Chapter 6 - The Vanishing
Sunday morning dawned gray and suffocating under heavy Rochester clouds.
We had retained a family law attorney, a sharp, no-nonsense woman named Marcus Vance—no relation to the CPS caseworker—who had spent Saturday evening reviewing the documents I unearthed. Her advice had been blunt: *“Nadia has the immediate tactical advantage because Oliver corroborated her narrative to CPS. If you walk into that courtroom tomorrow morning waving financial records, Nadia’s lawyer will call it a desperate smear campaign. We need Oliver to recant his statement to the child advocate. If the boy doesn’t tell the truth, the judge will rubber-stamp the temporary custody order.”*
How could Oliver tell the truth when he was locked in Nadia’s penthouse, surrounded by her lies?
At 1:15 PM, my cell phone rang.
The caller ID displayed an unknown local number. I answered on the second ring, putting it on speaker so Paul could hear.
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Miller?" A high-pitched, frantic voice came through the line. "Is this Lena Miller?"
"Yes, speaking. Who is this?"
"My name is Sarah Jenkins. I'm... I'm Oliver's friend Toby’s mother. From Little League."
Paul stepped closer to the phone. "Sarah? What's going on?"
"Paul? Oh, thank God," Sarah gasped, out of breath. "Listen to me, I don't know what’s happening, but I’m at Cobbs Hill Park right now. Nadia was here with Oliver. She met someone in the parking lot—a guy in a suit with a bunch of brochures. They were arguing near the dugout while the kids were playing on the turf."
"Arguing about what?" Paul demanded.
"I don't know! But Nadia was screaming at him, and then Oliver started crying. He had a backpack with him. Nadia tried to grab his arm, but he broke away from her and ran into the woods toward the reservoir! Nadia didn't even chase him, Paul! She just got back in her car and started driving around the outer perimeter honking her horn!"
Paul didn't wait for another word. "We're on our way. Call 911 right now, Sarah! Tell them a nine-year-old is lost near the reservoir!"
Within sixty seconds, Ellie was buckled into her car seat, and Paul was reversing our pickup out of the driveway, the tires chirping against the asphalt.
Cobbs Hill Reservoir was surrounded by steep, wooded trails, rocky outcrops, and dense brush. It was a place Paul had taken Oliver hiking dozens of times over the years. As we sped down Interstate 490, rain began to splatter against the windshield in fat, heavy drops.
"He knows those trails," Paul muttered, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, weaving through the light Sunday traffic. "I showed him the maintenance culverts near the old water tower. If he’s scared, if he thinks she’s taking him somewhere... he’ll go to the tower."
When we arrived at the park, the scene was chaotic.
A police cruiser was parked near the playground, its red and blue lights flashing against the gray mist. Down by the baseball diamonds, Nadia was standing near her Range Rover, clutching an umbrella, gesticulating wildly at Officer Briggs—the very same officer who had escorted Oliver from our home yesterday.
Paul slammed the truck into park near the tree line.
"Stay with Ellie," Paul told me, unbuckling his seatbelt.
"Paul, be careful," I pleaded.
He didn't run toward Nadia or the police. He knew that would only waste precious minutes in bureaucratic arguments. Instead, he pulled up his hood and sprinted straight into the dense forest trail leading up the eastern ridge of the hill.
The rain turned into a steady, cold downpour. Through the rain-streaked truck window, I watched Nadia notice our truck.
She marched across the soggy grass, her designer boots sinking into the mud, and rapped sharply on my driver-side window.
I rolled it down two inches. "Get away from my car, Nadia."
"Where is Paul going?" she hissed, her face pale, the rain ruining her makeup. "Tell him to stay out of this! I called the police! Oliver is having a psychological episode because of the abuse you two inflicted on him!"
"Stop lying, Nadia," I said, my voice ice cold. "We know about the four hundred thousand dollars. We know about the grandfather's trust. We know about the foreclosure."
Nadia froze. For a split second, the polished mask slipped entirely, exposing the raw, desperate predator beneath. Her lips thinned into a razor-sharp line.
"You don't know anything," she sneered. "And even if you did, it doesn't matter. The court listens to the child. And by tomorrow afternoon, Oliver will be enrolled at St. Jude's Academy in Connecticut, and you two will be paying me child support for the next nine years."
"He's nine years old!" I shouted over the drumming rain. "He’s wandering alone in a storm on a rocky cliff because he is terrified of you!"
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Before she could reply, a loud crack of thunder shook the sky, followed by the distant wail of a police siren winding up the service road toward the top of the hill.
***
