He already knows this, I’m sure. He saw my keynote—besides, you can find it all through a simple Google search, an archived news broadcast, one of the hundreds of articles that have been written about that awful March night. I imagine he just wants to hear it all in my own words, unscripted, so I tell him about how I put Mason to bed, like I always do, around seven o’clock. How I read him a story, though I’m not sure which one it was. How I had turned on his night-light, blew him a kiss from the hallway, and closed the door behind me.
“My husband and I stayed up for another few hours after that,” I say. “We watched some TV, had a couple glasses of wine. I poked my head in to check on him around eleven, saw that he was still sleeping, and then went to bed.”
“Did you hear anything strange during the night? Any noises?”
“No. I used to be a very heavy sleeper.”
“Used to be?”
“Not so much anymore,” I say, but I don’t elaborate.
“So your husband could have gotten up, and you wouldn’t have noticed?”
I shoot him a look, my eyebrow cocked. “He was questioned extensively, obviously. I mean, yeah, I guess he could have, but Ben wouldn’t hurt our son. He had no reason to. We were happy.”
“What about the neighbors?” Waylon asks. “Did they see anything?”
I shake my head, sipping silently.
“And what time did you notice he was gone?”
I’m quiet, replaying that morning again in my mind. How I had woken up early, around six, the way I always did. How I had brewed my coffee, puttered around the kitchen. Wasted two precious hours scrolling through Instagram and reading the newspaper and scrambling eggs before I had ever even thought to check on him. Because that’s the thing about time: It feels endless in the mornings, the day stretched out before you like a long yawn. I remember actually feeling relieved as it continued to drag on, slow and uneventful, no noises erupting from beneath his bedroom door. No screams or whines or cries. I was grateful that he was sleeping in, that I had a few more moments of quiet than normal. Of precious time to myself.
I didn’t realize that the second I poked my head into his bedroom, I would soon be racing against it. Begging it to stop.
“A little after eight.”
“Any clues?” he asks, a burning intensity in his eyes. I look down at his drink, notice the way he’s twirling his glass in rhythmic circles. “Prints? DNA?”
“An open window,” I say. “I’m almost positive I closed it the night before. Sometimes we opened it, to let the fresh air in, but I never would have—”
I stop, exhale, take another drink.
“They found our fingerprints on the windowsill, obviously, but nobody else’s. There was a partial shoeprint in the mud outside his window—it had rained that morning—but not enough to glean any real meaning from it.”
“Estimated shoe size?”
“They think it may have been somewhere between a size nine and a size eleven, but we had workers, too. Lots of people who could have left it. The exterminator came the day before and sprayed in that exact spot, so we don’t even know if he’s the one—”
“You keep saying he,” Waylon interrupts. “Do you know the person who took him is a he?”
“Well, no,” I admit. “But the vast majority of stranger kidnappings are committed by men.”
“Well, the alternative to a stranger kidnapping is the kidnapper being someone in the family,” he says. “Someone close.”
“Yes,” I say, biting my cheek. “And the vast majority of parental kidnappings are committed by women. The mother. So why don’t we get that out of the way right now?”
I look at Waylon, my eyes unflinching.
“I didn’t hurt my son. I didn’t do anything to him. I’m trying to find the person who did.”
“That’s … not what I was implying,” Waylon responds, his hands raised in surrender. He looks genuinely uncomfortable, once again surprised at my sudden outburst, like that time on the plane, so I simply nod and turn back toward the bar, my cheeks burning as I scan all the different bottles of amber liquid glistening in the dim light.
“Is there anything else you think is worth mentioning?” he asks, trying to gently nudge us along again. “Clues, I mean?”
“Yes,” I say, a squeeze in my chest. “They found his stuffed animal when they were searching the neighborhood. A dinosaur he used to sleep with.”