me, I can be back here in less than five minutes.”
Lucas watches her shrug into her coat and collect her things, jaw clenched. Muscles and tendons twitch under the cotton of his T-shirt.
Dawn slips out the door, and he turns to me. “What do you need me to do?”
I don’t hesitate. This is the reason I called him here, to bulldoze the woods and search for clues, to follow my baby’s footsteps through the terrain. As much as I want him to stay here and comfort me, I need him to find Ethan. Never have I needed anything more.
“Find him, Lucas.” I hold his gaze, and his eyes glisten with marching orders. “Go out there and find Ethan for me.”
Lucas jumps up, swipes his duffel from the floor and disappears out the door.
* * *
As soon as Lucas is gone and I’m alone in the cabin, I try Andrew’s numbers but get flipped to voice mail again. The sound of his voice after all these months scrapes across my nerves like a patch of stinging nettle.
At the beep, I take a deep breath.
“Andrew, this is Kat... I’ve been trying to reach you for hours now. Ethan’s missing. If you had anything to do with it, if he’s there with you right now, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll give you anything. I’ll cancel the restraining order. I’ll beg the judge to give you fifty percent custody. I’ll take out a full-page ad in the AJC and tell everybody you never laid a hand on me if you want me to...” My throat threatens to funnel shut, but I force myself to shove the words over my tongue. “Just please. Don’t take Ethan from me. I’m begging you. Please don’t take my baby away.”
I hang up just in time, right before a sob pushes up my throat and steals my voice. I toss the phone on the table, cover my face with my hands and let the tears come, the images flitting through my mind like a horror show. Ethan on the backseat of Andrew’s Mercedes, wondering where they’re going. Andrew laughing every time he sees my name pop up on his cell phone screen. Are the police tracking it? Are they watching the blips move farther and farther away on some computer screen? It’s almost nine. They could be halfway to Mexico by now.
I jump out of my chair and begin pacing.
I think about what it would be like to never see Ethan’s face again, to live the rest of my life not knowing, never finding answers. I think about Ethan, blindfolded and bawling, in the back of some unmarked van. His little body, mangled beyond recognition. My thoughts are wild things, chasing me around the tiny room.
“No.” My voice is thin and reedy in the cabin, and I try it again, this time louder. “No.” I can’t do this to myself. I swipe the legal pad and pen from the couch and force myself to sit still long enough to make a list of names.
The first dozen or so come without much effort. Lucas. Izzy and two—no, three of her ex-boyfriends, none of them lasting more than a few months but long enough that Ethan remembers their names. Our old neighbor, Mrs. T, who still drops by on Christmas with hand-knit socks nobody ever wears. Andrew and our old friends, most of them people I haven’t seen since the afternoon outside the CVS. Are they still in his life? Are there new friends I don’t know about? I have no idea.
And what about my neighbors? I don’t know their names, but I know I don’t trust them. Ethan is not allowed to play in his own front yard without me there, a lioness watching her cub. Though why would any of them drive all the way here to steal the kid who lives across the street?
I make a list of places we go—school, the Publix down the street, the deli on the corner where Ethan once asked me why a homeless man was rummaging through the Dumpster. “Because he’s hungry, I guess.” Ethan gave the man his sandwich. Fresh tears prick my eyes, because that’s the kind of child I have, one who is constantly reminding me there are people in the world who have it worse.
I think back to what Dawn told me earlier, about roadblocks and neighborhood canvasses and all those strings of letters that sounded straight out of a crime show. One pops miraculously in my mind: BOLO. Be on the lookout for. But did she mention where they were looking? Which direction? I wish I’d thought to take notes.
The questions beat an insistent drill in my skull. Where else are they looking? How many police officers are on the case? Has the media been alerted? What about an AMBER Alert? Are there other state and national alert systems for missing children? Are there others working to spread the word, too?
I flip to a clean page, start jotting down the questions before they can flit away. I’ve barely recorded one before the next one thrums its way into my consciousness. Before long, the paper is covered in blue ink and scribbles. I flip to the next sheet and keep going.
What about the teachers and chaperones? How certain are the police that they were where they said they were? Have they all been questioned, accounted for? What about the camp staff, the other kids? Surely somebody heard or saw something. Who’s talking to them?
And then there are the more sweeping questions about missing children, morbid generalizations I can’t help but consider. What are the statistics on the first few hours, the first few days? If we don’t find him soon, what does that mean for the likelihood of finding him at all? At what point will Dawn sit me down and tell me to start preparing for the worst? After two days? After three days missing?
Before I know it, I’m crying again. I think about Ethan climbing onto the bus at school, my mind already flitting to my endless to-do list at work, and my stomach aches. I see myself standing on the sidewalk, waving up at the dark smudges behind the bus’s tinted glass. I couldn’t even tell if he was waving back, or for that matter, if it was even Ethan. I just picked out one shadowy lump and waved and waved and waved, because the sooner that bus left, the sooner I could race off to work.
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