I Hope You're Listening

by Tom Ryan

  But I’m on the outside now, and the things happening in these walls have nothing to do with me. Except maybe now, for a moment, they do.

  Layla’s mother answers the door. She looks exhausted, unhappy, beaten down.

  “Hello?” she asks when she sees me. I get the sense that she’s trying to place me, then her eyes widen with recognition. “You’re that girl,” she says. “The one from…”

  She doesn’t finish, but I know what she means. “Yes,” I say. “It’s me. Can I come in for a minute?”

  She looks surprised but doesn’t argue. She manages a smile and steps aside. “Sure,” she says. “Would you like some tea? I just made a pot.”

  I nod, then follow her up the stairs into the kitchen.

  I’m in a dream. It’s the only way to explain the haunted feeling that moves across me as I walk up the stairs from the entryway to the kitchen. I haven’t stepped into this house since I was eight years old, since we moved across town just a few months after Sibby went missing.

  The walls and steps and windows are the same, but ten years of new furniture, freshly painted walls, different dishes, and unfamiliar photographs on the walls have swept in to fill the space like a disguise. I feel like I just need to close my eyes and breath myself to sleep, and when I wake, everything will have slipped away. The house will be the same as it was, and I’ll be the person I was, hurrying through breakfast so I can go outside and play with Sibby.

  In the kitchen, Mr. Gerrard is sitting at the table, his hands around a steaming mug of coffee, staring out the window at Mrs. Rose’s house. He turns to look at me as I enter the kitchen, and his face is blank and unreadable. As Mrs. Gerrard walks past him to the counter, she reaches down and gives his shoulder a quick squeeze. Adam Gerrard doesn’t react, just continues to stare at me.

  “This is the girl who used to live here,” his wife says as she reaches into the cupboard for another mug. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. It’s Skinner, right?”

  “Delia Skinner,” I say. “Dee.”

  “Have a seat,” she says.

  I pull a chair out at the end of the table. “I lived here when my friend went missing,” I say. “I’m sure you both know all about that.”

  Mrs. Gerrard puts a mug in front of me and then pulls out a chair next to her husband. She sits, then reaches out and puts a hand on his knee.

  “Yes,” she says. “An awful story. An awful coincidence.”

  “It isn’t a coincidence, Bonnie,” says Adam Gerrard. It’s the first thing he’s said, and from the tone of his voice and the confused look on her face when she turns to him, the last piece of the puzzle drops into place. “There was a note, remember?”

  “That man left it,” she says. Her voice tells me she believes this. “That O’Donnell man. It was a diversion.”

  Adam shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “A diversion.” He turns and looks at me. “What are you doing here? Why did you come here?”

  I stare back at him for a moment before responding. “I wanted to ask you to your face,” I say. “I wanted to give you a chance to tell me what happened to your daughter.”

  Mrs. Gerrard stands up so suddenly that her knees catch under the table, shaking my tea and spilling some over the edge. She looks at me like she’s been slapped.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she asks. “What is this all about?”

  Across the table, her husband has kept his composure. “What makes you think we have anything to tell?” he asks calmly. “I know about your little podcast. Do you think that gives you the right to come into my home and make accusations?”

  “I didn’t accuse anyone of anything,” I say. “Not yet.”

  “Okay,” says Bonnie Gerrard. “That’s it. Time for you to leave.” She moves toward me, and I stand before she has the chance to take me by the arm and throw me out.

  At the kitchen doorway, I stop. “I just have one question,” I say. “Is she free to leave when she wants?”

  Bonnie Gerrard’s face twists into a knot of complete confusion, but I’m not looking for her reaction. Her husband’s face remains blank, and after a moment, he drops his eyes, unable to meet my gaze. It tells me all I need to know.

  I turn and walk back into the entryway, pulling on my boots as the Gerrards follow me.

  “I don’t know what kind of bullshit this is,” Bonnie says, “but if you had any idea the pain we’ve been through these past few weeks, you’d reconsider this cruel interrogation.”

