Chương 2
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have filled it that much.”
Laura’s mouth tightened. “You told me to put all the upstairs laundry in it.”
“And you told me Rachel said the girl needed more responsibility.”
“I said Rachel was worried she wasn’t helping enough at home. I didn’t say lock her outside.”
Margaret finally looked at her. “You stood right there.”
Laura folded her arms. “I thought you were making a point.”
“I made it.”
Ethan let the blind fall. “She passed the mailbox.”
Sophie hovered behind him. “Where’s she going?”
“She’ll turn around,” Margaret said.
Ethan lifted the blind again. Emily was at the end of the block, her low ponytail moving against the back of her shirt.
“Should I get her?”
Laura reached for her phone, then stopped. Rachel had sent a message twenty minutes earlier asking whether Emily had settled down after the argument about chores. Laura had answered, Fine now. Mom has it handled.
If she called immediately, she would have to explain why fine had become walking down the street alone.
“She’s trying to scare us,” Margaret said. “Don’t reward it.”
Ethan watched Emily turn the corner.
He waited for her to come back into view.
She did not.
Across town, Rachel Carter was standing beside a copier that had jammed for the third time that week when her phone began vibrating in her blouse pocket. She ignored it. Her supervisor was at the far end of the office, and Rachel had already arrived twelve minutes late after Margaret complained that Emily had left cereal in the sink.
The phone stopped.
It began again.
Rachel pulled it out, saw Laura’s name, and felt irritation before concern. Laura rarely called during business hours unless she wanted Rachel to solve something that could have been a text.
Rachel answered in a low voice. “I’m at work.”
“Okay, don’t panic.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
People who said don’t panic had usually delayed the call until panic was the only reasonable response.
“What happened?”
Laura spoke quickly. “Emily got upset about a chore and went outside. Mom thought she was on the porch, but then Ethan checked, and she wasn’t there. We’re looking.”
Rachel’s hand tightened around the phone. “How long?”
“Not long.”
“How long, Laura?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes. Twenty at most.”
The office noise receded. Rachel could still see her coworkers moving, still hear the copier clicking uselessly, but everything seemed separated from her by thick glass.
“Why was she outside?”
“She was having a tantrum.”
“What happened?”
“Mom gave her some laundry.”
“And?”
“She refused.”
“And?”
Laura inhaled. “Mom shut the door for a minute.”
Rachel’s car keys slipped from her other hand and struck the tile floor. Several people looked over.
“What do you mean she’s missing?”
The words came out loud enough to silence the nearest desks.
Rachel bent for the keys and nearly fell. Her knee struck the copier cabinet. Her supervisor called her name, but Rachel was already moving.
“Call 911,” she said. “Now.”
“We don’t need to turn this into—”
“Call them.”
“Rachel, we’re searching.”
“An eight-year-old is alone somewhere because you locked her out. Call the police.”
Margaret’s voice sounded in the background. “She was not locked out. She chose to leave.”
Rachel shoved through the office door and into the parking lot. Heat hit her face.
“Put Mom on.”
“She’s checking the backyard.”
“Laura.”
“We’ll find her.”
“If you hang up without calling 911, I will call them and tell them exactly how long you waited.”
Laura went quiet.
Rachel unlocked her car with shaking fingers. She dropped the keys again, swore, snatched them from the asphalt, and climbed behind the wheel.
Her supervisor had followed her outside. “Rachel, what’s going on?”
“My daughter’s missing.”
The woman’s expression changed immediately. “Go.”
Rachel started the engine. Her phone was wedged between her shoulder and cheek.
“Tell me what she was wearing.”
“You know what she was wearing.”
“I need you to say it.”
“The mauve shirt. Jeans. Gray shoes.”
“Did she have water?”
“No.”
“Money?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think?”
“Rachel, I’m trying to help.”
Rachel backed out too fast, braked before striking a parked SUV, then forced herself to stop. Her hands were trembling so badly that the steering wheel vibrated beneath them.
She put the car in park.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Go outside. Walk the exact direction she went. Keep me on speaker. Send Ethan the other way with Mom. Do not drive around randomly. Check yards, open garages, porches, under cars. Call 911 while you’re walking.”
“You’re making it sound like we—”
“Call them.”
Rachel ended the call and dialed emergency services herself.
By the time she reached Margaret’s neighborhood, two police cruisers were already there. Rachel saw Laura standing in the road, one hand pressed to her forehead. Margaret was speaking to an officer beside the porch, her posture stiff and offended. Ethan and Sophie sat on the curb. Sophie was crying. Ethan stared at the ground.
Rachel did not stop.
She lowered her window and called, “Emily!”
Her own voice frightened her. It was too high, too desperate, almost unrecognizable.
She drove slowly past the small park where Margaret sometimes took the children. No Emily. She checked the bus shelter, the drainage path behind a line of houses, and the narrow strip between a pharmacy and a closed insurance office. She pulled into each parking lot, left the engine running, and searched behind dumpsters and hedges.
“Emily!”
A woman loading groceries into a van turned around.
“Little girl,” Rachel called. “Brown ponytail, mauve shirt?”
The woman shook her head.
Rachel drove on.
May you like
At the entrance to the neighborhood, the gas station sign rose above the road. She remembered stopping there that morning. Emily had complained that the bottled water tasted like plastic, then drunk half of it anyway.
Rachel pulled into the lot and searched the parked cars. She checked the trash enclosure first because the gate stood partly open. Nothing. She walked the length of the building, calling Emily’s name. Her lungs felt too small. Each breath stopped high in her chest.
