The Advocate's Daughter (4 page)

Ryan lifted his head. “I'm sorry, okay,” he said. His hair was matted, face blotchy red, tear-streaked, another reminder of Ryan as a little boy. Not the stranger who appeared two years ago when, as the doctors explained it, puberty struck early and kicked his ADHD impulse control problems into overdrive.

“I don't know why I sent the messages,” Ryan said. “I never did weed. And I swear I never sold any.”

Emily sat on the bed beside him and rubbed his back. “We just don't understand why you'd write those things? And why you'd sneak on the Internet when you've worked so hard to earn back everyone's trust?”

The “why” questions dominated the next twenty minutes. Sean knew they'd never get a satisfying answer. But Emily, as always, said all the right things—things Sean was too angry or too impatient or too stubborn to say. She told Ryan to get cleaned up for dinner. He would
not
be ruining the celebration of Dad's new job.

“Do we have to tell Abby about this at dinner?” Ryan asked.

“Tonight's about Dad,” Emily said. Another lawyerly technique, answering him without answering him. She would have been a great litigator had she decided to go into practice rather than stay home with the kids. Emily gestured to Sean that it was time to leave Ryan's room. You had to pace yourself with teenagers, she always said.

As they padded downstairs, Sean said, “If this is middle school, what's high school gonna be like?”

Emily didn't reply, she just sighed.

“I'm still searching his room,” Sean said.

“I know you are, Sean,” Emily said, exasperated. “I know.”

 

CHAPTER 6

The search of Ryan's room had yielded nothing so far. Sean would have to leave the computer and Facebook investigation to his more technology-proficient wife. For now, he had only a few minutes before Emily and the boys returned from the store or whatever errand Emily had come up with to pacify Sean's pathetic need to play detective. He leaned against Ryan's doorframe, staring into the room. He tried to channel his inner teen. Where would he have hidden pot or booze or
Playboy
s or something incriminating?

He turned and looked about the hallway, assessing the fingerprint smudges and dings and nicks, staple décor in any home with boys. He opened the hall linen closet. Just towels and toilet paper and clean sheets. He eyed the attic door on the ceiling. More finger smudges, near the latch.
Hmm.
He reached up and hooked his finger around the ringlet latch and pulled down. The hinged door opened, the springs creaking and groaning. The door had a ladder, a folded-up contraption, attached to it. He brushed away some spiderwebs and unfolded the ladder and climbed into the mouth of the attic.

It was dark and the air warm. Musty. Sean adjusted his eyes to the dark and found the switch. A single exposed bulb flickered on and Sean surveyed the boxes, old furniture, and rolled-up carpet remnants in the dim light.

He stood, careful not to hit his head against the triangle of the roof. A bump on the head could be fatal since the roof was not insulated; rusty nails that secured the exterior shingles poked through the wood. Another one of the joys of owning a historic home, and a reminder of how little a million dollars got you in an affluent D.C. suburb.

He walked carefully down the small pathway lined with junk. He really needed to clean the attic. He decided it would make a good punishment for Ryan's latest debacle. He scouted about, not seeing any contraband. He spotted the small coffin-like boxes for Abby's American Girl dolls. He remembered when she was about twelve and packed them up for storage and how a quadrant of his heart had disintegrated in his chest. Deciding the entire search was wrongheaded, he turned back toward the shaft of light coming from the hole in the floor.

Along the path, a dimpled old box caught his eye. Scrawled on its side in black Sharpie was the word
JAPAN
. He thought he'd long ago buried that box deep in the bowels of the attic. He crouched down and opened the box's flaps. On top were a few Japanese comic books, some wooden nunchucks, and a throwing star, the types of precious cultural artifacts only a fourteen-year-old could fully appreciate. Under it all, a pile of vinyl albums. His collection from when he was a kid. He flipped through them. AC/DC, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, and some embarrassing ones, Night Ranger, Duran Duran. He pulled out one of his old favorites, Def Leppard's
Pyromania.
The soundtrack of his youth. He wiped a hand across the cover, clearing away the dust.

