“How are you, and my baby?” Jesse asked a girl giggling in the background.

“I am very stressed, but I’d rather not talk about that. Sammi is good, and has been crawling for about two weeks. We are going to start teaching her to walk.” I walked into my bedroom.

“Ah, yes. How is young Nat?”   

“Good, but he isn't you.” 

“You need not fret girl. You have his baby, and I will forgive you no matter what.” 

“Where are you? I am not raising her by myself.” 

“I am in Las Vegas, and have been for about a month. I, uh, moved here hoping to find help, but I only found more hell.” 

“You should move back, and you can get the proper help. You and I can be together, and get away. Sammi needs you, and I need you.” 

“It’s just a little separation, and you'll both be fine. As long as you have money coming in and you aren’t suicidal again.” 

“You need to listen to me Jesse. You got me back on my feet, and I am going to get you on your feet. You are my life and without you I have nothing. You will get your ass out of that bed, get in your car, and drive that fat ass of yours back here.” 

“I can’t Jackie. I am going to live down here for the rest of my life because I am just not the same person anymore. I feel like an ass.” 

“If you stay down there you will be an ass, but the faster you come back the quicker you will be an angel. Please Jesse I beg of you. Nat’s girl is coming to visit and I can’t stand being here alone.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can, but you must promise me something.” 

“Whatever it is I’ll promise it.”

“Good. If anything happens I want you to blame me and not you. I will be the one to blame even if it is your fault.” 

The dial tone filled my head, and I sighed thinking about my life of horrors. I looked in my medicine cabinet, and took the pill out. I took it out, popped it, and knew that there would never be a baby. There would only be a memory of rough sex that apparently was too rough to knock me up. I walked out into the living room, but Nat was gone and not only was he gone, the crawling Sammi was gone. I ran through the apartment looking and looking for her. I waited for hours, called him, and walked through as much of the city as I could. I then called the police, and crying I walked out of the door right into Jesse.

A week passed, and I was helping Jesse get off his alcohol addiction. I was ready for that last push when he threw every bottle of alcohol away, and sat down with a ginger ale. I knew he was healed, so I sat down with him waiting for that call. We were being over safe about sex not wanting to rush into a replacement, but it didn’t look too hopeful. Every tear I shed for three weeks was for her, and every joint I snuck was for lost love. I was on my period when they called me, and told me that they were estimating that she was out of state. Bad news and periods don’t go together, so for a week I was in the office smoking, and working. For a week I sat there, but Paul said nothing of concern. He was giving up on all things, and when I saw the camera I knew why. All the pot in the world could not block it out, and I was soon looking for a way to get rid of it.

I went a month without knowing where my baby was, and it was painful. I went through hell and back, but I never gave up hope. I stopped smoking pot and started working like mad. Jesse and I were working crazy hours, and I was in fact sleeping on the couch on papers like I used to New York City. When we were together on the weekends we discussed moving back to New York, but it was a hard decision to make with our baby out there somewhere. I knew that it would be the smartest thing to move on from Salt Lake, but a bad idea to move to back there.

The lead on her case called and said that while they weren’t giving up they had disbanded the team and the case was more as evidence was presented. Both Jesse and I knew what the meant and picked a new place to live away from where we were. On her eight month birthday we moved into an apartment in Miami. It was a large water city, and here we changed our hours to work around each other. We started to have sex again and admitting that she was not coming we started trying for a new child. I didn’t like how it felt at all, but everyone had pretty much given up and it was a distraction for us as we picked up the pieces. 

“Do you think that we should go to the beach now that we’re all settled in, and have nice hours in the job market?” I looked out of our window to the beckoning beach.

“I think that you are officially infertile, and that is all.” Jesse looked up at me, stressed and tired.

“Listen it may just be everything piling up, and might be you or both of us. What we need is some nice Miami fun before the stress levels get too high. You know what happens when we get stressed.” 

“If you dare bring up what happened in the past I might hit you.”

“Don t you ever fucking say that! You put me through enough already, and now you’re going to threaten abuse. You need to step back, relax, and get your fucking swimsuit on. We have 9-5 Monday through Friday, and then we have all the things we want.” 

“I think that you need to look at the fact that we lost our fucking daughter, and there is no way of knowing whether or not she is still alive.” 

“That’s why we moved here. We moved here to get away from every little piece of that memory. We were going to settle down a little, go to the beach, and pray every night for her little soul.” 

“That isn’t good enough. We need to show that we are mourning.” 

“We did though.” 

I picked up my towel, and dragged myself out to the beach where every guy was zoned out at me. The girls took a hold of their man, and the guys pushed away friends to get a look at me. It was nice to be out getting some rays, but the stares were getting creepy. I dropped my towel next to a group of people and went for the water. I went under for a minute before rising back up. I was in deep water after a few minutes, and that’s when the guys came out to see me. I had hard rock abs, and legs that were tan from my porch sittings. I could see Jesse looking down on me from the balcony wishing he came down. I blew him a kiss, and his ass was on that beach faster than a squirrel on nuts. He took me into his arms, and we were soon out to sea.

We spent the entire day on the beach, and we were quite a couple. We looked like a couple on the cover of a magazine with our bodies, our tans, and those moments where the entire population disappeared for us to hit that water making out. We were so happy to be out of the house and in that water that we forgot that we had the police calling us every day at the same time. At 3:30 we realized our mistake, but they had already called. No change though, so we headed out to the clubs around ten. It was a wild Saturday to be out, so sooner than later we just headed for home. When we arrived a Miami cop was sitting on our couch texting.

We sat down, and he explained that there had been a sighting, but there was no hope for another one. He guesses that he had changed her name, settled somewhere, and was living a lie with my child. I looked over his shoulder to see my bag of pot lying on the bed, and excused myself. I hid it under my pillow, and kept on ranting about how everything was going good in the west. I just sat back, and asked him to leave explaining that we had hope, and didn’t need things that were going to kill the little hope we had. I showed him to the door, and walked back in staring at the Jesse which I hadn’t seen in months.

“That was our only sense of peace and you kicked it out the door. That was our life support in the search of our child.” He stood and threw me to the ground.

“Leave me the fuck alone! My new dealers here, and you’re going to get arrested if you don’t get your ass off me.” I screamed, throwing him off me. “I’m coming Hines!” 

“You watch it young lady. The fact that our baby has been seen, and everything is going in a good way doesn’t mean you can do whatever the fuck you want.” 

“If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have to worry about my baby being kidnapped. How’s that?”