Gully goes upstairs to Avery’s room. Wearing a pair of gloves, she flicks on the overhead light and takes a long look. The room is painted off-white, the bed neatly made with a pretty pink-and-yellow quilt on it. There’s a white nightstand next to the white bed, a small white desk and matching chair, some pictures on the walls—something undoubtedly chosen by her mother. It’s hard to get a sense of Avery from looking at her room.
The dark and the rain press up against the bedroom window; the soft light makes the room feel cozy and safe. Gully feels a stab of anxiety for the missing girl—it’s late at night, and she’s out there somewhere, instead of here, tucked up in bed where she belongs. Gully moves farther into the room and opens the bedside-table drawer. She riffles carefully through its contents—pens and paper, a chocolate bar wrapper, some lip balm, and underneath all that, a diary. It’s the kind that has its own little gold lock with a key attached, on a red string. She sets it down to read in a bit. She looks under the bed, beneath the mattress. She searches behind the pictures, through the desk and dresser drawers. She lifts up the small area rug on the floor. She’s looking for anything that will help her understand what might have happened to the little girl. Even children of nine can have secrets.
She sits down on the bed and opens the diary. The first few pages have short entries, poorly written, about school and her struggles there. Avery doesn’t seem to have any friends. She writes that no one likes her, except for one girl, Jenna, who lives across the street, but she can’t always count on her. Gully allows herself for a moment to feel terribly sad for this lonely little girl. The entries stop suddenly, as if the novelty of having a diary had worn off. Gully fans the pages to see if there’s anything trapped within it, but nothing falls out. No secrets here.
* * *
? ? ?
Nora hears Al and Ryan come in the front door, can hear them hanging up their jackets, kicking off their boots. She remains lying on her side on the sofa in the dimly lit living room for a moment, afraid of what they might tell her. She glances at her watch, sees that it’s just after one in the morning. She sits up and turns on a lamp.
Al enters the living room, and she looks up at him, hoping to see good news written on his face. But if they had found her, they would have burst into the room with the news.
“Anything?” she asks, as Ryan comes into the room behind his father and stands beside him.
Al shakes his head. “No sign of her. They’re going to have the volunteers start again in the morning.”
“You’re soaked. You must be frozen,” she says. They both nod wearily, shivering, lips blue. “Will you go back in the morning?” she asks.
Al glances at their son. “I’ll take the day off work. They’ll understand.”
Ryan nods. “I’ll go back too.”
“We both need hot showers,” Al says. “You go ahead, Ryan.”
“No, you go, Dad,” Ryan says.
Al nods and turns to go upstairs. “I’ll be quick,” he says to his son.
For a moment, Ryan remains behind with her. It’s as if he wants to say something. Or perhaps he just wants comfort, she thinks. He’s only eighteen, just a kid. This must be disturbing for him; he has a sister not much older than the missing girl, at the same school, who takes the same route home every day. Nora moves toward him, but he turns away.
“Night, Mom,” he says.
She watches him trudge up the stairs.
Eight
Early the next morning Erin wakes from a brief and restless sleep and is startled to find herself in a strange hotel room. Then she remembers, and the suffocating weight settles on her again. She wonders if it will always be like this, if she’ll wake up every day and have to adjust to this new, terrible reality. William is not in the bed beside her. She raises herself up on one arm and sees him sitting in one of the hotel chairs, watching her.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says, his voice hollow. Then he stands up wearily and says, “I’m going to have a shower.”
She watches him slip into the bathroom and falls back against the pillow. No one has come to tell them that Avery has been found, alive and well. Erin grabs her cell phone from the night table—it’s barely six o’clock, her daughter has been missing for about fourteen hours—and starts scrolling. She’s sickened by what she reads. The news stories say their house is being treated as a crime scene. There’s a picture of it, with yellow crime-scene tape across the front porch. How damning. There’s nothing about the jacket, about how it was hung up out of reach by a person unknown. The detectives told them last night that this information is being held back, in the interests of the investigation, and asked them not to share it with anyone. They also said they haven’t changed the original description given out, which included Avery wearing the jean jacket. Often, keeping information from the general public can help police. She stares at the photograph of their house with the crime-scene tape and thinks that the detectives might just as well have told the media that the parents are the prime suspects. She feels her trust in the detectives eroding, a new fear sprouting.
“Have you seen this?” she asks William, holding up her phone when he comes out of the bathroom.
“Yes,” he says, barely glancing at it.
“How dare they!” she says, shaken and furious.
He starts getting dressed. He breathes out heavily and looks at her. “I think we have to brace ourselves,” he says carefully.
“But—putting crime-scene tape across the house—was that really necessary? It makes it look like they think we did something to her!”
“Maybe that is what they think,” William says.
“No.” She shakes her head back and forth. “No. They can’t think that. If that’s what they think, they’ll stop looking for her. They can’t stop looking for her!”
He grasps her firmly by both arms, looks her in the eye, and says, “We will not let them stop looking for her.”
At that moment there’s a tentative knock at the door. “Are you up?” It’s the female officer’s voice, the one who’s been here all night, in a chair outside their rooms. Even so, she probably slept more than they did.
“Yes, we’ll be out in a minute,” William calls out.
Erin goes to Michael, asleep in an adjoining room. She shakes him awake, pulls him into her for a hug. “Come on. Put your clothes on, Michael. We have to get going.” She returns to her own room and hurriedly gets dressed. As she opens the door to the hallway, William right behind her, she sees Detective Bledsoe and Detective Gully stepping out of the elevator and coming toward them. They are grim-faced, and for a moment she is stricken with fear, terrified of what they might tell her. They’re both in fresh clothes, but as they approach, Erin can tell that they’ve barely slept either.
William steps past her into the hall, sees them, and blurts out, “Any news?”
Bledsoe shakes his head. “I’m afraid not.” He looks at each of them and then at Michael, as he appears in the corridor beside them. “We’d like to ask you some more questions.”
William glances quickly at her before turning back to the detectives. “We’ve already answered all your questions,” he says impatiently.