My phone starts to ring as I open the door to walk into the store. It’s buried in the depths of my bag and is difficult to find. I shove aside a wallet and a cosmetic bag, knowing the search is likely futile. I will never get to it in time.
My fingers make contact on the third or fourth ring. I fish it out of the bag, but as soon as I do, the phone goes quiet. I’m too late. A missed call notification from Sienna appears on the screen. I’m taken aback. I physically stop in the open doorway and stare down at her number on the display. Doubt and confusion fill my thoughts, because it’s just after ten o’clock in the morning and Sienna is at school, or rather, she should be.
Sienna texts from school sometimes, sneaking her phone when the teacher isn’t paying attention—Can I hang out with Gianna today? I lost my water bottle. Did u buy tampons? My stupid calculator won’t work.—but she doesn’t call. My mind goes in a million different directions thinking how, if she was sick, the nurse would call and, if she got in trouble at school for something, then the dean would call. Sienna wouldn’t ever be the one to call. I don’t have a chance to call her back. Almost immediately the phone in my hand starts to ring again and I jump from the unexpected sound of it. It’s Sienna, calling me back.
My thumb swipes immediately across the screen. “Sienna? What’s wrong?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear. I step fully inside the store, letting the door drift closed to muffle the street noise outside, the sound of cars passing by and people on their phones, having conversations of their own. I hear the shrill, unmistakable panic in my voice, and I think how, in the next instant, Sienna is going to ride me for overreacting, for freaking out about nothing. Geez, Mom. Relax. I’m fine, she’ll say, drawing that last word out for emphasis.
That’s not what happens.
It’s quiet at first. I just barely make out the sound of something slight like movement or wind. It goes on a few seconds and I decide this must be a pocket dial. Sienna didn’t mean to call me. The phone is in her pocket or her backpack and she called me by mistake. She doesn’t even know she’s called me twice. I listen, trying to decipher where she is, but it’s more of the same. Nothing telling. Nothing revelatory.
But then, a man’s voice cuts through the quiet, his words cold and sparing, his voice altered as if speaking through a voice changer. “If you ever want to see your daughter again, you will do exactly as I say.”
I gasp. My eyes gape. I lose my footing, falling backward into the closed door. A hand rises to my mouth, pressing hard. I can’t breathe all of a sudden. I can’t think; my mind can’t process what’s happening at first. I pull the phone away from my ear, looking down at the display to see if I’m mistaken, if it’s not Sienna’s number that called but someone else. A wrong number. Because this can’t be right, this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening to me.
But it is right. Sienna’s number stares back at me from the display.
“Who is this,” I ask, pressing the phone back to my ear, “and why do you have my daughter’s phone?”
And then, in the background, I hear Sienna’s piercing scream. “Mommy!” she bellows. It’s high-pitched, frenzied, desperate, and that’s when I know that this man doesn’t only have Sienna’s phone. He has Sienna.