I'll See You Again Part 3

"They're just being silly," Diane said. "They're playing." But her words were slurred, almost incoherent. I a.s.sumed that they were on the road heading home, pulled over somewhere.

"Are you okay? Where are you?" I kept asking.

I couldn't get an answer.

"Let me talk to Emma again," I said.

Diane continued talking, her sentences muddled, and I looked around for my cell phone to call Warren. My strong, capable husband could take care of this. He'd talk to his sister and straighten it out. Diane hung up just as Warren walked in the door.

"I just spoke to your sister and she's slurring her words. She sounds drunk," I said, growing more nervous.

"Impossible," he said.

"I know, but she sounded strange. Maybe she had a seizure. Or a stroke."

He grabbed the phone and called her right back. She answered and Warren immediately knew something was wrong. She couldn't have a coherent conversation. Scared as he was, he went into action. He would go over and get them.

"Stay right where you are," I heard him say. "Do not move. Do you understand, Diane? Do not get back in the car. Do not move."

He asked to speak to Emma, trying to figure out exactly where they were.

"Tell me what signs you see on the road," he said to our eight-year-old. "Read me all the words you can."

Instead of getting overwrought, I felt unexpectedly calm. A problem, yes, but Warren would handle it. Diane must have made it to a rest stop, which meant other adults would be around to comfort the children. I pictured them at McDonald's, many people nearby, the girls in safe hands. Someone was surely helping them.

Warren listened as Emma carefully read from the road signs, spelling out the words she didn't know. My good girl. She wasn't crying anymore and apparently sounded composed. As near as Warren could tell, they had stopped at a rest area near the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown.

"I'm on my way," he said, rus.h.i.+ng toward the door. He called his dad, asking him to come with him. If Diane couldn't drive, they'd need two people to get the kids and the Windstar back home. As he left the house, he called back to me, "Call the police. Call 911."

I went over the conversations in my mind again and concluded that Diane had suffered a seizure. That was the only reasonable explanation. I knew something about seizures because Danny had been struck with one out of the blue not long ago. And one of my oldest friends from nursery school was regularly coping with her husband's seizures from a brain tumor. I had heard all the symptoms. Diane's seemed to fit the pattern.

I punched in the emergency police number and blurted out the story. We needed help. My sister-in-law was driving my kids home from a camping trip, and something seemed to be wrong.

"I think she's sick or having a medical emergency," I said.

I stressed that there were five children in the car. Five children. As far as I knew, the car had pulled over at a rest area in Tarrytown, but I couldn't say exactly where.

The cop listened politely but responded laconically. "You don't know where they are?" he asked.

"No. From what my daughter said, they're at a rest stop in Tarrytown," I repeated. And then for good measure, I added, "She's eight years old." Whether I meant Emma's age to give validity to the report or express the urgency of the situation, I'm still not sure.

"Well, you'll have to call the police in Tarrytown," the cop said. "Maybe they can help. It's outside our area." He gave me a phone number to try.

I hung up and suddenly felt my sense of calm disappear as a wave of helplessness crashed over me. Call Tarrytown? I needed to rally help however I could, but I realized how vague my story sounded. At a loss, I called Melissa and filled her in, telling the disconnected details one more time. Brad's brother was a cop, so maybe he could give some suggestions. What was I supposed to say to the police to get their attention?

"I'm coming right over," Melissa said.

"You don't have to," I a.s.sured her.

I tried to reach my cousin Liz, who lived near Tarrytown. Maybe she could get to the car quickly. But I just got her voice mail. I called my mother in New Jersey to see if she knew how to get in touch with Liz.

"Should I come to you?" my mom asked, her voice quavering slightly.

"No, Mom, everything is going to be okay. The girls are at a rest stop. I'm sure somebody is taking care of them. There must be a lot of people around. Warren is on his way there right now."

I tried the number in Tarrytown and got transferred a couple of times, repeating my story to anyone who would listen. I got through to a cop who asked me my license plate number and registration. I couldn't remember the number. Maybe I was more anxious than I realized. He couldn't help without the information, and I hung up in frustration.

Melissa showed up at my door and came into the living room. She knew how to keep her house perfect, but right now, even she couldn't sort out this mess. After my call to her, Brad had called 911 for me. Eventually, the police went to the only big rest area on a highway in Tarrytown, but didn't find anything that matched our description.

Melissa called Diane's cell phone. No answer. I didn't know that Warren had been trying the number over and over.

"Diane's probably in an ambulance," I told Melissa again. "I think she had a seizure."

I slipped into a practical gear, antic.i.p.ating what I had to do. With Emma's play and Alyson and Katie's activities, the week ahead was already crammed with responsibilities. But if Diane was in the hospital, I'd pitch in and take care of Erin and Bryan. That's what family did. The whole thing seemed like an inconvenience and maybe a good story to tell later.

What else can I do? I wondered. Danny had been the last one with them, so maybe he knew something. Diane and the children had planned to leave the campsite first, with Danny staying back to pack up the camper. But everything seemed unclear now. I didn't have Danny's cell phone number, so I called another relative to get it. When I finally reached Danny, he sounded groggy. He had gotten home a while ago and fallen asleep before he had to go to work that night.

"Diane's not there?" he asked sleepily. "She should have been home by now. I'm going to go find her. I know the route she takes."

Warren called me from the car. He'd contacted his friend Doug Hayden because he was a lawyer and a judge in town and knew a lot of people. Warren had made Doug one of his first calls, thinking he might have some advice. But n.o.body knew where to go. Diane wasn't at the rest stop where she was supposed to be, where Warren had implored her to stay.

By now Melissa's husband, Brad, had come to the house, too. Not knowing what was going on, Jeannine called from Lord & Taylor and started describing a dress she was trying on. Instead of giving an opinion, I told her what was happening.

"I'm coming over," she said. "I'll try these later."

"You don't have to," I insisted. "Melissa's here. We're fine."

"Too late," she said. "I'm already heading to the parking lot."

What was going on? It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and my friends were interrupting their plans to come over. I couldn't understand why. Maybe Diane had gotten sick, but I kept telling myself that everything would be fine. I wouldn't allow myself to see the urgency that other people did.

Una, the wife of our lawyer-judge friend Doug, walked in at some point.

"Oh gosh, what are you doing here?" I asked when I saw her.

"Doug told me about Warren's calls," she said. "I thought I'd better come here."

I started to get increasingly anxious. Jeannine, Melissa, Una-why were all these people coming over? Was I missing something?

Everybody seemed to be on their cell phones. Melissa kept trying to call Diane's cell. Una spoke to Doug and tried to get updates. Meanwhile, Warren was at the police barracks in Tarrytown. At his suggestion, the police were trying to tap into Diane's cell phone, and they needed Danny's permission.

Somehow, word came that there had been an accident. More calls, more confusion. I was uneasy, but I still wasn't panicked. Car accidents happened all the time. The girls would be scared and probably shaken up a bit, but nothing we couldn't fix.

"I know Emma broke her leg," I said, hopping around the room. "I know it, I just know it."

For Emma to have broken her leg would have been karmic. I'm a terrible liar, but I'd needed a dramatic excuse to get out of a commitment a few weeks earlier, and I'd fibbed and said that Emma had broken her leg. I'd felt guilty at the time. Now I was convinced it was coming back to haunt me. If Emma had a broken leg from this accident, it would be my fault. "Emma broke her leg," I moaned, worried about retribution. But no, everyone was going to be all right. Mild injuries. A broken leg. We'd deal with it.

Then my mind jumped way beyond that. "Please don't let anyone be brain-dead," I whispered.