“Rosemary, let the girl inside before you start peppering her with questions.” My dad’s face was literally pale with worry.
“I just want to know, Russell. Where is your sister, Paige?”
I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know. We couldn’t find her.”
“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? First you lie to us about going to the concert with your sister, and then you LOSE HER?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, honestly.”
Maria was looking at me empathetically. “I’m sorry, Paige.”
“Come on Russell. Hand me my purse. We’re going to the police to sort this out.”
My dad stood up and was looking around for my mother’s Louis Vuitton bag.
“Mom. The police aren’t going to do anything. She’s sixteen and is late coming home from a concert.”
“Like hell they won’t,” she said.
“Look. Why don’t we go upstairs to my apartment and let Maria get some sleep. We’ll wait a little while and if we don’t hear anything by morning, I’ll drive us to the police station.”
My mother looked at my dad, and he said, “She’s making sense, Rosemary. They won’t do anything until at least the morning.”
Maria went to the fridge and got the bag of food I’d bought earlier at Southgate. For a moment I remembered the attack, but put it out of my mind as fast as possible. “Thank you so much for everything, Maria.”
“Of course, amiga. Keep me posted, okay?”
I hugged her and ushered my parents out her front door. “My place is up here.”
* * *
I openedthe door and held it for my parents to go in first. It was strange to go inside and see everything as if I were seeing it for the first time through their eyes. When I’d left the apartment earlier this evening, I was just running out for a few minutes to get some snacks for the girls. Now, it was 2:00 am, I’d been accosted in a parking lot, Bailey had gone missing, and my parents were standing in my living room.
The apartment was really bare. Just a leather couch I’d gotten from the thrift store, along with a coffee table that I’d found by a dumpster outside of Tiny’s. I was using inverted milk crates as end tables, which I thought was a very clever idea until I saw my mother staring at them.
“Are these my lamps?” she said.
“No, those are the ones I got at the Hendersons’ garage sale last year and was storing in our garage.”
“Ah. I thought they looked familiar.”
“So, are you going to give us the grand tour?” my dad said, trying to break the tension.
Grateful for the diversion, I said, “Well, what you see is what you get. This is the living room and that is the kitchen. In there is the bathroom.” I walked about ten steps to my doorway. “And this is my bedroom.”
Noting the papers and notebook on my bed, my dad said, “Still doing homework?”
“Actually, it was research.” I paused for a moment trying to decide if I was going to talk to my dad about the business idea now or not. On the one hand, we were all really worried about Bailey. But there was nothing any of us could do now but wait, and maybe it would get our minds off of it. So I grabbed the notebook and papers and went back out to the living room. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Me? You wanted to talk to me?”
“Is this my 2017 Caymus Cabernet?” my mother said, holding up a bottle of 2017 Caymus Cabernet I’d snagged from her wine cellar. “That you’re drinking out of a...Wonder Woman cup?”
Damn. I wasn’t exactly expecting company. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”
“Thank me?” She looked confused.
“Yeah. For the housewarming gift.”
