*
"Here you go."
Samantha placed the tall drink in front of a slim, dark-haired woman, and was startled when she looked up to reveal a face no older than Samantha's own twenty-seven. Her eyes, though, held an aching world of quiet experience and an all-too familiar look of reluctant resignation. Samantha wanted to shake the woman by her shoulders and whisper fiercely, "Don't end up like me."
Ten years in the city that boasted dreams as a reality and here she was, working late nights in a seedy bar only to return home, fall into an exhausted sleep, and head out in the infant hours of the morning to clean rooms at one of the three nearby hotels.
And she was lucky.
Ten years ago, Samantha Spade stepped off the bus and into the whirlwind that was New York City. Exhausted, she crept into the first abandoned warehouse she found and fell asleep against the grime-covered wall. Less than two hours later, the teenager had been jolted awake by the taunts of four middle-aged, leering men, who wasted no time in letting her know the price she was going to pay for making the warehouse her temporary shelter.
A terrified Samantha fled, blinking back tears as she searched for a place to call her own.
Days passed in a blur of dodging inappropriate advances, eating when she could, sleeping in doorways, frequenting the laundromat in a compulsive attempt to maintain at least a shred of dignity, and after a month she found herself on a familiar streetcorner, clutching a quarter in her right palm and the payphone in her left.
Sick and gaunt, broken and alone, Samantha lifted a shaking finger to the keys, ready to punch in her home phone number and let the ringing signal her ultimate defeat. It was then that the large white sign bearing "Free Women's Clinic" in black letters caught her attention, and, in a haze of hunger and pain, she placed the phone back in its holder and stumbled across the street, entering the brick building that was to be her salvation.
She'd entered with nothing, and left with treatment, a place to stay, and a friend.
Ana Rolon, the hospital's large and cheerful nurse's aide, had sighted on Samantha from the moment she walked through the door. Proclaiming her in need of a good meal, the two had shared lunch, and Samantha gave the older woman the barest details of her story. By the end, Ana insisted on sharing her tiny apartment with Samantha.
It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
And it was.
The two developed a comfortable rapport and routine--Samantha, honest when she could be and lying when it was necessary, eventually found work at a local grocery store, and their combined salaries allowed them to live for more than the next meal.
For the first few months, Samantha searched the papers for any mention of herself or her disappearance, but it hadn't traveled to the city, and she began to think ahead instead of behind.
She wasn't exactly fulfilling her dreams, but she was young, and the hope that had been enough to propell her from the prison of her home to the freedom of the city had slowly returned, seeping into everything she did and every word she spoke.
Until one day, it all fell apart.
Ana, the victim and product of years of drug abuse and addiction, had been clean long before Samantha walked through the doors of the clinic.
That night, though, in a moment of weakness and temptation, Ana pressed the needle to her skin once again, dark eyes full of both sorrow and indignance as they gazed steadily at the desperate, shocked Samantha.
"Just this once," she had promised, even as she emptied the syringe into her arm. "It'll be okay."
But it wasn't.
On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Samantha watched her friend and benefactor overdose on the same drug she'd fought so hard to cut out of her life.
The next morning, the sun rose and the world continued on, and Samantha ran ahead of it.
Ana's death left her with a cut deeper than she was willing to let heal, and so she merely covered it, taking on a second job and then a third, working herself into a state of exhaustion so when she stumbled home at night, she could avoid the demons that stalked her alone in the darkness.
Days rolled together, months turned to years, and dreams faded to whispers until they were so faint she could no longer hear them.
It was only times like these, when she saw herself in the defeated eyes of another, that the dreams returned, swirling, dancing, hovering just out of her ever-weakening reach.
As she returned home that night, always home to the cold and to the dark, Samantha reflected on that night so many years ago, when she'd crept out of a house just as frozen and black as this one.
She'd done everything possible to ensure that she wouldn't be followed, wouldn't be discovered, wouldn't be found.
Pulling the thin blanket to her chin, a single tear--the only one she had left--crept down her cheek, as she quietly admitted that now, she would give anything to be found.
*
When people die, the finality of that end brings an undetermined sense of peace to those who knew them. When people go missing, missing for years and years until all the details of what they looked like and who they were fade away with them as well, they seem to no longer belong to who they once did. They're no longer just someone else's daughter or sister or son or brother; they find themselves in not only those they left behind, but in those who want to find them.
