The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  He applied a butterfly strip and checked Daphne’s other cuts and bruises. “Nothing seems broken besides that tooth,” he said after a few minutes. “You’ll have to see a dentist about that. Advil’s the best cure for the pain right now.”

  “No concussion?” Hester asked as she watched from the corner of the room, Mindy sitting at attention beside her.

  “Nope, nothing much on the physical side,” he said. “But, like I said, I’m a shrink. Come talk to me if you want. This couldn’t have been easy, and sometimes it’s good to talk things through.”

  “Sure,” Daphne said, in a way that meant she wouldn’t. “Thanks.”

  “For real,” the doctor said. “Session’s on me.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Daphne said. “Right now, what I really need is something to eat.”

  “Is she okay to eat?” Hester asked.

  “Absolutely. Though you’ll need to watch that tooth.”

  “How about a drink?” Daphne asked.

  “One drink. No more.”

  Hester watched him pack his bag up and leave, listening as his footsteps descended the narrow staircase. “Maybe you should go talk to him,” she said.

  “Not a chance,” Daphne said. “Come on. I’m ravenous.”

  A few moment later, they’d hiked with Mindy to the Finisterre Brewery, where a few remaining summer people lounged on picnic benches in the cooling autumn air. The brewery was in a one-room log cabin. A chalkboard hanging on the wall listed the available brews, and growlers were lined up on an A-beam ready to be filled. Outside, a food truck sold burgers, pot stickers, and blueberry pie. “Watch the dog,” Hester said to Daphne and then grabbed two lagers from a girl with a nose ring and purple streaks in her hair.

  “It’s like a slice of Brooklyn here in Maine,” Hester said, bringing the beers to Daphne. Mindy had already fallen asleep under the picnic bench.

  “I wanted to come here all summer,” Daphne said.

  Hester glanced around. Long strings of white bulbs hung over the seating area, and she imagined them lit up, music playing, crowds spilling across the grass on a perfect summer night. She also imagined Daphne outside, looking in, hoping to be asked. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t drink too fast, then. Let’s get some food in your belly.”

  At the food truck, Hester ordered burgers and pie; waited till they called her number; and, at the table, watched as Daphne gave herself over to hunger. When she finished, Hester slid her own burger to her. “How’s that tooth?” she asked.

  “Barely feel it,” Daphne said.

  Hester split the pie in half but took only one bite. When Daphne finished devouring it, a smear of blue across her lower lip, Hester laid her phone on the table, and like cell phones always did, it tugged at them and made its presence understood. The phone connected them to the rest of their lives, to their future. Daphne’s eyes drifted toward it, and as if on command, it rang. Morgan’s photo flashed onto the screen. “He’s worried about you,” Hester said. “And Kate’s with him.”

  “I need more time,” Daphne said.

  Hester clicked into the call. “The service is spotty around here,” she said, attempting to add a note of cheer in her voice.

  “Any luck?” Morgan asked.

  Hester glanced to Daphne, who shook her head slightly.

  “I may have a lead,” Hester said, the lie coming too easily. “But it hasn’t panned out yet. How about you?”

  “We talked to Vaughn Roberts’s wife,” Morgan said. “Rich as can be. She told us to ask Vaughn about the drugs.”

  Hester stood, stepping out from the picnic bench. Daphne sat up, alert, and Hester moved away from her toward a line of trees. Morgan walked her through what he’d learned, and it took all Hester had not to tell him that Vaughn had been arrested.

  “I could make a living doing this,” Morgan said, and Hester could hear that the distraction had done him good. It made her feel the tiniest bit less terrible about lying to him. “Finding people,” he continued. “I get why you do it. We’re at the Walmart now, following up on another lead. Finding the mysterious Emily. But there are a lot of Emilys in this world. I don’t know if we’ll have much luck.”

  “You’ll be surprised,” Hester said. “You’ll ask the right questions, and there will be your Emily.” She paused. “It sounds like you may need more time in the city.”

