“Why?”
“It’s a long story.” Sarah shrugged. “Liza tried to tell me about it, but I got lost in the pronouns, you know? Too many ‘then she said this’ and ‘then someone else said that.’”
“So these girls ganged up on Liza.”
“Yeah, it’s all over the schools. ’Cause her dad’s a minister, and because Liza is freaking out. When Liza’s mom went down to the school, she asked to talk with each of the girls separately, with the school counselor present. The principal at Liza’s school, Mr. Carson, he couldn’t let Mrs. Scott do that. So she went to their houses and talked to the parents.”
“Good for her,” I said. Emily might not be my favorite person, but she had a backbone and she loved Liza.
“Yeah, but it got worse after that. Like ‘Little kid, sent your mommy to fight for you,’ type thing.” Sarah shook her head. “Anyway, that’s why when Liza kind of latched on to Phillip, he didn’t have the heart to shut her down.”
Thank God, I thought. My brother was kind. I held that to my heart like an ember to warm it. “And that’s why Liza was with Phillip and Josh and Joss? When they went missing?”
Sarah looked relieved. “See, I was standing right by them at the soccer field, so I heard what they said. I’d given a lesson to Harmony Davis, and Joss was working with Liza. But the little creeps had come over to the soccer field just to say nasty stuff to Liza.” Sarah shook her head, her lips compressed in a look of disgust. “They were almost … jeering at her. And Liza’s mom was late picking her up. Of course, Liza wanted to get away from them. She asked Joss for a ride home. Joss was on the phone with Tammy, but she said sure. Then Phillip and Josh came to get Joss, and they were all getting into the car when I left, myself.”
“When did you last hear from Phillip? Or any of them?” Robin asked.
“I got a text from Phillip right around then,” Sarah said. She messed with her phone, which she’d been clutching in her hand for the whole conversation, and showed us her initial text and the exchange it had initiated.
Where r u going?
Taking Liza home. C U later?
Could happen.
“So you had plans to meet later?”
“Well,” Sarah said, waving her hands. “Maybe. We’d talked about going to the movies. But he wanted to let you know, and I had to ask my mom.” Sarah looked embarrassed that she had to tell her mother where she was going. “Since my mom doesn’t know Phillip, she’d have to meet him. And we’d have to go in my car.”
At fifteen, Phillip didn’t have a car, of course. He hadn’t even gotten his learner’s permit. I hadn’t realized what a handicap that was going to be for Phillip’s social life. But that wasn’t important now.
“So Liza was taking a lesson from Joss, and when it was over, Mrs. Scott hadn’t gotten there to pick Liza up, so Josh, Joss, and Phillip decided to take her home,” I said, by way of recap.
“Yeah. I think normally they would have hung around for Mrs. Scott to get there, right? But the three witches were around, and Joss had to get to her hair appointment.”
Beth had mentioned a hair appointment, but it hadn’t really registered with me. “Where was that?” Robin said.
Sarah looked blank.
“Where does Joss get her hair done? We can drive the route they would have driven.”
“Good luck, then, because I did and I didn’t see anything,” Sarah said rather unexpectedly. “Joss was getting her hair cut at Shear Delight on Pickett Street.”
I found myself liking Sarah more and more, and not least because of her unpredictability.
“So you haven’t heard from any of them since Phillip’s text?” Robin asked.
“No,” Sarah said. “I mean, no sir.”
I saved that for later. Robin rated a “sir,” which meant either he looked more formidable than I did, or he looked older than I did.
“Sarah, thanks so much for coming over and filling us in on the situation,” I said.
“My dad didn’t want me to,” Sarah said. “But my mom thought it was only right.”
“I can see both their points of view,” Robin said diplomatically. “But I know when we get Phillip back, he’ll be grateful.”
She grinned. “Well, I hope so. On both counts. Oh, before I forget, I passed another car coming into the parking lot when I was pulling out. At the soccer field.”
“Who was in it?” I asked.
For the first time, Sarah hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “And I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Not with something this big.”
