With a little show of ceremony, Cate pushed the doorbell, then knocked gently with her knuckles on the door of 1C. We waited. No response. I pressed my hands against the glass to peer inside. It was shadowy in this first-floor apartment. Dishes stacked in the sink, beaded with water. A pair of sneakers by the back door. Men’s sneakers, large and ugly.
“Wait a minute—” I began.
The door opened. “Can I help you?” A stranger. He looked at each one of us in turn. He was holding his face in a polite half smile, but his blue eyes were harder, already retreating.
“We’re looking for Angela Grassi,” I said at once. “Is she home?”
“Never heard of her,” he said. “Sorry.”
“What about her daughter, Gina?” He started to withdraw into his house, but I kept talking, my urgency like a hand shot through the door. “Do you know them? Do they live here in Freshwater? Maybe you’ve heard of them—”
“You got the wrong place. I’ve lived here a long time,” the man said. “A long time.” He glanced behind him, any excuse to get away from us.
“Look at me,” I snapped. I locked eyes with him, digging in, letting that world-tilting sense of vertigo rush through me as I reached inside his brain. “Tell me if you know the Grassis,” I said.
“I don’t know them,” he said at once.
“Tell me if you’ve met a woman named Margaret Morrow,” I said. Phrasing questions like this—commands, not queries—felt more natural to me now. Like people’s minds were opened drawers I could rummage through, then close again.
“I haven’t met her.”
“Tell me if you’ve heard of the Grassis.”
“No. Never.”
Cate’s hand on my shoulder. “Morrow, this guy doesn’t know anything. He’s just a tenant,” she whispered. “Junior gave us the wrong address. Let’s go.”
“Shit.” I broke the gaze reluctantly, and he shook his head like he wasn’t sure what had just happened, inhaling shakily. He was already closing the door, and I suppressed the urge to slip in behind him, run through the rooms screaming for my mother until I made her materialize by sheer willpower and want. But I just stood with Cate and Isabelle until the door was shut, a click so final I could feel it in my bones. My mother wasn’t here. Maybe she wasn’t anywhere. I’d had weeks to accept this conclusion. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But I felt that loss, and I realized I’d have to feel it every day if I couldn’t find her. I’d never get used to a world without my mother.
We split up and tried every door in the complex. Some people didn’t answer; the ones who did had never heard of the Grassis, seeming just as confused as the man from 1C. We returned to the Volvo, connected by a grim frustration.
“What now?” Isabelle asked.
I tried to push my grief aside. “This is the first time Junior’s address didn’t work.” I spoke with an assuredness that became firmer. “He was going to get an address wrong eventually. The Grassis could still be here in Freshwater. Or there’s someone who knows where they went next. We’re just going to have to look, that’s all.”
* * *
The coffee was stale, the burger greasy and limp. But I was hungrier than I’d realized. All three of us gained a little life as we ate. “I feel like Junior’s somehow behind this,” Cate said. “His one last grand gesture. His one last fuck-you to the three of us.” She swung her middle finger high, then dropped her hand.
“In fairness,” I said, “he shared this address with us before we kicked him out.”
Cate took a long sip of her drink, licked her lips unselfconsciously, a quick glimmer of her tongue. She leaned back. “Do you miss him?” she asked frankly.
I stalled with a long gulp of bitter coffee. “Junior was the first one to help me out. He’s like—he’s like my scarecrow. So, yeah. I miss him a little. I know it’s stupid.”
“Like in Wizard of Oz? So what does that make me? Who was the second…？” Cate thought for a second, then gave a quick smile. “Right. The one without a heart. And that makes you Dorothy, the girl who’s trying to get back home. Sorry that we’re ruining that for you. You’re farther from home than ever.”
“I’m not far from home. Not really.” At her quizzical look, I stammered: “I mean—sure, I won’t ever return to Chicago. Maybe I won’t ever work for a research institute, I don’t know. I’m not sure where to go from here. Even if we find my mother tonight, where do we fit in anymore? But—despite all this—I’m home already. I am.”