A chill fell over him. Just a few days ago he'd heard “Rock of Ages” on the radio and it had thrust him back to that night. In fact, Japan had crossed his mind more than once in recent days—the familiar pit in his stomach, the faintest shortness of breath. It had been so long since he'd thought about it, dwelled on it, that he sometimes wondered if it was all a bad dream. An old movie he'd seen that he had latched on to in his memories as real. But it was real. All too real. The memories had resurfaced with such vigor, he assumed, because of all the attention he was getting about the possible Supreme Court nomination. Paranoia.

He realized that he was kneading the palm of his left hand with his thumb, feeling the ridges of the scar. The three of them had each cut into their palms to seal their blood oath. They'd used the same blade that killed the storekeeper and swore to never speak a word of that night for the rest of their lives. Sean reflected on the melodrama of it (to say nothing of the unsanitariness of using the same blade). Then the questions that had long haunted him fired through his brain: Why did Kenny do it? And why hadn't Sean seen it coming? He could've stopped him. And why, when Sean had immediately broken his oath and gone to his father for help, had his dad chosen to bury it all?

Sean pulled out the disc from the Def Leppard sleeve and blew on the black vinyl. He debated whether to look inside the sleeve to see if the item was still there. He told himself not to. But he slid his hand inside the cardboard and felt for it. The paper touched his fingertips, and he took in a deep breath before sliding it out. He flattened the newspaper clipping on the top of the cardboard box. It was wrinkled and yellowed and written in a language he couldn't read. It was incredibly stupid to keep it, but he just could never quite part with it. The newspaper photo of the Japanese storekeeper stared up at him. He heard his father's voice.
You will tell no one. Ever. This is about more than just you, Sean.
Another voice pulled him out of it.

“Whatcha doin'?” Jack's head popped up from the hole in the floor, eyes wide, mouth agape. The gopher from
Caddy Shack.
An attic is a magical place for a seven-year-old.

Sean fumbled to shove the newspaper clipping back into the album sleeve.

“Hey, buddy,” Sean said. “Be careful on the ladder there.”

“Mom said it's time to get ready for dinner.”

“Okay, I'll be down in a minute.”

“Can I come in? I'll be careful. I'll—”

“Sorry, pal. Too dangerous. Lots of nails sticking out and it's dark up here.”

“Aw, man. That's what Abby said too.” Jack frowned.

“Abby was up here?”

“Yep.”

“When was that?”

“The other day.”

“What was she doing?”

“I dunno. She was looking at that box there.” Jack pointed to the
JAPAN
box. “She was digging through the same stuff you're looking at.”

 

CHAPTER 7

At ten-thirty, Sean walked up the stairs and found Emily in the bathroom. She was leaning over the sink washing her face. Her nightgown didn't quite reach the back of her thighs. Even after all these years, the sight of the curve of her bottom caused Sean to stir.

“I tried calling her again,” Sean said. He unbuttoned his shirt. “It went straight to voice mail.” Abby had not shown up at the restaurant for dinner either.

“I'm worried about her,” Emily said.

“She's probably just on a studying binge,” Sean said.

Emily shook her head as she brushed her teeth. “No,” she gurgled, toothpaste foaming at the corners of her mouth. She dabbed her lips with a towel. “She knew this was a celebration dinner. And she never ignores my text messages. It's not like her, Sean.”

“Maybe that's what she was calling me about yesterday, to say she couldn't make it.”

“I really wish you would have taken her call.”

“It's not like I was dodging her. I just missed the call. Kind of like you do nine out of ten times when I call your cell.”

“Aren't you worried?” Emily said, ignoring the jab.

Sean let out a low breath. “What do you want me to do? I can drive to her apartment. But you remember what happened last time.”

“You'll never let that go.”

“It was embarrassing for her, and for me. If she's got a boy there again, I just—”

“Fine, I'll go,” Emily said. She marched to the bedroom. By the time Sean caught up with her, Emily had already pulled open a dresser drawer and thrown a pair of jeans on the bed.

“I'm not letting you drive to Capitol Hill at this hour,” he said. “I'll go.”

Emily continued getting dressed.

