And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  She reminded Gray of her forever-mother, Faye. Nothing but time, sweetheart.

  “You’re Rebekah Lawrence, yes?” Gray asked, closing in on her. “How are you today?”

  “Depends on the next ten seconds.”

  Gray smiled wider. “It’s no big deal. I’m just here to check on your daughter. To make sure she’s okay.”

  Rebekah Lawrence cocked her head. “I need you to say more than that. You are…?”

  Gray handed the woman one of her new business cards.

  Rebekah’s eyebrows furrowed as she read aloud: “‘Grayson Sykes, Private Investigator, Rader Consulting.’ My daughter is fine. I just saw her on Sunday.”

  “That’s good to hear. Has she been living with you?”

  “Yes, for the last month.” She squinted. “Who hired you?”

  “Can’t say, Mrs. Lawrence.”

  “I’m just confused, is all. I don’t like being confused.”

  “Understandable. My client seems to think that your daughter has run away.”

  “Is that illegal now? She’s a grown-up and can go wherever she wants.”

  “My client thinks she was under duress at the time and is concerned about her safety.”

  “She wasn’t under duress on Sunday, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s not missing, nor did she ‘run away.’ Not in my opinion, and I’m her mother.”

  Which is why the police had not become involved.

  “Wait…” Rebekah Lawrence held up her hand. “I know who hired you, and…” She pressed that hand against her forehead. “Please tell him that we’re working on it, okay? We’re not rich people. I mean, we do okay, but ever since Joe’s stroke … We have a lot going on right now.”

  Gray offered a comforting smile. “I hate piling on, but could you do me a small favor?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Could you take a picture of the dog and Isabel holding today’s newspaper?”

  Confused eyes from Rebekah.

  “Sounds ridiculous,” Gray admitted, “but it’s just so that I can show my client that—”

  “The dog? And … Isabel?”

  “Yes.” When the older woman didn’t speak, Gray said, “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I assumed you only had one daughter. Isabel.”

  “I have two daughters. And I thought you were talking about Noelle.”

  “No. Isa—”

  Rebekah Lawrence was slowly shaking her head.

  And the two women stared at each other as the neighbor’s sprinklers clicked, as a passing Jetta boomed rap from its janky stereo, as an airplane thundered above their heads.

  Rebekah Lawrence reached for her bag in the passenger seat of the Caddy.

  Gray dug into her battered Liz Claiborne.

  They both thrust pictures at each other.

  Gray’s picture was of the Mary Ann with the long ponytail and Vogue cheekbones.

  Rebekah Lawrence’s two pictures were of a pig-nosed, light-skinned woman with facial piercings and violet dreadlocks and another woman, with the same nose, darker skin, wearing a Princeton sweatshirt. Neither woman was Isabel. Neither woman had been in the wine tasting tribe pictures on Isabel’s Facebook page or in the pictures around her condominium.

  Had Clarissa given her wrong information? Was there another Rebekah Lawrence who had borne a baby girl named Isabel?

  “Do you know this woman?” Gray asked, holding up Isabel’s picture.

  Rebekah Lawrence gave a decisive nod. “Yes. That’s Isabel.”

  “But she’s not your daughter?”

  “No. She’s Noelle’s friend.” She held up the picture of the woman with the facial piercings. “Noelle stays with Isabel sometimes. I believe they met over at UCLA.”

  “Ah. Got it.” This was a case of the Black Family: lots of play aunties and play cousins and everybody calling every older woman “momma” or “auntie.” Growing up, she’d had “play family.” Nick Rader—decades ago, he was like a brother to her. Even within her foster families, “Auntie” Charlene had been Mom Twyla’s best friend. She’d bathed in Chantilly perfume and smoked skinny brown cigarettes. Charlene had always carried plastic-wrapped caramels in her purse and called Natalie “Li’l Bit” like that was her name. Auntie Charlene had helped Mom Twyla buy purses, jewelry, and cheese with money that the state had paid Twyla for fostering.

  “Is Isabel okay?” Rebekah Lawrence asked now.

