The Missing Ones

by Edwin Hill

  “It’s a shame,” the man in front of her in line said. “Not too many of those trees left.”

  “We had a few showers and gusts of wind in Boston,” Hester said.

  “Lucky,” the man said. “But you’ll barely notice it by tomorrow. People around here are used to digging out from storms. We’re all survivors.”

  Hester glanced at her phone. Again. Not at the texts from Morgan that repeatedly popped in demanding that she let him know where she’d gone, why she’d left in the middle of the night, and where Kate was, but at the texts that had come last night from a number she hadn’t recognized. The first one had read:

  Finisterre Island. In Maine. I need you.

  Followed moments later by a second one:

  It’s Daphne. I’m sorry. For everything.

  Hester’s first instinct had been to ignore the messages and to go on with the life she’d built over the past year. Now was not the time for Daphne to return. When Hester overlooked the fight with Morgan or the failed intervention or the lies about work or that Kate hadn’t been to school in weeks or her inability to make decisions, she realized that, lately, things had been easy. Not easy, exactly. But manageable. All she had to do to move forward was solve her own craziness. She could do that, even if it might take a while, even if it meant swallowing her pride and asking for help from the same people who’d tried to offer it to her. But she couldn’t solve Daphne’s crazy, and no matter how much Hester loved Daphne, no matter how much she worried about her, Daphne made everything more difficult. Even now, here in Maine standing in this line, Hester still had an opportunity to turn back, to go home, and to push off the inevitable for a while longer. But Daphne was—she existed—and in that existence, she was Kate’s mother and Morgan’s sister and Hester’s best friend, in that order. So, instead of ignoring the text, Hester had come here. She’d even left a note for Morgan that read Running errands. See you tonight!

  Another angry message popped up on her phone.

  WHERE ARE YOU?!!!

  She silenced her phone and dropped it into her pocket. That would teach him.

  Ahead, the captain, a solid young woman with a ponytail poking out from under her cap, waved from the bridge toward the dock. Two deckhands opened the gate, and the line started to move. “Hold my hand,” Hester said to Kate, who dashed across the gangway and leapt onto the ferry.

  “Wait up,” she called after the girl, who ignored her and ran toward the bow of the boat. Hester pushed away the anxiety that filled her as Kate left her sight. What was the worst that could happen, anyway, besides Kate falling off the boat and drowning, right?

  Wait, that was real, not paranoia.

  Hester shoved forward, past the man she’d been speaking to, and waved her ticket at the deckhand. On the ferry, she found Kate standing at the front of the boat, leaning over the railing. “Don’t leave me again,” Hester said, pulling her back.

  “Where we going?” Kate asked.

  “To an island,” Hester said, as the ferry’s engine clicked into gear and the captain backed into the harbor.

  Another deckhand came around. “All set?” he asked.

  “Is there cell service on the island?” Hester asked.

  “In most places,” he said.

  Damn.

  She glanced at her phone again and relented, typing in a response to Morgan.

  All okay. Needed to cool off after last night. Not angry anymore. Call in a bit!

  That should hold him off. For a while at least. She powered the phone down and almost immediately felt a wave of relief at being disconnected.

  She took Sebastian the stuffed rabbit out of the tote bag. “Be careful with him,” she said to Kate. “Don’t let him fall overboard,” which was code for, Don’t go near the rail or stand up or move, because if you do, I’m sure you’ll trip and fall overboard and drown.

  Kate danced Sebastian across her lap. “Don’t tell Uncle Morgan,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “We’ll call Uncle Morgan when we get to the island,” Hester said.

  “He come too?” Kate asked.

  “Probably not. We’ll only be here for the afternoon.”

  “What about Waffles?”

  “Not without Uncle Morgan.”

  As the ferry picked up speed and headed out of the harbor, the captain read through safety procedures over the loudspeaker. “Once we hit the gulf, expect a rough ride,” she added.

