Local Woman Missing Read online

  Delilah has broken up the formation. Now Delilah and Piper skip ahead, laughing, while Cassandra and Arlo lag behind, still holding hands.

  I feel somewhat guilty for unloading Delilah on Cassandra. Walking the kids to school is a favor I rarely get to repay. But Cassandra is autonomous. She’s independent. By her own admission, she doesn’t like to ask for help. I never get the chance to reciprocate.

  I take Leo to Charlotte’s. I head to work. On my way, my phone pings and I break out into a cold sweat. I glance at the phone with reluctance, knowing I have to. It might be a client in labor.

  It’s not. What it is instead is a variation of the same text I received last night. I gasp and drop my phone, but not before I’ve read the message.

  I know what you did. You’ll never get away with it, bitch.

  KATE

  11 YEARS BEFORE

  May

  Bea and I meet Josh in his yard just shy of eight o’clock. It’s early in the morning, but already he’s gathered about a dozen people to search for his missing family. There are more on the way. Still, ours is a grassroots effort. We gather in a circle and talk about places Meredith and Delilah might be. Some ask for details about yesterday, and Josh, rubbing at his forehead, fills them in. He looks wired and high-strung, but also exhausted. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s twitchy. I doubt he slept much, if at all. I look around. Leo isn’t here. Josh left him with the sitter, Charlotte, I assume. Charlotte watches many kids in the neighborhood. Even Bea and me, without kids of our own, know who she is. She’s a staple around here. We see her and the kids out when the weather is nice, parading around the neighborhood. Charlotte is in her late fifties, sixty, maybe. She lives alone with her husband.

  I wonder if Leo knows what’s happening, if Josh told him. Does he know that Meredith and Delilah are missing? I doubt it, thinking that would be indigestible to a four-year-old boy. Crayons go missing. Puzzle pieces go missing. Moms and sisters do not go missing. I wonder where Josh told Leo that they are. He would have had to be confused when he woke up and Delilah wasn’t there.

  Among our search party is the woman who owns the yoga studio where Meredith works. Josh goes to her and apologizes for Meredith’s absence yesterday. He says, “I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

  She says it was no inconvenience at all, that she and another teacher split Meredith’s classes among themselves, same as they did last week when Meredith was sick, and the week before.

  Josh is taken aback, as are Bea and me. We exchange a glance. “What do you mean?” Josh asks, because as far as any of us know, yesterday was the first time Meredith called in sick. I watch Josh’s reaction. He’s a tall man, a brunette with cool blue eyes. His eyes are moist, the blue turning somehow even more blue because of his tears. Leo, wherever he is, has the same eyes.

  The woman feels stupid. She turns red. She’s misspoken. She fights for words, saying, “It’s just that yesterday was like the third time in two weeks that Meredith has called in sick. You didn’t know?” she asks Josh, and he shakes his head. “We were worried. Until a couple weeks ago, Meredith was always so conscientious. This wasn’t like her. We thought there was some real health crisis, like cancer or something,” and it sounds to me as if she’s trying to make light of that—Meredith having cancer—though I wonder if cancer would be preferable to whatever’s happened. With cancer she’d have a fighting chance. With this, I don’t know.

  Another woman speaks. She introduces herself as Jeanette, a midwife with whom Meredith works on occasion. “If I may,” she says, explaining that Meredith had very recently made the decision to cut back on her workload, to spend more time with her family. She told Jeanette a week or so ago that she’d be taking on fewer clients, and asked for recommendations of other doulas that she could send inquiries to.

  I see in Josh’s reaction that he didn’t know this, either. His expression turns thoughtful, contemplative, but also sad. He runs his fingers over a mustache and beard. Frown lines appear between his eyes, one deeper than the other. Josh, like Meredith, must be in his midthirties, just slightly older than Bea and me. He’s not yet forty. I remember a conversation about whether they would go somewhere exotic when they both turned forty. It wasn’t around the corner, but something they had time to think about and decide, years away but still on the horizon.

