The Herd (ARC)

by Andrea Bartz

  In the en suite bathroom, I poked at the makeup bag yawning open on a shelf. Lots of Gleam products—she practiced what she preached. Several products from the Nimbus collection, “designed to flatter all skin tones and types.” The Nimbus launch had bothered me for several reasons: First, that we needed a POC add-on to begin with—it was lame that Gleam’s initial products, in particular its highlighter and eye shadows, didn’t work especially well on darker skin. Second, that journalists expected me to join Eleanor for interviews and photos about the line, as if my face gave the effort authenticity. One reporter, a bearded dude from Fortune, even asked about my “ethnic heritage.” It’s especially fun to speak on behalf of all women of color when you’re barely in touch with your own brown-ness.

  Eleanor’s mirror snapped open when I pushed it, and I stared into her medicine cabinet, the rainbow of products there: toothpaste and cotton balls, facial bleach and pimple patches and antiaging eye cream, plus moist flushable towelettes and vaginal itch cream under the sink. All normal things around which I’d always felt a cloud of shame, and here they were in Eleanor’s bathroom, almost out in the open but for the soft click of a cabinet or mirror. Eleanor was a human, like the rest of us, carefully curating the lacquered shell we all admired. Eleanor was … really missing.

  A rush of impropriety and I slammed everything closed. Tears stung my eyes as I made my way into the office. There, my gaze fell on the built-in bookshelf, a custom, complicated mass of oak slabs and copper tubing. A thick book with silver and gold letters on a blue spine looked familiar and I took a step toward it when—

  The doorbell chimed, reverberating through the mirrored foyer. I froze, like I’d been caught. The detectives, they were back, and I’d be in trouble.

  No, that didn’t make sense; they knew Daniel wasn’t home today. Amazon delivery guy? I padded back through the bedroom and peered out the window.

  There he was, in a shiny down coat and sweatpants. He still had sparkly blue eyes and that angular jaw, now bristled with a five o’clock shadow.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d trotted down the steps and swung open the front door. Cameron took a step back, his eyes wide.

  “You heard what happened?” I asked. He squinted and I reached for my heart. “Hana, Eleanor’s friend. Remember me?”

  I’d only seen him a handful of times over the last decade; he was at Eleanor’s wedding, and I couldn’t decide whether that was odd or not, and once or twice we’d all hung out while he was in town visiting Ted. He’d remained in Boston when he and Eleanor had broken up right around our graduation, which was also when his life had taken a nosedive. While I was out in L.A., Cameron had flown to Arizona and checked himself into a treatment center for opioid addiction. Afterward, he defaulted on the sprawling condo he’d bought in pricy Beacon Hill and, at his parents’ urging, moved into the renovated cottage in their backyard. Years later, he was working again and looked, with his long blond waves and clear eyes, nothing like a junkie.

  “This is Eleanor’s place, right?” he said in his chill, pothead drone.

  I nodded. “I … just came to pick something up.” I swallowed. “But Daniel doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Daniel, right.” He nodded, holding my gaze, then looked over my shoulder. “So can I come in?”

  “Right! Sorry.” I held the door and he pushed past me, coldness wafting off him, and I realized I’d just invited him into someone else’s home. He unzipped his coat and sauntered into the living room, then plopped down on the sofa.

  “I tried calling you last night,” I said.

  “You have my number?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You have Eleanor’s address?”

  “Ted gave it to me.”

  “Funny. He gave me your number.”

  “Huh.” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and ran his hand over his chin. I’d settled into an armchair across from him and began to laugh.

  “What?” His lips curled into an involuntary half-smile.

  “Sorry, I just—we’re casually lounging in Eleanor’s living room, and I keep fighting the urge to offer you something to drink. It’s … oh my God. Eleanor.” The laughter careened into something darker and more hysterical—a mask for my grief. I took a deep breath. “What are you doing here? Did you just get in?”

  “Yeah, I talked to the detectives this morning and then got in my car and drove down. I wanna help. Will there be search parties?”