  “I take it you want another night on the island. Didn’t we get in a huge fight about this?”

  “I’m at a brewery,” Hester said, relieved to tell the truth. “Once you get used to having nothing to do, this place is pretty relaxing.”

  “I want to find this woman, and Angela has one more day off before she heads back. . . .”

  “And I talked to someone who said he saw Daphne earlier today. I wonder if she’s lying low, waiting for the right time to appear.”

  “You’d let me know if she did, right?”

  “Of course,” Hester said.

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow on the morning ferry, Daphne or not. And Kate wants to talk to you.”

  At the first sound of the girl’s voice, Hester felt her heart travel right through the phone to that Walmart parking lot. They talked for a few minutes about the boat ride and Waffles and seeing Uncle Morgan tackle a man outside the car, and the whole time Hester wanted Kate here, with her, just being herself. She didn’t want to miss a single moment of seeing Kate become who she’d be. “Is Mommy with you?” Kate finally asked.

  “Not yet,” Hester said, and this time, the lie felt absolutely right. The first and only thing she cared about was protecting Kate.

  “When will she be with you?” Kate asked.

  Hester glanced toward the picnic table, where Daphne sat at attention. It should be Daphne, here, on the phone. It should be Daphne’s heart zooming across the Gulf of Maine. And it should be Daphne clinging to every moment of this precious childhood, hoping to make it last forever. But it was Hester. It had been Hester all along. And she wasn’t willing to give any of it up or to let Kate love someone else instead of her. Not yet, at least.

  “Soon,” she said, “I promise,” and regretted it almost at once.

  When she hung up, Hester kept the phone to her ear for a few moments, pretending that the conversation hadn’t ended.

  “I bought you another day,” she said, back at the table.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Daphne said.

  “Kate isn’t three years old anymore,” Hester said. “She isn’t a toddler, she’s a girl, and she knows why I came here.”

  Hester scrolled through her phone till she’d found the right photo of Kate, the one she’d have used on a missing child poster. In it, Kate sat on a swing at the park, her curls flying behind her, a grin plastered across her face. She looked smart and curious and kind, like the girl Hester had dreamed of being herself. She’d learned to count on that swing, moving through the numbers with every push, a first that Daphne had missed. And when Daphne took the phone, Hester expected tears, but Daphne’s eyes stayed dry.

  “I get it,” Daphne said. “I screwed up.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Hester said. “You messing up is about you, but this isn’t about you or me, and it took me a long time to figure that out. I hate it when people say things like they were never a real adult till they had kids, but whether you’re an adult or not, it changes your responsibilities. It changes your perspective. It changed mine.”

  “Kate was mine first,” Daphne said.

  The words burned. And a part of Hester wanted to let Daphne know what it meant to be a parent, what it meant to take responsibility. But, she reminded herself, Daphne had the power. Kate had been hers, and she could be hers again. One wrong move and they’d be on that four o’clock ferry heading toward a future Hester never wanted to face, toward years without Kate. For so long, Daphne had been Hester’s confidante, her sole friend, the one person she could go to when
the world hurt. She had other friends now, more than she’d ever had in her whole life, and Daphne’s departure had made that life possible. What could she do now that Daphne was the source of her pain?

  By the brewhouse, a young man with a beard set up a microphone and strummed a guitar, and Hester was glad for the distraction. She wrapped an arm around Daphne, and they listened as he played. Daphne drank in the small kindness, melting against Hester, her eyes closed. Mindy woke and laid her head on Hester’s thigh. The singer played a Bob Dylan song, and moved through his set. An hour later, off in the distance, the ferry blew its horn as it docked at the pier. It would leave soon, and Hester would have seventeen hours. Seventeen hours to figure out what to do.

  “I could use a bath,” Daphne said as the singer finished.

  “You really could,” Hester said, playing her part. Being a friend.

  “You’re awful.”

