She opened the pizza app on her phone and ordered their usual Friday night dinner: one large pepperoni and one large cheese, both thin-crust. She wasn’t sure how hungry Jon would be, but Oliver would be famished after an entire day of running around in the sun. It never mattered how many sandwiches or chips he ate, he was always still hungry afterwards. She suspected they fed most of their food to the birds at the beach, but they always denied it.
She set the delivery time for 5:30pm, closed the app, and gave herself a pat on the back for getting a few good hours of work in and having dinner taken care of.
The phone rang again when she was settling down on the couch with a book.
“Hey babe, where did you put the spare tire? I can’t seem to find it.” On speaker, Jon’s voice echoed through the quiet living room.
“Crap,” Rebecca had never replaced the spare. Driving over construction debris (from the never-ending construction of highway 288), a nail had impaled itself in the right rear tire a few months before. Since the spare was full-sized, she never bothered with buying a new one. Of course, it didn’t occur to her they would need another again so soon.
“I completely forgot to get another one. What’s going on?”
“Nothing major, just a flat tire. We pulled off to the side of the bridge so don’t worry, we aren’t on the highway. But dammit, I thought we had the spare. Do you have the number to AAA?”
“Yeah, I’ll text it to you. But I think they’ll have to tow you if there isn’t a spare. I’ll just come get y’all.”
“That works. See you in a bit then. Love you.”
While there were several bridges between their home and the beach, she knew immediately which one he meant. It was ‘The’ bridge, the largest one that carried you over the Intra-coastal Canal. From the top, you could see the coast stretch out for miles on either side. White-tipped frothy waves kissed the sandy beaches while darker waters waited for boaters further out. It was the best view in the county.
It took Rebecca exactly half a minute to find the AAA card in her wallet and text him the number, something he definitely could have done himself. He had a copy of that exact card in his own wallet. She rolled her eyes and put it back in her purse. Of course, it was easier for him to ask her than do three seconds of digging on his own.
In no time at all, she was heading south on Highway 332, engrossed in the latest political podcast. Podcasts were the key to her sanity during the long commutes into downtown every morning. Houston traffic gave even the most docile person homicidal thoughts. She knew she was lucky that her boss was okay with her working from home a few days a week. Rebecca (and her sanity) appreciated it. Still, she felt like she should double her output when she worked from home, so they wouldn’t think she was watching TV or running errands on their time.
She was halfway to the bridge when her phone rang again.
“Hey, are you still in town? Looks like the AAA guy is here already, we’ll just ride with him. You can meet us at the mechanic shop, it’s closer to home, anyway.”
“I’m not, but I can turn around. They got there fast.”
“Yeah, I thought so too. But he’s not in a tow truck. This is probably the car service so we don’t have to ride with the tow guy. Either way, they really need to invest in nicer vehicles. This van looks like it’s about to fall apart. I’ll call you back when we’re on the road again. Love you.”
Later that night, she would go over this conversation a hundred times, wondering what she had missed. Wishing he had said more about the van or the person driving it. Wishing she was with them or they were safe at home with her.
Rebecca turned the car around and headed for Henry’s Auto, a greasy little place right off the highway with low prices and somewhat honest technicians. It was the only shop they used, though it had been a while since either of them had needed to. They were finally making enough money to buy new cars and had done so the year before.
When she pulled into the empty parking lot, she realized they were already closed for the day. But it wasn’t a wasted trip; they could always leave his car there and call in the morning to let them know what was going on. She knew the boys were still several minutes behind her, so she put her car in park and left the engine running. It was too hot outside, even in the early evening, to sit in a car without the air conditioner on. Her hand was reaching to push play again on her audio book when she thought better of it. Being the only person there after hours was spooky enough, but the high chain-link fences topped with coiled barbed wire surrounding her on three sides only added to her anxiety instead of making her feel safer. The place was a dump, but that was what one came to expect from an old auto repair shop. Vehicles surrounded her in various stages of assembly, all waiting to be made whole again. It was hard to tell if the several used tires piled by the door were waiting to go on a car or had just come off one. One benefit to using Henry’s was the cheap tires. Not new of course, but would get you on the road again at any rate. A fence rattled off to her right and she heard a dog barking.
She locked the doors and rolled her windows all the way up, and muttered, “Don’t worry, Cujo... I’m not coming in.”
She was almost glad it had closed for the day; she would much rather wait in her car than the waiting room there at Henry’s. It was a small space, filled with two love seats that used to be shiny black pleather but had since been reduced to peeling, faded gray messes. There was always the burnt smell of reheated coffee in the air and, no matter what day you went, there would be a different version of an old man in dirty clothes trying to make conversation with you as you sat on the couch getting the back of your legs scratched by the cracked leather.
She glanced at her watch, “Shit, the pizza.” No one was home to accept it. She hoped they wouldn’t charge her card anyway, but they probably would. Customer service everywhere was shit lately.
The boys should have been there already. They had more than enough time to drive from the bridge to Henry’s. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and dialed Jon’s number, listening as it went straight to voicemail. She couldn’t know that at that moment, less than fifteen miles away, Oliver was crying out for her. She couldn’t know that in less than five minutes, he would be dead.
