The Herd

by Andrea Bartz

“I did. I don’t…I’m out of PTO days for the year.”

  “Jeez. I’m sorry. You didn’t want to just tell them you have a family emergency?”

  “We’re not…” His voice got even lower. “Since we’re not saying anything. The cops, last night. They said to just maintain my normal routine. And I—I have a bunch of meetings today.”

  “Huh.” His behavior was so strange, I almost felt embarrassed for him: Your wife goes missing and you’re thinking about PTO days? Carrying on like nothing had happened—Christ, was that the behavior of an innocent man? I didn’t have a spouse, but if he went missing, I wouldn’t give a shit about my stock of personal days—I just wouldn’t show up. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll just be here all day.” A beat. “Uh, thanks, though.”

  “Of course. So no updates from the detectives?”

  “Nothing. They went through the apartment last night, pawed through all our stuff. Didn’t seem to find anything interesting, though.”

  An idea crystallized, a better plan for my day. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? Anytime, day or night.”

  He thanked me and hung up.

  * * *

  —

  I thought about inviting Mikki along, since, after all, she faced the exact same stakes as me. But she was probably at the Herd right now, likely with Katie, and after her text last night, the last thing I needed was another chink in her resolve. Instead I let her know I wouldn’t be coming to the Herd today. Then, pushing through the fug of my worry for Eleanor, a heady sadness that billowed like incense, I got dressed and headed out.

  A few whiskery clouds bristled the edges of the sky, the sun over us almost taunting in its coldness. The streets were nearly empty—even at lunch hour, no one wanted to venture out into the Arctic afternoon. I checked my phone: a wind chill of -6 degrees. Aurelia had touched base from the Herd, letting me know Ratliff had just arrived, and this soothed me—no cops would be knocking at Eleanor’s door anytime soon.

  Her street looked different in the light: a tree-lined road of row houses, their stoops spilling outside like the graham-cracker paths leading into gingerbread houses. I’d always thought of this block as warm and fairy tale–like, but today a crust of bruised-looking snow capped the curbs, and the trees, spindly and stark, raked at one another angrily. I climbed the stoop and froze—what if Eleanor never walked out of this door again? My mind skipped ahead to funerals, black dresses and hot tears, Daniel tearily putting a For Sale sign out front. But the cold had found me: My nose prickled, my fingers stung, so I fumbled with my spare key and shoved the door closed behind me.

  I had no clear idea why I was there, what key or keyhole I was looking for or even whether I’d know when I found it. But maybe Eleanor had left behind another clue, possibly tucked deeper under her mattress, that’d give these random numbers meaning.

  Or perhaps there was something in her apartment that I had to be sure nobody could find.

  I’d only been here without Eleanor once or twice, when I’d walked over from the Herd to water her plants while she and Daniel were away. Alone in her huge townhouse, I’d always felt the vague, faraway urge to poke around—the same distant impulse I’d felt as a teenage babysitter, feeling grown-up and saintly as I resisted. The house was empty, the cops long gone. Finally, I could give in.

  I left my coat in a heap in the foyer and climbed upstairs, then practically flipped the mattress confirming there wasn’t anything else under there. Her nightstand drew my eyes—Daniel had said she kept pills in the drawer, right? Antidepressants? I pulled it open but if there had been anything in there before, it was gone now. On top of the nightstand was the bell hooks book (very on-brand) with a Books Are Magic bookmark two-thirds of the way through (ditto). I thumbed through the pages for notes but found nothing.

  In the dresser, I found myself groping through lingerie. I blanched with embarrassment before moving on to the other two drawers: nothing out of the ordinary. I stepped back and surveyed the bedroom, my chest throbbing, my thoughts a wail: Where are you, Eleanor?