  “We’re hoping so. Do you know anything about Isabel’s parents?”

  “No clue.”

  Gray now wanted a copy of Isabel Lincoln’s birth certificate. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Maybe a few months ago. March?”

  “How was she acting back then?” Shit. I should be recording this. Too late.

  “She reminded me of a wounded bird,” the older woman said. “She’s older than my daughter—Noelle is twenty-five and aimless. Always in trouble. Always running. A bit … slick, know what I mean? That’s why I thought you were a process server or a bill collector.”

  Rebekah Lawrence sighed. “Kids these days are a bit slick. I’d hoped that she’d grow up some, since Isabel seemed so adult, but then Noelle met this thug, and he just made her worse. She and I had a big blowup about money and that’s when she started living with Isabel. She stayed away for a few weeks, but she came back here. Now she’s living with that boyfriend.”

  “Speaking of boyfriends, do you know Isabel’s boyfriend, Ian O’Donnell?”

  Rebekah Lawrence blinked at her. “Why would I know him?”

  “He told me to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me? Why?”

  “Because he believes you and Joe are Isabel’s parents.”

  “I have no idea why he’d think that.”

  “Maybe she considers you to be like a mother to her?” Gray offered. “There’s a picture of you two on her desk at her house and her job.”

  “I don’t know her like that. I don’t know Ian Whoever-he-is at all. And I really need to get to work right now.”

  Gray asked for Noelle’s phone number.

  “I’d rather have Noelle call you. But let me try to get her on the phone right now.” Rebekah Lawrence dialed her daughter’s number.

  Gray watched a black Range Rover roll toward the Lawrence house—Not Sean; not with that cheap, bubbled window tinting—and listened as Noelle’s phone rang … and rang … Finally, a female voice told the caller to leave a message. And so Rebekah Lawrence left a message.

  Gray thanked the woman, turned to leave, but turned back again. “Who in your family handles phone service?”

  Rebekah Lawrence sat her purse back on the Cadillac’s passenger seat. “Noelle does. Phone, internet, and all that. To tell you the truth, Miss Sykes? It’s all Greek to me.”

  Play moms. Missing women. Confused boyfriends …

  Gray sighed. It’s all Greek to me, too, Clair Huxtable.

  SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

  LOVE, LOST

  On the last Saturday of the month, Special Agent Dominick Rader stood on the porch of 787 Lyndon Street in Monterey, California. In his arms, he held bags filled with eggs, bread, and paper towels—and since Natalie was home on spring break, he included a box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries. He smiled at the college senior, his gray eyes bright even as the smell of death rolled past him and mixed with the hopeful aromas of evergreens and the Pacific.

  Natalie was always thrilled to see Dominick Rader. He always brought light into the house, brought light into her heart. Nowadays, the Grayson house needed light from all sources.

  Cancer killed everything.

  Natalie’s mother, Faye, was still sharp in her sky-blue knitwear, but a little heavier from stress and a diet of fast food. On this morning, she met Dominick in the hallway. “You don’t have to do this, Dom. It’s such a long drive down from the city.”

  “I don’t mind coming, Mrs. G.,” Dominick said. “You and Vic would do it for me.” Then he followed Natalie into the kitchen and toge
ther they unpacked the groceries. He removed the empty carton of eggs from the fridge. Changed the old box of baking soda and replaced it with a new box. He whistled as he worked, usually Nirvana, sometimes Pearl Jam.

  After he and Natalie straightened the kitchen, she led him to the master bedroom, the source of that smell of decay. That’s where he found his boss, Victor Grayson, now a whisper of himself at sixty years old, a brown-skinned husk of a man, lost in a hospital bed.

  “Looking good, sir,” Dominick said.

  “Always,” Victor answered, his voice still strong. “Nat and Faye are good nurses.”

  Seven years before, Faye and Victor Grayson had adopted fifteen-year-old Natalie Kittridge. Since then, Faye had taught their only child the art of conversation, ways to spot a liar, how to manage a bank account, how to make a proper martini, how to make a proper pitcher of lemonade. Faye had regularly taken Natalie to the library and to bookstores, and before Victor’s diagnosis, they often ate in restaurants that utilized several pieces of flatware.