I tried coaxing the information out of Sarah by telling her I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but she had dug her feet in. She didn’t want to implicate anyone who might have a legitimate reason to be at the soccer field that afternoon.
Sarah left, and I watched her go, feeling bleak. But better informed.
“So,” Robin said, after the door closed. “Did this bullying of Liza have something to do with their disappearance, or not?”
“You mean, is that the right track or a diversion?” I shook my head. “I don’t know, but it’s all we’ve got. Do you think the police know all of this?”
“Why wouldn’t the Scotts let them know?” Robin said. “But then, why didn’t they explain it to us? Why didn’t they let us know that Liza was actually with Joss when she got in the car? It seems to me that Phillip being there was simply random.”
“I don’t think I can call them up and say, ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell us all this?’ right now,” I said. I tried the idea on for size, and shook my head. “I just can’t.”
“They already feel as bad as they can,” Robin agreed after a moment, and I couldn’t tell whether he was hinting that such a phone call could not make them feel any worse, or that we should not add to their bad feelings. Either way, I wasn’t going to make the call. I was definitely out of the school loop for gossip, and my mother was, too. She liked the Scotts; she would certainly have told me about the persecution of Liza.
I sat on the couch beside Robin and put my head on his shoulder. Poor Liza. The cruelty of children could not be denied. They were pack animals, or at least some of them were. I remembered we were going to have one of these for our very own, and I promised myself that we would bring up our child to be better than that. It really bothered me that Phillip had a problem he hadn’t had a chance to tell me about. Had it been Liza’s crush? But I was so tired …
The next thing I knew, Robin was putting my feet up on the couch. And then, though I struggled to wake up, I sank back down into sleep.
* * *
It was daytime. The sun was just peeking through the front windows. My eyes felt glued shut, but I managed to pry them open and look around me. I was still in the same clothes I’d worn the day before, and there was a blanket spread over me. Robin was asleep in one of the chairs, and the house phone was ringing. I struggled to sit up, but Robin suddenly erupted from the chair as if a puppeteer had yanked his strings, and he grabbed the phone from the table between us. “Hello?” he said hoarsely.
“Yes, this is he,” he said next. “What happened?”
Then something terrible passed over Robin’s face, and all the sleep left me as if I’d never closed my eyes. I tossed off the blanket and sat up. A wave of nausea hit me so hard that I dashed into the kitchen and threw up in the sink, because that was the closest receptacle. I hadn’t thrown up much with my pregnancy until now—mostly, I’d been queasy—and I’d been very, very lucky, I realized. I finished upchucking and ran the water full force, dashing it on my face. I filled a glass and drank it very slowly.
“Honey, are you okay?” Robin was right behind me.
“After I brush my teeth and eat something,” I said, maybe optimistically. “What was the call about?”
“We have to go as soon as you do those things.” His voice was so sad. “They found a body and they want to know if it’s Phillip.”
While I brushed my teeth and washed my face and
Robin got a sleeve of saltines to take with us, I simply denied this discovery. They hadn’t found a body: if they had, it wasn’t Phillip’s. It was someone else’s. It wasn’t even Josh. It was some completely unknown male person.
I was determined to eat some saltines so I wouldn’t be sick again. Everyone had told me that was the best preventative. Maybe so, but we had to stop again halfway to the spot so I could vomit again.
I didn’t even ask where we were going.
Finally, we came to a stop in one of the newer parts of Lawrenceton, a strip mall that currently housed a vapor shop, a manicure/pedicure place, an army recruiting station, and the haircut salon Shear Delight. There were police cars and civilian cars parked badly, and people everywhere. Robin helped me out of the car and put his arm around me. We made our way slowly through the throng to the driveway leading to the alley in back of the strip mall.
Robin said something to the first uniformed cop we saw, and we got passed up the chain. Each time we moved a little closer to the center of the activity. Finally, I could see that there was body lying almost concealed behind a Dumpster to the right of the salon’s back door. I could see the feet, in tennis shoes. I could not remember what shoes Phillip had been wearing, or if he had any like that.
