He must see it on my face.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice soft, deep. “I know he hurt you.”
I wave him off, feign nonchalance. “He was just a guy I met online.”
You trust him because he looks like Jay. Just like Jay, says Robin.
Yes, the golden hair and grayish green eyes, the coolness, the mettle, that way of a guy who fixes and finds. She’s right. Robin is a keen observer.
Bailey flips through the pages of the notebook. Will he find something I didn’t see? He comes to the page with my handwriting on it, holds it out to me. I probably shouldn’t have done that. Tampering with evidence or some such, right?
“I wrote that,” I admit. He just nods, keeps paging through the book.
“Will you tell me about Mia?” I ask. “Your client’s daughter.”
He glances up from the empty black Moleskine, and those eyes. Yes, he looks just like Jay. Too much like Jay. I look away, feeling the breath in my lungs.
“What do you want to know?” He puts the notebook down.
“Her story.”
He sighs and leans back, seems to consider. Then, “Mia? Her mother died when she was young and, according to her father, she never really got over it. She struggled with depression, then addiction in high school. Then an eating disorder. She got help finally, went to rehab. Her father, he stood by her, did the right things. She went to college, seemed to have her act together, wanted to be a writer. She started a blog, was having some success.”
Sounds a little too familiar. Do you have a type, Adam Harper? Adam Grove? Or is it Raife Mannes? How many names do you have?
“Then a friend encouraged her to try Torch. She started dating here and there. Nothing serious. Hookups, really, according to her father. Which he didn’t love, but she was a grown woman.”
He leans forward, picks up the pen, turns it this way and that, then places it carefully back on the coffee table.
“Not much Thorpe could do, really. And then there was Raife—or Adam. Or whatever his name is. Her father said that she changed almost overnight. He thought she might be using again. She abandoned her writing, dropped out of school. And then, she was just gone. And Raife Mannes, he turned out to be a ghost—all his profiles disappeared, his cell phone disconnected, his address a fake. My client hasn’t heard from his daughter in nine months.”
Bailey leans back in his seat, rubs at his temples. “This was my first lead in a while. I hate to have to tell him that the trail is cold again.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
He shrugs, drains the last of his coffee. “Do you know that people just walk away from their lives all the time? I mean like thousands of people, usually men, walk out on jobs, on families. They cash out accounts, and shift off their life like an old skin.”
I know all about that, yes, I think. But say instead, “Did she do that? Cash out accounts?”
“Her accounts were cleared. By her? By someone else? I don’t know.”
He lifts and replaces the notebook, the watch.
“What about you? Did he take anything from you?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I checked.”
“Keep checking.”
I nod my agreement.
“What about her phone? Her blog? Her social media? Her credit cards?” I press.
I know a thing or two about finding the lost—those people who walk away. Dear Birdie hears about them all the time. From the children looking for parents, the wives looking for their husbands, the lonely hearts who give their money and their love away. More people walk away than are taken, I think. That’s what Jason, our consulting PI, has told me. More people abandon the life they built than are wrested from it. It’s not a crime.
You should know, says Robin. She’s over by the fireplace now, squatting, poking a stick into the flames. I ignore her.
“We found her phone, her purse, and her wallet in her apartment,” Bailey goes on. “She hasn’t used a credit card, or posted on social media, or on her blog since she disappeared.”
“Do you think she walked away? Or do you think he…hurt her?”
You were gentle with me, Adam. Respectful. Loving. Kind. You wouldn’t hurt anyone, would you? Not like that. You’re not a monster.
But now that you’re gone, it’s as if you were never really here. You could have been anyone, I knew so little about you.
But no. Our last hours together, as we wrapped around each other in the dark. Wasn’t there a knowledge there, an intimacy that went beyond your name, your job, your address? I’m sure there was. At least for me.