by Nic Joseph
Sam’s nerves subsided even more.
“She looked under every trash can and behind every rock. She even looked inside Old Mr. Maggin’s sock!”
The room erupted in laughter, and Sam froze. He couldn’t believe it.
He cleared his throat and kept going. He was moving through the story quickly now—too quickly, and he’d have to work on that—but besides that, it was flawless.
Perfect.
They loved it.
He moved left and right, along the length of the couch, making the puppets jump and turn and spin and dance, all to an animated, happy crowd. He didn’t know it, but they were encouraged by the wine they’d been drinking, and the laughter flowed easily out of them. But for Sam Farr, it was a magical moment, and he was confident his performance was one of the best he’d ever done, even better than the countless times he’d practiced alone, no pressure at all, in front of his bedroom mirror.
He was close to the end of the skit now, and he continued to move with ease.
“Would Annie McDerney ever find her missing ring? Or would she have to say good-bye forever to her favorite thing?”
He spun Annie around again for one of her final moves—when he felt something snag.
Wait—
Annie had caught on something.
Maybe one of the pillows on the couch?
Sam frowned and poked his head up over the back of the couch to see what had happened. As he did, his mother rose out of her chair and approached him, her eyes on the place where Annie’s leg had hooked on a tassel that flanked one of the couch’s ornate pillows.
She didn’t make it in time.
As Sam lifted himself up and reached forward to see what was wrong, there was a loud, cracking sound that seemed to reverberate around the entire room, filling it, stopping it, and bringing the laughter to a grinding halt.
Sam leaned forward and watched as Annie’s leg remained entangled in the tassel, even as he pulled his arms back, lifting the rest of her body out of harm’s way.
It took a moment for what had just happened to sink in.
Then Sam dropped his head back, closed his eyes, and began to wail.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I was jogging up the front steps to my apartment building when a figure came barreling out of the door.
Amy.
The moment I saw her, I knew I needed to be the one to speak first, to say everything I’d been trying to tell her since she first arrived. But I could barely form a complete sentence.
“Amy,” I said, my throat tightening and my heart rate speeding up, “I’ve been trying to call you. Where have you been?”
Good job. Start by blaming her.
She stared at me with those huge brown eyes, and instantly, I knew she’d heard. She stopped a few steps above me and just stared, and the pain and disappointment on her face was crippling.
“Amy,” I said again, but she started to move, stepping around me without a word.
“Ames, wait.” I reached for her arm, and when she spun around, there were tears in her eyes.
“For what?” she asked, and I knew they were the angry kind of tears, not the sad ones. “Wait for you to come up with some lame way of saying ‘I was going to tell you’?”
“But I was going to—” I stopped myself, gritting my teeth and racking my brain for something else, anything that would get her to trust me.
“It’s too late for that,” she said. “Mom told me everything.”
No.
Of course her mother hadn’t told her everything. She didn’t know everything, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be in her nature to tell any of the parts that wouldn’t make me look like a complete jackass.
“She did?” I asked. “What did she say?”
“She told me about how you changed your name and never bothered to mention that you were a whole different person when you were a kid. What the fuck?”
“I didn’t lie to you, Ames,” I said, and I knew I should say something about the cursing, but it seemed we were beyond that. “I just never found the right time to tell you about my family. You have to understand that.”
“I have to understand that?” she asked. “Alex Scroll is my grandfather. Did he take Matthew Farr?”
“No,” I said quickly, and I stopped myself, spreading my arms in front of me. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I really wanted to tell you, Ames. I just couldn’t find the time—”
“You know when would have been the right time to tell me? How about before I found out on the news during a freaking…missing person case? How about then?” She shook her head, and she stared at me with what seemed to be a mixture of disbelief and disgust. I don’t know which one hurt more. “I gotta go,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” she said.
“Where?” I said again to her retreating back, and I stood there helplessly as she darted down the block.
I dialed Reba, cursing as her voice mail picked up. In her singsongy recording, she told me she was sorry she missed my call and that it was very important to her. I hung up without leaving a message. As much as I wanted to be mad at her for talking to Amy before I got a chance to, I knew that wasn’t completely fair. Amy had gone to her mother because she didn’t trust me, simple as that.
She didn’t trust her own father.
And I had no one to blame but myself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tuesday, 5:00 p.m.
As I sat down at the kitchen table, the silence was interrupted by the trill of my cell phone. I glanced at the phone and sucked in a breath when I saw the screen.
It was a Skype call.
From Reba.
I answered it. “Hey,” I said, and I glanced at the screen momentarily as her fuzzy picture formed.
