The Good Neighbor

by Cathryn Grant

  The undeveloped landscape was unusual in its proximity to suburban backyards, suggestive of activities taking place far from the hearing of the tightly circled houses around its perimeter. But why would some guy grab her and then linger in a dark, empty wilderness that offered minimal protection? It made no sense in my mind.

  Nevertheless, we kept trudging. When they weren’t wobbling across the dark sky, light beams smacked the ground as if they were making physical contact. People talked and called out to each other, wondering over the significance of each piece of trash they came upon. There was no way Brittany was out there, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. Saying that would imply that I wanted to quit, that I wasn’t trying hard enough. At least scrambling around in the dark felt like we were taking action.

  It was almost dawn when we admitted we couldn’t keep going. We needed to lie down, even if sleep was impossible. We couldn’t keep walking like this, our minds focused on every horrific scenario, our feet moving erratically.

  Moira didn’t object when I put my arm around her waist and pulled her gently around to face the trail leading back to the area behind our house.

  When we reached the gravel-covered clearing where four police cars were parked, Officer Carter approached us. “I know it’s difficult, that it seems impossible, but you need to get some rest.”

  Moira began sobbing. I tightened my arm around her, pulling her hard against me. I could feel the rigid state of her body. She didn’t want to be held, didn’t want to be comforted, but she was too exhausted to pull away.

  Walking home felt like the walk of the damned. In the space of a few hours we’d been transformed from a small happy family into a couple mauled by grief. Brittany could be anywhere. She could be dead and already buried under piles of earth. Her body could be in a culvert, at the bottom of a pond, stashed in a closet, a storage locker, a car trunk, a freezer. Sobs tore at my lungs, but the sensation was so intense it remained clogged inside me.

  All those people were walking around, the police were on their radios, and the dog was doing his thing, a consummate professional, ignoring the family pets that barked incessantly.

  Everyone acted as if they’d take a quick look around and they’d miraculously stumble across a missing girl in the same way they would a car after simply forgetting for a moment where they’d parked.

  I felt hopeless. I loathed that feeling. It was the worst feeling in the world. I’d devoted my life to keeping my family happy, to caring for Moira and our daughter. I’d always found a way to fix seemingly hopeless situations, but I had no idea what to do now.

  7

  Moira

  The search party was awful. Even the name—party—sickened me. While I was glad so many people were helping us try to find Brittany, it seemed futile. Surely she wasn’t out there in the open space preserve, if she ever had been.

  We needed experts looking for Brittany, not a bunch of neighbors carrying flashlights and bringing along their dogs. Being out there was like a horror movie, looking for our sweet girl, gone without anyone seeing or hearing anything. No one had seen an unfamiliar car in the neighborhood, no one had observed a stranger lurking. It was impossible to believe she could vanish as if she’d never been there at all.

  The thing that plagued me the most was trying to figure out how this monstrous person had set his sights on Brittany. She was almost always with Alan or me, or both of us. When she wasn’t, she was supervised by other homeschooling parents, people we trusted. Activities with our homeschool groups took place in areas that were appropriately protected.

  At the same time, she could have been seen anywhere. I’m the sort of person who has good instincts, sensitive radar to the people and situations around me. I’m always aware if there’s someone nearby who seems a little off, too interested in looking at us. Trying to figure out where someone might have set their attention on her tormented me as I clawed my way through brush and weeds, my mind tracing back over the past few weeks. I even wandered back to the memory of our drive to California. We’d thought a road trip would be a great experience for Brittany, a chance to see part of this incredible country. But who had seen her? Had she been targeted? Our car followed?

  There was no doubt that some horrible subhuman person had taken her, but after the police questioning, and at the search party, I felt people looking at us as if we were the ones who’d done something awful.

  As we approached the parked police cars, Officer Carter stopped us. She ran through a list of things they would be handling in the next few hours, including distributing electronic and paper copies of the photograph, interviewing more neighbors, and checking known sex offenders in the area.

  Why did she keep mentioning that? I already knew, she didn’t need to tell me again. People didn’t think about how it made me feel when they said things like that. It felt as if my insides were being torn out of my body, removed by a hook that grabbed hold of my vital organs like the Egyptians used to do for mummification. But I was alive, and I felt every tear and pinch in the most tender parts of me.

  I didn’t want to think about him. Not picturing the man who had her was the only way to keep from crying all the time. I couldn’t consider what he looked like or what he wanted. I couldn’t think about where he’d seen her and set his filthy mind on her.

  Brittany.

  I would focus on her. I’d picture her face and imagine her coming home to us. She was alive. I could feel it. I could not imagine her mouth gagged, her wrists and ankles wrapped with wire or plastic, abused, tortured. I would not imagine anything like that. I would not think of her hurt in some awful, irreparable way. Or worse.

  Brittany wasn’t keeping secrets from us, going on the computer or social media like other kids her age. When Officer Carter had asked, we told her there was no computer history to look at. Brittany’s computer time was supervised by me. We wanted her to have a solid sense of herself before those ugly fingers of the world touched her.

