The Good Neighbor

by Cathryn Grant

  “The police are checking into it.”

  “That doesn’t sound hopeful.”

  “But it is. She’s alive!”

  “What was she doing at Taco Bell?”

  Her question sounded disconnected. She was in shock, disoriented. “There was a man with her.” I knew she didn’t want to hear that. But of course there was a man, the creep who took her. Knowing he was walking around like nothing was wrong made it feel worse somehow. “I know it’s not what you want. I know you need her home. That’s the only thing that matters,” I said. “But it’s something. It’s a step.”

  “I guess it’s not something or the police would have spoken to us by now. If this happened last night.”

  “They just found out this morning. When I called.”

  “So they’re not even looking at the page? What good does that do?”

  “They are, I think. I don’t know. It just got started, maybe they haven’t had time. We should focus on the good part. Someone saw her! We know where she is. And she isn’t hurt.”

  “Not visibly. Just because she can walk into a Taco Bell doesn’t mean she hasn’t been damaged.”

  I sighed. “I know. It’s so hard. I wish I could help more.”

  “When are they going to call us? They should be talking to us, not you.”

  “When they know something. This really is good news. Not great, but good.”

  “It is. But Phoenix? And that man?” She began to cry.

  “You have to stay positive. I know it’s so hard, but you have to think good thoughts.”

  When we’d finished talking, I drank my smoothie, but the mixture was separating, and it wasn’t enjoyable. I couldn’t figure out if I was a foolish optimist or everyone else was looking at the darkest possible outcome. Still, everyone working together, even so-called strangers, would make a difference. Keeping a positive attitude mattered. It had to.

  13

  Moira

  When the doorbell rang, I nearly vomited. Something wonderful or something that would destroy my life waited on the other side of the door.

  I walked slowly through the courtyard, the dribble of the water in the fountain like a sharp pinging inside my head. Alan walked several steps behind me. I felt his presence, heard his footsteps. I wished he would come closer and take my hand, but he held back.

  The chance that they’d managed to track down the man seen in the Phoenix Taco Bell was nearly impossible, but my heart raced all the same. I opened the door and directed my gaze into Officer Carter’s eyes. She was alone. Did that mean anything? I smiled, far more hopefully than I should have, knowing before she spoke that she had nothing good to say.

  The sighting posted on the Facebook page hadn’t yielded any results. The employees at the Taco Bell were interviewed and shown Brittany’s picture. No one remembered seeing her or the man. Why would they? Hundreds, possibly thousands of girls Brittany’s age go through any given Taco Bell every day. And maybe that woman hadn’t seen Brittany at all. Maybe she’d seen a girl Brittany’s age, with Brittany’s hair color and style. Maybe she’d imagined it or made it up. This was the internet. Nothing on the internet is what it seems.

  When she was finished delivering her bad news, news that I should have expected but that destroyed me for the hundredth time in two days, Officer Carter took a step forward. “I’d like to come in and ask a few more questions.”

  Suddenly, Alan was close behind me. “Such as?”

  “Inside would be better.”

  “How many questions are there?”

  “It’s a conversation.”

  “You should be looking for our daughter,” Alan said. His body brushed against mine, giving me no comfort.

  “This is how an investigation is conducted. We need your cooperation.”

  Both of us sighed as if a single organism were exhaling the contents of its soul.

  We sat in the living room. The tingle of déjà vu crept up my arms. I asked whether Officer Mae was out looking for Brittany, and Carter informed me they don’t go out door-to-door beyond the immediate area, which had already been done. Physically searching thousands of homes was not feasible, and the odds of stumbling across a child in a search of that nature were astronomical. However, she said, he was conducting interviews with people of interest. I assumed that meant perverts and monsters.

  Officer Carter opened her notebook. “First, I need another photograph or two of Brittany.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The one you provided doesn’t show a clear enough image of her features. I think that contributed to the false sighting.”

  “You’re saying it’s my fault?”

  “Not at all, but I need another picture, the most recent you have. It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, and it doesn’t need to be a studio shot. In fact, preferably not. Anything, really, as long as her face is clearly visible. Two or three would be helpful so people can see various aspects of her. We rarely look exactly like our photographs, and we’ve found a range can be helpful.”

  “I don’t want her pictures all over the web, where any creep can…”

  Officer Carter nodded. “Yes. But you understand, this is necessary.”

  “So our ensuring she didn’t have an online presence was pointless.” Tears filled my eyes. Even though the worst thing we were trying to protect Brittany from on the internet had already happened, I didn’t want her picture out there. The search effort was exposing her name and face to the entire world. She’d be marked forever as an abducted child.

  Our family valued privacy, we’d worked hard to maintain it, and now everyone was looking at us. Everyone. They were talking about us on Facebook and behind their courtyard doors. They were pitying us and criticizing us. Even though they knew she was taken right out of her bedroom, the human reaction is to find someone to blame. No one wants to think it can happen to them, to their little girl. To protect from that fear, they look for flaws in you. I knew it was only a matter of time before they started posting nasty things about us on the Facebook page. Social media, the entire internet, is fueled by rage and bullying and shunning.

