The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  “What?” Rory said. This was his home. He wanted to be out in the storm, to take charge and make something happen, not be stuck here minding the store. And, once and for all, he wanted to prove to the people of the island that their gossip about what had happened with Oliver was just that. “Did someone say something to you about me and that boy?” he asked. “Did Trey?”

  “Hold on,” Barb said. “You know the terrain. You know the people. If an emergency comes up, I need someone who can help me respond, and respond quickly.”

  “Whatever,” Rory said.

  Barb raised an eyebrow and swept her blond hair behind an ear. “I’ll say this exactly one time,” she said. “Listen or not, it’s up to you. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Trey, and I don’t care. I’ve heard good things about you, and don’t forget, I was here on the Fourth of July when you found the other boy. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, no matter what people say.”

  So the whispers had traveled across the water too. How much of the story had become truth with the state cops? “What do they say?” Rory asked.

  “Who cares?” Barb said. “Is any of it true? Did you take that boy and sneak him away all while making sure a ferry didn’t crash into the pier? While half the town was watching? How would that even be possible? Forget motive and means, where was your opportunity? Half the state police force came out here to search for Trey’s kid that day. If any of those rumors were true, you’d think one of us would have figured it out. You know who would have definitely figured it out? Me, because I’m damn good at my job. All this talk sounds like a bunch of nothing to me, and if you forget about it, it’ll forget about you. Today, you and I are going to handle this situation, but I need you to stop acting like an idiot. That’s Trey’s job. Got it? I need you to cowboy up, especially once the mother comes in for questioning.”

  “Trey won’t let me anywhere near Frankie,” Rory said.

  “If Trey treats you like a jerk, then give it right back. It’s the only way to make it, and it’s the only way to earn his respect. Plus, you can practice with me. I always play good cop. I’ll need you to be an asshole tonight. A real fucking asshole.”

  Rory laughed.

  “You like hearing me swear?” Barb said. “Guess what? I know all the swear words. Even the really bad ones. And if Frankie Sullivan has any secrets, they need to come out. Tonight. Even if I have to say the c-word. You’ve been living on the island with her. What do you know?”

  “Nothing, really. She showed up a few weeks ago.”

  “Out of nowhere?”

  “People come here to escape.”

  “Any idea what she wanted to escape?”

  “Not really. It’s just an impression I got from Annie.”

  “Who’s Annie?”

  “She’s another one who just appeared one day, but earlier in the summer.”

  “What about the drugs? The ones your brother took. Do either of these women have anything to do with it?”

  “There have been drugs on the island for years now,” Rory said. “That’s your job. State cops work drug cases. I’m local.”

  “Point taken,” Barb said. “And this Annie. What’s she escaping?”

  In truth, the only thing Rory knew about Annie or Frankie was that he wished they’d leave and take all their troubles with them.

  The doors to the community center slammed open, and Nate rushed in. “Tree down! By the brewery. It landed on a truck. People are trapped.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Barb mumbled. “We shouldn’t be out in this. We don’t have any equipment for this type of situation.” She looked to Rory, who waved a hand her way.

  “Go,” he said. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  She nodded, lifted her hood, and dashed into the storm.

  After she left, Rory sat in the silence, listening to the wind and rain lashing at the building and losing himself in his own thoughts while the radio crackled every now and then with an update from the field. He crossed over to the one-room schoolhouse and checked in on the children. Oliver sat in a circle while the teacher read a story. He lifted a hand to give Rory a high five. Rory had barely seen the boy all summer. Even now, he wanted to lift him up and fly him through the room, but he knew enough not to get close. Not again. He remembered Pete as a kid. He remembered him at Oliver’s age, such a pain in the ass, following him around the island, always wanting to be included. “Meet him halfway,” Rory’s mother used to say.

  He wished he had, more often at least.

  The phone rang in the community center. Rory ran through the rain and picked it up. “Dunbar here,” he said.

  At first, he couldn’t understand the voice on the other end. And then he did. And he forgot everything: his training, the need for backup, his role here in the community center. He dropped the phone and ran.

