The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  “Or money,” he said, holding out a hand.

  “Name.”

  “Seth,” he said.

  Hester tossed a twenty into the suitcase. “There. You found some.”

  Kate’s voice rang out from down the hallway. “Fifty-nine, sixty!”

  “Be there in a sec,” Hester shouted over her shoulder.

  “How many?” Kate asked.

  “Exactly one.”

  * * *

  Fresh air had never smelled this clean. As soon as Hester tripped out of the house and onto the wraparound porch, she took Kate’s hand and ran, shoving rhododendron branches from her face and stumbling through the dark forest till she scrambled out of the trees and into the light. She bent over and took deep breaths, feeling the methane that house exuded sweep from her lungs. She never should have brought Kate in there, or to this island. Everyone who lived in that house probably spent most of their day high. What had Daphne gotten herself into? How could she have fallen this far?

  Daphne had always been the tough one, the one who took women’s studies and wrote poems about her clit that she read during poetry slams at the The Hoop. One of the things that brought them together was their complete disinterest in the past. For Hester, it had felt as though they’d both appeared, fully formed, with ideas and interests and passions, with none of the baggage that she normally associated with new friends. It was as if Daphne cared enough not to ask about Hester’s parents or where she grew up or went to school, which freed Hester from tracking her story. Eventually, little truths slipped in: Daphne’s father, a cop, had been shot and killed when she was eleven; Hester had worked at the A&P in her small town, where the produce manager had copped a feel while she labeled bananas. When those truths appeared, they caught them and nurtured them and tucked them away for later, all while treating them like no big deal.

  After graduation, Hester and Daphne moved into a dumpy apartment in Allston. Daphne drifted from one job to the next, never quite satisfied with where life was taking her, while Hester enrolled in a master’s program in library science and took an internship at a suburban data-processing center that was more than two hours away using public transportation and where she spent her days wading through stacks of reports from a dot-matrix printer.

  Daphne showed up at the office one day. She smelled of smoke and bus fumes and said something about going to lunch. “Not for another hour,” Hester whispered. “Wait for me in the lobby.”

  Daphne wore a black leather jacket and skin-tight jeans. She snapped on a pair of headphones and gave Hester the thumbs-up, then backed away. Twenty minutes later, the receptionist scurried toward Hester’s desk. “Is that your friend?” she asked. “The one with the red hair? She’s TP-ING the bathroom.”

  Hester ran to where Daphne sang “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” while tossing a roll of toilet paper across the stalls. Hester pulled the streams of paper down in armfuls, flushing it and destroying the evidence. “You want this!” Daphne said, lifting the headphones from her ears.

  “Get out,” Hester said. “Now. And don’t come home tonight either. I don’t even want to look at you.”

  Daphne’s face froze in a smile. She left, but by then the damage had been done. Even though Hester cleaned the bathroom, Security had been called and waited in the lobby to escort her out of the building. When she trudged to the bus shelter for the commute home, she found Daphne waiting. It was a fall day, crisp, with a promise of winter. The leaves in the office park had begun to turn. It was the kind of day that demanded hot cider and hayrides, though at that time in her life, Hester would have been lucky enough to have afforded an apple.

  “You got me fired,” she said.

  “Come on!” Daphne said. “I saved you. You hated that place. What did that job even have to do with being a librarian anyway? You’re so much better than data printouts.”

  “Who’s better than data printouts?” Hester shouted.

  “You,” Daphne said. “You’re better than this bus and a two-hour commute and the $8.50 an hour they were paying you. You’re better than me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  Daphne took Hester’s hand. And even though Hester hadn’t wanted to admit it then—she almost didn’t want to admit it now—she had hated that job and the commute, and she’d settled for it only because she wanted to feel grounded and permanent. She wanted to live a life where nothing ever changed, one where she could feel normal. Daphne made that impossible. She refused to settle, and she refused to give in.

  A week later, Hester found another internship, this one at Harvard, and the one thing that almost kept her from accepting it was that by doing so, she had to admit Daphne had been right all along.

