The Secrets of Pimsim Cove - 1. Chapter 1

Cool crisp clean sheets tangled around my legs, as I franticly flailed around my bed, still trying to run away from some scaly boogieman. Thank goodness it was morning. My eyes popped open to the bright Atlanta sunshine.

Whoa, what the smurf was I thinking letting Cassy talk me into doing crazy things so late at night, like stopping for corndogs after that slasher movie last night? No wonder I had such messed up dreams.

I was definitely going to christen my new journal with every gory detail of that tripped-out nightmare. Last year’s journal was already crammed into the bookshelf with all the others. The tattered label, ‘The Junior Invasion’ was peeling back from the brown front cover with its three little pink flowers in the lower right hand corner.

My journals held a lot more than frilly unrealistic dreams about becoming Mrs. Justin Bieber. It was a living breathing commentary on my entire teenage life. Not only was it filled with the complex characters that I developed for my next awesome short story, but it also held such pressing issues as the hottness ratings of Hollywood’s sexiest leading men (hott: human that is outrageously totally tempting!) and the pros and cons of whether I supported team Jacob or team Edward, and even the answers to this week’s Facebook quiz on ‘are you a good girlfriend?’

Mom bought me the new journal as a congratulations gift. I had made it through another school year. Eleven down and only one more to go. I was always jotting down witty story lines for my next story, that hopefully would one day, land me on the best seller list.

Shimmers of Atlanta’s warm, summer sun hit the beautiful stained-glass design that topped each of my windows, sending a vibrant array of colors dancing around my bedroom. I love Atlanta, but I love summertime in Atlanta even more!
Rolling out of bed, I glanced at the clock and smiled. It was after 10am and Mom hadn’t banged on my door yet? She must have run out to get her errands done early before the summer sun got too hot for her to waddle her big pregnant belly around in the June heat.

This was the first full week of summer vacation and it’s my only week to sleep-in, since I signed up for a Creative Writing Class that starts on Monday. Grabbing the new journal off the dresser, I ran my fingers over the little sun and moon embossed in the upper right and left hand corners of the pale blue cover. The two symbols together represented the mystical opposites of night and day and the three little water waves across the bottom kind of gave my new journal a nautical-like theme.

I jotted down every detail of last night’s dream inside the first page. Maybe some of those gruesome details might come in handy when coming up with a new short story for class next week, but not today. This week, I’m going to sleep-in late, lounge by the pool, work on accumulating more freckles and maybe go back to the mall and buy that totally cute little purse that I saw there last night.

It probably wasn’t too hot yet to go for a nice long jog, so I quickly changed into a worn pair of cotton running shorts and pulled on one of my favorite tank-tops, you know the ones that have the bra built right in. Having small boobies really sucks. Especially trying to survive as a seventeen-year-old in my boring humdrum life, but at least I could just pull on a tank-top and go running. No bra required. Boobies... hehehe!

Okay, I guess it’s really not that funny, but kind of sad really. Whatever! I had to try to focus on getting ready. Teeth brushed, check. Bed made, check. Hair rubber-band on wrist, check. Socks and tennis shoes, check and check.

There was no need to look in the mirror because I already knew exactly who I’d see: that skinny girl that looked so much like a child with her long frizzy strawberry blond hair hanging almost to her curveless, non-existent waist, and not to mention the massive overflow of freckles that covered every square inch of skin. There were too many freckles to even count. If it wasn’t for that girl’s shocking green eyes, she would almost be too plain to remember.

Taking a quick glance at my reflection, I sighed. Well, I guess I’m as ready to face the world as I was ever gonna get and rushed out of my bedroom, right into a full-fledged military sneak attack!

“Ouch! Jimmy!” I gasped at the unexpected pain.

I love my mischievous little brother, I really do, but he normally waits until the afternoon before declaring war. It looked like I’d be defending myself, against a blitzing army of miniature Gorgonites and plastic Transformer robots, a little early today. Ouch! I think one of those tiny suckers just jammed a sword through the bottom of my big toe.

“You’re lucky it was only me walking through here, squirt,” grumbling under my breath to the empty hallway. “If Mom would have stepped on one of your toys, Jimmy, she could have gotten hurt, really hurt, really bad.”

I tried not to sound too agitated with the seven-year-old as I scooped up handfuls of army men and set them down on the hall table, while waiting for him to spring out of some dark hiding place. Jimmy didn’t understand that with the new baby on the way, Mom could barely see her own feet, let alone avoid stepping on an army of plastic action figures. With the toys cleaned up and out of the hallway, I gathered up my shoes and socks and headed down to the kitchen to warn Mom that Jimmy was starting earlier than normal today.

