Fortune (Mia): Fortune

My Fortune is missing.

I waited so long

Worked so hard

Over hill and dale

Beyond the valley

Not so far that it can never be found

But well out of my own grasp

My fortune is gone

And I shall never be the same

For she was my everything

1

MIA

Fortune was missing .

Mia’s heart pounded as she looked around the space where her eight-year-old daughter should have been playing in the scale sized doll house she and her husband had built in the corner of the front yard four years earlier.

Fortune had been right here in the front yard. The neighbor kid had come over. But they were both gone now as Mia stood in the center of the patch of grass and looked in all directions.

The manicured lawn sloped downward where it met the neighborhood street in a seam of green and black. It hid nothing. She couldn’t breathe; she told herself she was wrong, and it would all be okay. She tried to believe it.

Frantic, Mia opened the small door and stuck her head in the doll’s house again. With a barely five-foot ceiling, it didn’t fit Mia. Though there was only one room and she could see all the corners, she entered anyway and turned around, desperate for information on her daughter.

She talked herself down. The neighbor kid—Derek—had gotten tired and gone home. She told herself that Fortune—always enterprising—had let herself back inside the house unnoticed. Her daughter would have gotten a drink and would be in her bedroom. Mia hadn’t checked the house yet, because she’d thought Fortune was playing outside, with Derek.

Scanning the street one more time, she somehow refrained from screaming Fortune’s name. It would just look foolish later. She would have to explain to Eddie what she’d done, why the neighbors were looking at her like she needed a psychiatric evaluation or worse.

On the front stoop of the red bricked house, she pushed open the large front door set into its own gabled section on the façade. The doorknob was centered on the door, which was the most damned inefficient thing Mia could ever have thought of. Centuries of door use, and the designers had gone backward with it. She’d refused to let them mix three shades of brick when the builders suggested it. Too dated, she’d said. She picked the prettiest garage doors and chose three equal sized ones, painted to blend in as much as they could. They faced the street. That was what people would see. She’d stood firm against Eddie, the builders, and the trends in the neighborhood, but she’d thought that doorknob in the middle of the big, oak, arched front door would be cool.

As she shoved at it, her brain asked her how Fortune could have handled such a heavy door without Mia noticing. Had she ever seen her tiny child push it open by herself? There was always a first time, she muttered the words in her brain, growing confident her daughter would be inside the house.

As she entered the rec room she saw the toys lying scattered around the floor, but Fortune wasn’t in here. The living room remained pristine, as it was practically untouched since the day they’d moved in. It faced the front of the house and she and Eddie had decorated it in whites and creams. Sometimes she took a book in there and read on the supremely uncomfortable couch just to use the damn place. Now it simply stared back at her. Fortune knew not to play in there. She hadn’t done that today either.

Mia’s heart started tripping, the rhythm getting away from her. Fear pushed in at the sides of her senses. What if Fortune wasn’t in the house?

Racing upstairs, she checked her daughter’s bedroom to see if her daughter had crawled into bed and fallen asleep.

She hadn’t.

Mia was starting to hyperventilate. Still, this had happened before and in the end it had been fine. It happened to every parent—that horrible minute or two when you couldn’t locate your child. She’d lost Fortune in a grocery store once. It took three minutes to find that her daughter had tucked herself behind the banana stand because she’d stolen one and was eating it. At four years old, she’d fit neatly back there, panicking a good number of store employees and fellow parents.

Once at an amusement park, Fortune had disappeared for maybe thirty seconds, but Mia hadn’t taken one breath that whole time. Her daughter had merely decided that she needed to pee and stepped into the ladies room without telling anyone. End of story. Fortune had been found, and Mia hadn’t screamed her daughter’s name. She’d begun to breathe again.

Surely that’s all this was, too. Mia promised herself that—in just another minute—she would find her daughter and then she’d laugh at the panic she’d been experiencing. She’d rattle her child, tell her not to leave the yard again, or even just come inside, not without telling her mother where she was. Though Fortune would nod, she wouldn’t understand. No child did until they were a parent themselves. Fortune would ask for a juice box and say she was hungry, never knowing her mother’s life had gotten five years shorter today.

Mia checked the bathroom attached to her daughter’s pink and yellow, princess-themed bedroom. Fortune wasn’t there either.

Giving up and knowing she’d feel better if she found her daughter sooner, Mia yelled.

"Fortune!"

She waited.

The house was sickeningly silent in the muggy afternoon. Mia felt her heart beat against her chest and tried to quell it. She yelled again.

"Fortune!"

It had been louder this time. Had her daughter curled up in the back of the laundry room or under a bed, she would have heard. Still there was no answer.

Pushing back the stark fear that was starting to take over, Mia devised a plan. She’d check outside again. If that didn’t work, then she was checking every room methodically.