  * * *

  There was an hour and forty-five minutes before the ferry left—just over ninety minutes to figure out where Daphne was hiding. But Seth was right, this was a big small place with lots of nooks and crannies.

  “Why wasn’t Mommy at the house?” Kate asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Hester said.

  “Does she want to see us?”

  The questions broke Hester’s heart. “I hope so,” she said. “We’ll keep looking.”

  Why the hell was Daphne hiding from her after texting so urgently for help? Why would she have such a sudden change of heart?

  They rounded a corner and the water opened out in front of them. Small waves lapped at the shore of a tiny harbor, with the lighthouse perched at the end of a jetty. A seagull cried as it swept across the sky, dropping a clam to the stones below and diving in to gobble up the meat that had broken free. Debris from the storm littered the rocky beach—buoys, driftwood, seaweed, stranded fish, now expired. Hester scanned the horizon for a woman and a small boy but didn’t see anyone. She stepped over the beach and onto the shore, where the tide had receded, leaving shallow pools filled with shellfish. Hester had grown up in a beach town, and the smells and sounds of the sea pulled her to those lonely times. Now she watched as Kate dashed from one tidal pool to the next. Kate had never been to the beach. Not once in her short little life. Hester joined Kate at the edge of a tidal pool, crouching beside her and lifting a spiky anemone from the water, the sun reflecting from its rainbow-hued shell. Kate touched the spikes and quickly withdrew her fingers.

  “The spikes keep them safe,” Hester said, letting the shellfish drift into the water.

  Kate ran ahead as they crossed an outcropping of granite. Hester scanned the horizon again, but they seemed to be the only ones out here. A gentle wave swept up the sand and lapped at Kate’s sneakers. “Please don’t die,” Hester mumbled to herself, the same mantra she’d repeated since the day Kate came to live with her. Even before that. Since the day she’d met her as a newborn.

  Kate kicked off her sneakers and waded into the surf. No fear.

  No fear!

  It was a good thing.

  Kate’s hand shot into the water. She pulled out a horseshoe crab by its spiny tail, its legs clawing at the air. Hester nearly said to be careful, to watch her fingers, but she reminded herself that there was nothing to be afraid of, no risk. Hester had spent a childhood lifting hundreds of horseshoe crabs from the sea, a childhood wandering along the water on her own, and she was still here, with all her fingers and toes. She kicked her shoes off too and waded into the frigid water. “He’s probably scared,” she said.

  Kate released the horseshoe crab. It floated down, swaying back and forth, till it hit the seafloor and scurried off to join the others. Together Hester and Kate examined stones and shells and whatever else they could find, till finally Hester said, “I can barely feel my toes,” and turned toward shore.

  The sun shone beyond the lighthouse, and for a moment Hester swore she saw a person silhouetted against the light. She nearly called Daphne’s name, but resisted. It wouldn’t do any good to give Kate false hope. Soon it would be time to go. Time to get to the ferry. Hester had done her best. Really, she had. She’d come to find Daphne
, but maybe Daphne didn’t want to be found anymore.

  As Hester took Kate’s hand, a black lab with a red collar ran from behind a boulder. It was wet and covered in sand and waited till it stood right next to Hester to shake seawater from its coat.

  “Doggie!” Kate shouted.

  Hester let the dog lick her hand. “Where did you come from?” she said. “You lost, pup?”

  Morgan had a habit of collecting strays—dogs, cats, rabbits. This dog looked healthy and well loved, but maybe with the storm she’d lost her owner. Maybe Hester would be the one to bring home a rescue, and they’d have something to talk about tonight besides her disappearance. Besides Daphne.

  “Everyone’s wondering who the woman asking questions might be.”

  At the sound of a deep voice, Hester spun around. A man stood behind her, his hip leaning into a boulder, a half-dozen lobster buoys lashed together with twine and balanced on his shoulder. “Sorry to scare you,” he said. “We’re cleaning up after the storm.”

  “Who’s been wondering about me?” Hester asked.