  In the en suite bathroom, I poked at the makeup bag yawning open on a shelf. Lots of Gleam products—she practiced what she preached. Several products from the Nimbus collection, “designed to flatter all skin tones and types.” The Nimbus launch had bothered me for several reasons: First, that we needed a POC add-on to begin with—it was lame that Gleam’s initial products, in particular its highlighter and eye shadows, didn’t work especially well on darker skin. Second, that journalists expected me to join Eleanor for interviews and photos about the line, as if my face gave the effort authenticity. One reporter, a bearded dude from Fortune, even asked about my “ethnic heritage.” It’s especially fun to speak on behalf of all women of color when you’re barely in touch with your own brown-ness.

  Eleanor’s mirror snapped open when I pushed it, and I stared into her medicine cabinet, the rainbow of products there: toothpaste and cotton balls, facial bleach and pimple patches and antiaging eye cream, plus moist flushable towelettes and vaginal itch cream under the sink. All normal things around which I’d always felt a cloud of shame, and here they were in Eleanor’s bathroom, almost out in the open but for the soft click of a cabinet or mirror. Eleanor was a human, like the rest of us, carefully curating the lacquered shell we all admired. Eleanor was…really missing.

  A rush of impropriety and I slammed everything closed. Tears stung my eyes as I made my way into the office. There, my gaze fell on the built-in bookshelf, a custom, complicated mass of oak slabs and copper tubing. A thick book with silver and gold letters on a blue spine looked familiar and I took a step toward it when—

  The doorbell chimed, reverberating through the mirrored foyer. I froze, like I’d been caught. The detectives, they were back, and I’d be in trouble.

  No, that didn’t make sense; they knew Daniel wasn’t home today. Amazon delivery guy? I padded back through the bedroom and peered out the window.

  There he was, in a shiny down coat and sweatpants. He still had sparkly blue eyes and that angular jaw, now bristled with a five o’clock shadow.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d trotted down the steps and swung open the front door. Cameron took a step back, his eyes wide.

  “You heard what happened?” I asked. He squinted and I reached for my heart. “Hana, Eleanor’s friend. Remember me?”

  I’d only seen him a handful of times over the last decade; he was at Eleanor’s wedding, and I couldn’t decide whether that was odd or not, and once or twice we’d all hung out while he was in town visiting Ted. He’d remained in Boston when he and Eleanor had broken up right around our graduation, which was also when his life had taken a nosedive. While I was out in L.A., Cameron had flown to Arizona and checked himself into a treatment center for opioid addiction. Afterward, he defaulted on the sprawling condo he’d bought in pricy Beacon Hill and, at his parents’ urging, moved into the renovated cottage in their backyard. Years later, he was working again and looked, with his long blond waves and clear eyes, nothing like a junkie.

  “This is Eleanor’s place, right?” he said in his chill, pothead drone.

  I nodded. “I…just came to pick something up.” I swallowed. “But Daniel doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Daniel, right.” He nodded, holding my gaze, then looked over my shoulder. “So can I come in?”

  “Right! Sorry.” I held the door and he pushed past me, coldness wafting off him, and I realized I’d just invited him into someone else’s home. He unzipped his coat and sauntered into the living room, then plopped down on the sofa.

  “I tried calling you last night,” I said.

  “You have my number?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You have Eleanor’s address?”

  “Ted gave it to me.”

  “Funny. He gave me your number.”

&nb
sp; “Huh.” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and ran his hand over his chin. I’d settled into an armchair across from him and began to laugh.

  “What?” His lips curled into an involuntary half-smile.

  “Sorry, I just—we’re casually lounging in Eleanor’s living room, and I keep fighting the urge to offer you something to drink. It’s…oh my God. Eleanor.” The laughter careened into something darker and more hysterical—a mask for my grief. I took a deep breath. “What are you doing here? Did you just get in?”

  “Yeah, I talked to the detectives this morning and then got in my car and drove down. I wanna help. Will there be search parties?”

  “I don’t know—no one’s organized anything yet. They haven’t announced it publicly.” I leaned forward. “Are you staying with Ted?”

  “Probably. Or maybe a hotel. I hadn’t thought that far.”

