Was it a boy or a girl?  Would it have favored her?  Could he have become president some day?  It took many counseling sessions with John and their pastor to convince her that she had been held in bondage by her past.  She had been forgiven by her parents, by John, and by God.  She must now forgive herself.  Oh how she remembered those nights when John would hold her as she cried and begged God for a child. 

But what a celebration they had had when she found out she was finally going to be a mother. 
Thank you, God, that you answered my prayer.  Thank you for giving me another chance.
 

     
She could still hear John soothing her in the delivery room, encouraging her.