  “I think your daughter is alive and healthy,” I say as I pull my hat down over my head. This brings her up short, and she stops, staring at me. Outside, cars come to a screeching halt against the sidewalk. When I open the door, Officer Avery is already out of his car and striding toward me, followed by Chief Garber and a couple of additional uniformed officers.

  “Delia,” says Avery. “You shouldn’t have come here alone.”

  I shrug. There’s no way to change that now. Behind me, Bonnie Gerrard steps outside, still in a T-shirt, shivering and wide-eyed.

  “What’s going on?” she asks. “Is it true what she says? Have you found her?”

  “Mrs. Gerrard, we’re going to have to ask you and your husband a few questions,” says Avery.

  Adam Gerrard follows us out. He’s pulled on a jacket and boots, and as he walks over to where Avery and I are standing, he glances at his wife, and the look he gives her is almost unbearable.

  “I’m sorry, Bonnie,” he says. “I didn’t think it would come to this.”

  “What are you talking about? Adam? Tell me what’s happening!”

  He ignores her and steps up in front of us.

  “I’ll tell you what you want to know later,” he says to Avery. “This has gone on long enough.”

  He glances at me, and the look is enough to tell me that he doesn’t resent me for figuring out his secret. If anything, I know that he must be ready for it all to come to an end. An understanding passes between us, and I nod at him before we turn together and move past Avery to old Mrs. Rose’s house. He follows us up onto the front porch, but it’s me who rings the doorbell and Adam Gerrard who steps inside the house first, once Mrs. Rose, slightly befuddled, opens the door for us.

  “Hi, Mrs. Rose,” I say when we’ve stepped inside. “Is it okay if these nice policemen come inside with us?”

  She smiles broadly and nods. “Yes, of course, dear,” she says. “Come in. Come in. I’ll put on a pot of tea.”

  She turns and heads into the kitchen, ignoring the fact that five people have just come inside her house. I glance at Avery, wondering what the proper procedure is, but Adam Gerrard is already moving toward the living room.

  “Stay here with Mrs. Rose,” Avery orders his companions. Kicking out of our boots, we follow Adam, vaguely aware of Mrs. Rose chatting away to the officer in the kitchen.

  At the top of the basement stairs, Adam Gerrard stops and turns to look at us. His face has fallen, and the depths of sorrow in his eyes make them hard to look at.

  “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t do it.”

  I step past him, hurrying now as I walk down to the basement, Avery close on my heels.

  The basement is similar to how I remember it. A rec room that’s looked the same since the 1970s: plaid furniture and wood-paneled walls, a wet bar in the corner of the room with colorful vinyl stools and a gold-flecked mirror filling in the space behind. This room, where Sibby and I used to play as children, now smells musty, mildewy. Unused.

  Boxes fill the space, and the piles of garbage and old magazines that fill the upstairs of the house are even more prominent down here. At the back of the rec room is a narrow passageway cleared between the boxes leading to a door.

  “In there?” Avery asks.

  “Yes,” says Adam. He’s emerged downstairs, and tears are now streaming down his face. He moves past us toward the door, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a key and puts it in the lock as Avery and I step up behind him.


  The room is simple. Warm enough, thanks to a radiator along the wall. In one corner is a table with a small refrigerator plugged into the wall beneath it. In the corner of the room, another door is half-ajar, revealing a small bathroom. A bed in the middle of the room and an armchair underneath the small, narrow basement window complete the furnishings.

  Layla Gerrard is standing at the foot of the bed, her eyes wide.

  Adam drops to his knees and opens his arms, and Layla rushes into them.

  “Daddy?” she asks. “Am I allowed to leave now?”

  45.

  Transcript of RADIO SILENT

  Episode 46

  HOST (intro): I am the Seeker, and this is Radio Silent. This is the first episode since…everything happened, and I won’t lie: it feels weird. It’s kind of awkward and really exciting and totally new to me to be recording and releasing an episode without disguising my voice. But after the events of last week, I can’t go back and pretend you don’t know who I am. So let’s start again, from scratch.