“Hey,” she said. “Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Oh, okay.” She paused for a moment. “Look, I know you’re pissed—”
“I’m not, actually,” I said. “I was at first, but then I realized Amy had every right to ask you. And you had every right to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you?” Reba asked. “Tell her, I mean. After all these years, and with her moving back to Lansing, she was bound to find out. What were you thinking?”
I gripped the phone tighter. It wasn’t at all out of character for Reba to call out of the blue and ask me why I couldn’t get my shit together. She’d asked me that same question in some shape or form every day we were married.
“I thought it would be more fun this way?” I asked and immediately regretted it. She didn’t respond, and I cleared my throat. “I really don’t know. How are things out there?”
“They’re okay,” she said. “Actually, you know what? They’re really good. Sorry. I know it’s not the best time for you to hear it, but…I don’t know, I’m doing great. There’s really no sense in lying about it.”
“There are things that make less sense,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I said that’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Thank you, Francis, that’s big of you.” She said it emphatically, as if to drive home the importance of us being able to be happy for each other. “Things are going to work out. Amy will get past this. And hey, I guess you can thank me for taking some of the heat off of you, right?”
I frowned and glanced at the phone. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I—” She stopped herself. “Wait, she didn’t tell you what happened?”
“Amy?” I asked. “She barely spoke to me. Just said she’d talked to you, and that she knew everything about my parents.”
“Oh, wow,” she said. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised she didn’t say anything.” She paused. “Amy asked if we could speed things up. She wanted t
o move here now, instead of waiting until she graduates. She said she’s been practicing her Italian.”
“She has,” I said, my stomach dropping as a wave of emotion washed over me. “What did you say?”
“I told her the truth,” Reba said. “With everything going on, I couldn’t just say ‘stay with your father; it’s for the best.’ She’s a young woman now. A smart one. She deserved to know the truth.”
My stomach flipped again, and the dread began to build. “What did you say?” I asked again.
Reba sighed. “I told her that in all honesty, it made sense for her to stay in Lansing. I’m on shoots every day, seven days a week. I can’t remember the last time I got a full night of sleep. It’s just…I don’t think it’s what she would expect. And who knows where I’ll be two years from now.”
“Damn it, Reba—”
“It was time to tell her,” she said. “She’s been keeping a little calendar in her purse, an actual printed calendar, Francis. Checking off the days until senior graduation. Counting the seconds until she can move out here to live with me! I saw it right before she left New York, and I almost said something right then, almost told her that—”
“You don’t want her to come.”
I realized we’d never said the words out loud, but we’d both known it, from the very beginning. We’d worked hard to make Amy feel like it was a tough decision, that we’d both struggled with it, but that simply wasn’t the case. Not by a long shot.
“I told her I didn’t think it’s what she would expect.”
“You said it yourself, she’s a smart girl, Reba. She can read between the lines.”
“And maybe that’s okay,” she said. “It’s real life. Amy gets it. Why can’t you?”
“It’s not okay,” I said angrily. “I don’t care if she acts like a thirty-year-old. She’s still a child. And you know what you’re supposed to do? You’re supposed to make your child feel like you want them. No matter what. Even if you’re tired, or you’re stressed, or you have a fucking photo shoot, or you move across the world, or you haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep. You do whatever you can to make them feel like the only thing you want in the world is to be by their side, even if you can’t.”
“That’s nice,” Reba said, and I felt pitied and ridiculed at the same time. “But not every parent is trying win parent of the year. Some of us are just trying to make sure our kids turn out okay. Or that they don’t turn out to be serial killers. Or kidnappers—”
I hung up the phone.
I’ve never once in my life hung up on anyone, but that was the last straw. I tried Amy, but it went to voice mail again. As I hung up, I was surprised to see the phone ring again, almost immediately. I frowned when I saw the unfamiliar number on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hi, um…it’s Patricia Smith-Bilks from Carmen Elementary School,” a woman’s voice said.
“Hi,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I assume you went to see Principal Murray?”
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“She sent out an email to a few of us, blind cc’d. Basically saying she was going to get to the bottom of who is spreading rumors about her. I figured you must have gone to see her. Anything helpful?”
“Not really, Ms. Smith-Bilks. She has a pretty tight alibi. She was at her church fund-raiser all day.”
“Oh,” the woman said with something that sounded like disappointment. “So they confirmed it? That she was there all day?”
“Well…” I started. “I haven’t gotten a chance to ask, but I’m sure the story is easily corroborated—”
“You didn’t go by the church?” she asked. “What have you been doing?”
I opened my mouth to respond and then shut it.
There was no good way to answer that.
“I’ve been following other leads,” I finally said. “Quite frankly, much more promising than Principal Murray.”
