Gilroy drew his mouth into a noncommittal line. “We’ll do our best to find her. But I will tell you that we don’t have a clear idea that this is a missing-person case. Your daughter is almost eighteen, and she might think she’s old enough to do what she wants, without telling anyone. We have lots of frantic parents of kids that age contacting us. The kid almost always turns up, confused that people were worried about them.” He attempted a smile. “I know, they’d make it easier on everyone if they’d just stay in contact.”
I didn’t return the smile. “Please, that’s exactly what’s not making sense. It’s just not like Kara not to stay in contact. We’ve always been so close.”
He studied my face for a moment then drew a deep, audible breath. “So, you checked with the university?”
“Yes. She hasn’t turned up to any classes for weeks.”
“What about her friends? Other kids from her classes?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to them, too. No one’s heard from her. Her roommate, Paige, dropped out of university two months ago. I had no idea.”
“Your daughter didn’t tell you about her roommate dropping out?”
“No,” I said quietly.
“So, does that sound like she was trying to hide something from you?”
“I think maybe she didn’t tell me because if I’d known she was living alone, I’d have tried to pressure her to come home.”
“Was there any specific reason she wouldn’t have wanted to come back home? She did choose to go a long way from home in the first place.”
“She’s just . . . headstrong.” My voice sounded both stiff and weak at the same time.
He raised his eyebrows—just slightly—enough for me to know he was thinking things he wasn’t saying. “Well, leave it with me, Mrs Lundquist, and I’ll give you a call around this time tomorrow and let you know where we’re at.”
I was giving him the wrong answers. So far, I’d basically told him she was hiding things from me and that she was headstrong. I’d painted a picture of a girl who was likely to go off on her own.
By the sound of it, he’d been through this a thousand times with parents before, with the young person popping up again. Please, please, let that happen for me, too. I want to be laughing about this tomorrow—about my mad-mom dash across the world to find my daughter.
Gathering up my photographs, I rose from the chair and let Detective Gilroy show me out of his office.
Outside, the clouds had cleared to expose a wintry sun.
My phone rang. It was James, wanting an update on Kara. He’d wanted to come with me to Australia, but he was under an enormous workload at his job. My husband held a high-level position at the corporation he worked for, and he was always weighed under. It’d been him who’d told me to go directly to the police. I told him about Detective Gilroy and what he’d said. It was a quick conversation. James was about to head into a meeting.
I slipped the phone back into my handbag.
Putting on my sunglasses, I headed along the city street, finding myself in a large open area. I remembered seeing it from my hotel window—the Darling Harbour Precinct. Crowds, eateries, children’s playgrounds, building work and noise.
A sign near the entrance to the Chinese Gardens offered tranquillity. Paying the small fee to enter the gardens, I went in and settled myself in a quiet corner of their café, looking out onto a pond of koi that was framed with willow trees.
I stirred milk into my coffee vigorously. Detective Gilroy didn’t know Kara. He didn’t know how special she was and what a terrible thing it was that she’d vanished. And he didn’t understand that Kara and I were tight. We talked all the time. We were friends as well as mother and daughter. Weren’t we?
I hadn’t admitted to him that Kara wasn’t exactly like most young girls. She was an aloof daydreamer who only really engaged in conversation when she was interested in the topic. Those were the times she’d light up and talk on and on. She had a fairly narrow range of interests—astronomy among them. A paediatrician had once assessed her as being both highly gifted and on the fringes of the autism spectrum. Her mastery of science and English had her finishing high school two years early and then heading into college at age sixteen. She’d lost contact with her old friends and had found it hard to make new ones. Not that it seemed to bother her that much. Most of the time, Kara seemed to drift along in her own world.
I’d been shocked when she’d first told me of her desire to finish her college education in Australia. Australia of all places! She had a friend she’d met at college—Paige—whose family was moving back to their hometown in Australia, and somehow Kara had decided that she would go too.