“Come home to us and we’ll take care of you, baby,” her mother had said. The offer was too good to refuse. Bree had talked to them more often than usual since her mother’s heart attack. She realized of course that this had coincided with Lara’s leaving, and so she couldn’t be sure which event had led them back to her.
Adrian, the guy she had met in a bar in Celia’s neighborhood in Brooklyn, a guy she hardly even knew, had called or e-mailed several times since April’s disappearance. The excitement she had felt after their first date had faded quickly, and though Bree knew he meant well, she never answered his calls. They were only a painful reminder that Lara had not been in touch. She assumed that by now Lara must have heard about April. And yet there had been no calls, nothing. Wasn’t Lara even thinking about her, or had she simply moved on to something or—this made Bree sick to imagine—someone else? Before she went to sleep at night, she called Lara’s cell phone even though she knew what would happen. Each time, a recorded voice told her that the number had been changed.
Bree’s father picked her up at the airport on Sunday evening. She made him switch the car radio to an AM news channel, and he looked at her sadly and said, “There’s been no update. But listen, those guys in the Atlanta PD are some tough buzzards. They’re gonna find your girl.”
When they got home, her mother had set the table with her best china and heaping bowls of all Bree’s favorites—mashed potatoes, biscuits, fried chicken, collard greens, creamed corn, and strawberry pie.
“No butter on the collards,” her mother said. This was her version of a heart-healthy diet.
She hugged Bree close. “I’m only going to have a taste, don’t worry. At a time like this, you deserve some comfort food,” she said. Bree wasn’t sure whether she was referring to April or Lara or both.
“Are the boys coming?” Bree asked, sitting down at the table and taking a warm biscuit from a bowl.
“Nope, it’s just the three of us,” her mother said.
Bree couldn’t remember the last time the three of them had been alone together. Probably not since the summer she was nine, when she broke her leg and had to stay home while her brothers went to camp in the Berkshires.
She looked around the kitchen, at the familiar pale wooden cabinets and sky-blue walls, the wicker ceiling fan that hummed at night, and the faded yellow carpet. In this room, she had studied for countless spelling tests, baked a thousand coconut cakes with her mother, and hidden in the crawl space in the pantry where the dogs slept so she could talk to Doug Anderson on the cordless phone all night long. Here, it didn’t really matter that she had graduated in the top 3 percent of her law school class or that she could afford an apartment with a guest room in the nicest part of San Francisco, or even that she had probably pissed away her entire career in the span of the last three weeks. Here she would always be adored for building a cardboard-box village for her She-Ra figurines and getting up early to fix her father cereal before work and forcing her brothers to let her paint their toenails. When she came back to her parents’ home, she became a simpler, younger version of herself again in an instant.
In the years since graduation, Bree had forced herself to forget that this level of comfort existed, so that her family’s absence wouldn’t hurt so much. And now, just like that, she had them back. But her Lara was gone.
Over dinner, they talked about April and the investigation. Bree’s dad knew a few of the cops in the Atlanta police department, guys who had transferred from Savannah years ago. He was pressing them for information, he said, but no one knew anything. The police questioned the pimp everyone suspected and then allowed him to go free—something Bree could not understand for a minute. Neighborhood girls interviewed on CNN said he walked the streets of the Bluff with his head held high now, the same as ever. The two teenagers police had found chained to a radiator in his home had refused to appear in front of a grand jury and said that they would deny all the accusations made against him. After five days, the police had nothing to hold him on, and so he was set free.
When talk of April got too hard, they discussed Bree’s brothers-Roger and Emily were getting serious and had just gone to the beach house off the coast of Charleston for the weekend.
“They’ll be home in the morning, and you’ll finally get to meet our Emily,” her mother said.
Our Emily. That made Bree want to cry. Why couldn’t she ever have seen Lara that way?
Tim was living at the beach with friends for the summer, working as a pizza delivery boy, which scared Bree’s mother because, as she said, “I followed him in the station wagon once, and he turned left on red three times! When I yelled at him about it later, he just said, ‘What? You’re not supposed to do that?’”
After dinner, Bree’s father cut each of them a fat slice of strawberry pie. When he set her mother’s piece down on the table in front of her, she turned her face toward him, her eyes brightened, and they kissed. It lasted just a second, but it reminded Bree of a photo from their wedding album—her mother’s face tilted up adoringly toward her new husband, who was making a toast, raising a glass of champagne.
Bree felt her throat tighten. Her chest began to ache. Could she tell them how much she missed Lara? Would they understand? She wished more than ever that the special person in her life were a man. Then her mother would soothe and coddle her to her heart’s delight, her father would offer practical advice for winning her boyfriend back.
Bree’s mother may have been wishing the same thing, because at that moment, she put down her fork and said, “Oh, guess who I ran into in the deli line at the Food Lion this morning. Betsy Anderson, Doug’s mom.”
Bree smiled. “Oh?”
“Yes, and she was just so precious, asking after all of us, but especially you. She said Doug was blown away when he saw you again. He said you looked more beautiful than ever.”