Sean said, “You have a long day tomorrow. We've still got to go through Ryan's Facebook messages, and you've got a shitty meeting ahead with Ryan and Dr. Julie. You get some sleep and I'll go check on her.”

“I won't be sleeping until I know where she is, so it doesn't matter if—”

“Em, please. I don't mind going. I could actually use the fresh air. Can you try to call her again?”

He saw signs of retreat in Emily's face, so he started changing from his dress shirt and suit pants into a T-shirt and jeans.

Emily frowned as she took the iPhone from her ear. “Still no answer,” she said. “Maybe I should call Malik?”

“I thought she'd stopped seeing him? Do you even have his number?” Malik was a Supreme Court law clerk and six years older than Abby. The age difference hadn't bothered Sean so much as the kid's ambition and cockiness, not uncommon traits of the court's clerks.

“They still date. I don't have his number, though. Do you think someone at OSG would have it?”

Sean looked at his watch. “What am I supposed to do, call the SG or the Supreme Court and ask for the contact information for a law clerk because my adult daughter hasn't checked in with me in the last day?” Sean watched his wife's face harden.

“Em, I'm sorry. Let me go to her apartment. I'm sure she's just studying and unplugged to escape distractions. You know how she is. While I'm gone maybe you can track down Malik's number from one of Abby's friends.”

Emily didn't respond. Her eyes were fixed on the iPhone, index finger tapping and sliding. Sean went downstairs, dug up the spare key to Abby's apartment from the kitchen junk drawer, and walked out the side door to the SUV. Was he worried? He tried not to be. But as every parent knows, apprehension comes with the job. It's a lifetime of disquieting moments—those few seconds you lose sight of them at the neighborhood swimming pool, when they don't arrive home from school at their usual time, when they grow up and don't check in. So, yeah, like thousands of other times, he was worried.

 

CHAPTER 8

Sean drove on winding Rock Creek Parkway, which mercifully had no traffic. It was dark and he kept telling himself to slow down since deer were common on this stretch of national parkland, which ran from his neighborhood in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to downtown D.C. As he slowed, a bottle on the passenger seat rolled forward and clunked onto the floor. Eyes fixed on the road, he reached down and placed it back on the seat. The bottle was filled with a gold liquid that looked like bourbon and had a ribbon tied around its neck. He hadn't noticed the bottle earlier that night. On the face of the bottle, a note card was taped over its label that read
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW JOB!
No signature. He was no liquor connoisseur, but he assumed it was expensive stuff.

He pressed the SUV's voice recognition button and said, “Call home.”

Emily picked up on the first ring.

“It's me,” Sean said. “I'm almost to her place. Any luck reaching anyone?”

Emily's voice bellowed from the speakers over Sean's head. “I just found Michelle's number and texted her. No word yet. And still nothing from Abby.”

“Try not to worry. I know it's hard, but I'm sure she's okay. I'll be at her place in about five minutes. I love you.”

“I love you too. I'm sorry I was crabby. I'm just really worried.”

“I know.” He added, “You can make it up to me when I get home, after we find her.” Emily clicked off without responding.

He curled around the road past the Washington Monument—“the giant pencil” as Abby called it when she was a little girl—and onto Pennsylvania Avenue. His gaze fixed on the Capitol dome, a glowing beacon ahead.

Sean turned onto Abby's street, which was lined with historic town houses. With no spots open in front of Abby's place, he had to double-park. He jumped out of the SUV, startling a woman walking her dog. He nodded hello, hurried along the brick path, then trekked down the stairwell that led to Abby's English basement apartment.

No front light on. He'd have a word with Abby about that. The door had a window, covered in metal bars on the outside, a curtain inside. He cupped his hand and peered into the glass, but he couldn't see inside. He knocked and waited a moment before sliding the key into the lock.

The door creaked open. It was pitch black. Sean felt along the wall until he found a light switch, and clicked it on. Panic swept through him. Abby's apartment had been ransacked.

 

CHAPTER 9

Sean clutched his phone.
Pick up. Please pick up.
On the fifth ring, a groggy voice.