  Alan crossed the room and put his hand on the back of my neck, massaging it gently. He always knows when I need his support. The pressure and warmth of his fingers sank into muscles and tendons that were rigid with fear. The knots began to break apart, dissolving into pliable tissue, as they should. I felt him trying to draw my tension into himself, as if his body could stand in for mine.

  “I understand how difficult this is,” Morgan said.

  “I don’t think that’s accurate,” Alan said.

  “I have children.”

  His hand tightened on my neck, and his fingers stopped rubbing. “Have any of them gone missing?”

  “No, but I can imagine the terror.”

  “Imagining and knowing are entirely different,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t want a whole selection of photographs on the web,” I said. “The internet is forever. Once something is out there, you can never take it back.”

  She put her hands in her pockets and looked past me. “But of course you want to do absolutely everything you can to help us find her.”

  I closed my eyes. I was not going to respond to her cruel implication. Alan’s hand began moving again, calming me. “We don’t have thousands of photographs. We’re not that kind of family. We don’t need to document every detail of our lives.”

  Morgan moved closer. She folded her arms across her chest. “I understand your reluctance, I understand your grief and your upset, but the photograph we have is inadequate. I told you when you first gave it to us that it would do for the time being. Now we need a clear, close-up image of her face. If you want to do everything you can to bring your daughter home safely, you’ll give me more photographs.”

  It sounded as if she were making a speech. I wondered if she’d made that speech before. If so, I wasn’t alone in not wanting my innocent girl’s features and
her precious body made into an object of curiosity and lust.

  “Every minute we stand here is another minute without your daughter,” she said.

  She was treating me like all of this was my fault, acting as if another photograph was the difference between life and death. They already had a photograph! They’d failed to find any trace of that man in the open space preserve, and as far as I could tell, the only people they’d seriously talked to were those living right beside us. There were thousands of homes within a mile or two of ours. Any one of them might be harboring a monster who had evil desires for little girls.

  It was clear Officer Carter wasn’t going to move on without another photograph. I went into the computer room. Alan followed. We looked through the pictures we’d taken since moving to California. I chose two. One was taken when Brittany was baking a batch of peanut butter cookies. She was holding the jar of peanut butter to the side, posing as if she were advertising the product. A confident smile covered her face, and her eyes sparkled with the fun of playacting. The second was a picture of her helping Alan set up the badminton net in the backyard. I printed them out and took them into the living room.

  Officer Carter took the printed images and placed them on the coffee table. “Please email me the digital copies when we’re finished.” She clicked her pen open. “Now, I want to understand a little more about your family dynamic.”

  Alan groaned and looked out at the backyard. Maybe he knew better than I what was coming.

  “Is your marriage a happy one?”

  “Yes,” Alan said.

  “What does that have to do with Brittany?” I said over his quiet assertion.

  “I know these questions will be painful, and they might seem unimportant, but we find missing people by understanding their environment and who they are.”

  “You should be understanding who this monster is.” Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. There were no smears to wipe away because I’d stopped wearing makeup. Who wears makeup when her daughter is missing? I couldn’t believe how often I cried. I made wild swings from feeling cold and numb to crying so much I felt the inside of my head was dissolving.

  “So far, we haven’t had any leads in our checks with registered sex offenders in the area. While Officer Mae finishes off that avenue, we need to circle back and look at a possible connection to you or your family.”

  “It might not be someone from the area! Maybe it was someone who followed us when we were driving across the country when we moved here. It could have been—”

  “Moira, let’s just answer the questions, okay?” Alan cleared his throat. “I don’t want this to go on all day. Arguing only prolongs the process.”

  I clenched my jaw and waited for the next attack.

  “Is this your first marriage?”

  “Yes.” We said this together.

  “Was Brittany happy being an only child?”

  I shrugged. “We didn’t discuss it.”

  “That’s unusual.”

  “So? We didn’t discuss it. I don’t care if it’s unusual,” I said.

  “Moira.” Alan’s voice sounded tired.

  “Tell me a little more about the homeschooling.”

  “I don’t know what…” I felt Alan glaring at me. “Brittany and I spend weekday mornings following the curriculum for her grade level. Beyond her grade level, actually. In English and literature, she’s working at the level of a high school senior. She’s also above grade level in math and history.” I smiled. “The afternoon is for enrichment and social activities with other homeschooled children.”

  “And you do all the teaching, Ms. Cushing?”

  “Yes.”

  Officer Carter turned to Alan. “What’s your involvement?”

  “I support Moira’s efforts. When I can, I take time away from work to attend field trips.”

  “Do you ever act as one of the chaperones on these outings? Without your wife?”

  “Once or twice. Not recently.”