The lushly carpeted steps raced under her feet, depositing her back at the big front door with the silly knob. Opening it, she left it wide this time. Just in case her daughter was still inside and called for her.

For the first time, it occurred to her that Fortune could be hurt. That she might not be answering because she was injured, silenced. A bump to the head? Worse?

Taking a deep breath, Mia got her shit together. She cased the front yard and then stood at the west corner where the grass met the pavement. She scanned the area from this direction, something she hadn’t done in her earlier panic. She’d tapped into an eerie calm now.

She turned. Looked down the street. She cataloged what her daughter was wearing. Purple tights with white polka dots. Purple skirt. Pink sneakers. Blindingly pink hoodie. Thank God. Her daughter loved to dress to be seen. Even her pale blond hair was a beacon, but Mia could see none of it now.

She paced to the other corner of the lawn, again looking down the street both ways, looking for anything new. She looked up at the house, this time checking the windows for a tiny, happy face and a little hand waving at her wondering why she was acting like a banshee. Nothing was there.

The small back yard was next. It yielded similar results, though this time she had landscaping and a shed to contend with. She ducked behind it, stepping in the spare mulch and dirt the builders had thrown back there. No windows. The padlock on the one door was still intact; she’d have to go inside the house to get the key to open it. But the only way her daughter could be inside the shed was if someone stole the key from the drawer, opened it, put Fortune inside and then locked her in. Who would even know where the key was? Eddie wasn’t home yet. No footprints showed in the grass in front of it except hers.

Her racing thoughts betrayed her. She was thinking like a cop looking for a missing child, but she was just a frantic mother. She told herself again this would all be over in a minute or two and she would need a glass of wine—or five—to help shake the terror. But then everything would be alright.

Her blood thickened in the hot Texas air. A fine sheen of sweat formed across her brow, down the cleft between her breasts, at the dent of her spine in the middle of her back. Normally, that would make her crazy. She hated sweating, but right now, it was merely something she cataloged as she continued searching for Fortune.

The yard checked out. Her daughter was not hiding, nor was she injured and stuck in the bushes or behind something that would obscure her. Deciding her daughter was neither in the front or back yards, Mia headed back inside and grabbed a pad of post-it notes.

Overzealous in her search, she raced through the house and stuck one on each door of a room she declared clear, until the entire downstairs had bright yellow, star-shaped post-its mocking her. Even the laundry room and linen closet didn’t escape her attention. She checked behind the TV where the entire console Eddie insisted they needed sat at an angle in the corner. Better viewing, he’d said. Better chance for the toddler to get behind it, she’d responded as Fortune had been small at the time. What she wouldn’t give right now to find her daughter playing hide-and-go-seek behind the TV set. But Fortune wasn’t there either.

Upstairs, Mia repeated the process, this time looking for anything she might have missed. Under the sink? Crawled beneath the spare comforters and pillows in the hall closet? Under her bed?

Mia pressed on the mess of blankets and pillows her daughter had left behind on her bed this morning. They didn’t obscure any eight-year-old humans.

She checked her own bed. Nothing.

She pulled large, custom made drawers out from underneath, now frantically thinking her daughter might have folded herself up with the winter clothes. She could be sleeping in the sweaters. Mia hauled a suitcase out from under the bed and opened it to see if her child was in there, even though it had been obvious from the moment she tugged on it that it wasn’t heavy enough to hold a person, even a tiny one.

She was looking in suitcases. How long had she been searching? She didn’t know. Her alarm clock said it was five-seventeen. Back calculating, she realized she’d last seen Fortune while she’d been salting and stabbing potatoes at the butcher block island in the kitchen, then setting them in the oven to bake. Five? Four-fifty? Had she truly not seen her child for almost half an hour?

In the upstairs hallway again, Mia yelled her daughter’s name. Only this time it came out more as a strangled scream. She waited, listening hard for any return sound.

Then she heard it. A door. Opening. Knob turning, well-oiled hinges trying to stay silent, but still not managing to escape her eager ears.

She bolted down the stairs for the second time in ten minutes. She aimed for the sound, waiting for tiny feet. Her heart already breathing a sigh of relief.

Then, it plummeted to the floor.

Honey? What’s wrong? You look white as a sheet. Eddie looked up from where he’d set his briefcase on the island. She hated that. It was dumb. She’d just been cooking there. He’d get that expensive briefcase dirty. Despite the beautiful home in the prestigious neighborhood, they weren’t rich. They’d bought at the very upper limit of their ability to pay the mortgage. Her fingers had always been crossed that nothing went wrong. And Eddie just put that briefcase in the salted, dirty water from the potatoes she’d scrubbed and prepped.

