Then she got home and couldn’t stop thinking about all those new boys. Would Miles get lost not on the grounds but in the personalities, the types? Were they friendly? Were they cruel? Or were they that confusing in-between, like girls could be? She shuddered to consider what they were looking at on their phones. Porn? Other kids in this neighborhood got phones at ten, eleven, twelve, she knew. Because Miles didn’t go to sports practices or after-school activities, because he had access to some video games and her iPad and computer in a limited way, she’d always thought thirteen, which was a few months away, but didn’t want him to feel left out. Was she an overprotective, idealistic, screen-time-nagging idiot? Should she have gotten him a phone even though he didn’t need it and it would ruin his brain?
Hannah stood up to drink her third glass of water and eat another handful of cashews from her stash in the cupboard, and almost as quickly as the thoughts came to her, guilt washed over her, too. That little girl across the street, Liza Harris, was still missing, and she, Hannah, knew exactly where her son was. She’d been more calm walking through the woods with her mother and sister than she was waiting here, safe in her kitchen, thinking of Miles at school. Jesus, what was wrong with her?
She came back to her computer, but the alien sound of a helicopter overhead rattled the windows, startled her. The family had suspended the volunteer search across the wooded paths and short brush throughout the hills of their neighborhood, but helicopters, here, in the suburbs? Had they paid for these, or the police? There were dense, sloping stands of trees ringing the neighborhood, separating it from the old Tamsen farm. Woods too thick for ordinary volunteers. Did they know something was down there? Or were they just too lazy to search?
The next one swooped loud and low to the east, too close. Was it over Hillary’s house?
She stood up to look out the kitchen window when a sharp knock on the front door shook the floorboards. The house was old, but at that moment, it felt downright flimsy, like it couldn’t hold her.
Two men stood on her porch, looking around in a way that reminded her of home buyers, surveying the land, construction, looking for peeling paint. They were about the same age, both with brown hair, but one was sturdy and muscular, the other taller, lanky, a little gray in the front of his hair. Their rayon pants and button-down shirts made her think they were with a church group. She sighed deeply and prepared her standard line about being on deadline and wondered if they’d say that deadlines wouldn’t matter when the rapture came. She’d heard that one before. But as she approached the door, they both held up badges to the windowpane.
Again, guilt flooded her chest. How could she keep forgetting what was going on around her? That’s what being a writer will do to you, she thought. A deep dive that can carry you away from almost anything on the surface, even someone’s darkest tragedy.
“Afternoon,” the shorter one said. “We’re canvassing all the neighbors about the Liza Harris case.”
“Of course,” Hannah said and invited them in. They introduced themselves as Detectives Carelli and Thompson. Up close, she could see more differences in their hair, skin, faces. Carelli, the shorter one, was tan and dark-eyed. Thompson was pale, and his eyes were hazel. The sprout of gray in his cowlick threw a little bit of light in his serious face, but not much. He would have been handsome, perhaps, if he smiled or got some sun on his face. Neither of them smiled, so she didn’t either.
They looked around at a few remaining boxes and not-hung pictures.
“Just moved in,” Thompson said.
Not a question, but she answered by nodding.
“Where’s your son today?”
“He’s at school.” She frowned. “Wait, how—”
“You look a bit like your sister. I bet you get that a lot.”
She blinked. “No, actually. Not anymore.”
They asked her when she had arrived, if she’d noticed anything amiss. On moving day or before. No. Did she ever walk on the trails through the woods. No. Not yet. Anything she could think of that she’d observed across the street? Even the smallest detail that might have meaning? From any time?
“There were balloons,” she said dumbly.
“Balloons?”
“Tied to the mailbox. The day of my walk-through on the house.”
“For a party.”
“Yes, I assume. But—”
“But what?”
“There were no cars.”
“I’m sorry, no cars?” Thompson’s neutral face had moved into a full frown. He was older than she’d originally estimated.
“I was here most of the evening, here and at my sister’s. And there were no cars for the party. I left around seven, seven thirty.”
“Maybe the party was later?”
“For a six-year-old? Doubtful,” she said.
“And this struck you as odd.”
“Just this moment,” she said. “I’m realizing this right now.”
“Okay. Well, maybe the party was the day before.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The balloons hadn’t lost air. They were fresh balloons, not limp like they are the next day.”
The two men blinked at her, sizing her up.
“It’s a mom thing,” she said dumbly, but it was true, and they nodded. “So maybe no one came to her party,” she continued. “Which would be traumatizing.”
She could have kept going on this topic, shared the stories of moms on social media who railed against kids who RSVPed yes and then didn’t show. They posted photos with the birthday boy alone in a party hat, and strangers made it go viral, sending cards and presents and prayers to this poor lonely kid. It happened. She could certainly imagine that little girl having her heart broken, running into the woods in tears, too broken up to notice she’d wandered into something dangerous.
But their blank expressions told her to stop. They either cared or didn’t care, but at least she had come up with something to tell them. She was proud of her powers of observation, even if they weren’t. They asked her what day this was, if she was certain it was Wednesday, and she looked in her phone and told them. A Wednesday, yes.
She offered them coffee or tea, gesturing toward the kitchen.
“How about a glass of water?” Carelli said.
“Yes. Of course. Water.”
She poured from a Brita in the fridge. They thanked her and raised their glasses as if toasting her new home.
“Nostrovia,” she said, then instantly regretted it. Why she’d done that, she couldn’t say. Would they ascribe meaning to that? Would they walk away thinking she wasn’t a teetotaler but a Russian alcoholic who drank vodka on a Tuesday?