  “Are other parents always in attendance?”

  “What does this…” I sighed. She was prying into our lives for no reason. It was a cover for their inability to do anything to find my baby. I didn’t want to think it, but I was exhausted, working so hard to push away the thought that they’d never find her. She’d evaporated like a cloud. She was being tortured and abused, and there was nothing I could do. She would end up mutilated and dead, if she wasn’t already. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I was quiet.

  “Yes. The group we’re associated with now has fifteen kids,” Alan said. “That’s too much for one adult.”

  “I see.”

  I had no idea what she saw.

  “Are the other children ever in your home? Alone with you?”

  “No.” Alan coughed.

  “What kind of relationship do you have with your daughter?”

  “We’re close.”

  “Is there a lot of affection?”

  My skin grew cold. Now I understood. Most of her questions were a smokescreen. This was what she really wanted to know.

  “Yes, we’re affectionate.” His voice was stiff and he’d turned his head so it was impossible to meet his gaze.

  “Has that changed as she’s gotten older?”

  “Some.”

  “How?”

  “I didn’t hurt my daughter,” Alan said.

  “Tell me a bit about your extended family. And your social life.”

  I glared at her. “Like what?”

  “Just give me an overview.”

  “I’m an only child. Alan has one sister. She lives in Canada with her husband,” I said.

  “Do you see them often?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because we don’t live in Canada.”

  Officer Carter sighed. “Grandparents?”

  “Deceased,” Alan said. “On both sides.”

  “Family friends?”

  “We mostly socialize with the homeschool community,” Alan said. “We both have friends from college we see occasionally, but we haven’t seen any of them since we moved here.”

  “What about work events, take-your-child-to-work functions, employee family picnics and that sort of thing?”

  “My company doesn’t do anything like that.”

  Officer Carter wrote in her notebook. She’d been making short strokes with her pen each time we answered a question, but it hardly seemed enough to help her remember what we’d said. It furthered my impression that most of her questions were just a shield. What she was really after was Alan, and she didn’t need to make notes about that.

  “Mrs. Cushing, you mentioned the possibility of someone following you on your drive to California. Did you observe anyone that you thought was out of place?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a reason you mentioned that possibility? Is there something that’s bothering you, that seemed not quite right to you? A person you noticed more than once or who seemed to be paying too much attention to Brittany?”

  “No.”

  “So you were just speculating?”

  “I’m trying to think of anything I can!” I stood. “I can’t keep doing this. I want her back.” A wail rose out of my chest, so sharp it hurt my ears, but I couldn’t stop. “Why is this happening? I can’t…” I began gasping.

  Alan stood and rushed to my side. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me up. He put his hand on the back of my head, pressing gently so my head rested on his chest. “Shh. We’ll find her. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “I have a few more questions,” Officer Carter said.

  Alan kept me wrapped in his arms while we waited for what was coming next.

  “Do you have any reason to believe Brittany struck up a relationship online?”

  “No. I told you, we supervise her internet use,” I said.

  “Girls her age can be very resourceful.”

  I pulled away from Alan. “I know that. Other kids snea
k; Brittany doesn’t. We have a great deal of mutual trust, and she wasn’t doing anything online. She tells me everything. She doesn’t have any relationships with adults who aren’t normal and healthy.”

  Officer Carter made another note in her book. It looked like she drew an X. “Was she reluctant to move to California?”

  “No. She was excited.”

  “So you have no reason to believe she might have tried to go back to her old friends? Your previous home?”

  “No. Absolutely not,” I said.

  Officer Carter stood. She looked at Alan, hard, as if she was staring him down, waiting for him to admit to one of the dark things she had circling through her mind. “Did you ever use physical punishment on your daughter, Mr. Cushing?”

  “No.”

  She turned to me. “And you?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Did you ever touch your daughter inappropriately, Mr. Cushing?”

  “No,” Alan said, his voice a monotone.

  “Ms. Cushing?”

  My lips trembled. I felt Alan’s body move, but neither of us said anything.

  “Is there anything else you think I should know?” Officer Carter asked, more gently.

  I shook my head. I opened my eyes but didn’t look up at Alan.

  “I’m sorry to ask difficult questions. It’s important for me to understand as much as I can about the environment Brittany lives in.”

  “We understand,” Alan said.

  While he showed her to the door, I sank down on the sofa. I lay on my side and let the tears flow. I loved my husband and now I loved him more than ever. In the face of Morgan Carter’s ugly thoughts and accusations, he acted like a gentleman. He always has.

  No matter how I’ve disappointed him over the years, he’s loved me and behaved like the gentleman he is.

  14

  Taylor

  The Facebook page blew up again overnight. This time it was worthwhile, not just a bunch of prayer wishes. Twenty-nine people posted that they’d seen Brittany. Twenty-nine! I was stunned. My heart racing, I re-counted the comments that provided detailed information. It seemed too good to be true.