  A lot of good that did. Now the world had its grubby hands all over her. I started crying.

  Finally, as if we were abandoning her, leaving her alone, or worse, in that vast wilderness that had no place in the suburbs, we started toward our back gate.

  Taylor came up beside me. She patted my shoulder, just beneath the spot where Alan was holding me. “We’re here for you,” she said. “Your neighbors.”

  I took a breath, trying to find the strength to speak. “The police were awful. They acted like Alan and I did something wrong.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean to.”

  “They asked how much we argued with Brittany. They looked through her room like she was a criminal.”

  “That must have been awful, but I think they have to go through their checklist.”

  “She isn’t like other missing girls. They’re usually…well, a lot of them are neglected, or they’re chasing drugs and boys. It’s so sad.” I hoped she didn’t think I was judging. I wasn’t. It was sad to me, all the lost girls in this world. Too many to count. It breaks your heart. You want to save all of them. “Brittany is close to us. She tells us everything. She’s not sneaky. She’s not a liar or up to bad things like other kids her age sometimes are.”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”

  It was easy for her to say. First, she wasn’t a mother, so she had no idea how it felt to have people question how you were raising your child. And most likely, Taylor had no idea how nasty the police could be. Neither had I until I’d sat on Brittany’s bed and watched them go through her room like they were absolutely certain my family was hiding a dark, perverted secret. They touched my daughter’s things like they were junk, like there was something wrong with Brittany. And the way they’d looked at Alan…

  I shivered.

  Taylor put her hand on my wrist. I didn’t like her touching me all the time, but I let her leave her hand there. She was trying to be nice.

  She lifted the latch on our gate and held it open for us. We en
tered the backyard and went into the house, Taylor following along as if we’d invited her. In a way, I didn’t mind. It was nice to talk about Brittany to someone who wasn’t looking at us like her abduction was our fault.

  Inside, Alan filled three glasses with iced water and we sat in the living room, Taylor close beside me on the couch. She asked me to tell her about Brittany. This had an inexplicable way of easing my feeling that I wasn’t doing anything to find her. Talking about her seemed to bring her into our presence. I thought for a moment. “She’s an excellent student. She loves learning.”

  “That’s the first thing you thought of?” Alan said.

  “Things don’t always come to us in priority order,” Taylor said. “Especially when we’re under severe stress.”

  Alan made a sound that agreed with her and seemed to express regret.

  “When she was seven or eight, she loved to hide out in our attic. She and I would read books and watch movies, all the old kids’ classics. We watched Anne of Green Gables and The Little Princess. She loved cuddling up together.”

  “How wonderful that you didn’t just park her in front of the TV alone.” Taylor picked up her glass of water. “What else?”

  “Of course I remember giving birth like it was yesterday. It was one of the best days of my life. Along with my wedding.” I looked at Alan, but his head was turned toward the hallway leading to our bedrooms, as if he were waiting for Brittany to walk into the living room like it was any other morning of her life. “It sounds cliché, but it truly is a miracle, bringing a human being into the world. Even now, it overwhelms me, thinking about it.” Tears filled my eyes, but this time they felt comforting instead of painful. “That’s why I know she’s alive.”

  Taylor looked startled that I’d veered off track, but I had to say it. “I carried life in me. I felt every moment of that life emerging into the world. The pain, her heartbeat. Her breath.”

  Alan stared at me. His lips parted as if he meant to say something, but he didn’t.

  “I would know, I would absolutely know if she was…” My breath caught. “A mother knows if her daughter’s no longer alive.”

  I looked at the clock: 6:11 a.m. Brittany had been gone for five hours. Time was racing forward.

  Taylor stood. “I told the others they could come to my house for some light breakfast. I’m going to run out and get scones and juice. Do you want to join us?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sure,” Alan said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  Taylor patted my shoulder. She said nothing more.

  After she left, Alan slunk back into the computer room. I sat in Brittany’s room and looked at the posters on her wall, framed pictures of kittens and wild animals. Brittany adored animals and was constantly asking for a pet. I started to sob. Why hadn’t we bought a dog for her? I think we didn’t want the responsibility of an animal. A child was a weighty enough responsibility. Lying there, I was no longer certain why we felt that way. If we’d had a dog, that man would have been prevented from entering her room. The dog would have alerted us with loud, resounding barks that would have yanked us out of sleep.

  A dog might have attacked the man who came into her room. Not might, he would have. Brittany would be here with me right that minute. I could lie down in the bed and put my arms around her. The dog would sit on the floor, alert, his head up and his nose inhaling every unfamiliar scent.

  I fell back onto her pillow and cried into it.

  8

  Taylor

  Looking around my living room filled me with a feeling I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. Everyone who lived in our cul-de-sac, except Luke, had been out searching all night. Their hair was a mess, their hands grimy, their clothes thrown on at the last minute, but here they were, the community I’d longed for. It was terrible that a tragedy had brought us together, but a common purpose would draw us closer. Once Brittany was found, our closeness would be unbreakable because we’d all know from experience the power of community caring and support. Tears came to my eyes as I looked at each of the concerned faces.