“Look,” she said, “maybe I’m wrong about this. But you owe it to Matthew to make sure, right? At least go by the church. Please, for me. You can still make it out there today. They’re working on the fund-raiser, and they’re usually there until nine or ten o’clock.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go by and see if anyone is willing to talk to me. But I think you may be wrong about this.”
We hung up, and I left for the New County Church, my mind still on Amy. No wonder she’d been so upset when I’d seen her outside of the apartment. She’d just found out she was trapped.
With me.
As I walked into the church, I was overwhelmed by the buzz of activity. People swarmed everywhere. A woman with a clipboard was yelling something across the room. She groaned and turned around and wrote something down. While she was still hunched over her board, I walked up to her and stood nearby, waiting for her to finish.
She looked up and frowned. “Yes?”
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Principal Murray. She told me she might be here today.”
“Erin?” she asked with a frown. “No, I think she had something else to do today.”
I nodded. “Do you know if she was here last Wednesday?”
“Last Wednesday?” she repeated, thinking about it. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she was. That was our first big day of planning, and our Volunteers Opening Reception. Pretty much everyone was here.”
She finally took a good look at me. “And you are?”
“I’m Francis Clarke,” I said. “I am following up with some questions about a missing child at her school.”
“Oh,” the woman said, a look of surprise covering her face. “That’s terrible. Well, yeah, I think you’ll do better finding her at home, or at the school. She works pretty much 24-7. You could ask Diana, though,” she said, pointing to a woman who was on the far side of the room, arranging a bunch of trays on a table. “They are both overseeing the food-and-drink committee.”
The woman rushed off before I could thank her. I turned and walked across the room.
Diana looked up as I approached.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Francis Clarke. I was told I could look for Principal Erin Murray here.”
“Erin’s not here today,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, she’s not the only one around here who has a full-time job, but this is the one week that almost everyone in the church takes off. It’s such a huge deal.”
“So this is your centennial celebration?”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “We’re raising the bar this year. Do you live in the neighborhood? I hope you’ll be here.”
“Yes, uh, sure,” I said.
“Now why don’t I believe that?” she asked. “You should definitely come. It’s going to be a fun afternoon of food, music, and fellowship.” She saw my expression and smiled. “But that’s not why you’re here today. Tell me, why are you looking for Erin?”
“She is helping me on a case, about one of the children at her school.” I shrugged in a way I hoped would get her to stop asking questions. “I’m sorry to say it’s confidential.”
Her eyes widened, and I saw a glimmer of excitement there. “Oh, wow. Are you a cop?”
“No, a journalist,” I said.
“Oh. Well, no, she’s not here,” she said. “She barely ever is.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, and I could tell she wanted me to probe. Some people have an uncanny ability for that—making it seem like you’re pulling something out of them when they’re really dying to lay it all out there for you.
Diana was not one of those people. Her desire to talk about Principal Murray was completely obvious, but I played along.
“You guys work on the food-and-drink committee together, right?”
She scoffed. “Yeah,
I guess you could say that. I mean, her name is on the program, but I mean…you know how these things can be.”
I smiled and leaned forward a bit. “Let me guess, you’re doing more than your fair share of the work?”
“Hey, you said that, and not me,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, I’m no school principal, so I get that. She’s really busy. I work part-time at the bowling alley, so it’s not the hardest job in the world, but we all have lives outside of these things. And if you’re too busy, that’s fine. But then you don’t sign up to help, you know? If you know you’re not going to be able to put in the time.”
“I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve been there many times before. It’s pretty frustrating… Well, I won’t go down that road,” I said, giving her a knowing look.
She chuckled and shook her head.
I cleared my throat. “But she was here last Wednesday, right?” Diana handed a bowl to a boy who walked up, and he carried it to a table on the other side of us.
“Um, last Wednesday?” She tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, she was. I mean, I guess you could say that. She was here long enough to sign in. But that doesn’t mean she was actually here.” She turned to the boy again. He stood behind her, waiting for some direction, and she frowned slightly. “Terry, could you count out ten packs of the spoons? The large packs.” He nodded and walked away.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, like I said, she was definitely here in the morning for sign in, because that’s how you officially get credit for being a part of the committee,” she said. “But midday, I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find anyone, to be honest. I really needed some help, and it was just me doing it all. Do you know that I had to lift a thirty-pound printer up two flights of stairs all by myself?”
“So you think she left?”
“Who? Erin? I have no idea. All I know is that right after lunch, I was looking for some help bringing in some of the utensil trays, and I ended up having to ask someone from another committee to help me. And then, when the printer showed up, Erin was nowhere to be found. But that’s not surprising. It’s been happening for years. I hate being on committees with her.” Diana’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Listen to me, just going on and on, and in a church nonetheless,” she said with a smile.