  “Oh, it’s a small place. When you show up asking about people, it gets around.” The man wiped his hands on his jeans and extended a hand. “Vaughn Roberts,” he said.

  He wore knee-high rubber boots and a gray t-shirt. Sweat from the warm day poured down his handsome face. Kate pressed herself into Hester’s leg, shy at seeing the stranger. He whistled, and the dog ran to his side and sat. “This is Mindy,” he said. “Best swimmer in Maine.” He gave her a treat. “But she doesn’t do anything for free.”

  Kate moved toward the dog, who shook again, and this time Kate squealed and petted her nose.

  “She okay with dogs?” Vaughn asked.

  “Her uncle’s a vet,” Hester said. “Our house is full of all creatures, great and small.”

  “That’s a good way to be. You’re looking for Annie, right? We went fishing yesterday. Had a blast.”

  Of the people Hester had met so far, Vaughn was the first to have anything nice to say about “Annie.” “Have you seen her today?”

  “Not since last night,” Vaughn said. “She helped me out of a jam.”

  “She sent me a text. I drove all the way from Boston to find her.”

  “Well, there’s nowhere to go unless she slipped out on the ferry,” Vaughn said, clucking his tongue. The dog returned to his side. “You staying the night?” he asked.

  “I hope not.”

  “We all run on ferry time out here. You’ll need to get to the pier soon.”

  “We’re heading out to the lighthouse. It’ll only be a minute.”

  “Careful out there too. The tide’s about to turn, and when it does the land disappears. You could be stuck there for hours. You definitely won’t make the ferry then!”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Hester said. “If you see Annie, tell her Hester is looking for her.”

  “Will do,” Vaughn said.

  Hester watched him till he reached shore and turned down the path toward town. She could feel the time till the ferry’s departure ticking away, but she had to keep trying. “Let’s check out the lighthouse,” she said to Kate.

  Their feet slid through thick, damp sand as they crossed the jetty, a strip that couldn’t have been more than ten feet wide. The lighthouse sat on a disk of solid stone that beach roses had colonized. A few seagulls strutted across the ground, but besides that, the island was desolate. “No one here,” Kate said, sounding sad.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Hester said.

  They walked around the perimeter of the lighthouse rock. The remnants of a teenage gathering—cigarette butts and beer cans—had managed to survive the storm. Someone had written “Anson sucks balls” with spray paint. Hester’s eyes swept the lighthouse keeper’s house and she noticed that the front door was ajar. She nudged the door, and it squeaked open on rusty hinges. “Anyone here?” Hester’s words caught in her throat as they echoed back to her.

  “We should probably leave,” she said to Kate.

  They should definitely leave.

  But she edged over the threshold while Kate clung to her leg. The little light that filtered through the small windows revealed a cold, hard room with stone walls and a dirt floor. Hester imagined a narrow cot and a gas light, and the lonely suppers of salt cod and potatoes. Otherwise, the room was empty.

  “I guess we’re out of luck,” she said to Kate, and for the first time since she’d arrived a real seed of worry planted itself in the back of her mind. Where was Daphne? She tapped out a text to the number Daphne had used the night before.

  We came. We’ll be on the 4 pm ferry unless I hear from you.

  She hit Send and added a second text.

  Kate wants to see you.

  “Come on, kiddo,” she said, walking into the sun. “If we get back to town with time to spare, we’ll grab an ice-cream cone. Okay?”

  Even ice cream didn’t cheer up Kate, who kicked at stones and dragged her feet as they headed over the jetty. Finally, the girl fell onto the sand and refused to move. Hester gave into it and sat beside her. “I shouldn’t have brought you with me today,” she said. “It was stupid.”

  Kate balled up a fistful of sand and tossed it into the water. “Stupid,” she said.

  “So now, here’s the deal. We’ll have ice cream, get on the ferry, go home, and I’ll tell your uncle that I made a big mistake. And guess who’ll be in big trouble? It’s one of the two of us, and it’s not you.”

  A tiny grin started to form at the corners of Kate’s mouth.

  “Who’s in trouble?” Hester asked.