  Soon, as promised, the temperature dropped, and the surf began to roll. The bow of the boat rocked over huge waves, sending waves of frigid water across them. Hester pulled Kate in close as the girl shrieked with delight. “It’s like a roller coaster,” Hester said.

  “Sebastian’s wet!” Kate said.

  “So are we,” Hester said.

  On the drive here, Kate had slept most of the way and then accepted without comment when she woke in a strange town. So far, Hester had managed to keep from her that they might see Daphne today. Now, she swooped honey-colored curls from Kate’s eyes and kissed the girl on the cheek.

  The boat slammed over another wave. Water drenched them both from head to foot. A deckhand appeared, handing out white paper bags. “You may need these,” he said.

  Hester had already begun to feel nauseated. “Any tips?” she asked.

  “Stay above deck.”

  “Even in this surf?”

  “We’ve had much worse,” he said. “But hang on to the rails if you move around.”

  “Do you think she could meet the captain?” Hester asked, nodding toward Kate.

  The deckhand led them up to the bridge, where the captain scanned the horizon. She was in her mid- to late twenties, pretty and rugged. “It’s not too late in the season to see a pilot whale,” she said into a microphone. “We’ll let you know if any make an appearance.”

  When she noticed Kate, she introduced herself. “I’m Captain Zoe,” she said. “Do you want to try steering the boat?”

  Kate turned her face into Hester’s waist and hugged Sebastian close.

  “I’ll steer it myself, then,” Zoe said. “No need for help here.”

  Kate managed to pry her face from Hester’s sweater. “I can steer,” she said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I can.”

  “How about a please in there?” Hester said, and like usual, she couldn’t quite believe the words that came out of her mouth. But Captain Zoe didn’t know that Kate wasn’t hers, or that any of Kate’s bad habits could be blamed on someone else.

  “Please,” Kate said, glumly.

  Zoe lifted the girl up and rested her hands over hers as they guided the ferry forward for the next few minutes. The captain showed her the compass and walked her through some of the other instruments on the panel. She pointed toward the horizon where a small mass of land began to emerge from the mist. “See that,” she said. “That’s Finisterre Island. Where we’re headed.”

  “The storm hit pretty hard out here,” Hester said. “I didn’t know if we’d be able to leave.”

  “The ferry’s a lifeline to the island,” Zoe said. “Especially on days like today. I have cases of supplies below for first aid and the cleanup, but we’ve survived much worse than last night. From what I hear, a few boats ran aground, some lobster pots are missing, and there was flooding on the coasts, but nothing more. It’s all you can hope for in the end.”

  “Are you from the island?”

  “Grew up there, but I have a place on the mainland now. The island can get claustrophobic, especially during the winter. But I’m there twice a day during the summer. Back and forth. And once a day over the winter. There’s another ferry that goes out of Bar Harbor up north. It runs twice a day too.”

  Hester scrolled through her phone till she found a photo of Daphne. “Any chance you’ve seen this woman?”

  Zoe barely glanced at the photo. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  Hester nodded toward Kate, who seemed sufficiently distracted with the stee
ring wheel. “I’ve been watching my friend’s daughter,” she said. “We’re supposed to meet up, but she hasn’t answered her phone.”

  “Phone’s probably dead. Power’s been out all over the island, so unless she has a generator, she’ll be out of luck. And I doubt that woman has a generator.”

  “You have seen her?”

  Zoe nodded. “I’ve seen her, but I don’t know her. She came to the island at the beginning of the summer. I don’t even know her name. But someone’ll point you in the right direction. Try Rory. He’s the local cop.”

  Hester took Kate from the captain. “Thanks for the tour,” she said.

  Out on the deck, Hester gripped the iron railing and tried to calm the rising nausea. Beside her, Kate seemed unfazed by the waves as she pirouetted and then stumbled in a way that nearly had Hester diving to the slick deck to keep the girl from spinning right off the boat and into the choppy gray water. But nothing happened, and Hester managed to keep her cool long enough to hear Kate sing out, “Mommy’s here!” at the top of her lungs.

