“Oh, right,” he says, making a face like he’s only now remembered. “Lauren.”
My mom’s best friend from law school. That wasn’t who he spoke angrily to, though. Not a chance. My dad was careful around Lauren; he’d never talk to her that way. She already didn’t like him. It was an out-in-the-open joke between them—except that it obviously wasn’t a joke.
“Did Lauren know anything?”
He shakes his head. “No, unfortunately. She’s shocked and confused, like us. She said she’d make some calls, mutual friends, that kind of thing. She’s going to check back in later.”
“And who was the other person you talked to?” I ask. “Besides Lauren and Jules.”
“What?”
“I heard you on a call with a third person. Somebody from work?”
His face freezes for a second. Then he blinks and the look is gone.
“From work?” he asks.
“I don’t know, but ‘We have a fucking problem. You and I both,’” I say, repeating his words. “You sounded pretty pissed.”
“Oh, right, that … I, uh, am upset.” He seems thrown or embarrassed or something. “Dealing with location permits at a time like this for a movie that will probably lose financing and never start shooting anyway? It feels very … wrong. But I had to deal with it—so I lost my patience.”
“Right,” I say.
“God, Cleo. Please stop looking at me like that. Lying about the separation was a mistake and I am sorry,” he says. “So, so sorry. But it was to protect you. You’re the most important thing in the world to me. I hope you know that.”
“Right,” I say again. But the word sounds hollow even to me.
I grab my mom’s laptop off the bed and head for the door.
“Cleo!” he calls after me. “You can’t take that.” When I whip around, he looks as worried as he sounds. “We need to give that to the police.”
“I will—first thing in the morning,” I say, moving toward the stairs.
“Cleo!” My name comes out like a reprimand.
I turn to face him again. “You heard what the detective said. If we give it to them now, it’s going to sit there until the tech guys have time. I’m not going to mess with anything. I just want to seeif there’s anything important on there. That way, I can be sure they know. Either way, I’ll give it to them tomorrow.”
“That isn’t a good idea.” He sounds even more nervous. “We’re not supposed to get in the way—”
“I’m not going to get in the way. But I’m also not going to sit here and do nothing because someone tells me to,” I say. “I’m going to do what Mom would do if I were missing. I’m going to help find her.”
I stop at the bottom of the steps to grab my tote bag off the floor. I think of my mom’s other computer so out of place on her office floor. Maybe I should check that room myself. After all, the police missed her personal laptop upstairs. Not exactly in plain sight, but still.
The drawers and cabinets in her office are all gaping open from the police search. It looks so chaotic, so messy. So not my mom. And just like that, there are tears in my eyes, and a sudden terrible wheezy feeling in my chest. I take a couple deep breaths until it starts to pass.
Opposite the desk is “the tiny bathroom”—that’s what we’ve always called it. Only a toilet and a small sink. One of those old brownstone quirks, some illegal addition made before we ever lived there. It even has a lock with a little ancient key on the outside instead of within. Probably back from a time when it was only a closet. The lock works, too. I know that firsthand.
I’d just turned fourteen when I locked my mom inside.
I wanted to go with my friends to Gov Ball, the music festival on Governors Island, and she said I was only allowed to go if she came, too. She promised to remain out of sight so that no one would even know she was there. She just wanted to make sure I stayed safe. Not because she didn’t trust me, she claimed, but because she didn’t trust the world. And so she was going to hover,I don’t know, in the bushes,watching me? None of my friends’ parents felt the need to do this.
“It’s humiliating!” I can remember shouting after I’d already been at it for at least half an hour, following her from the bedroom to the living room to the kitchen. Even now the memory is so close—I can feel the way my heart was pounding as I chased her around.
“Enough, Cleo!” my mom had shouted that day, really angry, which wasn’t like her, either. “I’m going to walk away now.”
“So you get to decide we’re done!” I shouted, still following her down the hall.
“Yes, I do get to decide,” she called without turning around. “One of the very few things I get to do as a parent is decide when a conversation is over.”
