sprints to get her phone and clicks on the icon. After a brief heart-stopping pause, she sees a little bunny stalled in traffic. A great sense of peace comes over her. Charlotte watches it, transfixed. The bunny bounces in place, then inches toward the circus, then stops. Red light. Gridlock. It’s hard to tell.
The image shatters into pixels, and Charlotte feels a stab of panic, but now the bunny is back again, bouncing. Daisy’s in the circus tent; they must have found their seats. So far, so good. How long can Charlotte watch the bunny? All night, if she has to. But after a while she puts it aside and turns on the TV. Normally, she likes mindless Westerns and Scandinavian noir, but tonight nothing holds her attention, and she watches half of a French procedural before she realizes she’s seen it. The murdered woman is a drug mule for a Moroccan gang.
She checks her phone. They’re still at the circus. Probably safe, but then the trip back home . . . She pours herself a tall whiskey and takes a Xanax.
Charlotte’s asleep on the couch when Rocco and Ruth and Daisy come in. Is she dreaming? She can’t believe it’s real. Daisy’s fine. She’s fine! She buries her face in Daisy’s hair, which smells like popcorn and some sweet chemical.
Daisy says, “I got cotton candy in my hair.”
Charlotte says, “We can fix that.” Anything is fixable as long as Daisy is here.
Just then Eli walks in, and Daisy flings herself against her father. Eli registers the whiskey bottle on the coffee table. He knows why she’d needed to pass out. How she loves her husband and their daughter and Rocco and even (if only at this moment) Ruth!
Daisy’s saying, “The only thing I didn’t like was the people painted silver. Did you know you can die from that?”
“Where did you hear that?” asks Eli.
“This boy in my class said so, and Miss Amy said he was right.”
“What did you like?” says Charlotte.
Trying to describe some high-wire artist doing flips at the top of the tent, Daisy’s talking so fast she’s sputtering.
Just then Rocco’s ringtone sounds: the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Dum dum dum DUM. Who’s calling at this hour? He looks at the screen, considers not picking up, then takes the phone into the kitchen, where he remains for a long time. Mostly he seems to be listening. Charlotte senses trouble, but she no longer trusts that instinct, given her pointless panic about Daisy’s trip to the circus.
When Rocco returns, it’s clear something’s wrong.
“Jesus,” he says. “That was Mom. She’s insisting we all come to Oaxaca for her sixtieth birthday.”
“I’m not going,” Charlotte says.
“I want to see Grandma,” says Daisy.
“We have to go,” says Eli. “She’s your mother. Daisy’s grandmother. It’s her sixtieth birthday.”
Charlotte sighs. Eli’s sense of family is so much stronger than hers, perhaps because he actually has a family. Then they all fall silent.
Charlotte says, “It’s high season. I shouldn’t leave work.”
“Alma can handle it,” says Eli. “There’s email. Texts. Phones. We’re not going to Mars.”
“Great!” says Ruth. “Then it’s decided. Let me know when so I can tell the office. But wait . . . sorry . . . Is this family only? Would it be okay if I tagged along?”
Charlotte looks at her brother. It’s Rocco’s call.
“Sure.”
She can tell that Rocco wants Ruth to go. He’ll feel braver if she’s with him, better able to handle their mother. Doesn’t that count in Ruth’s favor? Even if it’s just that Rocco doesn’t want to hurt Ruth, that thoughtfulness is new for him, and reason for celebration.
Charlotte says, “The more the merrier.”
All that matters is that Daisy is safe. Everything else will work out.
12
April 19
Charlotte
When she gets out of the Uber and runs toward Ruth’s apartment, where she’s supposed to meet Rocco—and where she prays that Ruth is back with Daisy—she can only run half a block before she’s hyperventilating so hard that she has to sit down on someone’s front steps.
If she doesn’t stop, she’ll pass out. Then she’ll never find Daisy.
She was right to distrust Ruth. She just had the wrong time, the wrong event. The circus!
That had worked out fine. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security. Well, maybe not security . . . She’d learned to manage her anxiety. To tell herself that those fears were in her mind.
Well, they weren’t in her mind!
She forgot the one thing—the one thing!—she needed to remember to do: take Ruth off