  I am Dee Skinner. I am also the Seeker, and this is Radio Silent.

  Before I say anything else, I need to say thank you. It’s such a small phrase, and it will never come close to expressing how I feel about the LDA and all the people who’ve helped me with this podcast.

  You saved my life. Literally.

  I realize everyone wants to know about Sibyl Carmichael. About how I was involved and how I came to find her. My inbox has been full of questions, and to tell you the truth, it’s a bit overwhelming. I never thought I’d see a day when my identity was revealed, when my connection to Sibby’s disappearance was unearthed, and there’s a lot to say, but this podcast isn’t the place to say it.

  But you will learn more soon. I promise. And as soon as I can tell you more about that, I will.

  In the meantime, I will tell you about another case though. The disappearance of Layla Gerrard.

  We’re still learning details about how and why Adam Gerrard faked his daughter’s disappearance. But we do know some things.

  The family was in a bad situation financially, and Adam owed a lot of people a lot of money. He and his wife, Bonnie, decided to make a fresh start and move to a small town, and as fortune would have it, they ended up in Redfields, in the same neighborhood where a notorious kidnapping had taken place almost ten years earlier. In a house where, as it turned out, the girl who had been in the woods with Sibby that day had lived.

  They’d moved into my old house.

  When Adam learned from a neighbor about the circumstances of Sibby’s disappearance, and his new home’s connection to the case, the wheels began to turn, and he slowly concocted a plan. He decided to fake the disappearance of his own daughter and then stage an elaborate rescue. After that, he figured, the media opportunities would come rolling in. Interviews. A book deal. Maybe even a movie.

  Money.

  He didn’t tell his wife about the plan, but he had to tell Layla, and she agreed to help him. They’d befriended an elderly neighbor, a widow who had become a hoarder, and when Adam offered to help her move some boxes into her basement, he realized that this house could be the perfect hiding spot. A basement bedroom with an en suite bathroom. Easily accessed from a back door, right next door to the Gerrard home.

  Even better, another house was sitting empty right on the other side of the elderly neighbor’s house, an ideal place to stage a fake kidnapper’s lair.

  Adam Gerrard’s plan was to set up the empty house with some fake evidence, indicating that someone had used the empty house to spy on the Gerrard family, then take Layla and hide her in the basement of their other neighbor for a couple of days, then orchestrate her safe return with a wild story of a dramatic escape from her captors.

  Everything was on track until Terry O’Donnell stepped into the picture. It turned out he’d also been using the abandoned house as a place to hide out, smoke cigarettes, and be alone. A terrible coincidence that meant it was a lot harder for Adam to follow through with his plan. While the cops buzzed around the O’Donnell household and the media set up in Redfields, he was forced to keep Layla hidden, sneaking in and out of the basement hiding spot to bring her food and keep her morale up.

  Two days turned into two weeks, and Layla dutifully remained hidden. Her father, after all, had told her that their family was depending on her.

  Adam Gerrard is in police custody, and he’ll go to trial. Who knows what will happen to him after that. More important, Layla is home with her mother. She’s safe.

  Maybe someday she’ll decide to tell her story, but for now, that’s where it ends, at least as far as Radio Silent is concerned.

  I know about being thrown into a terrible situation as a child, a life full of questions. I don’t want to contribute to that.

  As you all know by now, the two missing women in Houston have been found. Scared, underfed, but alive. Their resilience is an inspiration, but they too have a long recovery ahead of them, and I want to make sure they have the space to come out of their experience strong and intact, on their own terms.

  But I also want to ensure something else. I want this to be the focus of Radio Silent. I want Radio Silent to find the overlooked and undervalued, the people who need our attention and rarely get it. I want this to be a space that works hard every day to find the ones who most need finding.

