“No, never.”
“Well, honey, Emma knew you well enough to be honest with you. If she needed something or someone to help her, she would have told you.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes,” Maggie said firmly. “I know it.”
“Well, I think the same of you. That she would have told you.”
Maggie shook her head. “I’m not sure of that at all.”
“Then you know how I feel.”
They ate a few more bites. Outside, a few more students yawned as they walked down the sidewalk. The city was starting to come alive, inching toward 7:00 a.m. More people awake now, going somewhere. An 8:00 class. A breakfast meeting with a professor.
“So, tell me about this boy she hasn’t mentioned to me,” Maggie said.
“There’s no boy that I know of.”
“The police seem to think she has a boyfriend. Based on something someone told them.”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
“She was working for the newspaper, though? Did you know that?”
“Yeah, I knew that. She was searching for something to write about, and she called me a while ago, saying she found it. Something juicy.”
“What?”
“That’s just it, she didn’t tell me. We were supposed to get coffee one day, and she cancelled, and I didn’t follow up and—” Tears filled her eyes.
“Sarah,” Maggie said. “That doesn’t sound like something to feel guilty about.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes things feel worse than they sound, you know?”
“I suppose.”
“During move-in week, we had this, I guess, psychology seminar? Where they explained that high-achieving kids are good at masking their problems. Everyone expects them to have it all together, so they act that way.”
“Is that how she was acting? Like everything was perfect?”
That didn’t sound like Emma to Maggie. Emma moped when things were wrong, got quiet. And when she was trying to lie or cover something up, she got chatty, nervous, overcompensated. And the blushing! Emma was not adept at hiding what she was feeling; she was actually terrible at it.
“No,” Sarah sighed. “I’m grasping at straws, I know.”
“How about this,” Maggie said. “Let’s both stop blaming ourselves. Because we can’t do anything about those missed coffee dates or missed signals. We can only go forward, pay more attention now.”
Sarah nodded.
“Gosh, I sound like a priest,” Maggie said.
Sarah laughed. “I wish more priests sounded like that,” she said.
Maggie thought of the church on campus, how she’d pointed it out to Emma on a map, saying that if she ever felt stressed or needed a quiet space in the midst of all these people living together, to remember that she could go there. To sit, reflect. That was Maggie’s primary worry, that her only child would not do well surrounded with other people. That she would feel encroached upon, overstimulated. Had she been right? Was that all this was? Was Emma somewhere holed up in an Airbnb just so she could be alone and could get some work done? Did she have a paper due, some reading to finish? Were the police right?
Maggie laid out this theory to Sarah, explained that the police believed Emma was staying somewhere else, on purpose, and just hadn’t told anyone.
Sarah shook her head with frustration. “She would have told us.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But onward. I’ll need some help, if you can spare it?”
“We need posters,” Sarah said. “We need searchers, we nee—”
“Yes.”
“I’ll help you,” she said. “And there’s an organization on campus that will help me get the word out.”
“Good.”
After breakfast, they went to the computer center and worked on large flyers, printed them out. Maggie bought plastic sleeves, thumbtacks, waterproof tape at the bookstore and gave most of the stack to Sarah. Maggie would cover the dorm area and head to the journalism building. Sarah would hit the rest of campus, focusing on the cafeterias, library, and student union.
They vowed to keep in touch, and as they hugged goodbye, each of them stifled a sob, nearly broke down.
“We have to stay strong,” Maggie whispered, and Sarah nodded.
Maggie went first to the journalism building, lingering outside the door until a boy headed for it, slipping in behind him. He glanced at her briefly, sizing her up as teacher or parent, not threatened. Not questioning. She brandished the posters, asked if he knew her daughter, and he said no. She asked if he worked on the paper, and he shook his head.
Inside, the corridors were quiet. The door to one classroom was open, a female teacher gesturing at the front of the room, and Maggie ducked away, out of sight. Kids might not think anything of an unfamiliar parent roaming the halls, but teachers were another problem entirely.
She stopped another student, a short girl whose backpack was stretched beyond the point of ballast, threatening to pull her over backward.
“Do you know where the newspaper offices are?”
“Third floor,” she replied.
“Great, thanks.”
“But they’re closed.”
“Closed?”
“Yeah, they distribute Tuesdays, so they always take Wednesday off.”
“Do you work for the paper?”
“My roommate does.”
Maggie pulled a poster from her stack, asked if she recognized her daughter, and the girl said no, then added wistfully, “She’s pretty.”
Maggie took a deep breath. Yes, her daughter was pretty. She had to be honest about that salient fact and how much it weighed on her. If you looked carefully, beyond the painted and polished archetypes of young women today, Emma, fresh-faced and healthy, was pretty. Many might see that in her. A certain person might prefer that. And that fact made Maggie both proud and very, very worried.
“Does she have a boyfriend?” the girl asked.
Maggie released a small shrug. “Maybe.”
“I bet she does,” the girl said.
“What’s your roommate’s name?”
“Liz Cameron.”
“Would you ask her if she knows Emma? Or where she might be?” She handed her the flyer, pointed out the phone number at the bottom.
