As a child, I was a messy little thing, always leaving my toys strewn about the yard. I had so many dolls that I loved, but I never took good care of them.
We lived in a big, run-down farmhouse at the edge of an evergreen forest – a beautiful place that became menacing after dark.
To try and get me to be more careful with my things, my mother had a rhyme she liked to recite:
When you go into the woods,
Be careful of the maybes,
they might just steal your babies,
or maybe they won’t…
I would laugh, and run around picking up my dolls, but at night I might lie awake, thinking of this. I would worry - did I forget one of my babies in the yard? Would the maybes come? Any noise outside troubled me on those nights.
Once, with friends there for a sleepover, I forgot to pick up my dolls. I realized this with a start just as I was falling asleep. I went to the window, overlooking the back yard. I could see my babies down there, doll eyes shining in the moonlight. I felt terrible for my oversight but would never dare go out there now. I finally fell asleep with the rhyme in my head.
The next morning, I ran outside in my pj’s at first light, picking up the damp dolls in a frenzy. Two were missing. I cried to my mother; did she take them? But she just shook her head. It was the maybes.
With the police lights shining a cadence on the windows, I remember that rhyme and shake. The old farmhouse I inherited didn’t seem like home now. And the questions from the police went unanswered as the words looped around and around in my head. I had only run inside for an instant, to turn off the oven. Lily was gone, her bassinet empty. Leaves blew around my ankles as I ran and called, ran and screamed.
It’s been a week since she disappeared. I know now it’s true – it was the maybes.