So Samantha Spade started belonging to Jack Malone the moment he opened a manila folder and paper-clipped her picture to it; the moment he wrote down her birthdate and physical description; the moment he uncapped the marker and wrote her name and thought of how she once may have wrote it herself; the moment he stopped letting her be an unknown; the moment he wanted her to be real again.
*
"Where do we even start, Jack?"
"We start where she started, " he replied, leading Vivian outside as he pulled the collar of his trenchcoat over his head.
"And that would be where?"
"Amherst. It's upstate. Very quiet, very peaceful -- kind of place you'd want to leave if you're a restless teenager."
"And she did, " Vivian remarked as they pulled away, her voice carrying above the loud swish of the windshield wipers as rain pelted the window.
He nodded.
"She did. And we're going to find out why."
"Maybe she just got bored."
"And she wouldn't have called for ten years? No, there's something more here, Viv. I owe it to her mother...I owe it to her."
Vivian's eyebrows lifted.
"We can't find them all, Jack, " she spoke resignedly, running a hand along the window sill.
"No, but we can try."
"Thank you for seeing me, Agent Malone, for taking this case, " Janet Spade spoke as she ushered Jack and Vivian inside.
Jack nodded politely and smiled.
"This is Agent Johnson, Viv, this is Janet Spade, " he waved a hand between the two and watched them shake hands.
They followed Janet through the house as she led them further into what had once been Samantha's house. He felt something wash over him, something he didn't fully understand, but felt deeply and profoundly nonetheless.
He felt her.
He paid attention to the pictures on the walls and the state of the house itself. It was beautiful in its simplicity, a house you could imagine spending your entire life in, no matter where it was. A house, he thought, that looked so perfect on the outside, it had to be anything but on the inside.
His mind thought of her as he walked on the carpet and imagined the sound her feet must've made as she ran through it with excitement as a young child, possibly once to jump into her mother's arms or her father's; he imagined the sound she must've made when grades were bad and her heart had been broken.
He imagined the sound she must've made when she left this house; the sound no one could ever forget. Because it was the sound of an infinite silence, final in its impact.
Janet motioned them to the couch, taking a seat across from them as Jack smoothed out his trenchcoat and pulled out his notebook and pen.
"Okay, Mrs. Spade, let's just start at the beginning -- what was Samantha like as a child?"
He would never forget the way her mouth lifted into a smile and the way her eyes teared up simultaneously.
"She was -- she was all I had ever wanted. She was just the sweetest little girl, she used to -- she used to crawl in my lap sometimes and just sit there and sing to herself and tell me stories about princesses and dragons. You never had to tell her anything, and she was so smart. She could just sit there and entertain herself."
"So what changed?" Vivian asked, knowing this picture being painted had to have smeared and dripped its colors dry.
Janet folded her hands in her lap, looked down.
"Uh, well, her father and I had problems and it got worse as she got older -- she saw most of the fights. And he drank, drank a lot sometimes."
Jack drew a silent breath and asked, "Did he hit her?"
She shook her head quickly.
"No, no, never. He was a verbal abuser, I guess you could say. He didn't have to touch her, all he had to do was speak. He used to -- sometimes he would say horrible things and I just -- I don't know why I let him do that. I should've -- should've stopped him. He never hugged her or kissed her or told her he loved her."
A few stray tears fell.
"I don't think he even cared that she disappeared. I think he was happy."
"How did he treat you, Mrs. Spade?"
"I used to pretend it was nothing, until she left and I realized that my not doing anything was just as bad as his actions. I think he liked it most when I cried, and Sam saw most of it, she used to hug me when it got really bad, just sit there and hug me. A daughter shouldn't have to do that."
"No. But neither should a mother. Where's your husband now?"
"We divorced soon after Sam left. He still lives here, but I haven't seen him in years."
Vivian leaned forward and asked, "Did she have any boyfriends or friends who might have known where she went?"
"She had some casual friends, but no one really close to her. She did have a boyfriend for a couple of years, he used to tell me he was going to marry her, but -- I think if he knew where she went, he would've said something."
"Does he still live here as well?"
"Yes, just a few blocks over, in fact."