Bree rolled her eyes, but her cheeks grew pink. Had he really said that to his mother, or was Bree’s mother just meddling?
“He did not say that,” she said at last.
“He did!” her mother said. “I think he’s still sweet on you.”
“Mom!” Bree laughed. “We talked for all of five minutes. He’s married, for God’s sake.”
Her mother sighed. “His wife’s a bit controlling from what I’ve heard. I wonder if he’s happy with her.”
“Dad!” Bree said. “Will you help me out here, please?”
Her father raised a hand. “Sweetie, when she gets like this, I find it best to just let her roll with the crazy.”
Her mother went on, ignoring him. “Some marriages are meant to be, and some aren’t. There’s no shame in it. I knew I was going to marry your father in third grade. Everyone was picking on this nerdy kid with glasses—oh, what was his name?—anyway, your father got up from his chair, and I’ll always remember this, he scooted right up next to what’s his name and acted like they were the best of friends. You should have seen the grateful smile on what’s his name’s face. I’ll never forget it, Bree. I leaned over to Patsy Foster, and—this is true, you can ask her yourself—I said to Patsy, I am going to marry Steven Miller.”
“And you did,” Bree said. She had heard the story a hundred times.
“And I did,” her mother said proudly.
“Okay then, you’ve convinced me,” Bree said. “I’m going to drive over to Doug’s house right this instant and demand that he run away with me.”
“Oh hush,” her mother said, swatting at Bree with her napkin. “Honestly! As if I’d ever suggest such a thing.”
Her father just shook his head and laughed.
He looked at Bree. “More pie?” he said. “Lord knows you deserve it.”
The next morning, Bree woke early, planning to drive out to Atlanta to see April’s mother, Lydia. Bree figured she could at least give her a hug and take her to lunch. She had never been alone with Lydia before. She hadn’t ever come to Parents’ Weekend, and they had met just once, at graduation. Sally war
ned her that Lydia was odd.
“Odd like April?” Bree had asked.
“Much odder,” Sally said. “April’s just a Dixie cup of crazy. Lydia’s more like a twenty-gallon tank.”
It had been over a week since April went missing. Bree knew from watching 48 Hours Mystery that after a day the chances of finding a missing person alive almost disappeared. She tried hard to put thoughts like this one from her mind, but it was impossible to think of much else.
She was showered and dressed by seven and in the kitchen brewing coffee five minutes later. Her father had already gone to the office for the day, and her mother was out tending to the back garden, her favorite morning occupation. Bree sat at the table and listened to her mother singing through the screen door. It was a song by Patsy Cline, Bree thought, though she could not name it. The smell of coffee and something sweet in the oven filled her nostrils. She wished she could stay here, just like this, all morning long, then accompany her mother to the country club for lunch and spend the afternoon reading on the front porch. Instead, she would have to walk the street that April had last been seen on. She would have to look April’s very strange mother in the eye and lie to her, saying that everything would be okay in the end.
Bree went to the cabinet under the old stone sink to get her mother’s spare set of keys. They hung there, on the same red shoelace on the same little hook, right beside the rose-covered gardening gloves Bree had given her on Mother’s Day in ninth grade. She was struck by the way nothing ever changed here. It was so unlike her own life and the lives of her friends, which seemed to change every day, every instant.
Outside, she heard her mother talking to someone, a man. Bree walked to the screen door, and there was her brother Roger, taking the hedge clippers from their mother’s hands and snipping off a branch of something.
“Oh, thank you, darling, I could not cut those ones—they’re so darn thick. Would you like to take some to Emily? It may not look like much now, but if she cares for it, it’ll be just gorgeous come next spring.”
“No thanks, Mama,” Roger said.
He looked up and noticed Bree inside the door. “Emily doesn’t know it, but she’s actually dating Mom,” he said.
Bree laughed.
“I’m so sorry about April, Biscuit,” Roger said, using his childhood nickname for her. Bree had always hated it, but now it was the most comforting sound she could imagine.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “April’s tough as nails. We’re going to find her.”
Roger walked up the stairs and past her into the kitchen. He went to the fridge and started lining up items on the counter—a box of English muffins, a jar of honey mustard, a package of chicken breasts, half of last night’s pie wrapped in tinfoil.
“What are you doing?” Bree said.
“Food shopping,” he said.
“Mama!” she called outside. “Roger’s taking all your food.”
“So Mom said Doug Anderson paid you a visit last time you were here,” Roger said teasingly.
“Not really,” Bree said. “We sort of just bumped into each other.”
“Bumped into each other on our front stoop as I heard it,” he said. “Sounds like he lurves you.”
“Shut up,” she said. “I swear, Mom still thinks he’s the One, even though he’s married with two kids.”
“Well, what do you think?” Roger said.
“I think she’s nuts,” Bree said. “But do you ever feel like Mama has this power over you? Like you just want to make her proud so badly that you’d do anything.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m her oldest son, Biscuit. I don’t have to work that hard. I know what you mean, though. I cried like a baby when I heard about the heart attack. I don’t think I had cried for a decade before that. That’s what Mama will do to you.”