“Sure,” she said. She took a picture of it on her phone, then handed it back.
Maggie headed up to the third floor. It was arranged differently than the other floors, with several classrooms combined in one. She pulled on the locked door, stared through the glass. She taped up a few posters, left.
She spent the rest of the day walking around, asking students if they’d seen Emma, if they knew anyone who worked on the paper or lived in Emma’s building. Thousands of kids on this section of campus alone, and she’d only connected with one person whose roommate worked on the paper. One.
At dusk, she went back to the dorm, slid in behind a group of girls, headed to Emma’s floor. She was hanging posters in the common room and outside the elevators when she felt a tap on her shoulder. The RA.
“Hi,” she said. “Are the roommates back?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Have you checked?”
“Look, Mrs. O’Farrell,” he said, then hesitated, took a deep breath.
“Yes?”
“You can’t be here,” he said. “Someone said you spent the night in the dorm. I don’t know how you got in but—”
“The door was open,” she said hotly. “Do you not counsel the girls in the dorm to lock their doors? Do they realize that someone could be kidnapped and go missing in a heartbeat?”
“We don’t know that Emma is actually missing,” he said with a sigh. “Please, we can’t have this rampant fear. We can’t have you whipping these girls into a frenzy. There are all these
rumors about a rapist, about a serial killer. It’s no—”
“I,” she said forcefully, “am trying to find my daughter. And if I scare somebody else’s daughter into being careful along the way, well, great.”
“Look, you can’t be here. Only residents can be here. It’s completely against university rules, and the girls are complaining.”
“Oh, are they? The girls are unhappy that a mother dares to worry when her daughter is missing for days? Well, tell them to stuff it.”
“Look, the police are on top of this—”
“The police,” she said through gritted teeth, “are most certainly not on top of it.”
“I spoke to college administration, and they said—”
“Oh, you did, did you? Well, I think I need to go there next! Straight to President Leandros. Because I have rights, too! And you,” she said, poking him in the chest, “you are part of my problem.”
“Don’t touch me.”
She poked him again, sending him back a few inches, and turned to leave. She was aware of him making a call or taking one as she headed for the elevator. She pushed the button, and as she waited, the door to the stairs opened, and a security guard appeared.
“I’m leaving, don’t worry,” she said, but the man stood next to her, got in the elevator with her.
“I said I’m leaving,” she repeated.
She walked out of the building and sat on the bench outside.
“Ma’am, you have to leave campus,” he said.
“Fine,” she said. She stormed off. She thought about how much a hotel might cost. She thought about how much a disguise might cost and how she could sneak back to campus the next day to go to the journalism building.
She went to a bus shelter on the edge of campus and put up another poster, then sat down and waited for more students to come by. How long could she keep doing this alone? She decided to wait an hour, until it was dark, then sneak back.
Under cover of darkness, she felt more powerful. Long strides, head held high. The power of criminals, the strength of shadows. Anonymous in the invisibility of midnight. Dark sky, dark clothes, it added up to power, and she, with her early nights and her extra half glasses of wine that didn’t count, rarely made it past nine. She didn’t know this power any more. She only knew the weakness of twilight, the fading of willpower that came the moment she left the salon for home.
She curled up on the bench outside her daughter’s dorm and watched the door. The roommates had to come home eventually, if only to get clothes. It was dark. I’ll stay outside, she thought. And I’ll leave before it’s light.
She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but once again, a woman’s voice woke her. She opened her eyes, blinked. Dark shoes. Dark uniform pants. Dark hair. Olive skin, a mole near her mouth. The streetlight on now, illuminating everything about them both.
“Hello, Maggie, I’m G—”
Maggie held up one hand, stopped her. “I know exactly who you are.” She stood up, brushed herself off. “So I guess you’re here to help Kaplan get rid of me?”
“Hell no,” Gina said. “I’m here to help you get rid of Kaplan.”
Twenty
Emma
Emma set an alarm on her phone. Ninety minutes. She’d give herself that much time to scan the material and get the paper done before she turned her attention back to her story and following up on what Cara had told her. Writing papers this way was just like journalism, she told herself, writing under deadline. Other students did their papers at the last minute every day.
But she squirmed in her seat, had trouble concentrating. She kept picking up the phone and looking at the time she had left. It reminded her of how her mother acted when they had to get to the airport for an early flight; every cell in her body was on edge, anticipatory. She finally stopped after an hour, when she had a first draft. She’d proofread it and check the footnotes in the morning. Or she’d hand it in and get the B- or the C+ that she deserved for half-assing it. She rubbed her eyes and put her laptop away. She was lucky it was on a religious topic she understood, something any Catholic could outline in her sleep. If it had been on almost any other topic, she’d be sunk. She headed for the communal computers and chose the one farthest from the door. She felt a little guilty suddenly, that unlike the other kids here, she had a scholarship and also a laptop. She hoped none of them had seen her sitting at the other table on the second floor, typing away, packing her things up. But there were plenty of open spaces; she wasn’t taking a computer from someone who needed it, and that was all that mattered.