"We'd like his address then, and your ex-husband's as well."
Janet nodded and stood up.
Vivian leaned closer to Jack, whispered to him, "I don't blame her for wanting to leave."
He nodded in agreement. "I don't blame her for not coming back."
They stood as Janet re-entered the room and Jack took the piece of paper with the addresses on it, folding it into his pocket.
"Thank you again, Agent Malone."
"We'll do our best, Mrs. Spade."
They started to leave and she spoke once more.
"I don't think she knew."
"Knew what?"
"That I loved her, " her voice replied, distant and haunted.
"Why would you think that?"
"Because sometimes I forgot to tell her too."
*
We can't find them all...
He jotted down a few more notes. Tomorrow, they would speak to Samantha's father and boyfriend and find out more about who she had been and where she had wanted to go in her life, what she wanted and needed and had to have to simply live.
He thought of Maria suddenly, the woman he had once been in love with, once when he was young and she had been the first woman to look at him as though he mattered. And maybe that was stupid and he had been naive, but it had been enough once.
But he had grown and she had grown and they had grown separately from one another, so distant, in fact, that sometimes he forgot who was attached to the ring on his finger. And it bothered him, but he didn't know what to do about.
He knew he didn't want this anymore, didn't want the cold, hollow void in his heart he got whenever he looked at her. He didn't want to pretend, didn't want to force a love that wasn't there. But it scared him, too, to leave and be on his own, without any other person to turn to. Sometimes the idea of being utterly alone scared him more than being with her and he thought that soon, maybe sooner than he liked, he would have to make a decision.
He needed to find himself, and maybe, in that journey, he would find Samantha as well.
We can't find them all...
Maybe not, he thought.
But maybe, in the bleakness of that resolution, there existed hope enough to find her; hope and even love enough to save her.
And he would, he thought.
He would.
*
"And the princess was so brave, she went to fight the big scary dragon all by herself..."
"Then what happened? Did the prince save her?"
"Oh Mom, you're silly. She saved him! She saved him and she loved him and he loved her and that's what happened."
The sudden slam back to reality left Samantha gasping for breath and drenched in sweat as she untangled herself from her knot of blankets, the dream still playing in her mind even as it slowly faded from view, leaving her with only its sharp, pointed aftertaste.
Let me tell you a story, okay Mom?
In the dark, she fumbled through the drawer next to her bed, relaxing when her fingers closed around a once-glossy, now used and worn photograph. Samantha didn't need to turn on the light; the image of her five year old self wrapped in her mother's arms as they beamed for the camera had long been burned into her memory, held in a safe and secret place she could slip to when the dragons were too strong for the princess to fight alone.
Samantha had no tears left, or she would have wept for the photograph and the people in it, for innocence lost and shattered, stolen and forgotten.
As she waited for morning to break across the inky blackness of the night, Samantha sent up a silent prayer for herself at five, for herself at twenty-seven, for all the things she'd been along the way..for her mother, wherever she was and whatever she had become, and in a final, desperate moment, returned to the place of princesses and dragons, and prayed without words for her prince.
She was tired of fighting alone.
*
He stood in front of her, hands jammed deep in his pockets, examining, studying, searching.
She didn't move or blink, because for now she was still just a picture, but Vivian had never seen Jack look upon anyone more intently than at this moment as he stood guard over Samantha Spade's photograph.
I owe it to her...
Watching him from the safety of her cubicle, she took in his rigid posture, the stubborn lift of his head, the way he moved his hand from his pocket and reached upward, almost as if to brush the errant lock of blonde hair from her forehead as she gazed steadily back at him..
This, Vivian knew, was not the same as any other case she had ever worked with Jack Malone. She worried about him sometimes--worried that the turmoil of their job was beginning to take its toll, worried about his marriage, worried that he didn't get to see his daughters enough...
But this was a different kind of worry. For the first time in their years together, Jack's promise to find the young woman in the photograph was more than standard reassurance.
He'd taken Samantha Spade on as a personal battle, made it his task to search and recover and, ultimately, save the girl who had left her world behind so many years ago.
Before turning away, Vivian caught the mouthed "I will" falling from Jack's lips as he took a long, final look at her photograph, dropping his eyes only after he was certain her face would never fade from his memory.
*
TBC...