  Natalie had learned that there were “everyday” plates and special occasion plates with scalloped edges rimmed in gold. She had become the proud owner of pink razor blades and a separate kind of lotion for her face. Her face!

  She’d been a Baptist, an Adventist, an Episcopalian. She’d been a vegetarian and a carnivore. An independent and a socialist. She had believed in science in May but, by Christmas, was a believer in herbs and Mercury in retrograde. Like most kids in foster care, she’d lived as a chameleon until Faye and Victor Grayson rescued her.

  The Graysons saw that she was a bright kid, eager to learn, not scared of much. They put her in a club soccer team and enrolled her at a girls’ school. They gave her a bedroom, a giant box with sea-green walls. The big bay window was true to its name and she spotted the Pacific Ocean right there. And she could decorate her room however she wanted. Posters of Michael Jordan, New Edition, and Janet Jackson covered her walls. She filled her tall bookcase with Tom Clancy, Stephen King, V. C. Andrews, and Jackie Collins. There was a lock on the door that she’d stopped using on her fiftieth night in the Graysons’—no, her—home. “This is your house,” Faye always told her. “You have nothing to fear here.”

  The men who had visited the Grayson house were as tall and muscular as the men who’d visited Mom Twyla’s home. These men carried guns, too, and they also cursed. But these men talked with her new father about presidents and rule of law, amendments and old Scotch whiskey. They were a different flavor of dangerous, and Natalie’s nerves knew the difference.

  She had listened and performed and excelled, to please Victor and Faye more than anything. She graduated high school with gold cords around her neck and a full scholarship to Cal State, Fresno. All of this to keep them from changing their minds about her and dropping her back at Casa Del Mar Group Home. But they’d kept her, and they’d legally adopted her. The Graysons loved her.

  It had been a good life.

  Even with the drives to doctors’ appointments and nurse visits, Faye hadn’t stopped being Natalie’s mother. She never sweated and never swore, even now. Her outfits were still the color of flames on weekdays and the colors of Atlantis on Saturdays and Sundays. Freckles still danced across the bridge of her caramel-colored skin, even though her cheeks were often wet with tears.

  Victor couldn’t perform daddy duty now, but before his sickness he had taught Natalie self-defense and weapons, chess and justice. He had been a big man, six five and as thick as the trees surrounding their home. His hair, when he’d had it, had lived in a black man’s crew cut, and his eyebrows had been tangled tufts of fishing lines.

  Yeah, a good life, until …

  On this morning, Dominick Rader gave Victor a shave, changed his catheter, and emptied his bag. Then he sat in the armchair beside the bed and told tales about the latest Bureau fuckup, about this girl Allison and that girl Vanessa. He whispered details that neither Natalie nor Faye could hear in the living room. Both men roared with laughter, though. Laughter was good.

  Once Victor had fallen asleep, Natalie joined Dominick on a drive for burgers.

  “You’re exaggerating.” His eyes bugged at the college student seated across from him.

  Natalie shook her head. “They played for six hours straight. No seats, all standing. I swear I got a contact high, there was so much weed smoke in the air. I will never, not ever, listen to a George Clinton–Parliament album ever again, you can’t make me, no, I won’t do it, not after last Saturday night.”

  Dominick swirled French fries through a puddle of ketchup. “I didn’t think you were into P-Funk like that.”

  “I’m not.” She took a big bite from her burger. “Not like that. Six fucking hours?”

  “Lemme guess: you went because of a guy.”

  Natalie blushed. “He likes horns. Parliament; Tower of Power; Earth, Wind and Fire…”

  “And after?”

  “And after, nothing happened. I stood for six hours and I didn’t get a hug, didn’t get a kiss, didn’t get one damned thing. Fucker.”

  He cocked an amused eyebrow. “Obviously not.”

  They laughed big, like he had laughed with Victor. Just a normal college student with her father’s favorite FBI agent.