  Bea is the one who comes up with a strategy. It’s so like Bea to take charge and be a planner. She divides us into groups with plans to search the town. Bea tells people to drive around looking for Meredith’s car, to stop in restaurants and shops and see if Meredith or Delilah has been there recently. Josh gives us the make and model of Meredith’s car, as well as the license plate number. The volunteers carve up the town among themselves, using major roads as their guide. Bea and I will stay and canvass the neighborhood, because we live here. Because we know the neighbors, and we know our way around.

  Before anyone splits, Bea takes cell phone numbers. She starts a group chat, so we can update each other with news. Josh sends a picture of Meredith over the group chat so we have it to show around. He gets choked up when he scrolls through and finds the image on his own phone. It’s a picture of Meredith with Delilah and Leo, taken recently. Meredith is a beautiful woman. In the picture, her hair is gathered into a loose bun on the top of her head. Her skin is fair, covered in freckles, and her eyes are a stunning mineral green. She’s clearly of Irish descent, dressed in some kind of embroidered shift dress that’s as red as the hair on her head.

  I feel a pang of sadness at seeing the image of Meredith, with little Leo and Delilah wrapped beneath each of her slight arms. I pray nothing bad has happened to her or Delilah, who sits beside Meredith in the photograph, tiny and nearly toothless, staring lovingly at her mom and smiling so sweetly it makes my heart hurt.

  I may never have kids. Bea and I talked about the possibility of using donor sperm to get one of us pregnant. We got so far as to discuss which of us would be better equipped to carry a baby—Bea, who’s larger in stature but also more maternal than me—and whether we’d want a sperm donor we knew or if we’d prefer to keep it anonymous. I wanted to keep it anonymous, but that was too impersonal for Bea. Too cold. She wanted to use the sperm of someone we knew, which felt weird to me. Bea and some man we knew having a child together. That’s where the conversation ended.

  My eyes move to Bea’s now. She stares over my shoulder at the picture. Her eyes are misty like mine.

  “They’ll turn up,” she says, her hand on my arm, and though she sounds so certain, she’s thinking the same thing as me: What if they never come back? We’ve grown close to Josh and Meredith over the years; we’ve grown close to their kids. “They’re fine. They have to be fine,” Bea says, voice trembling, fighting tears, and I wonder if it’s only wishful thinking.

  Are they fine? My gut tells me they’re not.

  One by one people get in their cars. They pull away, dispersing in different directions. Bea and I turn and move slowly down the sidewalk. We’re quiet, each processing what’s happening. The idea of something bad having happened to Meredith and Delilah is unfathomable. I won’t let my mind go there, no matter how much it keeps drifting. I have to stay positive, for Josh’s sake. For Bea’s sake. For mine. As we walk, Bea slips her hand into mine. It feels good, having something to hold on to.

  We make our way to the first home. I knock and, when Roger Thames answers, I ask if he’s seen Meredith. Roger is limping. He threw his back out working on his car, he tells us. That was last week, and he’s hardly left the sofa since. He hasn’t seen Meredith.

  “What’s the matter with her?” he asks abruptly.

  Bea says, “If you see her, can you just let Josh or us know?” I’ve never liked Roger much.

  We turn and make our way back down the walkway and to the sidewalk, moving on.

  “Could she just be at a birth?” asks Gwen, the woman who lives on the op
posite side of Meredith and Josh. Gwen is a widower. For three years now, her husband has been dead. Lou Gehrig’s disease. I didn’t know him well, but I remember that he went quickly. To me it seemed like I’d no sooner heard the news than I read the obituary in the paper.

  I tell Gwen no, that we don’t think Meredith is at a birth because of the fact that Delilah is also missing. “Little Delilah?” she gasps, her hand going to her mouth.

  “I’m afraid so,” Bea says. Delilah is high-spirited. She’s full of life. Everyone adores her.

  “Delilah colors pictures for me on my sidewalk with chalk. I find bouquets of dandelions on my front porch from her. Last year, when I broke my hip, she carried my mail to the door every day. She’s a darling girl.” Her voice cracks as she says it. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen Delilah or her mother for a couple of days. The weather,” she tells us, “has kept me inside.”