“Dammit Jon, pick up your phone,” she grumbled.
He probably had his ringer off. That man was the absolute worst at remembering to turn it back on. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and listened to her stomach growling, longing for pizzas they wouldn’t get to eat. An hour went by before she gave up and headed home, certain they would be there with a spare tire secured snugly to the car and already eating the leftover spaghetti from the fridge. She drove home, wondering why they paid two hundred dollars every month for phones if he wasn’t going to use the damn thing.
It was a typical lazy summer evening. The sun was low in the sky, casting orange and yellow tones onto everything, whispering that it (and its interminable heat) would soon disappear. Her next-door neighbors sat on their front porch sipping margaritas while their kids ran in and out of the cool spray of a sprinkler in their front yard. Giggles and squeals floated out to the street and into her car as she rolled down the window.
“Hi Nathan. Hi Emily,” she said waving to the man and woman sitting on the porch.
She was proud of herself for remembering their names, finally. It had only taken them living there for three years. She was the world’s worst at remembering names. Especially those of the people she hardly ever spoke to. She was always so busy with work, raising Oliver, and the recently added marriage counseling classes Jon wanted them to attend.
Nathan and Emily held up their drinks in greeting before turning their attentions back to the kids. One of them, the youngest, had slipped on the wet grass and fallen. As she drove past, Rebecca glanced in her rear-view mirror. The kid was fine, standing up and already running back through the sprinkler. Kids were so much more resilient than you thought. They could get through pretty much anything.
She remembered bringing Oliver home from the hospital and being too afraid to hold him. His little head had flopped around so much she was afraid it would flop right off. But Jon had known what to do, he had taken him from her that first night home and hadn’t let go since. They were two peas in a pod. She was sometimes jealous at how parenting came so effortlessly to Jon and how much Oliver worshiped him in return. But she was mostly pleased that she didn’t have to do it all herself.
The surrounding houses were all larger than her own. Their home may have been the smallest on the street, and Rebecca longed for the day when they could upgrade, but for the time being it was enough. It was a modern Victorian style, with steps leading up to a brown-bricked archway that framed their small front porch. The shutters and trim were cream, and two chimneys extended through the top of the roof. They had laughed at the idea of a fireplace in the master bedroom; during the Texas summers they practically lived on the surface of the sun. They didn’t need a fireplace, much less two. But the home had everything else they wanted. A large kitchen, three bedrooms, two baths, and a decent-sized backyard for Oliver to play in. It was the perfect starter home at just under fourteen hundred square feet. A driveway ran to a recessed garage to the left of the home, and whoever owned it previously had clearly had a green thumb. Shrubberies, flowers, and trees of every color filled the small flower bed in front, and the custom beds in the back yard. Rebecca herself had never had much time or patience for gardening, so Jon was usually the one who tended to it all. The neighborhood was mostly quiet, but still contained a few children for Oliver to befriend and spend time with, when he was older and had more roaming privileges.
As she pulled into her driveway, Rebecca’s brows furrowed in confusion. Jon’s car wasn’t there. Perhaps they stopped to pick up dinner, thinking she wouldn’t have ordered pizza so late in the evening. She parked her car and stood in the driveway, eyes scanning up and down the road in front of their house. She could almost imagine Jon’s car coming down the street with the windows down and Oliver’s laughter spilling out.
But the street was empty.
She turned to go inside, calling him again on his cell phone.
Still no answer; straight to voicemail.
She shut the door behind her and pulled up the recent calls on her phone. There it was, the last incoming call from Jon at 5:42pm. It was almost 9:00pm. Even if he had forgotten to call her when they got on the road, they should have made it to the shop before she left. If they decided to go straight home, they should have been there waiting for her. Or, at the very least, tried to call her to say why they would be so late. Jon never thought past what he wanted to do, never thought about her plans.
“It’s fine, I’m sure it’s fine,” she muttered to herself as she called him again.
They were probably okay.
The call went straight to voicemail again. It wasn’t even ringing. His battery could be dead, or he could have dropped it in the water...
Rebecca sat at the breakfast table in the kitchen and stared at the phone in her hand. She didn’t know what to do, who to call, or where the hell Jon and Oliver were. Even if his phone had died, he could have used Henry’s, or the AAA driver’s.
Of course.
They were with the AAA driver, she could call the dispatcher and see where they were.
She gazed at the paint peeling from the kitchen cabinets while she waited on hold for a real person to talk to.
“Yes, hello. This is Rebecca Crow. You guys picked up my husband a few hours ago and they still haven’t made it home. Can you see if they went to a different shop?”
“Mrs. Crow, is it?” She could hear the woman’s fingers skittering across her keyboard. “Yes... we had a call to pick up your husband, but when the tow driver showed up, no one was there. We assumed he was able to get on the road again. People always forget to call and cancel when that happens.”
“But... you gave him a spare, right?”
“No ma’am, we didn’t deliver a spare tire.”
Rebecca froze. If it wasn’t AAA, who was the man in the van?
