Dr. Abernathy, Cambridge’s head of school, shoos two people I don’t recognize from the chairs to her right—the school’s lawyers?—and offers them to me and Lucas. In dead silence, we round the table and take a seat.
As soon as we’re settled, Dr. Abernathy turns to me with an expectant smile. “Will your husband be joining us?”
“Ex-husband,” Lucas says. “And no, not unless he wants to be arrested for violating the restraining order. Two hundred feet, minimum. More than half a football field.”
Dr. Abernathy’s eyes widen, just a hair, not so much at Lucas’s revelation but at him putting my dirty laundry out there for all to see. At places like Cambridge, “restraining order” are words that should be whispered behind cupped palms, like “mistress” or “cancer.” Polite folks don’t just go around blurting them out. Lucas knows this, of course, but this is him, coming in guns slinging.
Dr. Abernathy swivels as much as she can in the crowded room, bumping up against my chair and the one behind her, nudging them out of the way until she’s facing me. “First of all, I would just like to say on behalf of everybody here at Cambridge Classical Academy, we are devastated by your son’s disappearance. Ethan Maddox is a valued and cherished student here at CCA, and we want him brought home and his abductor brought to justice as soon as humanly possible. Please know that we are bending over backward to cooperate with the authorities.”
To my left, Lucas makes a sound I interpret as I’ll bet. He hasn’t encouraged me to sue the school for negligence yet—too soon—but I know he’s thought it, and honestly, so have I, though for completely different reasons. Lucas is thinking about the money, of padding my bank account so I’ll never have to worry about money again, and I’m thinking only of revenge. I hate everything about this place, including the gray-eyed, frizzy-haired woman still waiting for my response.
“Thank you.”
She plucks a remote from the table and punches a button, and across from us, the Promethean board flickers to life. Ethan’s name appears in big block letters above a Cambridge slogan: “Embracing diversity, nourishing decency and fostering human dignity.”
Her presentation is long and careful and rehearsed. She goes over Miss Emma’s official police statement. A bulleted list of organizations participating in the search. An update from Detective Brent Macintosh of the Atlanta police. Each topic is accompanied by a graphic—a photograph, a logo, a colorful table. Leave it to Cambridge to express sympathy in charts and graphs. Nothing she says is news to me and Lucas; in fact, some of it is no longer current. The boot print the sheriff’s team lifted from the forest belonged to an eighty-four-year-old neighbor, for example, not the abductor. But all around us, people are rapt.
She’s finishing up when a flustered Stefanie steps into the room—a full fifteen minutes late. “Sorry,” she mouths to Dr. Abernathy, who halts the presentation to find Stefanie a chair. Stefanie shakes her head and presses herself to a thin strip of wall by the door, her face blooming bright pink. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please carry on.”
She’s accompanied by a man who is not Sam. Mop of mousy hair, slightly mushy jowls, ruddy cheeks squeezing a too-thin nose. He reaches over the table and gives Dr. Abernathy a hand. “Josh Murrill. Chief of staff for the mayor.”
As he’s pulling back, his gaze lands on mine for an instant, then darts off to take in the others in the room. I don’t know this man, but I know his type. He’s that guy who’s always looking over your shoulder for a more interesting, more influential conversation partner. Judging by the waves of lifted hands and smiles, he knows half the people here.
After an eternity, Dr. Abernathy wraps up her presentation and opens the floor for questions.
My hand shoots up, my mouth blurting the question before she can even look my way. “How is it possible that nobody heard or saw anything?”
Dr. Abernathy wasn’t expecting it, or the animosity that shot the words from my mouth. Her gaze seeks out the two men she shooed from our seats.
I don’t give her long enough to craft an answer. “Because by now we know that the kidnapper set the fire in order to get everyone out of the cabin and to use as a distraction. We know Miss Emma and the kids were in the clearing while Avery ran for help. We know Ethan disappeared somewhere between the third and fourth head count. But I know my son wouldn’t have left the group willingly, which means whoever took Ethan took him against his will. Maybe the kidnapper clapped a hand over Ethan’s mouth, but surely he kicked and squirmed and tried to get away. There must have been a scuffle. How did nobody notice that?”
“I...” She shakes her head, a rapid back and forth that sends her earrings dancing. “The police have already questioned all the students. Are you suggesting one of them is lying?”
“I’m just having a hard time believing that everybody was looking the other way. There were nineteen people in that clearing and a kid just vanishes? I just don’t see how that’s possible. How is that possible?”
The attorneys sit straighter in their chairs, alert and ready to shoot down anyone who dares to answer. No one dares.
“And where’s Miss Emma? Why isn’t she here to tell us her version of what happened?”
One of the attorneys clears his throat. “Ms. Quinn is no longer speaking for Cambridge Classical Academy. She’s on leave through the end of the summer.”
Lucas and I share a look, one that says he called it. That teacher is toast, he told me up at the camp, and apparently, he was right. “You fired her.” I try to drum up a scrap of sympathy for the woman, but I can’t. She deserves to have lost her job. No, she deserves worse.
“It was a mutual decision between Ms. Quinn and the board,” the attorney says, then says nothing more.
