With that brief statement, the doubt sauntered back, like a cocky friend I was expecting but wasn’t particularly happy to see. “About what?”
“We’ll be home in half an hour, maybe sooner,” he said. “Love you, Cassie.”
Sam hung up before I could say that I loved him too.
I ate the spaghetti standing up, not bothering to rinse my plate. The doorbell began ringing then. After passing out tiny chocolate bars and packets of sour gummy worms to the first wave of trick-or-treaters, I put the bowl of candy on the porch with a “take two” sign, turned off the lamp in the living room, and settled on the couch. Boo jumped up beside me. For the dog’s sake, I covered myself with a fleece throw and sank back into the pillows, intending only a short rest. Just until Sam and Audrey got back.
My eyes burned and, unlike the night before, sleep came quickly.
My vibrating phone woke me. That and the tickling on my foot. I answered, expecting Sam. It was Daryl.
“Sorry it’s so late, Doc,” he said. “Lester’s still on an IV, and they gave him some medicine to slow his heart rate. But he’s not vomiting anymore.”
“I’m glad he’s doing better.”
“Thank you, Doc.”
“You don’t need to—”
Daryl interrupted me. “Yes,” he said. “I do. That first time I came into your office, the incident with the sliding glass door . . .”
“Wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that, but I was high, and I was sure you would notice and make judgments. But you didn’t.”
That day five years before, he couldn’t have smelled more of skunk if he’d been sporting a white stripe down his back. “I noticed.”
Daryl chuckled, though it was more muted than usual. “Oh, yeah, I know that. My eyes were red as shit. What I meant is, you didn’t judge.”
Boo’s fur brushed my toes, so I jiggled my foot. “That’s not my place.”
“It’s nobody’s place, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it,” he said. “So thanks. Not just for today.”
The catch in his voice humbled me, and for a moment, neither of us spoke. Finally, I asked, “Still no idea where Lester got the chocolate?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, a lot, but I have no idea.”
Boo continued to graze my foot. Maybe it wasn’t his fur. A paw? “I appreciate the update, Daryl.”
“Yeah, well, sorry again it’s so late, but I figured with kids, you’d still be up, since it’s Halloween.”
It wasn’t until Daryl hung up that the full meaning of his apology registered: Sorry again it’s so late.
I checked my phone. 9:07 p.m. It had been nearly two hours since I had talked to Sam. I punched in his number, but it went straight to voicemail.
My mind picked over possible explanations, my heart beating faster with each I discarded.
Sam could have taken Audrey for a hamburger—except they had already eaten spaghetti.
Ice cream, then. But Sam wouldn’t allow our daughter ice cream when she already had a bucketful of candy. Because of the liver transplant, we were both watchful of how much sugar she ate.
Would Sam have taken Audrey to the grocery store to pick up some milk? Leo used mixing bowls for his cereal, so we went through a gallon every few days.
Concern became panic when I realized Sam couldn’t have gone for a burger, or ice cream, or groceries. His car was still at the house. Wasn’t it?
I jolted from the couch, earning a yelp from Boo, who was tucked into the couch next to my hip. I pulled open the curtains even as my subconscious tingled: Tucked into my hip?
I didn’t know which I had been hoping to see—the car, or an empty driveway. Without a car, Sam would likely be in the neighborhood. If the car had been gone, it allowed the possibility that he had taken Audrey to a friend’s house, or stopped by work to pick up some paperwork, or gone to the pharmacy for more cold medicine.
Sam’s blue Toyota Camry was still parked in the driveway.
Suddenly, the absence of options felt like a tangible void.
I flicked on the light, and my subconscious drew my attention to the foot of the couch and to the tickling that couldn’t have been Boo.
I screamed when I saw it. Black eyes were pinpricks in its large, round head. Stripes crossed its plump body, nearly two inches long. Mandibles jutted from its alien face, and it hopped on spiny legs. Toward me. I jumped back, grateful no one was there to witness my reaction.
Just a stupid Jerusalem cricket. Still, I shuddered to think that thing had been on my foot.