“You hadn’t cried in a decade?” Bree said. This was one of those amazing things about men that made her thankful not to be one of them. Imagine not crying for ten years.
“It’s like I almost want Doug to be the One, because I know how happy Mom would be if he was,” Bree said.
“Sounds pretty romantic,” he said.
She laughed, then said in a hush so her mother wouldn’t hear, “It just makes me so sad to see how much they love Emily. Why couldn’t they have ever loved Lara like that?”
“So you miss her,” he said.
She told him the story of how Lara had left, how devastating it had felt to walk into their empty apartment.
“Why don’t you call her?” he asked.
“I’ve tried. She changed her number. I don’t even know where she is,” Bree said. “Plus, sometimes it just gets so bad that you can’t imagine how it could ever get good again, you know?”
Their mother came in then and removed the ridiculous floppy garden hat she had been wearing.
Bree gave her a hug. “I should hit the road,” she said.
“Wear your seatbelt and pull over and take a nap if you get tired,” her mother said.
“I’m just going to Atlanta.” Bree laughed. “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive. How tired can I get?”
“Drowsiness accounts for more accidents than you might think.”
Bree rolled her eyes.
When she stepped outside, the heat hit her like a brick wall.
On the road to Atlanta, she ate the warm molasses cookies her mother had made for the ride. She listened to the radio and tried not to cry when one of April’s favorite Bob Dylan songs came on, but she cried anyway.
She thought about Doug Anderson every time she saw a Volvo on the highway. He had been on her mind more lately than he had in the last nine years combined. Her mother seemed to think it wasn’t too late for the two of them to just pick up where they’d left off in college, despite the fact that the man had a wife and children. For a little while now, Bree allowed herself to imagine it: At night, she’d burrow into him just like her mother burrowed into her dad, clad in a thin cotton nightgown, the color of a seashell. They’d wake up each morning to the sound of two kids pattering down the hall, and then they’d feel the weight of the kids’ bodies on top of their own in bed. She thought about brushing that little cutie pie’s long red hair and pinning it up with butterfly barrettes. (Of course, the hair would always be a reminder of the birth mother who had died in a tragic shark attack, but Bree would manage.) She envisioned flipping pancakes and singing songs in the car and having fights over vegetables and bedtimes. She pictured long, warm evenings on the porch alone with Doug, talking about their parents and their teenage years. Perhaps that sort of common ground was what real togetherness was made of. Not struggle and passion and difference, but just plain and simple, My mama knows your mama, and I remember what you looked like the summer you got braces and lost all your freckles.
Finally, there was a blast of a truck horn. Bree took it as a sign to stop thinking this way. She switched the radio to NPR and pretended to be riveted by a debate about ethanol. Of course, she had no one to pretend for but herself, but that seemed like more than enough.
When Bree pulled up to the dingy hotel, April’s mother was standing out front in jeans and a long, flowing top, smoking a cigarette. Lydia looked like she had aged twenty years since Bree had last seen her. Her face was covered in deep wrinkles, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Bree almost didn’t recognize her.
She didn’t smile as she climbed into the passenger seat. Bree wondered if Lydia knew how things had been between her and April this past year. Had April told her mother about their stupid fight at Sally’s wedding, about the way their friendship had fallen apart?
She decided not to wonder.
“It’s good to see you,” Bree said.
“Jesus, could it be any damn hotter outside?” Lydia said. “I’m sweating in places I didn’t even know I had.”
She sounded drunk. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning.
“I’m starving,” Lydia said. “That hotel food is j
ust rotgut crap. There’s a diner by the highway that’s not too bad.”
They drove to the diner in near silence and took a booth by the window. A fluorescent lightbulb over their heads flickered on and off every minute or so. The red plastic seat stuck to the back of Bree’s bare legs.
After she’d ordered her coffee and taken a few sips, Lydia seemed to soften.
“It was good of you to come out here and keep me company for the day,” she said. “I really don’t even know what I’m doing in Atlanta. There’s no real way to help. But what was I gonna do? Sit and chain-smoke in my apartment at home?”
Bree gave her a sad smile. Despite how odd she had always found Lydia, she pitied her now. Her only child was missing, and she was powerless to do anything about it.
“My mother says you’re welcome to come stay with us in Savannah,” Bree said.
Lydia waved her hand in the air, dismissing the invitation. “Believe me, that wouldn’t be good for anyone.”
They ordered pancakes and bacon from a bored-looking teenager in a pink uniform that was about three sizes too big.
Lydia pulled two tiny white bottles from her purse and shook out a few pills from each, downing the whole handful with one gulp from her water glass.
“That Ronnie Munro is a hot ticket,” Lydia said. “She met me for coffee yesterday. I would have killed for a job like hers, to have turned out as a real, serious woman artist. Making a difference, you know?”
Bree nodded, although she thought it was an incredibly strange thing to say. If it weren’t for Ronnie, April would probably be safe and sound in some Teach for America classroom full of disobedient little monsters right now.
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