It was sunny and beautiful, a beach day, and yet they were picking through knee-high grass, brushing the earth with sticks looking for their friend, for one of their own, suddenly lost in the world.
Liz’s arms were linked with searchers on either side of her. Jerry to her right, Gayle on her left. They were like her fortress, but Jerry’s arm trembled like her own. She wondered if he was as terrified to peer into the grass as she. She imagined a shock of blond hair against the bright green grass, and then shook her head, cast the image away, and gritted her teeth.
The searches went on for days. They combed the woods that butted Tranquil Meadows - their little subdivision. They fanned out to surrounding state forest lands, hiking parks. Liz searched with the parties every day. She couldn’t sit at home while Susan was out there.
Detective Hansen sat across from Liz and Jerry. He didn’t look away and avoid eye contact. She wondered how he’d mastered that, looking people in the eye in such devastating circumstances. She didn’t think she could do it.
“We’ve talked to everyone in your neighborhood, Liz. Everyone on Susan’s list of friends, everyone she worked with.”
“And?”
“And,” he held up his empty hands. “Hannah was the last confirmed conversation.”
“But-” Liz started.
The detective stopped her.
“We’re not done. I have deputies talking to every business in town. There are pictures on the news and in the paper. People go out of town. If someone saw her, they might not realize it’s important yet. Sometimes good leads take time.”
“We don’t have time,” Liz choked out.
Jerry took her hand. His was hot, slick. His face was hard. Liz saw his clenched jaw beneath his lips.
“What can we do?” he asked, pushing the words out slowly, as if it took all his effort not to shout them, pound his fists on the desk.
“Keep spreading the word. Hand out fliers. Hand out a hundred fliers to everyone you know, and ask them to hand them out too. And keep thinking about any place Susan might have gone that day. Keep searching your memory for a comment, something you forgot.”
Liz snorted.
“Hand out fliers? Try to remember? That’s your big plan to bring our daughter home?”
The detective’s eyes softened.
“Not my plan. The work we’re doing is extensive. Every bit of manpower we can spare is on this, Mrs. Miner. I’m telling you what you and your husband should be doing.”
Chapter 3
Liz
Missing. Vanished. Gone.
Liz wrote the words on a little notebook next to the telephone, grinding the pen deeper into the page until it struck the wood of the coffee table beneath. Still, she could not stop. She shoved the pen down, holding it in her fist, willing the emptiness that the words summoned to become some sensation other than nothingness.
“Liz?” Joyce stood in the patio doorway, a pitcher in her hand. She wasn’t smiling, but had the crestfallen, somewhat confused look Liz noticed on so many faces lately.
In the first week, Susie’s disappearance mobilized them. Phone calls, search parties, fliers. There was a purpose, direction. Check the high school, the local hangouts, the beach. Each time, Liz swelled with hope. This time they would find Susie. But they didn’t find her, not so much as a hair.
Liz didn’t talk, just waved her in, glanced at the table where she’d gouged it with the pen. It stirred nothing, not even a shred of emotion. She could smash the table to bits and burn it in the backyard and doubted she’d even blink an eye.
Joyce poured them each a drink - sweet tea laced with rum.
Liz sipped it.
She considered pushing it away. She might say, ‘I need to be clear if Susie comes home,’ but too much time had passed. She understood the likelihood of Susie’s fate, even if no one said it, even if her own mind refused to put the words together.
“Jerry’s losing it,” she said. “He screamed at a concession lady at Clinch Park yesterday when she couldn’t remember if she’d ever waited on Susie. He’s got all this rage, this emotion with nowhere to put it. He wants to blame someone. I can feel it hovering between us, like a balloon getting ready to explode.”
Joyce put her hand over Liz’s and squeezed.
“There will be answers,” she said, though she did not sound convinced.
“You mean there will be someone for him to be angry with? Someone who-” Liz’s sob strangled her words. It surprised both women with its suddenness. Liz buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t imagine a bad guy any more than she could say the words. It all led to a single conclusion, an impossible truth. It was the sort of thing people didn’t recover from. The death of a child. No, worse, the murder of a child.
Liz took her hands away, wiped the tears from her cheeks. She wanted that initial energy back. It had turned. Now she felt constant exhaustion coupled with jitters, an inability to sleep as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
“I don’t know what to do, Joyce. Tell me what to do.”
Her friend looked at her, her own eyes heavy with tears.
She pushed her drink closer.
“Just to take the edge off, Liz.”
Liz took another drink. If she drank the whole pitcher, would she finally sleep? She doubted it. Instead, she’d lay in her bed, the room rolling, her stomach a mass of oozing nausea.
“Where is Jerry?” Joyce looked toward the front door, as if he might burst in at any moment and take out his directionless rage on her.
“At work,” Liz said, puzzled. She had been angry when he went to work that morning. She’d screamed and cried. He left her on their bedroom floor, one of Susie’s shirts clutched to her chest.
“Just a for a few hours,” Liz added. “He needed to catch up on paperwork, insurance claims or something.”
“That’s good,” Joyce said.
Liz nodded. It probably was good. They couldn’t sit in the house together, Liz chewing her fingernails to bloody stumps, Jerry bouncing his foot until he wore a hole in the rug.
“Maybe I’m jealous,” Liz whispered. “He has somewhere to go. I have nothing.”
“That’s not true,” Joyce insisted. “There’s still work to do, Liz. We will find her. You just need a rest. Your eyes look, well, like you haven’t slept in days.”
Liz knew it was true - the way she looked and why. She’d gazed at herself that morning in the bathroom mirror. She hadn’t brushed her teeth or combed her hair, and she still wore yesterday’s wrinkled pedal pushers and a saggy, sleeveless blouse.
She’d fallen asleep on the couch sometime around midnight and sat up wide awake just after three a.m. For an hour, she’d walked up and down the neighborhood streets, lightly calling out Susie’s name as if she were a missing cat and not a grown woman. Did she expect Susie to burst from a shed, to wave wildly from a tree?
‘I’m up here, Mom! I climbed up and got stuck.’
The thought caused Liz to stare into every dark tree, searching for movement, for the pale glimmer of a face.
Chapter 4
Liz