  Damn! The kid heard every word she said these days. She heard and processed and made those words into her own truth, and right now that truth was something that would lead to disappointment, and Hester had no one to blame but herself. Hester should have found Daphne on her own! Why hadn’t she been able to see that last night, sitting in that truck, trying to leave?

  “Kate,” Hester said, her voice level. “I don’t know if your mother will be here or not. She sent me a note this morning and asked me to come, so here we are.”

  Kate spun again, and this time Hester grabbed her by the arm to stop her. She let go at once, stunned by her own intensity, by her desire to shake the girl and to tell her to stop celebrating, that none of this was good news. Kate rubbed her arm and seemed to be considering whether to go into tantrum mode. But she hugged Sebastian close. “It’s Sebastian’s birthday,” she said.

  Most days, it was Sebastian’s birthday. “We’ll get cupcakes to celebrate,” Hester said, which seemed to cheer Kate up right away.

  The ferry rounded a small, uninhabited island. On a larger island that looked as though it had been carved from solid stone, a small town rose, and a set of piers stretched into the gray sea to greet them. Hester took Kate’s hand as the shore grew closer. She wanted to hold on to this moment, this time between what was and what would be, and make it last. She wanted to remember it as special and untouched, something that was only theirs. The girl glanced up at her and smiled. “You know I love you, right?” Hester said. “More than anyone.”

  “More than Sebastian?” Kate asked.

  “More than Sebastian.”

  “More than Waffles?”

  “Even more than Waffles.”

  More than Daphne. And more than Morgan, though Kate seemed to know enough not to ask.

  A few people milled about the pier. Hester squinted, scanning for Daphne’s telltale red hair and imagined her there, calm and smiling. She’d say something simple like, “Hey,” in that tough-girl voice she’d perfected on the streets of South Boston. She’d act as though she’d been gone for the morning and that the past year had never happened. And she’d lift Kate into the air in a way that would make Hester feel Kate melting away.

  But as they pulled along the pier, Daphne was nowhere to be seen. Kate skipped forward and threw her arms in the air. “I’m so happy I have to let it out!”

  “I’m happy too,” Hester said.

  I need you.

  If Hester had written those same words these last twelve months, would Daphne have been at her door within hours? But now, even though she wanted to stay on this boat and go home, she couldn’t. She had to face whatever came next. “Ready?” she said to Kate.

  Kate dashed to the stairs.

  “Not without me,” Hester said, as she followed the girl across the gangway to the pier, beyond which sat a weather-worn hotel and a café bearing an enormous bulletin board. Sodden leaflets—for AA meetings, spaghetti suppers, a gathering of the Over the Hill hikers—covered every inch of the bulletin board, and over all of them hung at least a dozen flyers featuring a photo of a missing child, a blurry image of a boy about Kate’s age, and a handwritten phone number to call with leads. During her drive to Maine, Hester had heard on the radio about the Amber Alert for the boy, but seeing his photo on these wet posters made it feel more real. She pulled Kate close without realizing it till the girl squirmed free and ran after the other passengers.

  “Watch for cars!” Hester said as the girl passed a parked police Jeep, a deputy perched on its hood, the brim of his hat down.

  A few passengers greeted him, but most walked by as if he wasn’t there. His skin was brown from the summer sun, and his body toned in a way that told Hester he took care of himself. She caught up with Kate.

  “Ain’t too many cars around here,” he said, from behind half-closed eyes.

  “You have one,” Hester said.

  “One of the few,” he said, sitting up and lifting his hat.

  “You’re the cop, right?” Hester said. “Zoe told me to ask you about my friend. I think she lives here.”

  “Aren’t too many who do. Who’s your friend?”

  Hester showed him the photo of Daphne.

  “That’s Annie,” he said.

  Annie.

  Hester kept her expression still. Daphne’s middle name was Ann. “Have you seen her?”