  “I know.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Barb’s head tilted toward Vaughn as they talked like old friends. This, whatever it was, wasn’t an interrogation, and it certainly wasn’t the reception Rory had expected when he’d hauled Vaughn in. “What the hell . . .” he said. “I found Annie in this guy’s cellar. Daphne, I mean. Someone beat her up. And there are pills all over the place. I bet it’s the same drugs . . .” Rory’s words caught in his throat.

  “What did you see?” Barb said to him. “Tell me. Quickly. Before you forget anything. What did you see in the house?”

  Rory’s eyes darted from Vaughn to Barb. “Where’s Frankie?” he asked.

  “At the Victorian,” Barb said.

  “Why isn’t she here?”

  “We don’t have anything to arrest her on. Nate’s keeping an eye on her.”

  “Did you find Seth?”

  “Still looking,” Barb said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I apprehended the suspect and brought him in,” Rory said. “By the book. The victim was locked in his basement for at least twenty-four hours. She’d been assaulted and needed medical attention. I called Dr. Feldman on the way here and sent him over to check her out.”

  “Anything else?” Barb asked.

  Rory broke. He’d won. For once, Rory had won. Trey was gone, and now Vaughn was out of the picture. Lydia would have to see him now. “He’s a kidnapper and a drug dealer and God knows what else. You need to ask him about those missing kids. The ones everyone said I took. Ask him about Oliver!”

  “How did you know to go to the house?” Barb asked.

  She wasn’t listening to him. Calm, he reminded himself. Treat this like any statement. The pieces were in place, and all they had to do was follow the evidence. Walk through the facts, because in the end, that’s all he had. “I was participating in the search when the woman from the ferry, Hester, she ran out of the woods. She was shouting. About Annie and Vaughn. And the dog came running after her.”

  “Where’s Mindy?” Vaughn asked.

  “I think you have bigger things to worry about,” Rory said. Damn it! Why did he answer? Stay in control. Don’t engage.

  Barb glanced at Vaughn, and he made a zipping movement over his lips. “What did Hester say?” she asked.

  “Only that she’d found her friend and that they’d managed to incapacitate the suspect.”

  “Taken down by a woman?” Barb said to Vaughn. Was that a glint in her eye?

  “What can I say?”

  “Don’t say anything,” Barb said.

  “Got it,” Vaughn said.

  “Once you were at the house,” Barb said, “what did you do then?”

  “I secured the scene,” Rory said. “The suspect was bound with what looked like strips of cloth. He was lucid and alert.”

  “Just barely,” Vaughn said, rubbing the back of his head. “She packed a wallop. And I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Roberts!” Barb said, with enough irritation that even Vaughn shrank away.

  “I cuffed the suspect.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Rory said.

  “You should know.”

  “Okay, I did.”

  “What next?”

  “I escorted the suspect to the car, made sure the victim could make her way to town, and brought him here.”

  “Where’s Daphne now?” Barb asked.

  “At the inn!” Rory said, frustration exploding in his answer. “Do you know what I deal with out here? Frat boys getting drunk. Noise complaints. Lost dogs. Domestic disturbances. And drug overdoses. I know how to deal with all those things. I haven’t a clue what to do with kidnapping and murder, and certainly not when they all happen at the same time. And why isn’t he in cuffs?”

  Barb pulled up a chair. “Sit,” she said.

  “Not till I get some answers.”

  “Sit and you’ll get some.”

  Like usual, Barb made Rory feel like a teenager. And he did what he was told.

  “Earlier this year we started noticing an influx of a new drug in Portland,” Barb said. “Potent. Deadly. We’ve had our challenges, but this was different. We followed a few leads, got in touch with the feds, but these drugs were new, and not the kind they’d seen coming in from Mexico or out of pill mills.”

  “Yeah, the kind I found in his basement,” Rory said, jabbing his thumb toward Vaughn. “The same kind that killed my brother. He’s at the morgue, you know, waiting to be cut open.”