  “Okay.” He hadn’t answered the obvious question, so I gestured around: “And what are you doing…here?”

  “I thought Daniel would be home. Where is he?”

  “He’s at work.” I shook my head. “Why did you want to see him?”

  “To offer my help. Tell him I’m sorry.” His jaw muscles bulged like he was biting down.

  The hair on my neck and scalp prickled—something was off. Well, everything was off, but especially Cameron’s presence here. “You didn’t think to call him?”

  “I don’t have Daniel’s number. Ted doesn’t either.” He leaned back, draped an arm along the sofa’s back. “So no news yet?”

  “Not yet. They searched here last night.”

  “Did they.”

  I shrugged. “Supposedly they’re working very hard to track her down.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “To me, they seemed pretty convinced she left of her own accord.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  I thought about it, but couldn’t see a reason to hold back: “He and Eleanor had just opened up their marriage.”

  His sandy-blond eyebrows shot up near his hairline. “Shit. Do you think she took off?”

  “No. She’s always put her career first—she wouldn’t run away because of a broken heart. And anyway, Daniel claims it was her idea.”

  “Yeah. Well, it worries me because Eleanor’s got enemies.” He pointed at the wall and I wasn’t sure what he was referring to—the fireplace? The stockings hung by the chimney with care? “She comes up all the time in the news. She’s a public figure.”

  The TV, mounted on the exposed brick. “Do strangers who hate her count as enemies?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “So you think someone did something to her?”

  “Dunno. Could also mean she had to get away.”

  “What makes you think that, though? I can’t see her running away from all the good stuff she has going for her.”

  “I didn’t tell the cops.” He brought his hands to his jaw, ran a knuckle over his mouth. “When they called? But she called me out of the blue, maybe three months ago.” He folded his fingers under his chin. “She asked if I knew anyone who could forge a passport. I don’t know what she had in mind, but I keep thinking about it. Why would she be messing with that kind of shit?”

  My mouth gaped open, an oval of shock. “Why didn’t you tell the cops? It could help them. And who did you send her to?”

  The look he shot me stung like a whip. “I didn’t tell them ’cause I don’t need them thinking I’m a perp. I told Eleanor I don’t know anyone. I’m not part of some vast criminal network, you know.”

  I felt embarrassed, then indignant—Eleanor’s no idiot, and she’d thought Cameron could help. “Sorry. I’m just so shocked to hear that. I think of Eleanor as, you know, an upstanding, law-abiding citizen.”

  “Most of the time,” he muttered.

  I turned to him sharply—no, he must just mean the fake passport. I shook my head. “Have you talked to Gary and Karen?”

  “Sure. I checked in with them. They gave me the idea to come down.” He turned on Eleanor’s father’s thick Boston accent: “ ‘You let me know if you think we should get in the cah and head down theh.’ ”

  Eleanor’s parents had been in Mikki’s and my lives fairly regularly during college, taking us out to dinner near campus or having us all up for the weekend. Though I didn’t know the details, I had the impression Gary and Karen were like surrogate parents to Ted and Cameron too. They were almost comically nice, the kind of people who send a thank-you card for your thank-you gift. I thought of them and felt a surge of warmth and pity—Gary, a baseball cap–wearing real-estate developer and community magnate with a bald head and loads of energy, and Karen, a retired nurse with her crisp slacks and silver bob. Being with them was always soothing, my first true glimpse into how an unsplintered family could feel. They, too, must be praying she’d run off on her own and was safe and fine. It was a strange thing to hope for.

  “Cameron, you’ve known Eleanor longer than I have,” I said. “To me, this isn’t like her at all. Has she ever done anything like this?”

  “Nah.” He thought, then shrugged. “Actually, I guess her parents would say yes. When she was still in high school, if her parents were pissing her off she’d come stay with me. Or she’d crash with her friends—Mrs. Walsh would call me in a panic. Eleanor was, you know. So young.”

  I laugh-scoffed. “I mean, we all were. In high school.”

  “But she was especially—you know she skipped two grades, right?”

