Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller. Alexandra Burt

taking over the finances was just a way of increasing control over the woman who had floundered. It was ironic that the differences that brought us together – Jack’s sense of purpose, and his attraction to my carefree attitude towards life and, as he saw it, unpredictability – were the very things that were also driving us apart. That and the fact that I was an absolute failure as a mother.

      The floorboards creaked as I entered the office and a familiar aroma of leather greeted me. Like an observer I stood beside myself, watched a woman scan fake paneling between rows of books, push at conspicuous spots. I observed her as she looked around, expecting an antique oil painting to fall off the wall, an envelope yellowed by age dropping to the ground, containing some clandestine content. The woman pulled open the desk drawers. Her fingers slipped, almost snapping her nails off, as she tried to open a locked drawer. I watched her run her fingertips alongside the bottom of the desk’s surface. She pushed here and there, looked under the keyboard and mouse pad and in the desk organizer. Reality greeted her harshly: no hidden drawers, no secret compartments, just a piece of contemporary office furniture. The woman jerked back into reality when the phone rang.

      I backed away from the desk. The chair fell to the floor. Thud. The phone continuously nagged to be picked up.

       Ring.

       Ring.

      Its pesky urgency was followed by a faint gurgle of an infant echoing through the house. The baby monitor on Jack’s desk with its light display indicated the volume of Mia’s cries. Six out of ten. Then the lights alternated from the middle scale of the digital display all the way to the top. The phone went silent and so did the baby monitor. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was midnight.

      The phone rang again, slicing the air with urgency. I wiped the tears that were running down my neck, trailing inside my sweater.

      Once again, the gurgling baby monitor turned into a whimper, the whimper into a howl and then into a full-blown bellow. The lights remained at the very top of the display window, until one last gurgle drifted off into the distance. Then there was silence. I left the study and went through the bedroom into Jack’s walk-in closet. A masterpiece of built-in shelves constructed of maple wood and hardware of brushed steel, next to mine, separated by a wall, both accessible by individual doors. Jack’s dress shirts, arranged by color, immaculately pressed, aligned on one wall, his shoes along the other. I looked up at the top row of storage shelves, reachable only with the attached rolling ladder.

      Reluctantly I passed Jack’s full-length mirror in which he checked his designer suits, belts, and shoes every morning, afraid of the woman I’d encounter. I stepped closer and she stared back at me. I tried to force a winsome smile, yet her opaque eyes seemed empty, like doll’s eyes. Not one of those pretty dolls with an elaborate dress and curly hair, no, less than that, really more like a rag doll with crooked button eyes. I was unable to lift my gaze off her for she was familiar, a grotesque twin, a chilling replica of myself. When did the woman in the mirror become so powerful, so potent that I allowed her to make off with my prized possessions? My composure, my sanity, my joy, and the part of me that was a mother. The figure in the mirror was a stranger, one who looked at me with anger.

      White noise on full blast. A voice escaped the subdued grain of the maple shelves, and unlike mine, it made sense.

      The box, it said. Where is the box?

      The box that didn’t fit with the rest of the items in the closet?

       Yes, that one.

      The box that was old and torn, which I noticed every time I hung up his clean clothes, he moved from the overhead storage one week to a lower shelf the next?

       Yes, the old yellowed photo box with reinforced metal holes, rectangular and flat, larger than a shoebox.

      Am I supposed to look for it and open it?

       Yes, look for it. Then open it.

      I pulled the ladder to the far corner of the shelf, its metal balls sliding along the tracks, humming like a swarm of hornets. I kicked off my shoes, and climbed up.

      There it was. A quite unremarkable and ordinary cardboard box. I managed to climb down the ladder without dropping it, sat it on the floor and knelt next to it.

      The box was cumbersome to open; the lid had to be lifted on both ends simultaneously. I recognized the castle logo in the lower right-hand corner: Rosenfeld, Manhattan – one of the largest wedding gown stores in New York, maybe even the country.

      I parted the tissue paper. Photos with scalloped edges, tinged yellow by time, depicting people unknown to me. A little boy in a blue coat, a woman standing next to him, leaning on him, her arm around his shoulders.

      A property deed. Jack had mentioned that he had flipped properties while in Law School but I didn’t know he owned a house. A deed for a brownstone on North Dandry in Brooklyn.

      Before I could make sense of the deed, I came across a black pouch, heavy in my hand. I felt the shape of a gun through the velvety fabric. I removed the revolver from the pouch and cradled it in my hand. It seemed old fashioned, but I really knew next to nothing about guns. I pointed it away from me and randomly pushed the cylinder and it swung to the right. It was empty.

      Below the black pouch was a concealed handgun license card, laminated, with Jack’s information. I never knew Jack owned a gun, let alone a license to carry, but it seemed logical for a lawyer to have one. Tucked in the corner was a full box with bullets. The gun I could stomach, lawyers owning guns is not unheard of, what was hard to believe was the fact that it had been there all along and I never knew.

      I took a few bullets and cradled them in the palm of my hand. They were cold and made a gentle clinking sound when they touched. I stood up and filled up the chamber and engaged the cylinder.

      I froze when I heard the ticking of a wristwatch. A crinkly plastic sound of a diaper demanded my attention. A whiff of baby powder and the stench of deceit, a combination that had the power to silently command me.

      I looked up. There was Jack, standing in the closet, Mia in his arms, squirming, arching her back. There I was, gun in hand. Just in the nick of time I hid it behind my back, slowly backing into his dress shirts.

      He stared at me, his eyes blank. I kicked the box and it slid under his dress shirts, the Berber carpet allowing it to glide like a ghost to a clandestine hiding place. I needn’t have worried, Jack was focused on the usual.

      ‘Didn’t you hear her cry?’ Icicles around his every word. Again, I wasn’t vigilant enough. Again, I failed to be the mother I should have been.

      There were words Jack never said, words Jack never used, yet I had heard him say them over and over again – flawed, unfit. A bad mother, a bad wife. I had no business being there. I had no business being at his office earlier, in his closet, his house, his life. I had no business being the mother of his child.

      ‘What’s this?’ I said holding up the deed in front of him. ‘All you ever talk about is money. How we can’t afford this, and how we have to save more. You are making us out to be broke. It’s always about money.’ I was surprised by the strength of my voice. Everything was wrong. Jack, Mia, the ticking clock, the gun, the photographs, the property deed. ‘How come we are struggling when you own a brownstone, Jack? Explain that to me? What’s the place worth, a million?’

      ‘Own? I don’t own anything. The property is heavily mortgaged. I wanted to flip it within a few months but there were problems with the permits. I’ve been carrying two mortgages. Come on now, tell me you understand real estate? The moment I’m one payment short the bank takes everything.’

      ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

      ‘I was in over my head, okay? Is that what you want me to say? I didn’t know what I was doing? There, are you happy now?’

      His posture wilted, he looked like a little boy; small, softened, less confident.

      ‘Jack—’