  * * *

  Storm clouds churned across the darkened sky. Cool rain slapped at Annie’s naked skin. Despite the gusts of wind and the raging sea, she heard only Trey’s heavy breathing. And she was happy.

  More than happy.

  Complete. Content. Worthwhile. She felt strong and healthy. Solid. Like she mattered for the first time in a long time. And a part of her hated herself for placing so much of her own worth in someone else’s desire, but boy, did it feel good to be wanted! And knowing that Lydia, the one person she had no desire to destroy, could claim Vaughn as her own meant the world to her. In the few short weeks since the affair with Trey had begun, Annie had been torn by guilt. Lydia was her best friend! How could she sleep with her best friend’s husband? How could she be that woman? But now they could all go forward. They could be friends! Ones who got together on Saturday night and grilled burgers and played Hearts. Lydia and Vaughn; Annie and Trey.

  Trey rolled toward her.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Or maybe she thought it.

  It was something she barely dared to think, let alone to say out loud, but it was something she’d believed in her heart since his first touch.

  She rested in the crook of his arm and imagined a mattress instead of cold granite. She imagined the soft touch of sheets, the feel of a pillow under her head. She could hear the patter of Oliver’s little feet and smell fresh-brewed coffee.

  Coffee.

  This, the tangled lives, the mess, Lydia and Trey and Annie—and now Vaughn—this story had all begun with a cup of coffee. Or many, really.

  From the day Annie had arrived on the island, she’d gone to the bakery each morning for coffee, sometimes counting out exact change from what she’d scrounged the day before—the change she found on the paths of the island, near picnic benches, or on the beach. She hadn’t known what a difference a single dollar could make in her life, not till this year. On days when Trey wasn’t on the mainland working, he visited the bakery in the morning too, and one sunny day in July, he said, “Morning,” to Annie, his eyes feasting on her.

  Trey was beyond her reach. She understood that. And by then—this was after Oliver had disappeared—Lydia was her friend, but that didn’t keep Annie from timing her arrivals to coincide with his, which was at 7:45, not quite on the dot. She could slow or quicken her pace so that she arrived right behind him. She could let her hand nearly brush his. Some mornings, she nodded hello. Others, she pretended they’d never met. It was fantasy, that’s all.

  Then, in late August, she found Trey by the schoolhouse with Oliver. He texted while the boy slid down the slide on his own.

  “You’ll lose him that way,” Annie said, sweeping the boy up and carrying him to his father.

  Oliver squirmed in her arms and demanded to be put down. Annie lifted him high, toward the sky. He gave up struggling and shrieked in delight. He shrieked in a way that made Trey look away from his phone. Annie released the boy, but the downy soft feel of his cheek, of being needed, lingered like the most delicate perfume.

  “Work,” Trey said. “It’s relentless. I’d give anything for a free afternoon
. To not be needed all the time.”

  Annie couldn’t remember the last time anyone had needed her. “Life,” she said, waving a hand around the playground. “It gets in the way.”

  She kept her actions flat, avoiding the toss of hair or the bat of an eye. Nothing tells a man to run quicker than obvious flirtation, especially at a playground. And besides, Trey was the type who needed to make the first move. That was part of the attraction.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, in a way that sounded menacing, though Annie suspected that was how he asked all questions. And that he knew to listen for lies. It’s what kept her from saying, I’m only your wife’s best friend!

  Instead, she said, “I’ve been here since Memorial Day.”

  He paused, assessing. It was the truth. He didn’t take his eyes away from her till his phone beeped. “Lydia wants me home,” he said.

  “Lydia!” Annie said. “From the bakery. That’s how I know you. Coffee, black.”

  “Trey Pelletier,” he said, lifting Oliver and swinging him over his shoulder. “If I see you tomorrow, coffee’s on me.”

  “No,” Annie said too quickly.

  Coffee would connect them and send Lydia an alert. They’d already begun to collude. Trey seemed to understand that, too.

  * * *

  A week later, on Labor Day, he found her as she walked along the path toward home. He stood in the trees, perched on a rock, waiting. “You’ve been watching me,” he said.

