Detective Ryan picks up a photo of Malcolm with his parents on his college graduation day. “These are the Jenningses? Malcolm’s parents?”
“Yes. Meredith and Walter.”
“They’re on a mission now?”
“Yes.”
“Have you reached out to them?”
I nod. “I tried once, but they didn’t answer.” I was actually relieved. What would I tell them? I lost their grandchild, and I can’t find their son? Do they already know? Admittedly, I don’t really know my in-laws. Maybe they have a part in all this. It wouldn’t make sense, but nothing does right now.
No sign of Mikayla. No word from Malcolm.
The walls around me start to sway, and my mouth fills with saliva.
“What about your family? Friends?”
“My parents are dead.” All of them. I haven’t had anyone looking out for me, or being there for me, for a long time. Part of the reason I’m doing this—this move, this new life—is for Malcolm’s parents.
My stomach twists, and I feel light headed.
Detective Ryan appears in front of my blurry vision. Dark-navy pants . . . badge on his belt. A gun. “Hey . . . you okay?”
Why does he keep asking me that? How could I possibly be okay? I wonder if he realizes how obtuse the question sounds. If I wasn’t on the verge of a mental break right now, I wouldn’t be a normal mother, would I?
I force a steadying breath. I need to hold it together. “When are you going to go talk to Fran?” Mikayla might be with her. This woman could have her. She may have hurt her. Why wasn’t there more of a sense of urgency? If I weren’t being supervised every second, I’d be knocking on every last door in this neighborhood and beyond until I found her.
Why weren’t the police doing more?
“We should have a warrant in a few hours, and I’ll contact Ms. Bennett right away to get Fran’s contact information.” He sits and picks up the photo of Mikayla. A recent one. “Can I take this with me?”
No. The idea that he’s taking the photo to open a missing-child file down at the station makes me nauseated. The thought that Mikayla’s picture will soon be blasted out across media and online sources with a big “Missing” caption makes my blood run icy cold. This is not supposed to be happening to me. “Yes.”
He tucks it into his pocket. He checks his notepad and squints. “Your husband’s vehicle—it’s a Toyota Prius . . . license plate . . .” He pauses. “Sorry, I can’t read the other officer’s writing.”
Maybe he should have taken his own notes then. “It says ‘T3ACH3R.’ It’s a custom plate . . . his parents gave it to him when he graduated with his teaching degree. Are you going to go to the school? Talk to someone over there? Maybe they made a mistake . . .” Maybe the receptionist had the wrong information. Maybe Malcolm’s been there all along. I’m grasping. I’m hopeful.
“I’ll be heading there next,” he says. “We’ll soon have a unit tracking your husband’s phone, and we’ll contact border-crossing officials. Everyone is on high alert in these crucial first hours.”
“Except you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not on high alert, because you don’t believe me.”
“I believe something is going on here. But I think you’re not telling me everything.”
My pulse races under the scrutinizing gaze of his dark-brown eyes. Every family has secrets. Skeletons they’d rather keep buried.
“Until the pieces start lining up, I need to look at the evidence in front of me and not draw premature conclusions,” he says.
“You’ve drawn premature conclusions about me.”
“I assure you that won’t affect my ability to do my job . . .” He checks through the curtain as a marked squad car pulls up in front of the house.
“Who’s that?”
“Officer Ray. He’s going to stay outside tonight.” He releases the curtain and turns back toward me.
“You think I’m a flight risk?” First they assume I’m lying, that I’ve made this up; now I’m a suspect? They think I’m going to leave? Without my family? Never.
“We have no idea where your daughter and husband are. They could both be in danger. You could be in danger. Protocol at this stage is to keep you safe.”
Safe. Under surveillance.
“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call him.” He places Officer Ray’s business card on the table in front of me. “I think I have everything I need for the moment. Sit tight. Try to rest. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more or have more questions.”
Sit tight. Try to rest. Impossible, when I don’t know how much more Detective Ryan will have to uncover in order to bring Mikayla back.
September 6—4:10 p.m.
It’s weird walking the halls of my former high school. It still looks the same—gray concrete walls, lined with dark-blue lockers, thick with new coats of paint applied every year to hide the previous year’s graffiti. Shapes of old stickers show beneath. The building smells the same too. Musty, old, and damp, despite a new heating and air-conditioning unit the school installed a few years ago. Seems it was a futile attempt to reverse the signs of rotting within these walls, just like it’s impossible to reverse the damage four years spent here can inflict on a person.
The school is empty—the kids gone for the day. Only teachers remain, sitting behind their desks in the classrooms. They glance up as I pass. Already they look exhausted, and school’s only been in session a few days.
In the school’s glass case, the dust-collecting trophies from decades of achievement are displayed. New ones added each year. I don’t stop to look at the photos of the school’s victorious football team or the generations of Bishop’s Queens—the cheerleading squad, appropriately nicknamed Bishop’s Bitches by competing schools.
I pick up my pace as I pass the case but still shiver, knowing those familiar dark eyes of my sister’s follow me down the hall. Her smiling face in her cheerleader’s pose asking me why I haven’t found her yet. Or at least laid her corpse to rest.
Ellicott City is haunted. It’s been that way for centuries. A historic town with too much past, stories of ghosts that kept us kids up at night, especially in the fall months, when the wind howled at night and the trees cast shadows in our peripheral vision, playing with our minds. Taunted us with images of things that weren’t really there.
I didn’t believe in ghosts until I had my own haunting me at every turn.
In the school’s office, the receptionist is already gone for the day, so I knock on the principal’s door and enter at her invitation.
“Paul! How nice to see you.”
The same principal since my time there, Mrs. Delores Hannaford. One of those women who is never young but never seems to age either. Always wrinkled, always white haired, always the same purple-rimmed glasses. “Hello, Mrs. Hannaford. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“A Saint Bishop’s High alumnus is always welcome.”
This is the first time I’ve been inside the school since graduation day. I didn’t even return the following fall for the certificate ceremony, opting to have mine mailed.