  Even the Bryants’ kids, two girls and a boy, were there. The last time we’d all been in the same place at the same time was during a block party for the Fourth of July six years earlier. Since then, those kids had grown from small children to preteens.

  Except for Moira and Alan’s, all the houses on our cul-de-sac were occupied by the same people. Well, the other change was that Luke’s father was no longer there, but you could tell at that block party he already had one foot out the door.

  Sitting on the couch facing the sliding glass doors to the back patio were Freya and Josh Bryant and Kelly and Keith Hayes. Sofia Aguilar was seated in the armchair by the fireplace, and Carlos stood behind her with his hands on the back of the chair as if they were posing for a portrait. Nicole was at my left, half-reclining on the loveseat.

  I’d bought scones and made two pots of coffee. I’d also offered a selection of herbal teas. Each of them held one of my handmade mugs, from which they took eager sips. Half-eaten scones sat on thick white paper napkins on their laps.

  I’d worried they might not accept my offer of refreshments, disturbed that this seemed too much like a party. It appeared they understood the need to be together, to share our frustration and fear. Duncan was the only one who felt I was overdoing it. My husband, the high school history teacher who was often oblivious to the historical need for strong communities.

  I turned my attention to my neighbors seated around me. “Moira and Alan wanted me to thank you for helping with the search for Brittany.” I smiled at each of them individually. “It’s so important that we support them. An abducted child is a horrible blemish on a community. Her loss impacts all of us. It means more than you can know, to Moira and Alan, and to Brittany, of course, that you care. That you gave up your sleep for this.” I glanced at Duncan. He was using his index finger to make a subtle slicing gesture across his throat.

  “We didn’t accomplish anything,” Carlos said.

  “It feels that way,” I said. “But the officers reminded me that we eliminated one area of search. And eliminating possibilities, narrowing the field, is part of the process.”

  He rubbed his mustache as if he were brushing it, suddenly aware he’d crawled out of bed without looking in the mirror.

  I smiled. “The scones are amazing. You should try one.”

  “I need to watch my carbs,” he said.

  Nicole stood and went to the dining room table. She picked up a scone, took a bite, then transferred it to her other hand while she refilled her mug with steaming coffee. She took another bite, and the pleasure of the pastry was clear on her face.

  “Still feels like wasted time,” Carlos said. “What comes next?”

  “The police are interviewing everyone on our street, and they’ll expand from there. Distributing her photograph. I’ll be starting a Facebook page to help get the word out.”

  “She could still be out there,” Sofia whispered. Carlos moved his hand and gave her shoulder a squeeze. I was sure they were thinking of their grandchildren, feeling horror for the Cushings alongside their own latent fears.

  We’d always considered the open space an enviable feature of our home, backing up to an undeveloped area like this. Now it seemed like an invitation to criminals and creeps to have easy, unobserved access to our neighborhood.

  It had been tiring, discouraging work. The pleasure of hiking had been torn away as we’d moved slowly, laboriously, our backs bent. Since we didn’t stick to the trails, weeds lashed at our legs. I’d stumbled across a dead raccoon, and Nicole saw so many gophers, she worried they would surely be moving into our yards soon.

  Josh Bryant had found a used condom and an old tennis shoe. After that, there was a bonanza of used condoms. Clearly teenagers enjoyed the quiet and seclusion of the natural landscape more than any of us had realized.

  It was decided fairly quickly that given its state of decay,
the tennis shoe had been abandoned months ago. Others found a pocketknife, a child’s plastic lunch box, and a fair number of candy wrappers, beer bottles, and soda cans. We stumbled across an unbelievable number of discarded socks. Did people go for a hike and decide they could put their bare, sweaty feet into sturdy shoes for the last leg of the trail? It made no sense.

  The dog had been ambivalent to all of the items we uncovered.

  As the others began talking among themselves, I walked to the end of the dining table where Nicole stood nibbling a blueberry scone.

  Her hair was tangled but managed to look chic despite the long night outdoors. It gleamed silver-white under the track lights. Even with white hair brushing her shoulders, she didn’t look fifty. She was one of those women whose white hair has the opposite effect, making her still-smooth skin and clear blue eyes appear even younger.

  She swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “Did they put out an Amber alert?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. I think they need a vehicle description for that.”

  “This is so horrible. Right out of her bedroom.”

  “Like that other girl. In Petaluma. Twenty or twenty-five years ago? Remember that?”

  Nicole met my gaze. “How do you remember that? You were a child.”

  “Exactly. It was terrifying. Before that, we thought we were safe as long as we walked to school or played with a group of other kids. You never imagined someone climbing through your window and dragging you out of your bed.”

  Nicole’s eyes teared up and she looked down at the scone in her hand. She placed it on the table and held the coffee mug with both hands. “I can’t imagine it. Your child missing…”

  “It feels so safe around here, but I guess we’re too complacent. We need to watch out for each other more than we do.”