“Hey, Mom, you need to tell Jim--” My words were abruptly cut off.

The kitchen in our old Victorian home was usually bright and cheerful. It was everyone’s favorite place to hang out, but when I burst through the swinging doors this morning, like I did every morning, I didn’t expect to find a stranger sitting at our breakfast table and in Dad’s chair no less!

“What the smurf?” I huffed.

Mom really hates it when I swear. She hates it even more when I twist cute cartoons into cuss substitutions: Smurf=Shit, Hamtaro=Hell and Fraggle=the big old F-bomb, but smurf was my favorite and I tend to use that one for just about everything!

Who the heck was this pudgy old guy, with his seriously gross receding hairline, and why was he sitting at our breakfast table? Where the heck were my parents?

Glancing around the kitchen, I found Mom leaning against the countertop. Her normally sparkly blue eyes were all red and puffy as she stared out the kitchen window. She looked dazed and confused. The morning light reflected off her naturally blond hair while the fabric of her maternity top was stretched to its limit with her bulging belly. Even nine months pregnant and crying her eyes out, Mom was still beautiful.

“What’s wrong?” I choked on the sound of my whisper.

She didn’t hear me. She was lost to everything around her, but that fat guy at the table, he heard me.

“You’re Anna, right?” He asked the question as if he didn’t already know the answer. I nodded my head waiting for Mom to snap out of her coma, but she didn’t, she just kept staring out the window. It wasn’t until I followed her eyes that I noticed the cops standing outside tying off our driveway with neon-yellow police tape.

“Mom? What happened? Where’s Dad?” I blurted out questions, but I was afraid of all of the answers.

The old guy flipped his little black notebook open and scanned over his notes before standing up and telling me to sit down. His hair was more salt than pepper, but his eyebrows where still solid black, too bad there was only one and it stretched all the way across his huge forehead like a bushy black caterpillar.

“Ms. McLoughlin, your mother told me that you were out with friends last night? What time did you get home?” He asked me.

Me? My eyes shot over to him and his tacky necktie, sweat stained shirt, and the gold badge clipped to his shirt pocket. This detective...what did that badge say? Detective Tenney wanted to know what I was doing last night?

“Yeah, Cassy and I went to the mall last night and then caught a movie. We stopped at Chilly Burger’s afterwards before heading back home.”

“And what time was that?” His voice was gravelly like someone who’d smoked too many packs for too many years.

“I guess it was about eleven thirty or maybe eleven forty-five...why?” What was he getting at?

The fat detective totally ignored my question, but kept on with his own. “Was your father’s car in the driveway when you got home?”

“Dad?” I had to think a moment. Was he home? “No, ‘cause I rode my bike through his parking spot and around to the back of the house to park beside the back porch.”

His eyes narrowed in on me as if I had just lied to him. “Your bike? But your mother said you were seventeen--”

“So? My friends and I still like to ride our bikes. There’s nothing wrong with that!” My anger startled my mom and she suddenly noticed that I was standing with them in our large kitchen that felt like it was growing smaller with every passing second.

“Anna, your father’s missing!” She sobbed.

Her words drowned out the rest of my insult that, “maybe you should get your rolly-polly butt on an exercise bike sometime and try some cardio!”

What? What did Mom just say? Dad’s missing? That’s not possible…how could that be? His car is still in the driveway! As if she could read my mind just by looking at me, “He didn’t make it into the house last night.” Tears spilled from her red-rimmed eyes as she continued to sob. “His car door was open...keys on the ground...cell phone still in the car.” She gasped between each wracking sob.

Pushing past the fat old detective, I ran to my mother’s side and let her wrap me in her arms like she did when I was little, needing her love and comfort. “But why? Who would have done this to him? To us?” I whispered into her belly and my unborn baby brother.

“We’re trying to figure this out.” He interrupted my thoughts. “Did your father have any enemies that you know of, Anna?”

I shook my head in disbelief. Dad...have enemies? That just wasn’t possible! Everyone loves Dad with his thick Irish accent, strawberry hair, and incredible emerald green eyes. Mom had instantly fallen in love with him when they met their sophomore year of college.

Dad was studying to be an architect and Mom had changed her major more times than anyone could count. It was love at first sight. Convincing her to follow her dreams, Mom dropped out of school to pursue her passion for painting.

