The Last Joke

The rivers were already freezing in September. I jumped into the water without even taking off my shoes, walking straight toward the dot that marked my daughter's location. The water rose to my chest almost immediately, and I shivered.

The soil on the riverbed was slick and squelchy. One wrong step, and I slipped under. Murky water rushed over my face, but I forced myself up and shouted, "Tina! Tina, where are you?" My throat was squeezing up tight.

Someone on the riverbank shouted, "Someone jumped into the river!" Some people were taking videos. Others were probably taking photos.

I could not care less. All I could think of was Tina's smile before she left home this morning.

Tina was terrified of water. Even regular baths took a lot of convincing. She would never have come to a river on her own.

I bent down and searched through the mud again and again. My fingers dug through the cold, sticky soil. No matter how hard I tried, all I pulled up was sludge.

Every time blood trickled out of my wound, the river washed it clean.

Then, my fingers touched something soft. My heart sank, but with both hands, I grasped that item tightly and yanked it out of the mud. It was a pink strawberry bag. Tina's bag.

The bag was already drenched and weighed as heavy as a stone. With trembling hands, I unzipped it. But my daughter was not inside. There was only a drawing book, its pages nearly falling apart from the water.

"Tina!" I roared at the river. The sound that tore from my throat barely sounded human.

The only answer was the rustle of leaves and trash drifting across the water. Fear was tightening its grip around my neck, and it was threatening to suffocate me. I quickly called Donald, but he took his own sweet time picking it up.

"Where is my daughter? Where is she, Donald?"

There was a pause, and then it was followed by a lazy laugh. "Hey, it's hide and seek. She has to hide better."

"Are you mad? This is a child you're messing with!" I was shivering, perhaps both from the cold and rage.

"Oh, stop yelling. Here's the address. Come over."

My phone buzzed. The address was a hotel. I gripped my phone so tightly that my knuckles turned white. Then I got into the car and slammed my foot on the gas.

Twenty minutes later, I flung the door of room 8012 open. "Tina!" I barged in like a wild animal, my eyes burning red. The room lights were off, and the curtains were drawn. Only a dim, yellow lamp illuminated the bedside table.

Clothes were scattered across the ground. A man's shirt and a woman's silk dress were entangled. On the bed, Claire was scrambling to cover herself up with the blanket.

Donald leaned lazily against the headboard, his upper body bare. Red marks dotted his neck.

The moment Claire saw me, panic flashed across her face. But very quickly, she tightened her bathrobe, got out of bed, and pointed at me angrily. "Are you out of your mind? You shouldn't be here! It's Tina's first day of school! You should be at the kindergarten, not stalking me! Are you crazy?"

The humiliation of betrayal and the fury of being deceived was making my temples throb, but this was not the time and place to vent. I did not even look at that woman.

My eyes stayed fixed on Donald. Then I enunciated every word. "One last time. Where is Tina?"