A quick search for Professor Grady brought up cursory, predictable material. Married, lived in the suburbs. A pretty wife whose clothes looked a little artsy and hand-dyed and who taught preschool at a private school. Two teachers in the house? She felt sorry for their kids. A Semper alumni. Attended Radnor High School. In an article about Radnor parks, he was quoted as being part of a lively game of outdoor chess played throughout the summer. He practically had nerd stamped on his forehead.
She opened Google Earth, stared at the bird’s-eye view of his house outside Wayne. A green lawn, well-trimmed hedges, target set up in the backyard. Archery? Had to be. A path that looked like it led to the neighbor’s house. Or maybe the Radnor Trail, depending on where this street was; she didn’t know that part of town well enough to know. She looked him up on social media, expecting little, finding next to nothing. Typical. She remembered her own father’s attitude toward Facebook, calling it a burn book, a gossip column. She scrolled over to LinkedIn and found a profile there. Ah. That was actually better. Students connected with their professors on LinkedIn all the time. She asked to connect with him, knowing it would probably take weeks for a response. Then, to cover her tracks, asked to connect with all her other professors as well, then logged off and kept looking elsewhere.
She found an alumni Facebook group for the year he graduated, but it was private, and she had a feeling he didn’t belong. There had to be more alumni materials archived at the library—yearbooks, she guessed, maybe student newspapers and programs for the plays? These thoughts skittered through her mind as she dismissed them. They struck her as available but unimportant. She thought of other things that would be accessible—marriage licenses, real estate transactions, the salaries of public officials. She didn’t need that info to guess at what he and his wife made; he taught two classes, had tenure. They lived a nice, comfortable life but not a glamorous one, and she was willing to bet their kids went to the private school where his wife taught, and they would go to Semper, too, all at discount. It wasn’t a bad strategy for making a teacher’s salary stretch.
Still, something bugged her about the house. So neat and trimmed. Too neat? She went back to Google Earth, stared at the skinny, winding path she’d noticed in the backyard. The grass was trimmed at the edges. This was no trampled grass path, no cut-through. It was intentionally made. Was it stepping stones? Brick? Zooming in didn’t help; the resolution wasn’t crisp enough. But when she zoomed out? It was clearly a designed path that led down to a neighboring property. But wait. No. She plugged in addresses near his house number until she hit the one next door. From there, she could see it clearly. A patio, pool, and hot tub, the aqua tones throbbing in the midst of green, brown. A structure too small to be a house—it was a pool house or shed. Not a separate home. Part of his home, the parcel behind his, another terraced level. An expensive terraced level. How much did a pool and hot tub cost? A lot, she knew. This could mean something or nothing. He could have family money; this was the Main Line after all. But did people with family money usually attend Semper? Only if they were academic fuckups. Not if they were nerds who played chess in the park.
Meanwhile, three of her professors had accepted her LinkedIn requests, but none of them Grady. She switched her privacy mode to anonymous so no one would know she had looked at their profiles, then scrolled through. None of them
were linked to Grady, but that could mean nothing. She thrummed her fingers against the keyboard impatiently. Grady only had forty-two connections. Two of them were to Semper professors in his department, one to his secretary. He didn’t have a photo posted. He probably didn’t have his alerts set up. This was a waste of time, she decided.
She was about to seek out the librarian and ask about historical Semper materials when it occurred to her that someone may have digitized them. Bingo. Of course. A generous alumnus by the name of Stanley Gross had paid for the project. Searchable yearbooks. How thoughtful of you, Mr. Gross, to make spying on your classmates and friends so easy. Bless you.
And there he was, Professor Grady, freshman year of college. She was totally shocked, as she often was with older photos of adults, by how hot he’d been. Longish hair, streaks of sun in it. Skin still tanned from a summer backpacking or lifeguarding. Just a dude before he’d chosen a major, before he’d met his wife. Before his life had even begun. There were no clubs or interests listed. Had he joined the chess club? Taken up archery? Did he know what might lie ahead? Did he have a plan? Or was he as clueless and unformed as she was?
She scrolled through the whole class, thousands of them, searching for what, exactly? She wasn’t sure. She went through the Gs to the Zs slowly and was about to exit when she realized she’d forgotten A–F. And there it was. Sam Fucking Beck. Same class. Similar hair, bigger smile. He looked confident, like he knew more about what awaited him.
She felt an actual tingle along her neck and spine and knew before she even pulled up the search, before the pieces came together, that they would. Precisely. Same dorm. Same room. College roommates.
She felt a rush of blood to her head. They were in it together. She didn’t know whose idea it had been. And whether it had been hatched in college, lying shoulder to shoulder in their narrow bunks, surrounded by more beautiful coeds than they’d ever seen, or later, when their paths diverged, and one of them had an idea the other could help with. She imagined their lawyers claiming all this didn’t prove anything. Of course a friend would go to an old friend’s restaurant! Of course he would! And she knew they would be wrong, without even knowing the particulars. She knew it in her bones and didn’t need all the details, not yet. Those things could turn this from story to series, the behind the scenes, the history, the evil plot. She saw it all in her mind, the photos, a timeline, a map, a path. Her path.
Where She Went Page 11