The parents look around nervously, and heat rises up from somewhere deep inside, gathering strength and threatening to explode in a full-blown fury. The grief. The terror. The frustration. It’s all too much, the emotions too tangled up in each other, and I’m suddenly terrified I’m going to cry, which of course only makes me angrier. I suck in a long, slow breath, fighting back the flames, summoning the strength to pull myself together. The tears recede, but the anger remains.
“This is my son’s life we are talking about here. If Miss Emma or any of your kids has information, if any of them saw or heard even the tiniest little peep, I am begging you.” I slap both palms on the table and lean in. “It could be nothing or it could be everything, so please, please tell the police.”
The silence is long and sharp and uncomfortable, stretching on for what feels like forever. Dr. Abernathy coughs into a fist. The woman across from her fidgets. I look at Lucas, and his expression is as dark as my thoughts. What a fucking waste of time. I’m reaching for my bag when Stefanie clears her throat.
“When I picked Sammy up, he was terrified. Just...completely shut down. I’m sure he was overwhelmed and confused, but the longer he’s home, the more he processes everything that happened at the camp, the more he has to say. I don’t know how much of it is relevant to the investigation, but I’ve been forwarding everything over to Detective Macintosh.”
“Like what?” the man who walked in with her says. Sam’s pompous chief of staff.
“Well, like some people Sammy noticed at the mines who stood out in his memory.” She glances at me, then quickly away. “I also discovered he’s been talking to some people online, most of whom I don’t know and didn’t give approval for. He claims they’re kids from school, but you never know who’s really on the other end of the internet. I’ve passed everything on to Detective Macintosh.”
She holds my gaze, and her lips curve into the smallest of smiles. I smile back, even though I don’t know why. What is it with these Huntingtons? What kind of strange, spooky power do they hold over me? One nice deed, and I find myself liking them—or in Stefanie’s case, at the very least wondering if I’ve somehow misjudged her.
Stefanie focuses her attention on a woman seated by the far wall. “Angela. Your little Brenna is so observant. At Sammy’s birthday party she was the only one who noticed the flower arrangements matched the invitation. She must have seen something.”
Stefanie’s words raise a welt on my heart, because it’s the party Ethan wasn’t invited to.
Angela looks horrified to have been singled out. Her cheeks are two shiny cherries, and her gaze flicks all around the room, landing on no one. “Brenna said she didn’t hear anything because of the fire. Apparently, the kids were a mess. A lot of them were crying. She said there was a lot going on.”
Stefanie’s smile drops, and so does my heart. It hits the bottom of my belly with an elevator-like thud.
“But then yesterday, she mentioned she might have seen somebody,” Angela adds. “A person at the edge of the woods. At first she thought it was Avery, but then he came running up from the other direction. By the time Brenna turned back around, the person was gone.”
Lucas reaches for the pad of paper in the center of the table. “Male or female? What color hair? How tall?”
Angela lifts both palms from her lap. “Brenna didn’t say.”
But Angela’s confession unsticks something in the room, and one by one, the parents start talking. Harley’s mother says her daughter might have heard a thump. James has been dreaming about a red truck. Rachel is suddenly terrified of men with mustaches. Lucas scribbles away while I sit here, clenching my teeth and trying not to scream. Mac said it’s often one little lead, one seemingly random and unconnected clue, that breaks a case wide-open, and these parents waited forty-one hours—almost two whole days—to give up what they know.
I pull out my phone and find a text from Mac.
Plane just touched down. Waiting for it to roll up to gate.
My thumbs tap out a response.
We need another round of interviews with kids. Their parents say they’re remembering things.
Two seconds later, his reply pings my phone.
Will start first thing AM.
I look up to find Stefanie watching me.
“What about a reward?” she blurts, and all heads in the room swing to her. “For information, I mean. What if we took up donations, set up a tip line and offered the cash as a reward to whoever calls in with the case-breaking clue?”
Dr. Abernathy’s face is carefully blank. “Well, it could be worth a try, I suppose...”
“I think it would be great PR for the school. We’re not just a school but a community. We take care of our own. I’m sure you’d do much better at crafting the appropriate message. Rod, you’re on the marketing committee. What do you think?”
A man behind me clears his throat. “I can’t make these kinds of decisions by myself. I need to talk to the other board members first.”
Stefanie gives him a sweet smile. “I understand, and I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s just that whatever amount the school puts in gives the rest of us parents an indication of what we should be putting in. I assume you’ll be asking other parents for donations, no? I’m sure I’m not the only one here who’s eager to contribute.” She chews her lip and takes her gaze down the long line of faces, holding each one until heads bob in agreement.
“We’ll have a little huddle after this meeting,” Dr. Abernathy mumbles.
The conversation moves on to other topics, but I’m only half listening. My whole body is pulsing like a nerve ending. What the hell just happened here? Did Stefanie just accidentally talk the board into forking over reward money, or did she strong-arm them? Those parents who all nodded along, did Stefanie work her voodoo magic on them, too? Either she’s completely guileless, or she’s fucking brilliant.
And then her gaze catches mine across the table, her eyes glinting with satisfaction and I have my answer.