Grandma Gigi had been really pissed at first, but Dad smoothed it all out. Gigi wasn’t crazy about her debutant daughter falling in love with a scrappy architecture student from Ireland, but soon, she loved him just like everyone else did and before long, Mom and Dad were married and having me, then Jimmy, and now baby Marcus was on the way.

Life was perfect, or at least it had been until I woke up from one nightmare only to find out that I was still trapped inside of another nightmare, but this one was real.

“Was Wilson working late last night?”

Mom bristled at the detective mentioning Dad’s given name. “W.S.,” She snapped at him. “he likes to be called W.S. and not Wilson-Sampson and yes, he was working late. He has been working late every night for the last two weeks, getting ready for a huge presentation for the Nikomoto Building that his firm is working on.”

“I already told you, Detective Tenney, I fell asleep after he called to tell me he was on his way home. It wasn’t until I woke up and found his car and keys…that I knew that something was terribly wrong.” Her lower lip quivered as she fought to hold back more tears.

At least the fat fraggle listened before scribbling something else into his little notebook. “Mrs. McLoughlin has W.S. done anything like this before?” Mom shook her head as blond hair escaped from her hasty bun and spilled over her beautiful face.

The detective considered her lack of response and decided to amp up his next question. “Did your husband only marry you so he could stay in this country?” Mom gasped in shock. She looked like his accusation was a slap in her face, but I exploded.

“How dare you?” I roared. “My father’s missing! You should be out there looking for him, instead of badgering my helpless pregnant mother!”

“Well, technically he isn’t missing until twenty-four hours have passed, but since it does appear suspicious,” he closed his notebook with a flip of his thick wrist, “we’ll go ahead and start a missing persons’ file on him. The evidence techs should be finished and out of the way in another hour or two, so I’ll be in touch as soon as we know something more.” He tipped his head at Mom and me, while he continued to look down his nose at us.

Jeez, what was wrong with this guy? Does he just hate happy families? Or was it the fact that Dad was a successful foreigner, married to a beautiful American wife with whom he has wonderful and loving children? I really didn’t care what his problem was, I was just so smurfing glad to see that fat fraggle go!

***

After the cops were gone, Mom called Grandma Gigi, while I nervously paced around the living room. Every time I sat down, I was so fidgety that I popped right back up, even though my legs trembled, threatening to drop me onto the floor in a crumpled heap.

What were we going to do? My mind raced with dark thoughts that I quickly pushed away. Dad was going to be okay. He just had to be. Mom needed him, Jimmy needed him…we all needed him.

Consumed with my thoughts, I didn’t notice Mom came in from the kitchen.

“Gigi’s going to try to catch the next flight home.” Her voice was raw from crying, it didn’t sound like my mother and I jumped when she started to speak.

“What?” I was so lost in my own thought that I missed what she had said. Holding back my tears, my eyelashes blinked faster than normal, but it was hopeless. I couldn’t fight it anymore and the flood gates suddenly opened.

Mom quickly pulled me into a tight embrace. Well, as tight as she could with baby Marcus between us as I sobbed in her warm arms. “Shhhhh,” she soothed me and pressed a kiss to my freckly forehead. “It will be okay. Grandma Gigi is calling the airport right now and going to fly standby. I’m positive the police are going to find him, Anna. We are going to get him back, I promise.”

I nodded my head, hoping she was right. Dad was the center of our family, of our universe. He was the person that kept everything together. Without him…….

My mind trailed off. I couldn’t bring myself to finish that thought. There wouldn’t be any ‘without him’ because I wouldn’t let it happen!

The cops better know what they were doing because we needed Dad back.

Even if Grandma Gigi caught the very next flight out of Tahiti, she still wouldn’t be back in Atlanta until tomorrow at the earliest.

Glancing up into Mom’s face, I was startled by the deep purple marks under her red puffy eyes. She looked awful. That happy glow that she’d been wearing for weeks was gone. Now, she just looked tired and worn out. This stress was not good for her or the baby.

Okay, Anna, you need to get a grip. Mom needed me to be strong right now. It just wasn’t a good time to fall to pieces, so I wiped away my tears. “Why don’t you call Dr. Mueller and see if it’s alright for you to take a mild sedative while I make you a cup of tea and some toast?”

She agreed and quickly called her obstetrician. With his approval, it only took half a tab of a sleepy pill and a few sips of tea to have her drifting off to bed.