  “I don’t know—no one’s organized anything yet. They haven’t announced it publicly.” I leaned forward. “Are you staying with Ted?”

  “Probably. Or maybe a hotel. I hadn’t thought that far.”

  “Okay.” He hadn’t answered the obvious question, so I gestured around: “And what are you doing … here?”

  “I thought Daniel would be home. Where is he?”

  “He’s at work.” I shook my head. “Why did you want to see him?”

  “To offer my help. Tell him I’m sorry.” His jaw muscles bulged like he was biting down.

  The hair on my neck and scalp prickled—something was off. Well, everything was off, but especially Cameron’s presence here. “You didn’t think to call him?”

  “I don’t have Daniel’s number. Ted doesn’t either.” He leaned back, draped an arm along the sofa’s back. “So no news yet?”

  “Not yet. They searched here last night.”

  “Did they.”

  I shrugged. “Supposedly they’re working very hard to track her down.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “To me, they seemed pretty convinced she left of her own accord.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  I thought about it, but couldn’t see a reason to hold back: “He and Eleanor had just opened up their marriage.”

  His sandy-blond eyebrows shot up near his hairline. “Shit. Do you think she took off?”

  “No. She’s always put her career first—she wouldn’t run away because of a broken heart. And anyway, Daniel claims it was her idea.”

  “Yeah. Well, it worries me because Eleanor’s got enemies.” He pointed at the wall and I wasn’t sure what he was referring to—the fireplace? The stockings hung by the chimney with care? “She comes up all the time in the news. She’s a public figure.”

  The TV, mounted on the exposed brick. “Do strangers who hate her count as enemies?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “So you think someone did something to her?”

  “Dunno. Could also mean she had to get away.”

  “What makes you think that, though? I can’t see her running away from all the good stuff she has going for her.”

  “I didn’t tell the cops.” He brought his hands to his jaw, ran a knuckle over his mouth. “When they called? But she called me out of the blue, maybe three months ago.” He folded his fingers under his chin. “She asked if I knew anyone who could forge a passport. I don’t know what she had in mind, but I keep thinking about it. Why would she be messing with that kind of shit?”

  My mouth gaped open, an oval of shock. “Why didn’t you tell the cops? It could help them. And who did you send her to?”

  The look he shot me stung like a whip. “I didn’t tell them ’cause I don’t need them thinking I’m a perp. I told Eleanor I don’t know anyone. I’m not part of some vast criminal network, you know.”

  I felt embarrassed, then indignant—Eleanor’s no idiot, and she’d thought Cameron could help. “Sorry. I’m just so shocked to hear that. I think of Eleanor as, you know, an upstanding, law-abiding citizen.”

  “Most of the time,” he muttered.

  I turned to him sharply—no, he must just mean the fake passport. I shook my head. “Have you talked to Gary and Karen?”

  “Sure. I checked in with them. They gave me the idea to come down.” He turned on Eleanor’s father’s thick Boston accent: “ ‘You let me know if you think we should get in the cah and head down theh.’ ”

  Eleanor’s parents
had been in Mikki’s and my lives fairly regularly during college, taking us out to dinner near campus or having us all up for the weekend. Though I didn’t know the details, I had the impression Gary and Karen were like surrogate parents to Ted and Cameron too. They were almost comically nice, the kind of people who send a thank-you card for your thank-you gift. I thought of them and felt a surge of warmth and pity—Gary, a baseball cap–wearing real-estate developer and community magnate with a bald head and loads of energy, and Karen, a retired nurse with her crisp slacks and silver bob. Being with them was always soothing, my first true glimpse into how an unsplintered family could feel. They, too, must be praying she’d run off on her own and was safe and fine. It was a strange thing to hope for.

  “Cameron, you’ve known Eleanor longer than I have,” I said. “To me, this isn’t like her at all. Has she ever done anything like this?”

  “Nah.” He thought, then shrugged. “Actually, I guess her parents would say yes. When she was still in high school, if her parents were pissing her off she’d come stay with me. Or she’d crash with her friends—Mrs. Walsh would call me in a panic. Eleanor was, you know. So young.”