“Mrs. Crow, are you there?”
“Yeah... uh... I’m here. But, what do you mean, they couldn’t find him? Did you go to the bridge? He said he saw y’all pull up in a van.”
“Yes ma’am, we went to the bridge, but your husband wasn’t there. And we don’t show up with vans. All of our drivers are in tow trucks, for obvious reasons.”
She reminded herself to breathe. They had to be somewhere safe. Oliver was with Jon who would move heaven and earth to make sure he was safe. But that didn’t explain where Jon was... or why they hadn’t called. Or why they weren’t there when AAA showed up.
Or who was in that van.
“Mrs. Crow? I’m hanging up now. Have a good day and please remember to call us if you need help again in the future.”
She stared at the phone’s blank screen, unsure when the woman had hung up. The police: they would know what to do. Rebecca dialed 911 then hung up before it could ring. Was she over-reacting? Would they laugh at her and tell her to be patient? Was she supposed to wait twenty-four or forty-eight or whatever hours before calling them? They were okay. They would walk through the door any minute with a bag of burgers. They’d sit around the table and laugh about their adventure while eating and everything would be fine. Still, it was odd.
She dialed 911 again, and told herself everything would be okay.
3
Rebecca was still staring at the silent phone in her hand when red and blue flashing lights beamed across her front window, breaking the trance. She rushed to the door and yanked it open.
Standing on her front porch was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a kind face and a thick black mustache. He wore black slacks and a thin striped blue and white button-up shirt. A badge hung around his neck on a chain. In another life, Rebecca would have found him attractive. In another life, she wouldn’t be standing there wondering where her husband and son were.
She peered around him to the white unmarked police cruiser parked in front of her house, to the left of her car. Jon’s spot. Past the driveway, the street yawned empty on either side. If she stared hard enough, she could almost see Jon’s blue Chevy pull up to the intersection, take a left onto their road, and cruise towards her. Oliver would be in the back seat, waving from the open window. They would park behind her car, and an avalanche of sandy feet, toys, and towels would spill out onto the concrete. Jon would say she was being silly, for calling the police. He would say she was being impatient, that she needed to relax. He always said she needed to relax.
Rebecca didn’t dare look at the detective standing in front of her, because then it would be real. He would be there, and Jon and Oliver wouldn’t. The minute that man came into her home and sat down on her couch clicking his pen and taking notes about the last time she saw or talked to her husband, it would be real. And she wasn’t sure if she could handle that.
The detective reached out to touch her arm. “Mrs. Crow, did you hear me?”
She blinked and turned to face him.
“Mrs. Crow, I’m Detective Barnes with the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. You called us about a missing person?”
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath, forced her shoulders back, and walked into the living room behind the detective.
The evening was a haze of strangers and coffee as other officers trickled in to assist, though most of them avoided making eye contact with her. Like a gossamer curtain, the potential contagion of her tragedy encircled her, trailing each uncertain step. Their downcast eyes and shuffled feet skirted around it, careful not to touch.
Modestly decorated, a brown fabric full-sized couch consumed the small living room. In front of the couch sat a coffee table, its glass surface marred by scratches. A pre-Oliver purchase, it hadn’t been the same since he was old enough to bang his toys on it. A TV sat on a light wooden entertainment center against one wall, the screen blank. Rebecca and the detecti
ve sat on the couch with small blue pillows against their backs and cups of steaming coffee and tea on the table in front of them.
Detective Barnes pulled out his pen and pad of paper, and took notes as she walked him through her day. She was almost embarrassed at how little she remembered of their parting that morning, in too much of a hurry to get started on her work. Her work. It was all she had focused on the last few years before having Oliver. When their efforts to conceive took longer than they expected, the hyper-focus on her career was a welcome distraction. But even after he was born, it was the only place where she felt confident in what she was doing. And she was great at it. Even better at it than being a mom or wife. Rebecca racked her brain to come up with any details from that morning.
“Sammy.”
The detective looked up from his notepad, one eyebrow raised in confusion, pen poised.
“His stuffed elephant, Sammy. That was... is... with him. It’s this big…” She held up her hands about a foot apart. “And blue. He takes it everywhere. Is that important for you to know?”
“Sure.” he nodded as he added it to his notes, “Anything else you can remember?”
She sighed. “No, I don’t think so.”
Barnes put his pen down and looked at her, his eyes searching her face.
“Mrs. Crow, is there anyone we can call? Anyone that can come be with you?”
She stared at her hands, rolled her wedding band around on her finger, and tried to think of who she could call. There was no one. Well, that wasn’t completely true. There was her dad. But he was up in San Antonio, with step-mother number three. She could count on one hand the number of times they had seen each other since Rebecca had escaped her childhood home and never looked back. Before, it was just her and her dad, coexisting in silence and grief. Her mother’s slow death from cancer put a strain on Rebecca’s relationship with her father that was only improved by her absence. She thought it was because she looked so much like her mom, and she could understand that. Some days she got a glimpse of herself in the mirror and thought she was seeing a ghost. Especially as the years went by, and the wrinkles and weariness crept in.
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