  He drove Natalie back to Lyndon Street, where healthy green trees shot up, up, up into an impossibly blue sky softened by sea salt and the everlasting roar of waves. Before driving back up to San Francisco, Dominick checked on Victor. Then he hugged Faye and walked with Natalie back to his Ford.

  “It means the world to him,” Natalie said, tears bright in her eyes, “you visiting him like this. You’re like a son to him.”

  He watched the swaying branches of the pine trees. “Twice a month doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It isn’t enough.”

  She smirked. “Because you have so much free time.”

  “I know. Still…”

  “It’s not gonna be long now.” Those words were sludge in her throat. “Mom wants me to go back to school, since I’m graduating, but I have a feeling it’ll be a turnaround trip.”

  “You’ll call me?”

  “He’s making me memorize your number.”

  “Forwards and back?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll be here,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Always.”

  19

  Gray’s mind clicked back to her visit to Isabel Lincoln’s condo. Those clothes on the floor of the spare bedroom—did they belong to Noelle Lawrence? Were Noelle and her thug boyfriend somehow involved in Isabel’s disappearance?

  Gray didn’t know, although she did know that Rebekah Lawrence was tired of her daughter’s nonsense. Trouble still followed the put-together woman like the stink of wet trash on her designer pumps. Despite the Cadillac and the expensive purse, the pantsuit and the hair, Rebekah Lawrence was still dealing with hood shit—all because of Noelle. And now, Noelle’s friend Isabel, the stable one, had disappeared and some random P.I. had showed up at her house?

  “Hood shit,” Gray said.

  The sun was high and heat spiked through the Camry’s windows. Not only had Gray not talked to people from yesterday, she had added another name to her list: Noelle Lawrence.

  And despite Black Family, it was still strange that Rebekah Lawrence didn’t really know Isabel even though her picture now sat in the missing woman’s condo and workplace.

  One more glance at ORO—no recent notifications—and Gray sped out of Inglewood.

  Mount Gethsemane AME Church was known for its rocking services but also for its location—across the street from the best soul food restaurant in Los Angeles. Dulan’s on Crenshaw had been a blessing on those nights when Gray needed comfort food. The kind of food Miss Francine, another one of her foster mothers, had cooked. Miss Francine specialized in yams thick with butter and brown sugar. Tart collard greens speckled with gifts of cubed ham. Smothered chicken that singed tongues and filled bellies.

  Pastor Bernard Dunlop had consumed plenty of
pork chops and black-eyed peas. The large man wore many-gemmed rings on both thick ring fingers, and a cross as big as a stop sign dangled from a gold rope around his thick neck. He had a nice smile, though, which told Gray that she could tell him anything and that anything she told him, he would personally take to God in prayer. He had done that for Isabel Lincoln even though he really didn’t know her.

  “I do know she’s a friend of Sister Tea’s,” he said, stirring Splenda into his cup of tea. “They met right after Tea’s parents died in a car accident, back in 2017. Both she and Sister Isabel came down during an altar call once, after I’d shared a word about freedom in truth from the book of John, eighth chapter. How Jesus forgives and encourages us to walk from darkness into the light. ‘For if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.’

  “Sister Isabel was taken with this message, and she just … wept. I understood why Sister Tea was crying, and I admit, I thought that Isabel was in an illicit relationship and that my words were getting to her. I’m not here to judge, though. I’m just God’s usher.” He reached for the plate of cookies on the coffee table. “Help yourself. You look like the cookie type.”

  “Cookies, doughnuts, ice cream … I’m trying to cut back, but…” Gray took an oatmeal-raisin cookie. Who was she to deny delicious desserts offered by one of God’s ushers?

  “Isabel came down to the altar a few more times after that,” Pastor Dunlop continued. “Once, I talked about victory and making it through the valleys of despair—she cried during that. And then I preached about finding a path out of turmoil and to peace. She fell apart again, and while I consider myself a talented speaker…”

  He tapped the spoon against the cup’s rim. “There was something happening with this young lady, and so, afterward, I pulled her aside and offered to pray with her. She accepted my offer, and … well…”

  “Yes?” Gray sipped from her own teacup.