or father’s names, nothing other than Mr. or Mrs. Vaughan, or so I assume. And I’m guessing there are tens of thousands of people in the world with the last name Vaughan. Besides, I rationalize in my head, Esther and her family aren’t close. Esther doesn’t like to talk about them, but I gather that her father’s out of the picture; her mother and she are estranged. How do I know this? Because while my own mother sends care packages galore and shows up without warning at our door, Esther’s mom doesn’t even call to say hello. I asked Esther about her family once; she said she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t ask again. One time a card arrived, but Esther let it sit on the kitchen table for four days, unopened, before throwing it in the trash.
“Any reason to believe there was foul play?” the operator asks, and I say no. “Does the missing person have a medical condition that would make the issue life-threatening?” she asks, and again I say no. Her voice is detached and unfriendly, as if she doesn’t care. She probably doesn’t, but you’d think an emergency or nonemergency operator would have at least a scant amount of sympathy. I almost want to make something up, to tell this woman that Esther is diabetic and that she’s left all her insulin at home, or that she has asthma and is without an inhaler. Then maybe this woman would show concern. Maybe I should tell her the window screen was gashed, the glass broken in. That there was blood, a pool of it, enough for Esther to have completely bled out. Then maybe I’d be redirected to 911 and suddenly Esther’s disappearance would be deemed an emergency.
Or maybe the operator is trying to clue me in to something: this isn’t an emergency; Esther is fine. She says to me then, “Nearly seventy percent of missing people leave of their own free will and return within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, voluntarily. You’re more than welcome to come to the station and file a missing-persons report, though there’s only so much the police can do in the case of missing adults. Without evidence of foul play, we can’t immediately think something criminal has happened. People are allowed to up and disappear if they want to. But if you file a report, your roommate will be placed in a missing-persons database and our investigators will look into it.
“Does your roommate drink, do drugs?” she asks then, and I quickly shake my head and say no. Well, Esther does drink, a margarita here, a daiquiri there, but she isn’t an alcoholic or anything.
It’s then that the operator asks about Esther’s mental state—does she suffer from depression?—and I picture Esther’s magnanimous smile and think to myself that she can’t be. She just can’t be.
“No,” I say without delay, “of course not.”
“Did you two get into an argument recently?” she asks, and I realize she’s trying to insinuate that I did something to hurt Esther. Did Esther and I get into an argument? Of course not. But was Esther upset that I went out last night without her, though she’d told me to go? I don’t know. I reiterate to myself that she told me to go. I’d be a killjoy, Quinn. Go without me. You’ll have more fun. That’s exactly what she said. So how could she be mad?
“We didn’t get into an argument,” I say, and the operator leaves me with two options: I can come in and file a missing-persons report, or I can wait it out.
I feel silly for calling the operator, and so I decide to wait it out. The last thing I need to do is stare an officer in the eye and feel like a fool in person. I have plenty of experience with this. I’ll call the hospitals; I’ll try and track Esther’s family down. I’ll wait for Ben to call, and with any luck, Esther will come home of her own free will, just like the operator said, within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Two to three days. Two to three days, I think. I don’t know if I can wait that long for Esther to come home.
I hang up with the operator and will Ben to call. Please, Ben, please, I silently beg. Please call. But Ben doesn’t call. I search online for the numbers of the closest area hospitals, starting with Methodist, and then I call, asking the receptionists one by one if Esther is there. I state her name and then I describe her—the shaded hair, the heterochromatic eyes, the ungrudging smile—knowing that Esther has that kind of face that once you’ve seen it, you never forget. But Esther isn’t at Methodist Hospital or Weiss or any of the local urgent care facilities. I lose hope with each apathetic reply. No Esther Vaughan here.
I’m feeling lost and alone when I hear the sound of a telephone ringing. Not my phone, but a phone. Esther’s phone, which I know from the ringtone, some 1980s Billboard hit that nobody listens to anymore.
Esther’s ringtone. Esther’s phone.
Esther’s not here, so why is her phone?
I rise to my feet to find it.
I wonder if she has any idea she’s being watched.
I watch the girl twitch her hands, scratch her head. I watch her cross her legs this way—and then that way—on the park swing, trying to get comfortable. Then she uncrosses her legs and kicks at the sand. She looks left, right, and then peers upward and opens her mouth to catch droplets of rainwater falling from the sky.
I have no idea how long I stare. Long enough that my hands go numb from the cold and the rain.
It’s after some time that the girl rises to her feet and stands. Her feet, in the chestnut-colored Uggs, sink into the sand as she moves through it and toward the beach. Closer and closer to the water. It’s hard for her to move through the sand thanks to the density of it, for one, and the wind. It pushes her modest body this way and that, her arms out at her sides like the arms of a tightrope walker. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.
And then three feet before the tide line, she stops.
And I stare.
And this is what happens. It starts with the boots first, which she draws from her feet with great balance, one foot, and then the other. She sets them side by side in the sand. The socks are next, and I think to myself, Is she crazy? Thinking she will dip her feet into the frigid waters of a November Lake Michigan. It can’t be more than forty degrees. Ice cold. The kind of water that gives rise to hypothermia.
The socks get tucked into the shaft of the boot so they don’t blow away. I watch and wait for the girl to totter to the lake’s side and walk right on in, but she doesn’t. There’s a moment that passes—or many moments, maybe, I don’t know, I’ve lost all sense of time—before she reaches for the buttons of the coat and starts to unbutton from top to bottom. And then the coat comes off. Set in the sand beside the boots and the socks. It’s as she starts to remove the jeans from her legs that I think, This can’t be happening. I peer around for another onlooker, someone, anyone, to tell me this is real and not only a figment of my imagination. Is this really happening? This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
I’ve stood now and moved closer, two, maybe three feet, hidden behind the wooden columns that frame the picnic shelter. I wrap my hands around the columns and squint my eyes so that I can see the way Pearl unbuttons and unzips the jeans, the way she sets herself down in the wet sand and drags the denim from her legs, setting that, too, by the coat and the shoes. The rain has picked up its pace now and barrels down harder, blowing sideways in the wind. It sweeps through the orifices in the enclosed shelter space and soaks me through and through. The girl stands then, hands in the pockets of her blue hoodie, with nothing else on. Just the hoodie and a pair of underpants. And the hat and scarf.
But then the hoodie goes, too.
And it’s then that she enters the water. In nothing more than her undergarments, her scarf and a hat.