I grabbed an empty glass from the coffee table and trapped the bug beneath it, the insect’s antennae testing the walls of its new prison. Ping, ping. Only a stupid insect, but in light of the events of the past twenty-four hours, it felt like something else. An ugliness that had breached our threshold. A reminder of how vulnerable we were. Ping, ping, ping.
My hand trembled as I texted Leo: Heard from dad?
The response: No. Why?
He wanted to know what time your football game is tomorrow.
I could hear the eye roll in his reply, no emoji needed: Dad doesn’t know the time?
Even Leo saw through my lie. Understandably. Sam hadn’t missed a game. I was the one who sometimes ducked in at halftime.
I checked the time again: 9:10 p.m. Not so late. Maybe Audrey had gotten a second wind.
My subconscious sneered at the attempt at self-deception. After another unsuccessful call to Sam, I grabbed my keys, stepped around the tiny monster encased in glass, and headed out to find my husband and daughter.
7
With its mature trees, older homes, and sidewalks sloping toward the sky, Lomita Heights had always felt like a monument. It might’ve been the iconic stone sign at the base of the hill or that some of the families had been living in their homes longer than I had been alive. It felt solid, entrenched. Safe.
But tonight, I felt none of the usual security. There were shadows in the trees, and the sidewalk felt as if it could slide down the hill with only a minor jolt, crushing homes and trick-or-treaters alike in a tide of crumbling concrete.
That image certainly didn’t help my state of mind.
Shortly past nine, the streets were nearly empty. Even the older kids had started packing away their candy bags and halfhearted costumes.
This lack of pedestrian traffic made the house a few blocks over stand out. With its over-the-top decorations, the two-story home could have passed for a commercial enterprise. Ghoulish heads streaked with stage blood impaled on fence posts. A headless scarecrow with a leering jack-o’-lantern tucked under its arm. A reaper cast in the greenish glow of carefully aimed spotlights, skulls at its feet, bony hands protruding from freshly dug plots. Then there were the usual foam headstones, warning signs, and rubber rats, all shrouded in dry-ice fog and the soundtrack of ghostly moaning and rattling chains.
It was the only house that still had traffic. Among the stragglers was a black cat wearing a tiara.
Audrey.
I couldn’t get to her fast enough, and when I reached her, I fell to my knees beside her. I pulled her into a hug, so tight she might have melted into my ribs, but then immediately worried my violent affection might frighten her. I pushed her back, just far enough to get a look at her face, and realized my daughter was already frightened. And why not? Sam was nowhere in sight.
“I take it you’re the mom?” I looked up and found myself staring into the face of a witch I didn’t know.
“Mm-hmm,” was all I managed before embracing Audrey again. “Where’s your dad, Peanut?”
My daughter’s small shoulders lifted in a shrug. Her mouth was smeared with chocolate, her cheeks with tears. “I think he lost me,” she said. “I saw Savannah from school. Sometimes she’s nice. Tonight she was a cat, too, but she didn’t have a tiara, and she was brown.
“I said hi to Savannah, and then Daddy was gone.”
Audrey’s voice broke several times in the
telling of her story. Expectation lit her face, only inches from mine, and I read every unspoken thought: Mom’s here. Mom will find Dad. Mom will fix it.
Her confusion was a gut punch. Sam was the reliable one. He was the parent who kept track of the kids’ overbooked schedules. Remembered to reorder Audrey’s medication, or buy Leo’s cleats. Made sure the kids were fed, even if it was only pasta and jarred sauce.
Sam would know what to do. My fingers twitched, muscle memory wanting to tap out his number on a keypad. But Sam wasn’t answering his phone.
“Good of you to finally show up.” A second female voice. I turned and saw that a short-skirted pirate in fishnets had joined the witch. I ignored the judgment, nearly as thick as the smell of wine on the pirate’s breath.
“Where do you remember seeing Dad last?”