***
The house was quiet. It was unsettling since our home was usually filled with laughter and smiles.

Jimmy had poked his head out of his bedroom when I was helping mom up the stairs. His bright eyes looked worried. I didn’t know how much he’d heard of the earlier conversation from down stairs, so I forced a smile and told him to play quietly in his room while mom got some sleep.

Amazingly, Jimmy didn’t argue. He nodded his red head and disappeared back into his room.

However, the silence didn’t last long.

Cassy showed up moments after Mom lay down for a nap. “Oh my goodness! Anna, are you alright? I rushed over here as soon as I heard about your dad.” Short black curls bounced around her caramel face as she franticly burst through the front door.

“Shhhh!” I shushed her with a frown. “Mom just fell asleep and I don’t want you to wake her up.” Cassy pulled me into a tight hug. I fought really hard not to cry again, but when I felt her warm tears hitting my bare shoulder and streaking down my back, I sighed as a lonely tear excaped my lashes and rolled down my cheek.

Cassy and I had been best friends ever since her family moved to Atlanta when we were both in first grade. The Morgan’s lived just four houses down the street. I thought when she sprouted up three more inches right after Christmas last year and then suddenly grew boobs and curvy hips almost overnight, that she wouldn’t want to hang out with someone as developmentally challenged as me, but that didn’t stop her from being my BFF.

“What happened? What did the cops say? Do they know anything? What are you going to do?” It was just like Cassy to spit out a million questions in a split second, while never stopping to take a breath. She kept going on and on and on.

“Cassy! Stop! Breathe!” I waited until I saw her take a huge lung full of air to answer her. “We don’t know anything yet.”

“Well, what about your dad’s family, do they know anything?” She asked and immediately winced.

Dad’s family was a touchy subject in our house. “You know that Dad doesn’t talk to his family. He’s never been back to Ireland since he met Mom. So, they couldn’t possibly know anything about this. He never even mentions them.”

A few years ago, I confided in her that I wanted a relationship with Dad’s family, but that was impossible when he didn’t have one with them.

***
My head pounded. It felt like I had stuck it into a bucket of quicksand that was sucking me into a deep dark hole. I rubbed my temples and only closed my eyes for a second when I fell asleep.

Sometime during the afternoon, Jimmy made his way downstairs and curled up beside me. His little body curled against mine as we slept on the couch. It was one of those fitful sleeps that your body drifts to from pure mental exhaustion.

It wasn’t until the phone rang that I jumped up and noticed that the sun was already setting, casting a fiery red and orange glow across the living room. What was going on? I was still disoriented when the telephone suddenly rang again.

Oh smurf, where the heck is the phone? Why can’t anyone in this house ever put the handset back into its charger? Frantically running around the living room, I found it buried under a pile of trashy tabloid magazines. Uh oh, it was probably me who didn’t return the stupid thing to its stupid charger.

Fumbling with the telephone and trying to answer it before it quit ringing; I turned it over and read the information on the caller ID screen: International Call Ireland Code 353. Ireland? Could that grumpy old detective have contacted dad’s parents? And could they really be calling here? The phone trembled in my hands when I answered it.

“Hello?” It would be so embarrassing to have a squeaky voice the first time I spoke to my grandparents, but right now I really didn’t care.

“Anna?” His voice was barely a whisper, but I knew right way that it was him. It didn’t sound like the evil hissing from my nightmare last night, but instead he sounded like the warm affectionate and loving man that he had always been.

“Daddy!” My scream woke up the entire house. Mom’s heavy footsteps pounded on the stairs as she rushed towards my voice. “Dad, where are you? What happened?”

The phone line crackled and I held my breath, afraid that we would be disconnected, but we weren’t. “Oh my sweet Anna, I need you to be brave and to watch over your mother and brothers for me.”

“Dad, NO! We need you, Daddy!” I sobbed. “Where are you? Did someone take you back to Ireland--”

“Yes,” was the last word that I heard him say before the phone line went dead in my hands.

Tears and snot were dripping off my chin when Mom finally reached where I had collapsed onto the living room floor. She pried the phone out of my hand and punched *69, but a curt female voice said the number could not be reached as dialed.

“Damn it!” Mom cursed. Mom never curses, but this time she did. Cassy tucked her book under her arm as she looped her forearms underneath mine to help me up off the floor, since Mom couldn’t bend over. “Honey, what did he say?”