Honey? Where’s Fortune? He looked at her, where she stood, frozen, on the bottom stair, almost too petrified to take that last step down to the tile floor. It would mean she was done. Done searching the house, out of places to look, and Fortune still wasn’t here.

I don’t know. It came out as a whisper. She didn’t kiss him hello or ask about his day. Instead, she launched into telling him about checking behind the shed. About putting sunny, star-shaped stickers on the doors of the rooms she’d checked. How she’d just finished the upstairs when he’d come in. That was when Eddie started to get nervous, too.

Did you call Derek’s family? He was staring at her, his panic doing nothing to erase her own.

Mia shook her head no, Not yet. Then she watched as Eddie opened three drawers in an attempt to find the junk drawer. How he could forget which one was the silverware and which one held crap, she could never figure out. He was on the phone, talking, asking his own frantic questions, before she could think through anything else.

Thank you. He hung up. The look in his eyes was clear. He blinked, never once thinking she’d missed something. He didn’t check her work, he trusted her. Only the words out of his mouth weren’t reassuring.

In fact, they shattered her world.

We have to call the police.

2

Mia sat on her couch, wringing her hands. She’d never actually wrung her hands before. It seemed like such a useless gesture—one of inaction, defeat, loss of control. Yet she did it now because she felt all those things. She did it because it was the only thing she could do.

She should have been out looking for her daughter, but she was stuck on her couch. Near the phone. In case your daughter calls, they told her. But she’d put the pieces together and knew they wanted her right here, that she was also possibly waiting for a ransom call.

The local police were out of simple tasks to keep her busy.

She’d told them in detail what her daughter was wearing. Eddie sat beside her, but he hadn’t known. He’d been out the door early today, Mia not too far behind him, dropping Fortune at school then heading in to teach her classes.

What shirt was she wearing under the hoodie? the officer had asked. He’d asked it politely, but Mia understood. What if Fortune hadn’t wandered off? What if someone had taken her and they wanted to change her look quickly? A pair of pants, lose the easily identified hoodie, and voila, a child who can walk right past the people looking for her.

It was blue. It had a rocket ship on it.

He’d then had the balls to ask, Was it a boy’s shirt? A hand me down from an older brother or cousin?

Mia glared at him, pretending to be confused rather than getting angry about his gendered assumptions. She doesn’t have an older brother. It’s just the three of us.

Had he not looked at all the family pictures in their gleaming silver frames? No older brother. No head count higher than the three of them. Do you think we have another kid that we don’t hang pictures of?

The officer looked far too young for this, and his expression was far too old. I’ve seen it on more than one occasion, ma’am. He went back to writing in his little notebook.

It was the only thing that had lifted her terror even the slightest amount. The thought that he’d seen more than one family with a child whose picture was not on the wall. She and Eddie had worked so hard to get the one child they had. Mia closed her eyes, unable to imagine a family blessed with multiple children and not loving all of them to the fullest extent.

Then the thought passed and reality crashed back down. Mia was stuck protesting her own inaction. Her father and I should be out looking. If she’s stuck or hiding somewhere, she may come out for one of our voices, but not for yours.

As soon as we’re done here, we’ll take him out with us to call for her. The too-young officer pointed at her husband with the end of his pen, still making notes in the little spiral bound notebook he had. He also had a tablet. He’d asked her to email him with a picture of Fortune. Luckily, she had one from three days ago. She’d added her daughter’s most recent school picture. He’d forwarded it to the officers out canvassing the neighborhood.

I assure you, it’s unlikely that she’s far away.

That wasn’t comforting. The way Eddie tensed beside her, Mia could tell he felt the same. Was she captive in a neighbor’s house? Already dead?

Pushing the horrifying thoughts aside, Mia forced her focus back onto the officer. They were out looking for her daughter even if she wasn’t. If Fortune was hiding or hurt, she should come out or call to them. She wasn’t afraid of the police—at least not that Mia knew. When would her eight-year-old have really interacted with anyone in a blue uniform? She couldn’t remember.

Was the shirt a boy’s shirt? he asked again, pressing the issue.

Maybe. She was enamored of it, so I bought it for her. I fail to see how the section of the store from which her shirt came is relevant! She was an English professor. Unlike most people, when she stressed out, her vocabulary words got bigger.

The officer blinked at her, and it took a moment for her to realize he didn’t have trouble with her language. The big words didn’t faze him. He was struggling to explain why the boy’s shirt might be an issue.

Mia held her hand up. I’m sorry. I got it.

People were looking for a little girl. As much as it was silly, it was true: a little boy, no matter how well he matched the description, would walk right by people searching for her daughter. A ball cap, a pair of pants, lose the pink hoodie, and her son could be paraded right under their noses.