  “She did?” Did I know that? It felt new.

  “She skipped seventh and eighth grade,” he said, frowning. “She was two years below Ted, at first. So she was twelve when she started at that Catholic high school.” He cleared his throat. “We didn’t date till her senior year, obviously. When she was sixteen. But I figured you guys knew, at least, even if she didn’t make a big thing of it.”

  I tilted my head. “So she’s actually thirty right now?”

  “Uh…three years younger than me, so yeah.”

  “Huh.” I leaned back. It was a small discrepancy, but a weird one: Why keep this from us all these years? Had Eleanor hid it in the first few years of college and then felt she couldn’t come clean? We all had fake IDs from freshman year on, good ones, so it wouldn’t have been hard to quietly slip that out of her wallet even throughout senior year. But all this time, all these articles about Gleam and the Herd and, well, her, all extolling the accomplishments of a woman of a certain age—our age.

  “You think that’s relevant?” he asked.

  “No. It’s just weird.” I cracked my knuckles. “I think if something bad happened to Eleanor, we owe it to her to try to help.”

  “And that’s what you’re trying to do?”

  “I am. Same as you.”

  “No one’s demanded ransom, no contact at all?”

  I winced. “Nope.”

  “Well, the last time I heard from her was when she was asking about a forged ID. Before that, we hadn’t talked since her wedding. Seriously, no one’s suspicious of her husband?”

  Had Daniel done something to Eleanor? The thought made my stomach roil; he’d always seemed to dote on her, but his behavior today, business as usual, was nothing if not bizarre. I felt an odd instinct to ask Eleanor what she thought about it, followed by a rinse of despair. “Daniel seems genuinely worried and eager to have her back,” I said. “I’m curious to hear what he’s learned from the cops.”

  “Keep me posted, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  I stared at him. I hated this feeling: so much subtext, but I couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. I gave him Daniel’s number and mine, and then we both stood, the air between us cold and staticky. “So you’re sticking around?” he asked. Faux casual, like he thought I was up to something sketchy.

  “For now. I g
uess I’ll walk you out.”

  We dawdled at the door as he pulled his coat back on. Finally he caught my eye and gave a cool-guy nod. “You know, even under such shitty circumstances, it’s good to see you, Hana.”

  I froze. Seeing him out of Eleanor’s apartment—what the hell was I doing, standing here as if I were Talented Mr. Ripley–ing her life? I gave a little wave and pressed the door closed behind him.

  For a moment I watched him from the window. Why had he come? Why, really? I was pretty sure he and Daniel had never been alone in a room before, and it was hard to imagine them exchanging bro-y sympathy. Was he actually convinced of Daniel’s guilt, here to intimidate the man he’d deemed responsible? It hadn’t really crossed my mind before, but of course Cameron could still be in love with Eleanor. So many people were.

  I trudged back upstairs, desperation bulging inside me—this trip couldn’t be for nothing; I had to find something. I returned to the bookshelf and surveyed it, hands on hips. So many feminist memoirs and essay collections, spanning all the waves. Some domestic noir, a fat run of Calvin and Hobbes books, an entire row of Jane magazines. The blue cover that’d caught my eye earlier: Frida, a hefty tome she’d brought home from a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year. I pulled it out and flipped through the glossy pages. She’d always worshiped Frida, had been a fan since her parents took her to the Blue House museum in Mexico City when she was a little girl. I replaced the book, imagining I could feel Eleanor’s fingerprints on it, little echoes of her attention pressed into the pages.

  * * *

  —

  I locked the door behind me and felt the cold envelop my outsides: pressing hard on my nose, eyeballs, ears. My visit had been a bust, and this unleashed a new torrent of hopelessness. I was out of ideas, and with every passing hour, that candle flame of hope, the desperate belief that Eleanor was fine, dwindled. The app had said my car was two minutes away, but as I watched, bouncing on the balls of my feet, the driver took a wrong turn and the wait time jumped to six minutes.