“Before I saw Savannah.” She grabbed some candy from her bucket and held out her hand, palm up, for inspection. “She gave me all her sour candies, and I gave her one of my chocolates and all the purple ones that taste like cough syrup.” Her voice was hollow, and the candies plunked against the plastic as Audrey dropped them back into her bucket.
I glanced up at the women. “How long has she been alone?”
The pirate pursed her lips. “She’s not alone. We’re with her. But we’re not her parents.”
The witch added, “Her dad’s been gone for fifteen minutes. At least. We would’ve called, but your daughter doesn’t know your number, and she doesn’t have a cell phone.”
The witch said the last part the way she might’ve lamented Audrey being shoeless. I stood, pulling Audrey so she rested against my hip. “She’s six. Of course she doesn’t have a phone.”
“I got my Clementine a phone for her fourth birthday,” the witch said.
The pirate’s turn now. “Not that it’s okay to dump a child on people you barely know.”
“Sam asked you to watch her? Why?”
Both women ignored me. By the witch’s curt nod of agreement, I could tell that this topic of discussion had preceded my arrival and wouldn’t end until all bullet points were addressed. “We’re busy watching our own children.”
“Besides,” the pirate continued. “Nice neighborhoods like this, kids come in from other areas.”
I read her meaning clearly: these “other” children brought trouble with them.
Against my side, Audrey trembled. I stripped off my sweatshirt and wrapped it around her.
“Are you from around here?” the witch asked.
I frowned. “Why? Thinking of throwing a block garage sale?”
The witch picked up on the sarcasm, but the pirate didn’t.
“That’s a good idea, but that’s not why I was asking.” The witch shot her friend a “don’t be stupid” look.
I gave both of them one of my own. If I thought a six-year-old had been abandoned by her parents, I would’ve pounded on doors until I found someone who knew the child. But maybe that was just me. I also hadn’t thought to get my daughter a phone for her fourth birthday.
I took a breath, swallowing my irritation. It wasn’t really these two women who had me upset.
Well, okay, it was a little bit them.
“You said Sam left Audrey with you?”
The pirate pointed to the witch. “With her. I was at my house getting a bottle of water.”
Yeah, water.
The witch nodded. “Sam recognized me from carpool. We usually drop off around the same time.”
“Then where did he go?”
“No clue. He said he wouldn’t be gone long, but that was fifteen minutes ago.”
“And neither of you have seen him since?”
The witch shook her head, but the pirate shrugged. “I’ve never met him,” she said.
I scrolled through the pictures on my phone, selected one of Sam, then held out the phone for the pirate to see. “Him.”
Her brow furrowed as she studied the screen, then she smiled in that way my husband often made women smile. “Yeah, I saw him, but it was earlier. Before he dumped your daughter on my friend here. He looked like he was waiting for someone.”
When Audrey burrowed closer to my hip, I wrapped my arm more tightly around her shoulders. “Why do you think he was waiting for someone?”
“He kept checking his phone, looking around,” the pirate said. “He was texting too. Then he must’ve connected with whoever, because he put his phone in his pocket.”
“How long ago was that?”
They shrugged in unison. “Longer than fifteen minutes,” the pirate said.
We were going in circles, and I needed to get Audrey home. I tried one last question, “Where did you last see him?”
“Over by the ghosts.” The witch pointed to the far side of the yard, toward a palm tree.
I went for my wallet, intending to give them a business card, then realized I hadn’t thought to grab it. “Let me give you my number. In case you see him again.”
I recited my number, which the pirate punched into her phone.
“Thanks for looking out for my daughter,” I said. “I don’t want to take you away from your kids any longer.”
I took some pleasure in the women’s sudden panic as they looked around and realized they had no idea where their children were. I would’ve probably taken more satisfaction if the same couldn’t also be said of my husband.
8
I dropped off Audrey and Boo at Zoe’s. It didn’t take my daughter long to fall asleep, still in her cat costume. A minute after she did, I was back in the rental car.
I wanted to stay with her, to be at her bedside if she should awake, but Audrey didn’t need my comfort. She needed me to find her dad.