  I say, “The weather has kept many people inside, I fear.” Because of the relentless rain, everyone has been cooped up for days, blind to what’s happening on our streets.

  Bea tells Gwen the whole story. As she does, Gwen’s eyes fill with tears.

  “You’ll let me know when there’s news?” she asks. Gwen would join the search party if she could, but Gwen is nearing eighty and not as mobile as she used to be.

  “We’ll let you know the minute we hear a thing,” I say.

  Most of our immediate neighbors know Meredith. Though no one has seen her, they almost all want to talk. They step out onto their front porches and ask for details.

  “Has something happened to her?” they ask, everyone concerned. Meredith, like Delilah, is well liked throughout the neighborhood. She’s been known to drop everything to help a neighbor in need. When Gwen’s husband was gravely ill, she helped get him in the car and drove him to doctor appointments when she could. When the Timmonses’ little dog got out, Meredith walked miles around town, pushing Delilah and Leo in the double stroller, until she found it.

  Bea and I share the little we know with our neighbors, but the information we gather in return is unremarkable. Jan Fleisher remembers Meredith’s car parked in back; Tim Smith saw her pull down the alley.

  “Were the kids with her?” I ask Tim. He doesn’t know. He didn’t get a good look inside the car because there was a glare. He just knows that it was Meredith’s car.

  “What time was this?”

  He shrugs. “Eight, maybe. Or nine.” He thinks hard. “I had an appointment at eleven so I left the house around ten-thirty. It was before that. Sometime before ten-thirty, I’d say,” he decides, apologizing for being unintentionally vague. He feels badly for it, knowing he may have been one of the last to see her before she disappeared.

  Bea and I move on. This morning it isn’t raining. Still, the sky is full of heavy clouds. We feel the moisture in the air. The trees drip rain from last night’s storm down on us, making us wet in spots. We carry umbrellas, but we don’t need them, not yet, though the humid weather does nothing for my hair.

  There are twigs everywhere, torn savagely from the trees and tossed to the street by the rain and wind. The sidewalk is riddled with puddles; Bea and I part ways and step around them. It’s chilly outside, no more than sixty degrees, but the gray skies, the threat of rain and the relentless wind make it feel more like fifty. I didn’t think to bring a coat, and I regret it.

  We cross the street and go to the house directly opposite Josh and Meredith’s. It’s a gray house that belongs to a young couple with kids. Bea and I don’t know the Hanakas well because families with kids tend to bond better with other families with kids, and Bea and I don’t have any kids. But I’ve met them once.

  The Hanakas are friendly with the Dickeys. I’ve seen Delilah and Leo riding bikes on the sidewalk with their daughter. I’ve seen Meredith and the other woman, Cassandra, talking on the street, laughing. Meredith likes Cassandra, I can tell. She speaks of her often on the nights Meredith, Josh, Bea and me share a drink on the porch. It’s never anything much, but somehow her name always makes its way into a conversation. Cassandra said the new bakery on Jackson has the best cinnamon scones. Cassandra and Marty are planning one of those Alaskan cruises next summer, with the kids. Cassandra told me that a little baking soda and vinegar in the drains will get rid of those annoying fruit flies.

  Josh teased Meredith about it, said she had a girl crush on Cassandra, before looking mortified and apologizing to Bea and me, as if he’d said something to offend us.

  I don’t know much about Cassandra and her husband, Marty. Most of what I’ve heard is secondhand from Meredith. I know that they moved from the city. I know that, like Bea, they didn’t relish the idea of suburban living. Yet, as their daughter approached school age, they had to choose between an extortionate private school education, a shoddy public school system or moving to the suburbs. They came here.

  Bea and I step up to the door and knock. Cassandra comes. When she draws the door open, the house behind her is quiet, still.

  “I hope we’re not bothering you,” Bea says.

