Holland

The fluorescent lights of the grocery store seem brighter than usual today. The colors of the fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle are more vibrant. Everything in my life has intensified since Juliette’s birth—well, not everything. Music has become my enemy instead of the friend I’ve always known. I haven’t looked at my violin in over two months, much less played it, even though King has been up my butt about it every single day. The more he encourages me, the more I refuse to have anything to do with it. What the hell is wrong with me? When we first brought Juliette home, I had no desire to play. My focus was on her. But as the weeks went by, I found myself feeling unfulfilled, like there was a hole inside of me that only playing the violin could fill.

I’ve made my choice, though, and there’s no turning back. My life is King and Juliette, period. I may decide to go to college when she starts school. It won’t be Juilliard, but I can still get a degree in music, maybe become an orchestra teacher. Who knows? ‘Those who can’t do teach.’ Ugh, I really hate that quote. I can do, that’s the problem. I wish I could split myself in half and send half to Juilliard this fall, and the other half would stay here in Texas with King and Juliette.

My stupid cart has a wiggly wheel. They probably all do, but this one’s particularly annoying. Looking down, I see a wad of tape preventing it from moving smoothly, and I bend down to pick it off.

“Holland?” I look up into a mildly familiar face. I know her, but I can’t remember from where. I’m so bad at this.

“Oh . . . hi. It’s stuck,” I say, pointing at the stubborn wheel.

“Oh yeah? Hold on, I’ve got something for that.” I watch her rummage through an enormous purse until she pulls out a pair of tweezers. Who carries tweezers in their purse? This chick does, apparently. Bending down next to me, she easily plucks the tape from the wheel.

“There, ta da. All fixed.”

We stand, and she hands me my purse that inadvertently fell onto the ground when I crouched down. That’s it. She’s the lady from the Department of Transportation who helped me get my purse when I was pregnant.

“Thanks, that was driving me nuts. It’s good to see you again . . . I’m so sorry. I’m horrible with names—what was yours again?”

“Candy, and that’s okay, honey. You have a kid. They start sapping your brain cells the second they’re conceived. Did you have a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Wanna see?” I slide my phone out of my back pocket before she answers, because doesn’t everybody want to see my gorgeous baby?

“Sure.” I shove my phone under her nose, and before she knows it, I’ve forced her to look at pictures of Juliette from birth to this morning. She is oddly quiet as I swipe through the photographs until I hear her sniffle. When I look up, she is staring at me with tears in her eyes. Uh oh, what have I done?

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“No, no, honey, it’s fine.” She swipes a stray tear from her cheek. “You just seem like such a good mama. She’s a very lucky little girl.”

What do I say to that? I’ve been going on and on about Juliette and I don’t even know this lady. Maybe she’s lost a baby, or maybe she can’t have babies . . . crap.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I get carried away sometimes.” I turn back to my cart and shove my phone into my back pocket.

“All new mamas get carried away—good ones, anyway. I’m just an ol’ sap. I have a son of my own. He’s my heart. I was just like you when he was a baby.”

Oh, thank God she has a child. Now I don’t feel so bad about rambling on about Juliette.

We walk along, me pushing my cart and her with a basket on her arm, selecting produce like old friends. By the time we leave, we’ve exchanged phone numbers and made plans to have lunch next week. In the parking lot, she waves goodbye and disappears into a shiny silver Audi. I climb into the back seat of my own car, where Sebastián has been waiting to drive me home. King refuses to let me drive. It’s been almost two months, and he’s still petrified that I’ll have a seizure while driving. He also thinks I need a bodyguard. He’s still working his way out of the drug world, so Sebastián is never more than a hundred feet away from me. It’s so weird. Another thing that’s weird is being away from my baby. I’ve only left her one other time, and it was to go to the dentist. I couldn’t argue my way around that one.

Today I was surprised when King encouraged me to run to the store alone, and even more surprised when I wanted to. I have to admit that there are times when I feel like nothing more than a feeding machine. I wouldn’t change a second of it for anything, though. Just like Candy’s son, Juliette is my heart. I’d do anything and sacrifice everything to make her happy. It’s an altruistic, unconditional love that I never imagined existed. It started with King and blossomed into something extraordinary with Juliette.