  I laugh-scoffed. “I mean, we all were. In high school.”

  “But she was especially—you know she skipped two grades, right?”

  “She did?” Did I know that? It felt new.

  “She skipped seventh and eighth grade,” he said, frowning. “She was two years below Ted, at first. So she was twelve when she started at that Catholic high school.” He cleared his throat. “We didn’t date till her senior year, obviously. When she was sixteen. But I figured you guys knew, at least, even if she didn’t make a big thing of it.”

  I tilted my head. “So she’s actually thirty right now?”

  “Uh … three years younger than me, so yeah.”

  “Huh.” I leaned back. It was a small discrepancy, but a weird one: Why keep this from us all these years? Had Eleanor hid it in the first few years of college and then felt she couldn’t come clean? We all had fake IDs from freshman year on, good ones, so it wouldn’t have been hard to quietly slip that out of her wallet even throughout senior year. But all this time, all these articles about Gleam and the Herd and, well, her, all extolling the accomplishments of a woman of a certain age—our age.

  “You think that’s relevant?” he asked.

  “No. It’s just weird.” I cracked my knuckles. “I think if something bad happened to Eleanor, we owe it to her to try to help.”

  “And that’s what you’re trying to do?”

  “I am. Same as you.”

  “No one’s demanded ransom, no contact at all?”

  I winced. “Nope.”

  “Well, the last time I heard from her was when she was asking about a forged ID. Before that, we hadn’t talked since her wedding. Seriously, no one’s suspicious of her husband?”

  Had Daniel done something to Eleanor? The thought made my stomach roil; he’d always seemed to dote on her, but his behavior today, business as usual, was nothing if not bizarre. I felt an odd instinct to ask Eleanor what she thought about it, followed by a rinse of despair. “Daniel seems genuinely worried and eager to have her back,” I said. “I’m curious to hear what he’s learned from the cops.”

  “Keep me posted, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  I stared at him. I hated this feeling: so much subtext, but I couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. I gave him Daniel’s number and mine, and then we both stood, the air between us cold and staticky. “So you’re sticking around?” he asked. Faux casual, like he thought I was up to something sketchy.

  “For now. I guess I’ll walk you out.”

  We dawdled at the door as he pulled his coat back on. Finally he caught my eye and gave a cool-guy nod. “You know, even under such shitty circumstances, it’s good to see you, Hana.”

  I froze. Seeing him out of Eleanor’s apartment—what the hell was I doing, standing here as if I were Talented Mr. Ripley–ing her life? I gave a little wave and pressed the door closed behind him.

  For a moment I watched him from the window. Why had he come? Why, really? I was pretty sure he and Daniel had never been alone in a room before, and it was hard to imagine them exchanging bro-y sympathy. Was he actually convinced of Daniel’s guilt, here to intimidate the man he’d deemed responsible? It hadn’t really crossed my mind before, but of course Cameron could still be in love with Eleanor. So many people were.

  I trudged back upstairs, desperation bulging inside me—this trip couldn’t be for nothing; I had to find something. I returned to the bookshelf and surveyed it, hands on hips. So many feminist memoirs and essay collections, spanning all the waves. Some domestic noir, a fat run of Calvin and Hobbes books, an entire row of Jane magazines. The blue cover that’d caught my eye earlier: Frida, a hefty tome she’d brought home from a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year. I pulled it out and flipped through the glossy pages. She’d always worshiped Frida, had been a fan since her parents took her to the Blue House museum in Mexico City when she was a little girl. I replaced the book, imagining I could feel Eleanor’s fingerprints on it, little echoes of her attention pressed into the pages.

  I locked the door behind me and felt the cold envelop my outsides: pressing hard on my nose, eyeballs, ears. My visit had been a bust, and this unleashed a new torrent of hopelessness. I was out of ideas, and with every passing hour, that candle flame of hope, the desperate belief that Eleanor was fine, dwindled. The app had said my car was two minutes away, but as I watched, bouncing on the balls of my feet, the driver took a wrong turn and the wait time jumped to six minutes.