  “No,” Cassandra says, “not at all. I just put my little guy down for a nap.” A cat circles her ankles. Cassandra scoops it into her arms and invites us inside. “You two look cold. Let me get you some coffee,” she says, and we step out of our shoes and follow her down the hallway and to the kitchen. Cassandra’s home is tastefully decorated. Everything is in neutral tones and a touch too nice to belong in a home with little kids. It’s also immaculately clean. Cassandra seems like the type. She’s immaculate herself.

  She sets the cat on the ground. “You’re here about Meredith,” she says, taking the glass carafe from the coffeemaker and filling it at the sink. Cassandra is tall like Bea. She’s blonde, with shoulder-length hair that parts at the center and frames her face. She wears a maxi dress that a woman my height could never get away with. I envy her for it.

  Cassandra knows about Meredith. Of course she does. She, like us, would have been one of the first people that Josh went to when he realized Meredith was missing.

  “It’s awful what’s happened,” she says, back at the coffeemaker, generously scooping ground coffee into the filter. “I can’t believe that she and Delilah are just—” she pauses, a pregnant pause “—gone.” She reaches inside a cabinet and pulls out three matching mugs. She sets them on the countertop. As the coffee begins to percolate, Cassandra suggests that we sit down at the kitchen table and talk.

  “I haven’t seen her in a few days if that’s why you’re here. This weather,” she laments, sliding gracefully into a wooden chair across from Bea and me, “is ridiculous. We’ve hardly been able to get outside at all. Piper has been begging for a playdate with Delilah. She absolutely adores her. Just this morning, Piper was asking if Delilah could come over after school. I put her off, told her I thought the Dickeys had plans this afternoon and that Delilah wouldn’t be able to play. I’ve never lied to my kids before. But I didn’t know what else to say. Piper is inquisitive, always asking questions. She wanted to know what the Dickeys were doing that Delilah couldn’t play. I said they were going to the dentist. She asked if Delilah had any cavities. I said I didn’t know. I hate lying to her. If Delilah doesn’t come home soon, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to tell Piper that something terrible has happened to her little friend,” she says.

  This would be hard for a child to understand. It’s hard for me to understand. The area where we live is an area of low crime. Compared to national statistics or even the statistics of suburbs nearby, crime is nearly negligible.

  “I’m so worried,” Cassandra says about Meredith and Delilah. “Josh must be beside himself.”

  “He’s organized a search party,” I say, and she tells us she knows, that she plans to join the search just as soon as Arlo is up from his nap.

  Bea tells her that Josh is in the process of pulling together a list of phone numbers for Meredith’s c
lients, family and friends. “When he does,” Bea says, “there will be people to call. Perhaps you can help with that while your son is napping.”

  “Of course. Anything I can do. They’ll be okay, won’t they?” Cassandra asks. Neither Bea nor I reply. We’re quiet, contemplating the question. Will they be okay? No one knows. No one can say for certain. But Cassandra is staring at us, asking earnestly whether Meredith and Delilah will be okay. A tear leaves her eye, weaves down her cheek. I’m moved by the sudden show of emotion.

  Cassandra pushes herself from the table and goes to the coffeemaker. She fills the mugs, asks how we take our coffee. She gathers the sugar and milk.

  With her back turned to us, she says, “I saw something.”

  Her words are quiet but charged, full of meaning. They send a sudden shiver up my spine. I find myself wanting, desperate for more.

  Did Cassandra see something having to do with Meredith and Delilah’s disappearance?

  She goes on, back still to us. “I’d forgotten all about it,” she says. “It came to me only after Josh called to tell me Meredith and Delilah were missing.”

  “What’d you see?” Bea asks. Only then does Cassandra turn back to face us.

  “Someone outside their house. In the middle of the night,” she says, and then she makes the first of three trips to the kitchen table to deliver the coffees.

  “When?” I ask.

  “A couple weeks ago,” she says.

  “Did you tell Josh?” I ask.

  “No,” she admits. “I haven’t. Not yet. I forgot. I only remembered late last night, when it was too late to call and wake him.” This morning her daughter, Piper, was around and so she couldn’t call and tell Josh then; she didn’t want to scare Piper. By the time Piper went to school, the search was in full swing. Cassandra didn’t feel right stealing Josh’s attention away from the search.