* * *

Vibes and magical ways of the universe aren’t my thing, but when we pull up to the house, something in the air feels off. I’m out of the car before Sebastián comes to a full stop, hopping out onto the moving concrete of the driveway. Striding up the front steps, I abandon the groceries in the seat next to me. Sebastián is still in the car, calling my name through my open door. The moment I’m inside, I call his name.

“King?” Nothing . . . panic grips my heart. It’s too still in here, too quiet. They could have gone out. No, he wouldn’t wake her, and I put her down for a nap right before I left. I’ve only been gone an hour. She sleeps a minimum of two hours in the morning. Something feels very wrong. God, where are they? I race up the stairs two at a time. My mind is frantic when I fling open the door to her nursery. My eyes dart to every corner of the room. Nothing, no one . . . I turn on my heel and fly down the hall to our bedroom. The double French doors stand open exactly the way I left them. I stop short and spin in a circle, finding yet another empty room.

“KING.”

Downstairs. They have to be downstairs, I mutter to myself—in the kitchen, they have to be, they just have to . . . this is probably stupid, nothing is wrong. I’m overreacting. I’m a first time mom. It happens, right? I whip around and sprint down the hall to the stairs and take them down two at a time again. Sebastián is in the foyer with a bag of groceries in each hand, wide-eyed.

“Holland, what’s the matter?” He sets the groceries down on the floor where he is standing and follows me to the back of the house.

The patio. Yes, they’re on the patio. She woke up crying and he took her out there to console her by showing her the sky and the trees.

“Holland, what the hell is going on?”

I can’t say it out loud, not until I’m sure, not until I see for myself that they aren’t here. In the kitchen, I rip open the door to the patio and yell their names.

“Juliette. King.” They aren’t here either. God no, no, no, no . . . this isn’t happening. I walk all the way around the covered pool and check both sides of the house before I go back inside. The back of the house is an open concept design, making it all too easy to see that there is no one in the living room or formal dining room. I can say it now . . . I’ve searched everywhere.

“They’re gone . . .” I whisper. Trembling from head to toe, my heart pounding, I hold my head and squeeze my eyes shut tight.

“Gone? They must have stepped out. I’m sure they will be home soon. Calm down, Holland, everything is fine.”

It sounds logical when Sebastián says it, maybe he’s right—they went out, that’s all. Maybe there was an emergency and he didn’t want to bother me. Gotta love denial. It’s a very powerful thing. I want to believe him. God, more than anything, I want to believe him, but there’s a sixth sense or mother’s intuition at work here, and it’s telling me that he’s wrong.

The flecks of quartz in the countertop of the island blur, and I reach out to steady myself. I step back and drop my head between my extended arms and deep breathe. I feel beads of sweat breaking out across my forehead. I’m going to faint . . . shit, not now. I can’t, I have to keep looking for them.

The closet. I grasp the granite until my knuckles are white. When I’m sure my head is clear enough to walk, I straighten up and pass Sebastián, heading back to the front of the house upstairs to the nursery.

“I have to go upstairs.”

Sitting in the rocker that I rock Juliette to sleep in every night is her giant pink elephant. I swear that thing is looking at me with pity in its beady little eyes. I can’t bring myself to cross the threshold and enter her room. If the closet is empty, this will all be true, they will be gone, my life will be over.

I flinch when Sebastián places his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even hear him come up behind me.

“Holland, come back downstairs. I’ll make some tea and we can wait for them. I’m sure he’ll be right back.”

I shrug his hand off of my shoulder and cross the room, pausing for a second before I open the door to my baby girl’s walk-in closet. I feel for the light switch and flip it on. Empty. Oh God, it’s empty. No tiny pink dresses, no perfectly folded Onesies or sleepers in the shelving unit on the far wall, no boxes of diapers or wipes. I don’t want to see empty shelves or rustling little naked hangers. I want my baby.

The walls tilt when my vision blurs. I drop to my knees and grab fists full of my hair and scream. I don’t recognize my own scream. It sounds like another woman wailing over the loss of her family, another mother imploding in agony and grief, another lover mourning the loss of her soulmate.