  Trey was impossible not to see. She’d watched him with Lydia, with Oliver. She’d watched him sweep his thick hair out of his eyes as he’d stood on the deck of the ferry on his way to the mainland. And she watched him then, as she followed his voice into the woods, into the darkness, and let him run his hands along her arms, under her shirt, over her breasts. She didn’t worry about her stale breath or dirty nails. She didn’t ever remember Lydia, not till later. She didn’t ask why. She’d given herself over to him. Completely.

  * * *

  “Are you awake?” Annie whispered.

  “Sort of,” Trey said. “One more minute. Sixty seconds.”

  “We need to go,” Annie said. They shouldn’t have done this. There was a child missing.

  From under their sodden pile of clothing, Trey’s radio crackled to life. He groaned and kissed Annie’s cheek. “The world calls,” he said. “Pelletier here.”

  While Annie couldn’t quite make out the words, she recognized the panic in the voice on the other end. When Trey flicked off the radio, he said, “Get dressed,” with a brisk efficiency that made her feel herself fading away. He could do that. He could turn in an instant. And it made her want him even more.

  “There’s been an accident,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Come or stay,” Trey said, as he struggled into his wet clothes. “Lydia’s in trouble.”

  He didn’t need to say anything else. Annie’s place in his hierarchy was suddenly painfully clear. And it made her feel worthless and ashamed all over again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Gus had called it in. Lydia and Vaughn had been swept into the ravine beneath the swing bridge.

  Rory ran, shouting an update into his radio. It took a full minute for Barb to respond. “We have a mess up here, too,” she said. “Three people trapped under a tree, one unconscious.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Rory said.

  He signed off and tried Trey, who picked up after a minute. Rory updated him before driving through the storm at full speed, mud spinning from his tires, his wipers sloshing away buckets of rain. A plastic deck chair whipped across the path and ricocheted off his windshield. By now, anything not tied down was fair game. At the bridge, Gus clung to the railing, his frail body pummeled by the wind as he peered into the dark, raging water in the ravine below. Rory could see Lydia’s horses tied to a tree. Gus pointed toward the ravine and shouted, the wind whipping away his thin voice. Rory motioned him to the Jeep, and once inside, Gus said, “Vaughn climbed down the ravine and got swept into the water.”

  “Is Lydia in the house?”

  “She went in after him.”

  Rory considered Gus’s wrecked knees and hobbled frame, realizing he’d be more of a hindrance than a help. “Go make sure nothing happens to those horses,” Rory said to him.

  “I’ve ridden out worse storms than this,” Gus began to argue, but Rory held up a hand, and Gus had the good sense to stop.

  “Make tea,” Rory said. “Get blankets. Find some brandy. They’ll be hypothermic when they get out of the water. And send anyone who shows up down to the ravine.”

  From the back of the Jeep, Rory dug out a floodlight, which he attached to the railing on the bridge. It lit up the churning water, where he could see Lydia and Vaughn clinging to the branches of a fallen tree. Lydia waved both hands over her head. She wouldn’t be able to see that it was Rory who’d come to save her, but he hoped that she knew. Vaughn held up a hand to block the bright light. They both had too much Maine in them to panic.

  So did Rory.

  Like all cops who served coastline communities, Rory had been trained in water rescue. His Jeep was equipped with nylon rope, life vests, a helmet, and a rescue can. He scaled down the side of the ravine, using the rough granite as hand- and footholds. Water in the ravine swept from the bay to the Atlantic and back again, depending on the tides, but no matter what the source, it would be too cold to stay in too long. He waved his arms over his head till Vaughn saw him. Rory looped the line around his arm and hurled the rescue can into the water. It fell short, and the current picked it up and swept it away. He reeled in the line, and tried again, with the same result.

  Above, headlights flashed across the bridge. A moment later, Rory heard scrambling above him, and Trey slid down the embankment toward him.

  “They’re too far from shore,” Rory shouted. “We need to wait for backup, for the right equipment.”

  “We can make a human chain,” Trey said.