We moved around so we could see better. Though there was lots of activity around the still remains, I could see that a body about the size of Phillip and with golden hair like Phillip’s had been hidden behind the Dumpster. I could see that the clothes were bloody, and the body was distorted by broken bones.
“You don’t look well,” Detective Trumble said, appearing suddenly at my shoulder.
“I’m three months pregnant and I wonder if my brother’s dead,” I said.
“We’re just about to turn him over,” she said.
“All right.” I nodded. “Let’s see.” I had to know.
Robin’s arm tightened around me.
A man in medical scrubs squatted by the body at the shoulders, and another at the feet. They each positioned their hands, agreeing on which way they would turn the body, and then they moved.
There was a gasp that came from no one and everyone.
The corpse was not Phillip; in fact, it was not even a male. It was a girl.
Even though I’d been pretty sure, I sagged. “Thank God,” I whispered. And I turned sideways, so the body was not in my line of sight. I felt guilty for my thanks. This body had been a real person, loved by someone.
One of the scrubs-clad men said, “That’s Tammy Ribble.” His voice was hoarse and broken. It was clear he was trying not to cry. “I know her folks.”
“Local girl?” Detective Trumble said.
“Yeah. Plays soccer at the high school. Runs track. She’s gone to school with my boy her whole life. Gone to church with him.”
With Tammy’s short hair and athletic build, it was just possible to mistake her for a boy from the back, especially since she’d been wearing sweatpants and a quilted olive-green coat.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“She was hit by a car, I think,” Scrubs Guy said. He’d gotten his breathing under control.
I felt like I was living in the Twilight Zone. “Take me home,” I said to Robin.
And no one tried to stop us as we left.
I wondered why the Ribbles hadn’t reported Tammy missing. I wondered why no one had spotted her in that alley. “How long has it been?” I asked Robin.
“Two nights,” he said. He’d wondered, too.
“It just seems like forever,” I said.
He nodded. I felt somehow I should apologize to Robin. We were newlyweds and expecting a baby. We should not have all this on our shoulders. The most serious topic for discussion should be whether or not we wanted to know the gender of the baby before it was born. It would have been nice to talk about this, to have something pleasant to discuss; but I just couldn’t bear to bring it up.
“I wonder,” Robin said, and then hesitated.
“What?”
“I wonder if Tammy was Joss’s girlfriend?”
“Oh. I hadn’t gotten that far. But it would sort of make sense. I mean, that she would be there.”
“Because Joss was getting her hair cut, and she’d want her girlfriend there for that? Is that a girl thing?”
“Yeah, it could be.” My best friend, Amina, had gone to the salon with me a couple of times when we were teens.
“So Tammy met Joss there, and then something happened. This may be the point at which they disappeared.”
“Oh,” I said, shocked. “So maybe Tammy’s parents thought she was going to spend the night at Joss’s house … maybe two nights…”
“I’ll bet they haven’t missed her yet,” Robin said. “I’m surprised they didn’t hear about the kids being missing, though. Since Joss is gone, surely that would alarm them.”
When we got home, we trailed into the house. Robin pointed to the dining table and said, “Sit.”
I slumped in the chair. “You’re going to eat,” he said. “If I have to spoon it into you. What do you think you can keep down?”
“Cereal, I guess,” I said. “If we have any bananas, a sliced banana on the cereal?”
I ate slowly and carefully, because if it was coming back up I wanted to know in time to get to the bathroom. But it stayed down, and I could tell I felt better after about thirty minutes.
I was scheduled to work today, I remembered dimly. I called in to tell them I wasn’t coming. Lizanne answered the phone in the director’s office, to my surprise. For the past few weeks, Sam had been letting all calls go to voice mail. The minute she heard my voice, Lizanne said, “Oh, honey, don’t worry. We all know how tough it is for you now. Just call when you think you can come back.”