STEF
54 hours, 9 minutes missing
On Sunday, by some miracle, I sleep in. The chaos of the previous two days must have caught up with me, because I don’t stir until almost nine, and then the first thing I do is check my phone. Forty-seven text messages and an email inbox in the thousands. Sam is always getting on me for not cleaning them out, but why bother? The texts are probably all from the mothers at school, nosy gossips looking for news of Ethan to pick apart in endless wine-fueled discussions, and it would take me days to clear my inbox from all the spam.
But the point is, no new calls.
I drag myself from the warmth of my bed and into the shower, my thoughts returning to last night. The nerve of Dr. Abernathy, calling us in for an hour-long infomercial under the guise of supporting Ethan. She wasn’t there to “inform and support,” but to cover her own damn ass. The school’s ass. At least now she’s doing it to the tune of ten thousand dollars—the reward money she pledged in an email last night. By the time I climbed into bed, the amount had tripled, thanks to the generosity of the other parents I called and put on the spot.
I turn off the water and dry myself off, pulling on yesterday’s jeans and a fresh T-shirt. As I run a brush through my wet hair, I study my face in the mirror. Puffy cheeks. Bloodshot eyes. Sallow, saggy skin. I know Ethan’s disappearance is not officially my tragedy, but it sure as hell feels personal. The kidnapper called my cell phone, meant to take my child. I flip off the light and head into the hall.
Sammy is exactly where I left him last night—sulking on his bed. An iPad is propped against his legs. SpongeBob, according to the voices floating up from the speaker.
“Good morning, sweetie. How’d you sleep?”
He presses his lips together and glares.
“Are you hungry? Did you eat?”
No response.
A dull throbbing starts up somewhere deep inside my head. Later Sammy and I will talk about managing anger without being rude, but for now I’m in no mood to go toe-to-toe with him, not before my first cup of coffee. I leave my moody son and head downstairs.
Familiar male voices worm their way through the wooden doors of Sam’s study, and as I pass by on my way to the kitchen, I wonder if they even left. The attorneys were here last night when I got home, and they were here a couple hours later when I went to bed. I double back to the foyer windows and check their cars on the drive, a dark BMW and a boxy blue SUV, both parked in the exact same spots. Josh’s car isn’t there.
I spot Mom on the patio couch, her bare feet up on the coffee table, scrolling through something on my laptop. She looks up when I come out the door. “There’s pancakes in the warming drawer and fresh-cut strawberries in the fridge. Sammy ate already—I don’t know about Sam. He hasn’t emerged from his study yet.”
“Not even for coffee?”
“Nope. At least not that I’ve seen.”
I sink onto the couch beside her, thinking this worries me more than a little. Are Sam’s meetings about Ethan, or is the situation with Marietta really that dire? A scandal, Sam called it yesterday on the phone. Who was he talking to? And where the hell is Josh?
“Thanks for taking care of Sammy this morning. He’s apparently still not speaking to me.”
Mom closes the laptop. “Oh, he’ll come around. He’s a lot like you that way—stubborn.”
“Me? I think you’re confusing me with Amelia.”
My younger sister was born with an attitude and an iron will. She talked back. She drew on walls. She cussed and clawed and scratched. She could have been the poster child for Ritalin until she grew into a remarkably laid-back adult. I was never the stubborn one.
Mom laughs. “I’m not the one who’s confused, dear. You are. Oh, sure, you were the good sister. Whenever you did anything wrong, which wasn’t all that often, all I ever had to say was that I was disappointed in you. That was always punishment enough.”
A story I’ve heard a million
times. I was the easy child, the practice baby for my naughty, defiant, whirlwind of a sibling. My parents didn’t believe in spanking until Amelia popped out, and even that wasn’t much of a deterrent. Mom always jokes that if she’d known Amelia was going to turn out so well, she wouldn’t have worried so much.
I gesture to the laptop. “May I?” I passed on Sammy’s offense and the Xbox log-in credentials to Detective Macintosh last night, but since I haven’t heard back, I thought I would take another, better look at the names myself.
She hands the laptop to me. “Anyway, you’d cry and cry and cry, and I’d congratulate myself on being so much better at this motherhood thing than all those other women who came to see me. I couldn’t understand why they were always so flustered and agitated and helpless, always reeking of spit-up and desperation.” She smiles at me with a cocked brow. “And then your sister, Amelia, came along.”
I fire up the laptop and type in the password: <3SamJosX2, which I use for everything. Another reason I can’t be too angry at Sammy. I made it awfully easy for him to get past my flimsy firewall.
“So you’re saying Sammy inherited this kind of behavior? Sorry, Mom, but I’m not buying it. His reaction earlier had nothing to do with his DNA. Honestly, I think he’s just traumatized by what happened, and that it was supposed to be him.” I open my internet browser, surf to xbox.com.
“I agree. That’s where I was going with this story. Sammy takes after you. Your emotions always got the better of you, too, especially when you were ashamed. Sammy has all those same issues.”
I look up from my computer screen, interested now. “I don’t know if Sammy told you, but he was in Ethan’s sleeping bag. That’s why it took so long for the dogs to catch a scent. They were confused.”
Three Days Missing Page 18