  “You are.”

  “You got it. I’m in massive trouble. Probably the worst trouble I’ve ever been in, and I deserve it. Honestly, I do. I mean, I have totally f-ed up. Do you know what f-ed up means?”

  “Fucked up,” Kate said.

  “Yep. And I’ll be in even more trouble if we stay out here for the night. So, why don’t we get going. Tomorrow, Uncle Morgan will take you to school, and I’ll go to work, and maybe we’ll be able to take a step forward finally.” Maybe, Hester thought, I’ll stop acting like a lunatic. “Do we have a deal?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Come on.”

  As they stood, Kate walked toward the water, then pointed.

  Hester squinted into the sun. “What is it?”

  At first, she thought Kate was pointing at a pile of discarded clothing that had washed up on the beach. A wave swept the clothing toward them. It rippled and caught, and a hand fell to the sand. Then she saw a head of hair and a rain jacket.

  And the blue hilt of a knife.

  “Fuck,” Hester mumbled under her breath.

  “Fuck,” Kate said.

  Hester put a hand to the girl’s curly head of hair and led her away. Then she dialed Morgan’s number. He picked up after three rings. She imagined him in his exam room, prodding a furry abdomen, coaxing symptoms from a patient that couldn’t speak. Morgan was gentle and kind. He deserved someone better than Hester. Someone who didn’t lie to him.

  “You’re going to kill me,” she said.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “I’m in Maine.”

  “Right now?”

  “On an island. Looking for your sister. She sent me a text last night, and I left without telling you.”

  Hester could hear the need for control in Morgan’s sharp inhale. He whispered that he’d be right back, and she imagined him running a hand through his red hair and resting his back against the wall. Then he finally exhaled. “Okay,” he said.

  “And I brought Kate with me.”

  “Remember when you said I was going to kill you? You’re getting closer to homicide.”

  “Not as close as I am,” Hester said, squeezing Kate’s hand. “I can’t find Daphne. But I did find a dead body.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Rory sucked on his cigarette one last time and ground it out with his heel. He stood at Lydia’s front gate. Lydia Pelletier was th
e last person in the world he wanted to see, but Barb was being kind. She was trying to keep him busy and trying to keep him from thinking about Pete. So he followed the flagstone path to the bakery. Inside there were no customers, but he could hear Lydia at work in the back. He took his hat off and listened for the bells as he let himself in through the screen door. She popped her head around the corner, and when she saw him she nodded and filled a cup with iced coffee. She seemed to know enough not to smile yet. It was too soon for that. “You’re the only person I know who drinks iced coffee black,” she said, rubbing her neck as she suppressed a yawn.

  She looked as tired as Rory felt. And he was tired enough to give in to their old repartee. “Watching my figure,” he said.

  It fit like a glove.

  Lydia took a tentative step toward him and put a hand to his shoulder, halfway to a hug. They stood like that for a moment, till Lydia broke the silence. “That woman came by. The short one with the girl. She told me you were on duty.”

  “The state cops are still here,” Rory said, “and Andy asked me to take his shift. His house got hit pretty bad by the storm.”

  “Rory . . .”

  “It’s fine.” He cut her off.

  Work kept him at the center of things. And it helped him forget. He didn’t want to think about Pete. He didn’t want to think about any of it. He drifted toward the door. The bakery was tiny and cramped on the happiest of days, and today it felt miserable. “Is your husband here?” he asked.

  Finding Trey. That was the only reason he was here. He had to play the part. He yanked at the screen door and stepped outside, where he tossed back the coffee, letting the bitter liquid burn like acid.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Lydia said. “Not since last night.”

  “Tell him the detective is looking for him at the community center. She wants to leave the island and can’t go till he signs off.”

  “Talk to me, Rory,” Lydia said.

  “What was that all about last night?” Rory said, anger erupting in his voice. “At the ravine. What were you thinking?”

  He had meant to come here and make Lydia feel small, but he’d already betrayed his feelings. He’d given her the power all over again. “You and Vaughn . . . why?”