“Thanks, Lizanne,” I said, surprised that Lizanne had identified with the library so quickly.
“You bet. Call me if you need me,” she said.
“Roe,” Robin said. I looked up. “Why don’t you get in the shower,” he suggested. “Fresh clothes. It would have to make you feel better.”
“You’re right,” I said. I gathered up my energy to stand, and plodded to the bathroom off our bedroom. He gathered up my clothes and took them to the laundry hamper, while I got into the hottest shower I could stand. I washed my hair, I scrubbed my body, and I dried off thinking how exhausted I was, after a night on the couch. I pulled on the nightgown laid out on the bed. Wait! I had to get dressed in outdoor clothes!
I looked down at myself. Then I looked up. Robin. “Nightgown?” I said.
“You need to climb in bed for a while,” he said.
“You’re getting so bossy.” But I didn’t mind. I didn’t feel that I was taking very good care of myself just now.
“You can be bossy next,” he said, and turned down the unused bed.
So at nine in the morning, I went to bed, and at nine twenty, Robin joined me.
Chapter Six
My cell phone rang at ten thirty. Robin had plugged it into the charger and put it on my night table, so I groped for it. His side of the bed was empty.
“Roe, I’m sitting at the airport,” my father said. “Who’s going to come get me, or do I need to get a cab?”
“What airport?” I asked, bewildered.
“Atlanta,” he said. “What did you think?”
“I didn’t think anything. I didn’t know you were coming. I’ve been asleep.”
“I left a message.”
“Where?” I didn’t think I could bear to move. I patted Robin’s pillow, which was cold. He’d been up for a while.
“On your answering machine,” Dad said, clearly very irritated.
“I guess we didn’t check it when we came back from the crime scene,” I said, struggling to wake up. “We just showered and went to bed. Call Uber. You have that app on your phone?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “What crime scene?”
“It wasn’t Phillip,” I said. “The dead person.”
“What? What dead person?”
“The police asked us to come look at a body, but it wasn’t Phillip,” I said.
“You had to look…?”
“Yes,” I said. “I had to look.”
“I’m sorry, Aurora,” he said, in a more subdued tone.
“Right,” I said. “So you’re telling me that you’re coming to stay with me while Phillip is missing.”
“Yes. If you have room for me,” he added, but without any real doubt in his voice. “I can get a hotel room, sure, but I am not that flush right now.”
I covered my face with my free hand. “Okay, we’ll do our best,” I said. “You have my new address?”
“I do. Wait, I see your husband pulling up to the curb. Looks like the wedding picture. Tall, redheaded?”
“Yeah, that’s him. In a Volvo or a blue Toyota Camry?”
“Camry.”
“You’re not being abducted. See you,” I said. I ended the call and thought, God bless Robin. I forced myself out of the bed, pulled on some clothes, and brushed my teeth and hair, and ate more crackers, this time with a little cheese. I looked at the clock. I’d have to plan a lunch. I sighed. My phone rang again; it was Robin.
“I’m picking up some lunch at Hero Heaven,” he said. “What can I get you?”
I loved subs from Hero Heaven. I picked a combination that would stay down … at least, I hoped it would. I looked at the clock in the living room. They’d be here in ten minutes, maybe more, depending on how long the line was at the drive-through. I did a little picking up, put some dishes in the dishwasher, and checked the computer for e-mails. I had a lot of expressions of sympathy, which I appreciated. I was glad people were letting me know via e-mail, instead of tying up the telephone.
I had a Facebook page that Robin had insisted I needed; I seldom posted to it or visited it. It seemed like a good time to check it. I had a lot of messages there, too. I managed to post a blanket response. Moosie came to sit on my lap at my little desk in the kitchen. I remembered to feed her.
And then Robin and Dad walked in the door, and I had a whole different set of problems. Robin’s smile was weird and tight. My dad was clearly in a huff. I ignored that, and gave him a hug. He seemed smaller to me, and his face looked more lined. It had been a long time since we’d seen each other. He stood back from me and glanced down at my waist.