Sebastián’s arms circle my shoulders and he tries to comfort me. I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating. The room is too small. I need to escape.

“Why?” I ask, choking on emotion. “Why?”

* * *

My world turned black when I passed out that day, and one week later it’s still black. I can’t eat, I haven’t bathed, I haven’t left my bed since Sebastián and a physician deposited me here, pumped full of tranquilizers a week ago. I can smell them here on the sheets, her lavender body wash, his clean, soapy scent, even a spot of spit up on my pillow brings me comfort. I lay breathing them in and crying, rocking back and forth on my side under the comforter and moaning. I’m pitiful, and I don’t give a shit. The loss is physically painful. My heart is wrecked, my bones ache, my lips are dry from dehydration, and for the first few days, even my breasts hurt. They were engorged with useless milk that I’ll never use. In short, I’m a fucking hot mess with no end in sight.

I’ve been on a rollercoaster of hating King for disappearing with my baby and missing him so much I think my soul is frozen in time, waiting for him to return, for them to return. Mama has been here, Savannah too. I haven’t spoken a word. There isn’t anything to say. I’m going to lie in this bed and stare catatonically at the drawn curtains. Somebody, I think it was Savannah, tried opening them, but I just stared straight into the sun, so Mama told everyone to leave them closed for now.

I try not to listen much either. It’s amazing how easy it is to tune people’s voices out. I know they’re there and I hear them, but they sound like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon, wha whawha wha wha wha . . . nothing in the world makes any sense. Everything is warped like the Peanuts teacher’s voice.

King left me a letter. I hate his stupid letter. Sebastián found it in Juliette’s crib after my breakdown, but he didn’t show it to me until two days ago. I’m guessing he probably figured I couldn’t get any worse, so what the hell.

Somebody’s always watching me. I’m not paranoid. It’s a fact. They’re making sure I don’t do anything stupid like kill myself. Joke’s on them, though, because I am killing myself, one day at a time, by refusing to eat or drink.

Mama thought she’d be slick, leaving the baby’s video monitor on the dresser with a stupid bouquet of flowers one day. I noticed, but I don’t give a shit. Let ‘em watch. It’s not going to be a very interesting death. I’ll lay here until I either starve to death or rot away and become one with the mattress. I’m past being hungry. I wish I could remember how long a person can go without food before they die. I think it’s the lack of water that kills you first, and if so, hey, this shouldn’t take much longer.

My mouth is so dry I couldn’t talk if I wanted to, which I don’t. I wet the bed on day two. Sebastián just rolled me back and forth, stuffing towels under me, and Mama changed my clothes. I haven’t had anything to drink for days now, so there will be no more of that.

When I opened my eyes today, there is an IV hooked up to my arm. I remember Sebastián talking to me last night when I felt a bee sting my ass. I wondered for about two seconds why there was a bee in my bedroom before instantly falling asleep. They drugged me so they could hydrate me, very sneaky.

“Don’t bother taking it out, the doctor will just knock you out and put it right back in,” my daddy says.

He’s sitting in a chair next to my bed with his arms crossed and a stony expression on his face. The curtains are open, the sun is pouring in, my sheets are clean, and so am I.

“What are you trying to do, Holland? Do you think letting yourself die is going to help find King and Juliette? I didn’t raise a selfish daughter. How dare you even consider giving up? They aren’t the only people in your life who love you, ya know.” His brows pull together in a tight scowl as he shakes his head back and forth.

“I’m so disappointed in you.”

Disappointed? I can’t believe he just said he is disappointed in me. Doesn’t he realize that my baby has been stolen by the only man I’ve ever loved? Doesn’t he get that there is nothing left to live for? Obviously not. The IV fluids have me hydrated enough that I’m able to part my lips, and for the first time in over a week, I speak.

“You don’t know. Nobody knows how much it hurts. How can you be disappointed in me? I didn’t ask for any of this. My baby is gone. I’ll never see Juliette again.” They have pumped me full of enough fluids that I’m able to fucking cry again. I’m so sick of crying. The tears fill my eyes and spill onto my clean pillowcase, but Daddy continues to look at me with frustration.

