The detective wore a badge tucked into his front shirt pocket. The notebook rested untouched in his lap, and he sat with his hands folded over his paunch.
“I have three girls myself, Mrs. Williams.”
She rubbed her hands together, as if she were washing them under water.
“Is there anything you have forgotten to tell us? Is there a . . . boyfriend?”
I drew back. He had probably been waiting to ask that question the entire time. I wanted to cry because secretly, I had started to entertain such a possibility. Erica was getting older. Surely she was starting to have crushes. I thought of the lipstick she had started to wear. I had even bought her a new tube after throwing away the dirty one she had found.
“I said that’s enough.”
“It’s alright, Civil. No boyfriend,” Mrs. Williams said. Her voice sounded listless and faraway.
“Alright.” He tightened his hands over his belly. “Have you taken any special trips?”
“Special trips?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I took them to the beach.”
“Which beach?”
“Down in the Panhandle.”
It was too far, but maybe she had hitched a ride? She might not have realized how far it was. I thought back to a night when I’d gone over her math homework with her. Her reading skills were still behind, but she’d been revealing a talent with numbers. She already knew her times tables, learning them so quickly that the teacher had moved her on to simple division. She was such an intelligent girl. I hoped that intelligence was helping her survive whatever she was going through.
The detective didn’t write anything down, just studied my face for a few long seconds. I got the impression he was wondering about my role in this. I was their nurse, not family.
After he left, I helped Mrs. Williams straighten the room. If I kept my hands busy, I could endure the slow ticking of the clock. Mrs. Williams told me to leave. I knew she wanted to be alone, but I didn’t want to be alone. I could go talk to Lou about the verdict, but what did it even mean if something had happened to Erica? I was hungry again, the toast barely making a dent in my stomach. I could go talk to Irene at the diner. It had been so long since she and I had been friends. Alicia was at work. Ty was out searching. I wanted to hug Mrs. Williams, share in this burden with her. Who else loved those girls the way she, Mace, and I did? It was something rare to share such devotion over another human being. I perched on the arm of the sofa; it was a rude way to sit, but I wasn’t thinking about that.
“Civil.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“How’s your mother?”
I didn’t say anything. I had spoken to her twice in the weeks she’d been gone. I had not really missed her before then, but I sure needed her now. I needed her to come home and help me through this.
“She’s fine.”
“Is she? You ought to check on her.”
“Check on her?”
“Baby, I know about them blues. I been meaning to tell you. I seen her at the hospital that day waiting on you in the lobby. I seen something in her eyes. I know it cause I been there. I was there for a long time after Constance died.”
I shouldn’t have been sitting on the arm of her sofa, but I did not move and she did not correct me. We sat there silently, each lost on our own islands of sadness.
FORTY-SIX
I called Mama that night, and she arrived in Montgomery the next morning. Aunt Ros drove this time. They entered the house in a sheath of perfume. Mama was wearing Aunt Ros’s clothes, a black dress with blue flowers and large hoop earrings. The first thing I noticed was that she was not wearing her usual red lipstick. And she did not go immediately out to her studio to check on her canvases. She and Aunt Ros fluttered around the house talking loudly and teasing each other. They connected a long telephone cord and set up a call bank in the den, spending half the evening making phone calls to the same people I had already called. I sat on the sofa in my pajamas, worried they were tying up the phone line when Ty might be trying to call me. He and Mace had gone out again to walk the woods on Hunter Road.
Daddy came in with a plate of hot dogs. “I made the slaw myself.”
“I don’t know how y’all get any nutrition around here. This got to be the worst house of cooks in all of Alabama,” Aunt Ros said.
“Don’t knock my coleslaw until you tried it.”
Mama laughed and both Daddy and I turned sharply. We had not heard her laugh like that in a long time.
“Y’all so jittery. We are going to find her,” Mama said, mistaking our surprise for nerves.
“Mama, what you and Aunt Ros been doing in Memphis?”
“Girl, your auntie crazy. She hold meetings in her house where the women talk about the bad stuff in their lives. Then they write it down and drop it in her fireplace.”
Daddy set up four TV trays for the food.
“Then she start this meditation where she give them a piece of paper with a chant on it. You know they don’t bit more know what the hell she got them reading on that paper.”
“They trust me, June. I’m licensed.”
“You licensed, alright. Certified crazy.”
The two of them laughed again, and I could see how easily Mama had fallen into her sister’s embrace. She had gotten something in Memphis that her art studio could not give her, something that Daddy and I could not give her. Perhaps Aunt Ros had given her some kind of medicine. The legal kind, though I wouldn’t put the illegal kind past her. Daddy had never approved of pharmaceutics for this kind of trouble, but my aunt was defiant like that. I was still studying the two of them when the telephone rang.
I pushed aside my tray.
“I got it, baby. Hello?” Mama listened for a moment, then passed the handset to me. “It’s Ty.”
I grabbed the phone. “Ty?”
“Hey. I just got word from the police. They found Erica.”
“Is she hurt?” I rubbed my chest and could feel my heart beating.
“They say she fine.”
“Where they find her?”
“They say she went back to the old house where they used to live.”
“I thought y’all checked there. Nobody checked there?”
“Course we checked there. Two, three times. She must have hid from us when she heard us coming up the drive.”
“Where is she now?”
“They took her down to the station.”
“The station? She’s not a criminal.” I tried to calm myself. “Do you know which station they took her to?”
Mama wrapped her arms around my chest from behind and I wanted to lean into that unexpected hug. I needed the arms of my mama so badly. I put my hand over the receiver. “They found her. She’s fine.”
I had to put on some clothes, so by the time I got to the precinct, Erica was gone. Mace had just left with her. According to the lady at the desk, Mace had gotten fed up with the questioning and asked if she was required to stay. When they said no, he took her by the hand and walked out.
I drove to Dixie Court so fast, I prayed I wouldn’t get in another car accident. Cars filled the street, and I struggled to find a parking space. Inside the apartment, the living room was crowded. I’d never thought of it as particularly large, but with all of those people in there, the room appeared small and dark. It was mostly neighbors—men who had searched with Mace, women who had brought food to the searchers, the policewoman who had found her. They sat in the dining chairs. They stood, hands in pockets. Lou and Ty sat next to each other on the couch, and it was an odd sight, because I had never seen Lou inside the Williamses’ apartment. Mace sat on the sofa with an arm wound tightly around a visibly exhausted Mrs. Williams. When I walked into the room, they all looked at me, but I could only focus on Erica. I rushed toward her, and my nostrils filled with the scent of her. I took her face in my hands, scratching away with my thumbnail the crust at the edge of her lip.