As Erin drives, it begins to rain. She keeps glancing at her cell phone, expecting a call any minute, that he’s found her. She’s at her friend Jenna’s, across the street, she must be. But then she remembers that Jenna is in choir, too, and she didn’t get sent home. The woods then. Avery likes to play in the woods behind their house, in that tree house. She’s pulling into the driveway when her cell rings. She picks it up quickly.
“No one answered the door at Jenna’s. I’m at the tree house, and she’s not here either,” Michael says.
He’s obviously thinking along the same lines that she is. Her son is breathing heavily, and she can hear the alarm in his voice. It immediately infects her with panic too. But she’s the adult, she must remain calm. “Okay, Michael, come home. Wherever she is, she’ll probably show up now that it’s raining. If not, we’ll search for her. I’ll call your father.” She disconnects and gets out of the car.
The front door has been left unlocked, and she hurries into the house. She kicks off her pumps by the door and quickly searches, calling Avery’s name; maybe she came home while Michael was out looking for her. She runs up and down stairs, fans out around the house. Maybe Avery’s hiding, playing a trick on them. She searches under beds and behind clothes in the closets, everywhere she can think of. Avery isn’t here. She shouts her name again and again. No answer.
As she returns to the kitchen, Michael comes down the hall from the front door and meets her. He’s drenched, and he looks shaken, his face pale even though he’s obviously been running.
“I’m going to call your father,” she says. “And then I’m going to call the police.”
Three
William arrives home at 5:40, after the call from Erin. He’d heard the distress in her voice, although it was clear that she was trying to keep a lid on it in front of Michael. Avery is missing, she’d told him. I’m going to call the police. There is a police cruiser parked on the street outside their house. He feels his stomach lurch at the sight of it.
He parks his car in the garage and takes a deep breath. He must keep it together. He must be the rock in a crisis that everyone expects him to be. He’s the man of the family, a doctor. He must call on his training—he can’t let himself fall apart. His wife’s strained voice echoes in his mind. Avery is missing. I’m going to call the police.
When he gets inside, he finds his wife and son sitting in the living room at the front of the house with two uniformed police officers. The female cop is older, and the male police officer—he seems impossibly young, barely out of his teens—is taking notes.
Erin looks up at him, her face drawn. And it hits him, what’s happening. It hits him so hard he can’t breathe. His wife doesn’t get up and come to him for a hug. Nor does he go to her.
The female officer rises and says, “Mr. Wooler?”
“It’s Dr. Wooler,” he manages.
She nods. “I’m Officer Hollis, and this is Officer Rosales. Your wife reported your daughter missing a few minutes ago. We just got here. We’ll take particulars and get a search started. The detectives will be here shortly.”
He nods and sits down in another armchair. He watches the sudden rain hammering against the glass doors of the dining room that look out onto the backyard. It’s been such a strange day.
“Do you have any recent photographs of Avery?” Hollis asks.
“They’re all on my phone,” Erin says. She reaches for it and thumbs through and shows her photos of Avery. Her hand is shaking.
Hollis says, “May I?” and tags and sends several of them to her own cell. “Blond, blue eyes,” Hollis says, studying the photos. “Height? Weight?”
Erin answers. “She’s four foot two, maybe sixty pounds.”
“What was she wearing today?”
It’s as if William isn’t there. Erin seems to think for a moment. “Jeans—dark blue, they were fairly new. Pink running shoes. A white T-shirt with daisies on the front. She was wearing her jean jacket and her backpack is navy blue.”
“Any distinguishing marks? Scars?”
Erin shakes her head, then looks at him. William shakes his head too.
“You say no one has seen Avery since she left choir practice,” Hollis says, speaking to Erin. “What time was that?”
William can’t find his voice; it’s as if he’s paralyzed. The opportunity passes.
Erin turns to Michael. “I don’t know,” Michael says nervously. “She was kicked out of practice. I don’t know when, exactly.” He adds, “It starts after school, at three thirty and goes until four thirty.”
Hollis glances at the young cop beside her. “We need to talk to the teacher.”
“It’s Ms. Burke,” Michael tells them.
Hollis nods. “So she left school, and we don’t know where she went. She never made it home?”
Erin shakes her head. “Her backpack isn’t here. She doesn’t have her own key either, because she’s not supposed to walk home by herself.”
William swallows and still says nothing. He feels dizzy, as if he’s standing at the top of a tall building and leaning over, looking below. He knows that Avery was home today after school. She used the key under the front doormat to get in. He talked to her. He hit her. He’s a monster and a liar. He feels sicker by the minute; he’s afraid he might throw up. But he must not. He swallows down the bile, clears his throat, and suggests, “Maybe she ran away.”
His wife turns to him. “Why would she do that?”
He averts his eyes. “Maybe she was angry for being punished at choir practice; you know how she gets.” He immediately wishes he could take that back.
Hollis says gently, “How does she get? What’s Avery like?”
Erin sighs heavily and says, “She’s complicated. She’s a lovely nine-year-old girl. Very bright—gifted, actually. But she’s challenging. She has a learning disability and ADHD. She also has behavioral problems.”
Hollis looks at the two of them. “What do you mean, exactly?”
William lets his wife speak for them.
“She’s smart but she struggles in school. She’s easily frustrated. She’s impulsive. She often acts without thinking. She’s willful, defiant of authority. She does what she wants, basically. We’re doing our best.”
Erin doesn’t seem to mind telling them this, but William knows that when a child goes missing, the parents are regarded with suspicion. Now they will think they’ve done something to her. He wishes she hadn’t told them.
But Hollis just nods. “Okay. Has she ever run away before?” She looks at him now.
William can feel himself coloring slightly and says, “No.”
Hollis studies him more closely and asks, “Everything all right at home? Any problems we should know about?”
William meets her eyes and says, “Of course not. Everything’s fine.” Erin says nothing. Michael is staring down at his lap.
“All right.” She turns to Erin. “Thank you for the photos.” She stands up and says, “If you don’t mind, we’d like to look around the house. Could be she’s hiding somewhere. You’d be surprised how often that happens; they hide and then fall asleep.”