“I raised a fighter, not a quitter. If you want your family back, eat something and get your ass out of that bed and go find them.”

Daddy’s yelling. He never yells. I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve seen him truly angry. He was upset when I got pregnant. He almost turned white, and that’s a hard thing for a black man to do. When he found out the father of my baby was a twenty-five-year-old drug lord, he wasn’t happy either, but he never once yelled at me.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe there’s a chance I could find them. If I still have access to King’s money, I could hire a private investigator to figure out where they went. The problem with all of that is I know he doesn’t want to be found, and if anybody in the world had the resources to disappear, it’s him.

In his letter, he said that he couldn’t be the reason I didn’t follow my dream of becoming a professional musician. It said, “I can’t rob the world of your talent” or some stupid shit like that. He said I would never be safe as long as I was linked to him, he said my life would always be in danger. I would have taken the risk. I would have looked over my shoulder every day for the rest of my life to spend it with them.

How dare he make that decision for me? I wanted him and Juliette. How could he be unhappy with that? Unless he never really loved me at all. This could have been his plan all along. Maybe he sold Juliette on the black market and took off to live in the jungles of Columbia with a harem of women and his drugs.

Okay, so that’s taking it a little far. In my heart, I know he loved me, but he sure has chosen a monstrous way to prove it. Did he seriously think I’d say ‘Well, that’s that, they’re gone, guess I’ll go on to Juilliard and become famous’?

A sudden new spark of emotion shoots through my body. It’s anger, and it melts a miniscule part of my frozen soul, inadvertently giving me hope. He can’t just run away with my daughter because he thinks it’s best for me. I won’t let him.

I sit up in bed with newfound optimism, and Daddy moves to my side to adjust the pillows. When he’s made sure I’m not going to topple over, he cups my cheek in his hand.

“Now that’s my girl. I knew you were still in there. Let’s work on getting you better so you can get busy finding them, but you have to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that, Daddy?”

“That you’ll kick his ass for putting you through this when you do find them.”

“That’s a promise I can definitely keep. Daddy?” I reach out and cover his hand with mine.

“Yeah, baby?”

I bite my lip, and a single tear runs down my cheek.

“Thank you,” I say with a catch in my voice.

“Of course.”

His eyes are warm now. The disappointment is replaced with encouragement.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” We lean together simultaneously and wrap our arms around each other.

No words are necessary. Daddy holds me tight for a while.

I needed this reality check, and Daddy was just the one to give it to me. I sit back against my pillows and start planning my next move, but first I’ll have to actually move. I need to eat and get my strength back, but while I’m still stuck in bed I can start making some phone calls—which reminds me.

“Daddy, have the police been notified that King kidnapped Juliette?”

He’s quiet for a moment before he answers. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

“Why not?”

“My guess is because Sebastián doesn’t want the authorities involved in King’s business.”

All this time, I’ve been thinking of Sebastián as my friend, the only one who could imagine what I’m going through because we both lost people we loved. He could be in on it, though. In fact, that would make perfect sense. Sebastián can’t be out of touch with King. He’s his right hand man. Now that I think about it, he was calm and unruffled the day I came home to an empty house. He kept saying everything would be okay and they’ll be home soon, but he knew . . . he knew they would never be coming home . . . ever.

The first thing I’m going to do is notify the police. Then I’m going to check the bank account King set up for me and see if I have enough money to pay for a private investigator. Then I’ll start spreading their picture all over social media, which is the equivalent of slapping a kid's face on the back of milk cartons in the seventies, only better.

I have new purpose, thanks to my very smart daddy, who always taught me to be sensible.

Ideas are coming fast and furious now. The desire to find them is quickly replacing my depression. I thought I would die there in the fourth stage of grief, and I’m not sure I’ve moved on to acceptance, because I will never accept that King leaving with Juliette is what’s best for me. In fact, I think I may be clear back on step two, anger. I’m focused and pissed. I’m going to do exactly what Daddy made me promise to do, I’m gonna find King and Juliette and kick his ass for putting me through this torture. This, Mr. Romero, is unforgivable.