“I’m sorry, I don’t,” my dad says. “I know Kat has a Facebook account, but I don’t know the password. She wasn’t big into any of that stuff, though. I can’t imagine it would be very helpful.”
The detective turns to me before he’s even finished. “What about you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know them, either.”
She looks from me to my dad like,What’s wrong with you people?And you know what I think, even now with her missing?Trust me, my mom’s not so easy to live with. You’d give her a wide berth, too.I regret it immediately. But it’snotuntrue. I cross my arms tight across my chest. It doesn’t do anything to stop the burning in my lungs.
“Okay, well, might not matter, as you said, but if you come across the passwords, that would be helpful. Be sure to look around the house again, too. We did our search, but you know her better than anybody.” She doesn’t actually sound convinced, though. “You might see something important that we overlooked. Butdon’tgo chasing down leads. You come acrossanythinguseful, you pick up the phone. Immediately.”
“Of course.” My dad walks pointedly toward the door. Wilson eyes him but doesn’t follow. Instead, she turns to me.
“You can also call me anytime, Cleo. Yourself. For any reason.” She holds out one of her business cards and doesn’t release it until I meet her eyes and nod. “You okay with that plan?”
I still don’t want her to leave. Because the police leaving feels like a door closing, and I’m afraid to be locked outside with my mom still gone.
But I am also pretty sure that begging her to stay will make me feel worse. “Uh, sure.” I try to keep my voice steady. “Thanks.”
My dad and I stand in silence for a while, staring at the closed front door.
“What a mess, huh?” he says, then drops down onto a kitchen stool. “I’ll start calling around. I’ve got most of your mom’s friends and work people in my contacts already. You want to look around upstairs, make sure they didn’t miss anything?”
He’s got his phone out and seems focused and determined. Could be I’m underestimating him. I hope so. “Yeah, sure.”
I stand in the doorway to my parents’ room, staring at their sleek low bed with its crisp white bedding, neatly made, as always. The bureau drawers are hanging open, and so are the closet doors and bathroom cabinets. I wonder what the police thought they might find in those drawers. Proof of a robbery or some sign my mom took off on her own? I step forward and look into my mom’s side. Her clothes are all there, folded Marie Kondo–style, ready to spark joy. She didn’t pack up and run away—of course she didn’t. God forbid she do anything that might—
Wow.There I go again, kicking her while she’s … whatever she is. But if I were the one missing, she’d probably be doing some version of the same thing, thinking about how all of my “reckless choices” had brought on whatever had happened to me. Or at least I think she would.
We are just nothing alike, my mom and I, no matter how clearly I see her face staring back at me every time I look in a mirror. We have the exact same eyes, which shift from blue to gray to green depending on the light, identical jawline and cheekbones, the same long, thick black hair. But that’s where any similarities end. To say she’s type A is putting it mildly. And it’s not onlymy clothes and makeup she’s obsessed with controlling. A single dirty dish in the sink or a stray pile of crumbs on the counter and she freaks out. It’s like she can’t handle any sign that humans actually live in our home. Once, when I was little, she tried to ban Play-Doh. Even she eventually realized that was over the top. Meanwhile, I love messy things. Iama messy thing. Messy and confused and irrational and overemotional. But at least I feel things. I feel everything.
I start with my mom’s drawers, run my hands through her clothes, underneath and on the side. Nothing secreted away, of course. No sex toys or weed. Then my eyes snag on my dad’s middle drawer of the bureau—it’s empty. When I look down, his other drawers are all empty, too. My dad went to Boston for the day. Where the hell are his clothes?
I head over to the walk-in closet, flip on the light, and look around. Sure enough, my mom’s clothes are hanging where they should be, but my dad’s side is completely bare. Even his tuxedo and premiere-night suits are gone, and every single pair of his shoes.
Okay, something is not right here. My dad needs to explain. I’m almost at the bedroom door when I hear him on the phone downstairs. I can’t make out the words, but he sounds worried. He’s on with one of my mom’s friends, I think. She doesn’t have many, but the ones she does have—like Lauren from law school—she’s very close to. Way closer than I am with any of my friends. They talk and text constantly.
I creep to the top of the stairs.
“Calm down?” I hear him ask. And he’s angry. Really angry. “All I’m saying is that we have a fucking problem. You and Iboth.”
A fucking problem? What problem?
I bump into my parents’ bed behind me. I didn’t even realize I was backing up, away from the anger in my dad’s voice. Somebody from his work, it must be. As laid-back as my dad is, hegets really frustrated with incompetent assistants and annoying bureaucracy, and there’s a lot of that when you’re making a movie. But his voice was so … I press a hand to my chest, but I can’t get my heartbeat to slow.
I drop down onto the bed and land on something hard. I pull back the comforter and there it is: my mom’s laptop. Her personal laptop. The police must have taken her work one. It looks like my mom accidentally made the bed over it.
I open the lid and enter my mom’s password. I do know the one to her home computer. It used to come in handy when I wanted to order stuff on Amazon. When I was little, I’d always ask first, and my mom would always say yes to that new notebook or another cool set of gel pens. After Virgingate, I started buying stuff to piss her off—goth makeup and the teeny-tiniest tops and that big, blingy jewelry I knew she hated.
When the laptop comes to life, it actually takes me a minute to figure out what I’m seeing frozen on the screen: photographs of men lined up in little squares, twelve of them, like playing cards. “Your matches,” it says. I squint at the screen. A dating site?
The profile is definitely my mom’s, too, a photo I’ve never seen before. Taken outside, with her hair down, her face soft. She looks almost like another person—younger and more beautiful. Light and relaxed. Happy—she looks so much happier than I’ve ever seen her.
TWO DAYS BEFORE
Why do you needmeto do it?
Well, I don’tneedyou to do it. I can try to do it myself.
But it would be helpful if you would, yes. It’ll be a lot easier for you.