  “Not with that current,” Rory said. “Or with just two of us.”

  Annie stepped out of the darkness. “Three of us,” she said.

  Rory shined his headlamp toward her. Her face was covered in scratches, and even with her oilskins, every inch of her looked drenched in water.

  “Is Frankie with you?” Rory asked.

  “We haven’t picked her up yet,” Trey said.

  “You left over an hour ago.”

  “We got stuck,” Trey said.

  “Three won’t be enough to get to them either,” Annie said. “I can go in. I’m a strong swimmer.”

  “Good,” Trey said. “There’s a deep spot upstream where kids jump in during the summer. You can get in there.”

  Annie’s eyes flashed toward him, a momentary emotion Rory couldn’t quite place. “Not a chance,” he said. Rory knew the power of the sea, and that sometimes it didn’t matter how strong of a swimmer you might be. “That water has a mind of its own.”

  Annie turned away and headed upstream along a stony ledge. Rory grabbed her shoulder, and she shrugged him off.

  “The water isn’t even fifty degrees,” he said. “If anyone’s going, it’s me.”

  Annie began to object. Trey caught up with them. “Once you’re in,” he said to Annie, as though Rory weren’t there, “ride the current right to them.”

  “She’s not trained,” Rory shouted. “And she has no wet suit.”

  Trey stepped toward him, raising his fist, and Rory hated himself for flinching.

  “Lydia doesn’t have a wet suit either,” Trey said. “I’d think you’d be more worried about her.”

  “And I’d think you’d be most worried about Frankie,” Rory said. “Where the hell is she?”

  Trey cocked his fist again. This time Rory stood firm.

  “Stop,” Annie said. “Let me do this.”

  Something in her voice—the plea, maybe, or the offer—took the fight out of Rory. It was two against one, and he knew he’d already lost. Besides, Trey was ri
ght: Rory would choose Lydia over this strange woman any day. He turned to survey the ravine. Dark water swept past them as Annie stripped off her oilskins and secured a life vest while Trey looped the line through it and tested the knots. The yellow plastic helmet was too big and nearly covered her eyes.

  “Go down feet first,” Rory said. “And let the current do the work for you.”

  Trey advised Annie too, speaking softly, close to her ear, and she seemed to hang on each word, taking the scraps of kindness thrown her way. “You can do this,” Trey said. “You’re strong. If you’re in trouble, pull on the rope three times. Got it? One, two, three. We’ll get you out of there. And whatever you do, don’t try standing. The current could break your legs.”

  Rory stared at her, willing her to pull out.

  “I owe this to Lydia,” Annie said. “We’re best friends. And I know she’d do the same for me. Besides, I’ve survived much worse.”

  Her words hung around Rory, resistant to the wind and chaos. He remembered seeing Annie on the Fourth of July, the way she’d backed out of the General Store clutching those Hostess CupCakes. He doubted Lydia would brave this water for Annie. In fact, he wondered whether Lydia even remembered Annie existed.

  “Jump!” Trey said.

  And she did.

  * * *

  Annie hugged the rescue can to her chest as she seemed to hover in midair. She’d have done anything for Trey, anything to keep him. The drive here had been excruciating. She’d tried to talk to him, tried to say those words, I love you, even as he’d gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, the accelerator pressed to the floor. She thought about the way he looked at Lydia on those mornings in the bakery, his hips, his elbows, even his lips, all drawn toward her like lead shavings to a magnet. Everything about them—from the outside—perfect. And she thought about how much she wanted even the tiniest piece of that for herself. She still believed he could be hers. Or at least a part of him.

  You’ve been watching me.

  Annie gasped. She plunged into the frigid seawater. The cold forced the oxygen from her lungs. Water rushed over her head and up her nose at the same time. The ravine’s current swept her forward, her body spinning with the force, and the line tangling around her limbs. She’d grown up two blocks from the beach in South Boston and had spent her summers working as a lifeguard, training, doing sprints. But none of that mattered. Her limbs barely responded to the impulse to flail. The only thing that kept her from tugging at the rope was that she didn’t want to test Trey’s loyalty.