I want to go out and look for her. Eddie can man the phones. Even as she said it, she realized she was stealing opportunity from her husband. As she turned to him, she saw he looked a little green around the gills. Then again, who wouldn’t? Eddie. I’m sorry, I know you want to do something, anything, too.

It’s okay. You go. I’ll stay this time. He nodded at her, his trust in her absolute. That was new. About a year or two ago, he’d stopped patronizing her and started trusting her judgment. On the one hand, it had come almost out of the blue. On the other hand, she’d seen him struggle to say, Okay, if that’s what you think we should do. It was smoother now. He’d been working on it. She liked it.

He was the one who’d told the officers about the post-it notes on the doors of the rooms she’d ‘cleared’ before he arrived home. The police had asked if he’d searched the rooms himself. Eddie had almost become irate, Do you think my wife is frantic? Unable to locate her child, but missing her under a bed or such?

I’ve seen it happen. Another cool reply from the officer. But I was only asking because two checks, two sets of eyes are better than one.

They told her that these things tended to turn out with the child located at a friend’s or neighbor’s house. He gave her percentages. But Fortune was eight. She’d already come home from school. Where could she have then gone?

Mia’s blood ran cold with the suddenly certain knowledge that she was not going to be one of those in the lucky percent. Something bigger was at play here.

McNally? A voice called out. A human in what almost appeared to be hazmat gear was looking in at them.

Someone had stepped into her living room, her front door opening and closing as police officers made full use of her space. The officer in front of her looked up, then nodded and motioned the two of them to sit tight while he talked to the person in the white paper jumpsuit.

That can’t be good, Eddie said, still pale as a ghost.

Mia didn’t respond. They had already brought in the crime scene investigating team? At least that’s how she knew them from TV. She wasn’t even sure why the woman in the jumpsuit had called McNally over toward her. Mia could still hear everything they said to each other, despite their low-level murmuring.

We’re going to dust the kid’s room, and the kitchen—because the mother said the daughter was in there before she went out. We’re also going to dust the dollhouse outside. But it’s wood construction, rough surfaces. I’m not sure how well it will hold the prints.

Mia jumped up. I’ll get her things she touched. The glass she used last night for juice is in the sink! You can get prints off that.

McNally turned back to them. No, ma’am. We’ll look, but we almost definitely cannot get quality prints from a glass used last night.

What? Mia looked confused. Wasn’t that exactly what they did?

Children don’t have the same kind of oils on their skin that adults do. Their prints tend to evaporate within a handful of hours.

"I’m sorry, what?" Mia was leaning forward, her breath becoming labored at what she thought she’d just been told. Her daughter basically didn’t leave fingerprints?

At least he was smart enough to not try to explain it again. If everything happened as you suspect, the dollhouse will be her most recent location and our best chance of getting something. However, the surfaces are rough—no drywall, no glass in the window— He shrugged. So, it will be difficult to lift a print even if we did find one.

Eddie hung his head. His hands laced between his knees. She’d never seen him look so defeated. I should have put insulation and drywall in. Then we’d have her fingerprints.

Jesus, Eddie, Mia couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this exasperated with her husband. She couldn’t even seem to think why she was so exasperated with him now, but she was. Fuck drywall. We should have had her fingerprinted.

McNally ignored her outburst with a patient smile. That could not be good. No one expects this. We have good information.

Another officer came in, this one older, higher ranking. Mr. and Mrs. Flores?

When they nodded in response, he offered the staid kind of smile that meant nothing. Just an update. We spoke with the neighbors. They all mention one or the other of you coming by earlier and asking about your daughter⁠—

Of course, we did. We didn’t want to call you if she was just at the neighbors, Eddie snapped. Something was off with him. She sensed it, but Mia didn’t have either the time or the bandwidth to even consider it right now.

The officer just nodded in response. We canvassed the neighborhood again. Several neighbors let us inside their homes to search. Several didn’t. In a few moments, we’ll discuss the neighbors with you, see what you may know about them. First, however, we had a brief interview with the boy your daughter was playing with . . . Derek Taylor. He said she was in your yard, alone, when he went home. He thinks that was about five p.m.

It occurred to Mia then, that Derek—neighborhood child, dim bulb, and all-around really nice kid—might have been the last one to see her daughter alive. For a minute, her heart stopped beating.

In case that wasn’t enough, the officer stood in front of them, stern and unyielding. We will be investigating every lead. We take a missing child very seriously.

Well, gosh, Mia thought sarcastically, Was there any other way? At least she held her tongue this time.

In the course of investigating every lead, this means we’ll be investigating the two of you as well.

Mia was nodding—of course, they had to rule her and Eddie out. She was thinking about over-cooperating, just throwing her