  “I know,” Barb said. “The problem is that when word gets out about these new drugs, people want them, whatever the cost. They want the high. People chase the highest high they can find, even if it kills them in the end. That’s what happened to your brother. To Pete. We couldn’t figure out where the drugs came from, though.”

  “I think you have your guy,” Rory said.

  “But Vaughn’s one of the good guys,” Barb said. “He’s been working with us. We needed someone who knew fishermen, who knew the island. And we needed him to be undercover. The drugs are coming from many places, but this island is one of them. And that house where Frankie and Daphne live seems to be at the center of it. So we need to talk to Daphne. And we need to talk to her now. And, you,” she said to Vaughn. “You’re out of commission. We need people to think you did this.”

  “Do I have to wear cuffs?” Vaughn asked.

  “No, but you do need to keep your trap shut,” Barb said.

  “Why is Vaughn working for the cops?” Rory asked.

  “I am a cop,” Vaughn said. “Sorry to keep it from you, Rory-boy, but I work for the DEA.”

  “Did Trey know about this?”

  “I hope not,” Barb said. “Trey Pelletier was our main suspect.”

  * * *

  For the first time in over a year, Daphne felt full, really full, like she’d throw up if she ate another bite full, and now, in a way, following Hester and Mindy up the narrow staircase and into the little hotel room made her feel like Charlie walking into the chocolate factory. Anything she could dream of was at her fingertips, though her dreams weren’t that big. Here, the air smelled fresh, and when the door closed she didn’t have to worry that a strange man might walk in, that someone might steal her meager belongings.

  Or worse.

  The bedsheets were clean, the pillows soft. A TV waited. She touched the duvet, her fingers running along the smooth, white cloth, and remembered TV reports about hotel duvets, how unclean they could be, how they stored up germs from one hotel guest to the next. Take it off the bed! the TV reporter had exclaimed. Use gloves! Worry! Feel terrible. Know this: The end is coming, and it will come because you touched your hotel duvet!

  These people had never wrapped themselves in a stained beach towel, grateful for any protection from the wind it could provide. They’d never found a half-eaten steak bomb in the trash and wondered where it had gone, unable to remember eating all of it, even the bit of bread with a lipstick stain on it.

  The sheets were clean and dry, fitted to the mattress. She lay down, and the be
d shaped to her body. When was the last time she’d lain down on a mattress this soft? She shifted the pillows till they conformed to her head, and she told herself, somehow, some way, she’d remember this moment, in all its perfections. In all its simplicity.

  “Do you need anything?” Hester asked.

  Daphne didn’t need a thing.

  “Do you want to sleep?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll be back,” Hester said. “Lydia was worried about you. She’ll want to know you’re safe.”

  “You can leave the dog here,” Daphne said.

  “I’ll take her with me,” Hester said.

  No, Hester wouldn’t even trust her with a dog, but Daphne deserved that. She listened as the door clicked shut and Hester’s footsteps tapped softly down the stairs.

  Lydia.

  Would it matter now, about Trey? Would Daphne need to confess to the affair?

  She rolled onto her side. She thought about Kate, about the Post-it. A year ago, when she’d left, when she’d written that message—Back in an hour. Tops!—she’d truly believed that she’d return. She’d wanted a moment of peace, that’s it, so she’d surrounded Kate with a moat of cushions and left the house without a plan. She walked to the corner store on Highland Avenue, bought a pint of Chubby Hubby, and sat on the lawn in front of the Somerville Library and ate all of it. The night was dark and cool but not cold. And when she finished, she saw the 88 Bus idling as though it were waiting for her, the interior lit up and welcoming.

  It was so easy to get on.

  She was the only passenger, and she rode it to Sullivan Square and transferred to the Orange Line. She walked the few blocks to South Station as though in a dream, and when she got there, fate took her to Portland and to this life, because it had been the only bus still scheduled to leave that night. What if she’d gone to Worcester instead?

  Annie had allowed Daphne to wipe the slate clean. Annie had a different past, a different story.