So I drove. Santa Rosa is about forty square miles, and I searched each one of them. Some twice. Moving, I had purpose, and with purpose, I didn’t have to stare too closely at the problem. My husband hadn’t come home, and one of the last things he had said to me had been: We need to talk.
Never good words to hear, even less so under the circumstances.
As I drove, I called Sam’s closest friend, Ozzy, several times. Straight to voicemail each time. I kept checking my call log and texts, just to make sure I hadn’t missed any notifications from him or Sam. I hadn’t.
I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and rested my forehead between my hands on the steering wheel. When I stripped away all the hope, all the doubts, it came down to this: Sam had either left voluntarily, or something—someone—had made the choice for him.
Midnight approached and, alone in the car, the explanations that had been playing as background noise in my head no longer made sense.
Originally, I had considered that Sam had left to visit a friend. But that meant he had made the choice to leave our six-year-old daughter with a woman he only recognized from carpool. Besides, Sam wasn’t the type to grab an Uber, so unless he was visiting someone within walking distance, he would have needed his car, and his car still sat in our driveway.
But what if he hadn’t needed his car? He might have left in someone else’s—either coaxed into it or carried. My mind churned like one of those farming combines—reaping, threshing, winnowing possibilities, each more terrible than the last. A car could have clipped him as he crossed the street. He could have tripped. We lived in an older neighborhood, and tree roots pushed up concrete in some spots, throwing up blockades waiting to stub toes and twist ankles. A falling man could crack his head and lose his memory—or his life.
Sam could have been shot, stabbed, or beaten to death—for his wallet and phone, or for no reason at all. If his wallet and phone had been taken, how would the hospital know who to call? If his wedding ring had been stolen, too, how would paramedics even know he had someone back home worrying about him?
My hand trembled as I Googled hospital phone numbers. Each time I connected with the emergency department, I held my breath, but each time I got the same response: no one matching Sam’s description had been admitted.
> That left the police and the morgue. I wasn’t ready to make either call.
Of course, there was another option. Sam’s disappearance might be connected to the attack the night before. We had changed our locks, but we hadn’t changed our address. Carver Sweet would know we had kids if he had opened my wallet, and what felon would leave a wallet unopened? So we had kids, it was Halloween . . . he could guess we would be trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Out from behind our locked doors. Easy prey.
Even as I cast aside a thousand explanations, one returned again and again: Sam might be having an affair. He might’ve left Audrey with a woman he barely knew because the alternative was to bring her to meet his lover.
But if that was true, why hadn’t he called me to pick up our daughter?
An answer came as quickly as the question: maybe he had seen me searching for them. Despite what the costumed moms had said, fifteen minutes wasn’t long. I had been in that neighborhood at least half that time. Sam could’ve seen me, known Audrey was safe, and left to consider how to tell me he was leaving. Or, rather, had already left.
His words hit me again: We need to talk.
Another possibility: Sam had instead intended to break it off with his lover, and she had reacted badly. That brought back the images of Sam unconscious, waiting to be discovered in a bush, a ditch, or in someone’s trunk.
I gripped my cell phone tightly, resisting the urge to toss it on the floorboards. The sleek chunk of circuitry gave only the illusion of connection. I scanned my contacts, but there were few people I could call at that hour. Sam had no family except for cousins, aunts, and uncles, all out of state. I didn’t have the numbers of his coworkers, and I wouldn’t have called them if I did.
I put the car in gear and headed to Ozzy’s.
My husband’s friend lived in Healdsburg, a small town twenty minutes north of Santa Rosa. Known for its wine and the nineteenth-century plaza at its core, Healdsburg was surrounded by brewpubs and boutiques and restaurants with tiny patios where patrons could sip cold brew coffee, or sample locally sourced vegan or upscale Guatemalan fare. The plaza had one of those large gazebos, draped with garlands and lights at Christmas, stars and stripes around patriotic holidays. It had no doubt been filled with the town’s children earlier but sat empty now. Tourists and locals alike were tucked in for the night.
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