  Kalamazoo had winters like this, bell-clear and frigid. Katie had loved playing outside when we were kids, even when temperatures were in the single digits, and one winter we’d dragged a bunch of lawn furniture into a clearing in the woods behind our house, then sculpted the snow that fell on them into a kind of roof. Wearing long johns and snowsuits, we’d sit for hours in the series of protected ovals and rectangles underneath, and I’d boss Katie around as she fixed snow slides and tunnels. Katie must be wondering where I was. I should text her.

  At home I hesitated in the living room, phone in hand—I should check in with Mikki, I should try to contact Stephanie in her fancy beach hut in Goa. I should call Mom; Katie had sent me a screenshot of Mom telling her to tell me to call her, a literal game of telephone. But Mom would inevitably find a way to make me feel even worse. Even when something positive had happened and I’d rushed to Mom for approval, she’d found a way to twist it. When I got into Harvard: “Well there goes the cottage in Escanaba we were saving up for.” When I got scholarships and took on my own debt: “You better hope you find a good enough job when you graduate to stay on top of that.” Going to her with good news was foolish; calling her with bad news was unthinkable.

  Instead I went to my call list and tapped on one from last night.

  “Hello?” He sounded suspicious.

  “Gary? It’s Hana.”

  “Hana! I thought you were one of those damn telemahketers.” More quietly: “Karen, it’s Hana!”

  Some fumbling and clicking, then Karen’s voice: “Hana, hello!” She attempted to sound cheery, but I could tell it was forced. Then, suddenly tense: “What is it, do you have bad news?”

  “Not at all! I’m just calling to see how you’re doing.” I sank into the couch. “I know I was pretty frantic on the phone last night.”

  “We’re just waiting to hear anything,” Karen said. “You know, trying to stay positive. We feel so out of the loop about what’s going on down there.”

  “We talked to Daniel last night, he gave us a call,” Gary said. There was a quaver in his voice, though he was trying so hard to sound like his usual jolly self. “Asked if we’d heard anything, obviously, and we asked him the same. The whole thing is bizarre. We’re just telling ourselves, I don’t know—she must’ve decided to get away for a few days.”

  “They said he
r laptop, phone, wallet, she took all that with her,” Karen added, almost manically. “So she had to have left by choice—right?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “I can’t bring myself to imagine the worst-case scenario.” Her voice lowered to almost a whisper. “I just can’t.”

  “Of course. I’m sure the detectives have got it under control. They assured us they’d take this seriously.”

  “We got a call from that detective last night. Ratcliff.”

  “Ratliff,” Karen corrected.

  “Just wanted to know when we’d last heard from Eleanor. We decided it was Thanksgiving. Hard to believe it’s been that long, but, you know—you blink, and it’s almost Christmas.”

  “I know, I’ve been meaning to call home for too long too.” I gazed up at the ceiling; there was a small moon near the wall—a water spot? “How did Eleanor seem, back then?”

  “Oh, fine, just normal,” Gary said. “She spent Thanksgiving with Daniel’s family, so she called that day to just chat. Said they were having a nice time in Peekskill. Daniel had a cold, and apparently her mother-in-law had burned the turkey.”

  “And we went over plans for Christmas—she and Daniel are coming up on the twenty-third. It should be cozy, just the four of us.”

  Their use of present tense, their dogged confidence that she’d be there in one week—it unnerved me. Did they have some reason to think Eleanor was safe, off taking care of something but about to reappear?

  “Are you heading home to Minnesota?” Karen asked.

  “Er—Michigan, yes. My sister and I are flying that same day, the twenty-third.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sure you guys will have a nice holiday.”

  “Eleanor is fine,” Karen cut in, her voice a squeak. I winced, brought my hand to my collarbone. “She has to be.”

  Gary let out what I think was an uncomfortable laugh, but it sounded more like a sob, and he cleared his throat to cover it. “What my wife means is that of course we’re worried sick. We hung up the phone with Daniel last night, and we looked at each other and swore—swore—we’d be strong. How else could—what else could we—?” He trailed off.