“They came to me! Your daughter rolled her goddamn doll carriage, with yournewbornson inside it, across that street by themselves and asked if I was a police officer and if I could helpthem!”
I swallowed down the words. My head pounded and visionblurred.
“My wife is missing. That’s what’s happening? That’s what you’re telling me,right?”
Nothing made sense. The kids were safe;I saw themin front of me. I kept seeing them and looking at them, making sure they were really there.But Sheri was gone?She couldn’t have just gone. She wouldn’t have just left the kids alone.Something happened, right?I mean, she had to be hurt somewhere in the house. Maybe she fell down the basement steps, or she was putting out the garbage and fell and was hurt in the back yard.She never puts out the trash.She never goes in the basement either. I do all the damn laundry, don’tI?
There had to be a reasonable explanation for all ofit.
I bolted through the house. Tore through all the kitchen cabinets, thinking it was a sick, twisted joke. She had to be hiding. She and this crazy pretend cop friend of hers had to be playing a fucking game with me. But the kitchen wasempty.
She had to bedownstairs.
She had to havefallen.
I tore the basement door right out of its hinges, trying to get the stupid thing open. I flew down the steps, hissing her name. But that was empty,too.
Every room. Every hiding place a grown woman could shove herself into, I tried to find her. I ripped the mattresses off the beds and yanked off the shower curtains. I scoured the back yard andgarage.
The detective wasright.
Sheri wasgone.