  Sibyl Carmichael. Layla Gerrard. Vanessa Rodriguez and Nia Williams. Three stories and three happy endings.

  I have one more happy ending to tell you about. Mine.

  Finding Sibby has changed something inside me. Or maybe that’s not the best way to describe it. Finding Sibby has revealed something to me, as if a light has been flipped on and brightened a corner of my mind that I had never really noticed.

  You see, I always thought it was my job to tell the stories, and everyone else’s job to figure them out, help bring them to a satisfying conclusion.

  But now I know I was wrong. We all have a part in telling these stories, just as we all have a part in figuring them out. This podcast has only ever worked because people have been willing to work together, to share information, to hit the streets and start looking.

  It’s only worked because we’ve all been willing to pick up the loose threads and keep the stories going until they finally find their way to the end.

  It’s time for me to step away from my role as the Seeker. I’ve decided that I need to live my life in the open for a while. The page has been turned on one of my chapters, and this podcast is an important part of that chapter. But I’ve realized that not every story is mine to tell, and now it’s time for the Seeker to move on and create space for other voices.

  Starting with the next episode, Radio Silent will have a new host, one of many new hosts going forward, I hope.

  Carla Garcia, who did such an incredible job leading the search for Vanessa and Nia in Houston will be the new voice of Radio Silent. We’ll wait to learn what she calls herself, but I know she’ll be incredible under any name.

  I’ll be around, in the background. Helping out where I can, keeping the social media feeds running and the tips organized and the cases neatly filed away.

  This isn’t the last you’ve heard of me. But the next time you do, it will be somewhere new. Somewhere surprising. Somewhere that fits the new life I’m about to start living.

  Thank you for everything, Laptop Detective Agency. You saved my life, but there are still many more lives to save.

  Can we do it?

  Listen up.

  Let’s try.

  46.

  The bus lets me off on a busy corner, and as I jump down from the step, I only barely manage to make it across the puddle of slush and grime that’s collected in the dip at the corner of the sidewalk and the crosswalk. It takes me a minute to get my bearings, moving out of the way of pedestrians and fishing my phone from my pocket to open my map and figure out which way I need to start walking.

  I point myself in the right direction and start to walk. />
  It’s one of those rare days in early March when there’s a tiny bit of warmth in the sun, and if you’re not careful, you’ll let yourself believe that winter is actually coming to an end. I’ve been around long enough not to believe it—even as I left the house today, Dad was talking about how the temperature is going to drop again tomorrow—but for today, I’m just happy that I can feel my face and that I’m not going to arrive at my destination feeling ragged and sweaty under my clothes, with dry skin and a runny nose.

  I arrive at the café a bit ahead of schedule. The place is a lot busier than the last time I visited. Students on stools hunch over laptops at the long wooden work surface that runs along the length of one wall, a couple of moms with strollers squeezed in by their seats, an old man sitting in the window sipping on a mug and staring out at the street.

  A bearded twenty-something with a wool cap pulled down over his shaggy hair smiles at me as I approach the counter.

  “What can I get for you?” he asks.

  “Actually, I’m just wondering if Alice is working today.”

  “No,” he says. “Alice actually quit a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Do you know where she went?” I ask.

  “No idea. Sorry.”

  Another customer has stepped up behind me, so I step out of the way and work my way through the cramped space to the door.

  I know I could still figure out how to get to Alice’s apartment from here, but I have a feeling she doesn’t live there anymore. Even if she doesn’t, she hasn’t responded to any of my emails. Maybe that tells me everything I need to know.

  The door jingles, and I turn to see a girl my own age walk through. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this can’t be Sibby. This girl is too tall, too poised, dressed in jeans and a sweater underneath an unbuttoned peacoat, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  But she scans the room, and when her eyes land on me, she smiles, a half twist of the corner of her mouth, the edge of an eye tooth slipping over the edge of her lower lip, and I realize that it’s really her. It’s the exact same person I knew better than anyone when we were seven. The girl I watched be taken away.