My head was spinning around in circles. “I’m gonna puke!” Cassy dropped me into the nearest chair and stumbled out of the way. She might be my best friend and would do anything for me, but she drew the line at vomit.

Nobody noticed that Jimmy was standing at the edge of the living room watching us with wide, scared, tear-filled green eyes until a tiny sniffle broke the silence.

The sedative the doctor allowed Mom to take earlier had worn off leaving her refreshed and ready to take control. She started to bark out orders. “Jimmy honey, can you go get Anna a cold glass of water?” He nodded his strawberry head and scampered off to the kitchen.

“Cassy darling, the detective left his card on the dining room table. Would you please fetch it for me?” I loved how Mom could ask you to do something all while still making you feel special. I sat there trembling, as I watched them go. I hadn’t even realized that Cassy was still here. She must have curled up with a book while the rest of us slept.

As soon as they were out of the room Mom turned her clear blue eyes on me. “Sweetheart, I need you to tell me everything Daddy said!”

“The caller ID said it was an international call from Ireland, but it didn’t list a phone number. I thought it might be...” How was I going to tell her the names of my grandparents when mom and dad never talked about them?

Would now be a good time to confess that I’d snooped through their things a few years ago looking for answers to our family secrets? “...I thought it might be Rosy or Stonebrook McLoughlin.”

Mom’s slight gasp was from surprise, but not anger, at least not yet. “But it was Dad! Someone took him back to Ireland…something’s wrong, he told me to watch over you and the boys. It sounded almost like he was trying to telling me he’s not coming back…and then… then the phone line went dead. Mom, I want Daddy to come back home!”

She kissed my forehead and when Cassy handed her the blue and white business card she quickly dialed Detective Tenney’s phone number. Pacing around the room, she waited for him to answer.

“Detective Tenney? This is Jennie McLoughlin...We just got a phone call from Ireland...NO!...I told you…He didn’t run away...Yes, I’m sure! I think my husband has been kidnapped...Well, do you want to know where to look for him or not? Fine!” When she hung up the phone, her anger was boiling over.

I didn’t need to hear that fat fraggle’s responses to follow the conversation. The police believed that Dad had simply walked out and left us. He hadn’t abandoned his family like other men do. He just wouldn’t do that. The detective would continue his investigation, but obviously this case wasn’t going to be high on their list of priorities.

“Well, that really didn’t help now did it? The police suck!” I muttered.

Mom’s suntanned face suddenly looked pale and I regretted making her worry, but as soon as the idea popped in my head I just blurted it out. Yep, that’s me, speak now and think later! “Let me go to Ireland!” Mom, Jimmy and Cassy all stared at me as if I had just grown a second head.

Silence!

“I can file a missing person’s report over there and help the local police find Dad!” I knew that it was crazy, but what else could we do? I felt completely helpless just sitting here. The local cops didn’t give a crap about a foreigner that suddenly turned up missing, so it only made sense to go where he was to find him, but would Mom actually go for it?

“Let you go to Ireland?” Mom gasped.

“That’s smurfing crazy!” Cassy chimed in, so totally not helping at all.

“Mom, I know that it’s really far away, but maybe I could stay with Rosy and Stonebrook while the police look for Dad and I know that if you weren’t like a gazillion months pregnant and ready to pop that you would be going with me too, but trust me, Mom...I can do this.”

She got up and paced around the dim living room. No one had bothered to turn on any of the lights after the sun went down and we all remained in the dark until Jimmy got up and flipped the switch on the far wall near the doorway.

“I don’t know, Anna,” she sighed as she stopped pacing and turned towards me. “How do you even know about the McLoughlin’s?”

Crap! I had hoped she wouldn’t ask me that, but I wasn’t that lucky and now was not the time to be honest. If she knew the truth she would never let me go, and there would be nobody giving a smurf’s ass if Dad lived or died...I had to go…I had to find him!

“I found an old photo in Dad’s closet that had their address on the back of it...and I’ve written them several letters over the years.” Well, that wasn’t a total lie. I did find the picture and I did write the letters, but I always chickened out before actually mailing them.

Mom rubbed her ginormous belly as she waddled around the room. “It’s not a bad idea...”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth I jumped out of my chair until she finished with, “when Gigi get’s home, I’ll book the two of you tickets--”

Wait? No, what did she say? “But Grandma Gigi won’t be back home for days--” I protested.

“Well, I’m sorry Anna, but you’re too young to go to Ireland alone,” Mom cut me off. “If you want to go to help your father, you just have to wait until Gigi gets home!”