  “I see her practically every day. This place isn’t that big.” The deputy tipped his hat forward and closed his eyes again. “But we were all up late last night. A kid went missing. I bet you heard about it on the news. I don’t think anyone in town got more than a couple of hours of sleep, so if I was her and I had a choice, I’d be in bed.” He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I should be so lucky.”

  “I take it that you found the missing boy?” Hester asked.

  “More like he found us. He showed up at dawn. God knows what he got into or where he’d gone, but he seems mostly unhurt except for a few cuts and bruises. He keeps talking about Thomas the Tank Engine and not much else. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened, but I said it from the start: Kids wander off all the time on this island, and it’s not like they can go very far. What do you want with Annie anyway?”

  Hester took a split second too long to answer. The deputy sat up, alert, and leapt off the Jeep, rising to his full height. He was tall enough so that Hester had to crane her neck even to read his name tag, RORY DUNBAR. He reminded her of the police officers she’d grown up with, the local boys who never left, the ones who still drank beer in the town forest as though they were in high school but who had shown up when she’d needed them. Boys who lived small and dreamed big and found power in carrying a gun. Boys who did their jobs.

  “Visiting,” Hester said. “She told me she’d moved out here.”

  “Annie doesn’t strike me as someone who’d have visitors. Or friends. Don’t bullshit me, okay? I had just about the worst night of my life last night.”

  Instinctively, Hester put a protective hand around Kate. “We went to college together,” she said.

  “Annie went to college?”

  “Wellesley,” Hester said.

  Rory seemed to take that in for a moment. “Not the story I’d have guessed, but what do I know? She lives in an old Victorian over on Little Finisterre,” he added, giving Hester directions. “It’s sort of in the middle of nowhere, so if you can’t find it, keep looking. And you might also stop by the bakery in town and talk to Lydia Pelletier. They’re best friends, at least according to Annie.”

  Rory stopped talking as a pickup truck drove over the hill and pulled up to the pier. A group of men lifted a gurney from the back with what looked like a body bag on it and wheeled it onto the ferry.

  “Who died?” Hester asked, and almost immediately regretted how callous she sounded. It could have been easy to miss, too, but Rory’s tanned face fell for an instant as he stared at the empty space where the body had b
een.

  “Sorry,” Hester said. “I know this is a small place.”

  Rory took a moment to answer. “A drug addict,” he said, without looking at Hester. “He OD’d last night. Unattended death. Off to the morgue. Good riddance, right?” He glanced at his watch. “And unless you’re planning on staying the night, be back here at three forty-five sharp. The ferry leaves at four on the dot, and it doesn’t wait for anyone.”

  Hester gave a half-hearted salute. “Yes, sir,” she said, watching as he got into the Jeep and drove away. “Ready?” she said to Kate, offering a hand. But Kate ignored the hand and skipped ahead, and Hester had to remind herself that they were in the middle of nowhere, in a place without cars. Kate would be fine.

  “Who’s Annie?” Kate asked, running back toward her.

  “You know, I’m not sure,” Hester said, and for once she felt as though she wasn’t lying. Annie could be anyone.

  The path led down a hill lined with weather-worn summer cottages to a row of businesses typical of a summer colony—a fudge shop, an ice-cream parlor, a handful of craft stores, restaurants, and hotels. At the end of a row, Hester found the inn, a small Cape-style house set back among beech trees and hemmed in by a picket fence. The storm had flattened most of the flowers in the perennial garden. The smells of baking that wafted across the garden made Hester forget her queasy stomach. Inside Doughnuts and Pie Bakery, there was barely enough room for two sets of café tables and customers. Hester made her way to the counter, where a woman with dark hair worked behind a glass case piled high with baked goods. “What do you want?” Hester asked Kate, who pursed her lips together and shook her head.

  “I thought it was Sebastian’s birthday,” she said. “Doesn’t he want a whoopie pie?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll have yours. How about a blueberry muffin?”