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“They aren’t doing much of anything.” Her voice wavered. “I’m going over to her work as soon as it opens at six. I couldn’t get a hold of anybody last night.”
My dad swore under his breath then cleared his throat and said, “I’m booked for the 10:00 flight. I should be there by noon. We’ll find her, Mari. We’ll find her. Have you been able to log into her computer? See if she was getting cold feet about college or something.”
I could hear the desperation in his voice. The hope that maybe there was some kind of non-awful explanation. That maybe I was somewhere safe—if not especially responsible.
They both knew me better than that, even if the police didn’t. I’d never not come home.
My mom shook her head. “I tried and tried. I can’t figure out her password.”
“There’s nothing to find there,” I told her. “Don’t bother.” But even as I said the words, she was grabbing a scrap of paper to jot down “1025” and “Mickey.” Mickey was the name of the dachshund we’d had when I was five. And 1025 was the pin I’d chosen for a joint bank account I’d had with my mom when I was in elementary school. My actual password was a combination of letters and numbers I’d created from the chorus of a Britney Spears song. She’d never guess it.
When she hung up with my dad, my mom sat at the kitchen table staring at her phone. I sat and stared too, willing it to ring.
It wasn’t like finding out what had happened would bring me back.
Even so, I wanted to be found as much as she wanted to find me.
And I wanted the police to hunt James down more than I had ever wanted anything.
“Ask Ken about the hot chocolate guy. His name is James,” I told her, knowing she couldn’t hear me but unable to stop myself. I was pretty sure nobody had seen me get into James’s car; however, he’d been in that coffee shop at least three or four times a week all that summer.
Ken thought he was a nice guy. He wanted you to ask him out, I reminded myself as the despair settled over me in the dark kitchen like a lead blanket.
My mom’s eyes slowly filled with tears. I wondered if we were wrapped up in that blanket together.
* * *
We pulled into the Daily Grind parking lot at exactly 5:58 a.m.
I sat shotgun on top of a flattened breakfast sandwich wrapper that had been there for at least a month. My mom got teary-eyed to a country song about family and God while she drove. And as she parked the car and swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie, I suddenly realized that I was haunting her.
There was hardly anybody on the sidewalks or roads yet. One lone jogger. Someone standing in front of the cookie shop across the strip mall in the dim street light. A dark figure scurrying across the intersection near the bus stop. I wondered whether all of them were alive. Or if I could see dead people now that I was one. Did everyone turn into a ghost when they died, or was I an anomaly? Would I disappear after a while? Did I have a choice in the matter? Or was this my personal eternity? Was it limbo, or was this hell? What would happen when they caught James? What would happen if they didn’t? Was I still around because I had unfinished business?
I shut down that train of thought and focused on following my mom up to the front door.
Like I’d hoped, Ken was on shift to open up. When he heard the knock on the still-locked door, he walked to the counter and glanced into the lobby. He looked puzzled when he saw my mom’s beat-up red Buick Century—which I had sometimes borrowed on weekends if she wasn’t working at the hospice center—but he hurried to open the lobby door.
Before he had even finished with, “Hey, are you Skye’s mom?” she was in tears and telling him that I hadn’t come home.
Ken didn’t make her stand in the doorway. He flipped the front-door sign to open and called back to whoever was in the employee area. “Hey! You’re on lobby, okay? I need a few minutes.” Then he ushered her toward the comfy green chair in the corner of the room where they couldn’t be seen from the front counter. It was where the really serious freelancers came to snag a spot to work—and where we sometimes found kids making out after school.
He sat down in front of her and laced his hands together carefully the way he had when I forgot to clean the espresso machine over the weekend and it clogged. “Tell me what happened.”
* * *
When my mom told Ken what she knew—which wasn’t much—he looked increasingly worried. I hadn’t come home, I wasn’t answering my texts or calls, and the police weren’t exactly racing to find me. Ken pulled out his phone to show her that I hadn’t answered his text the night before either. I looked at his screen.
Drive SAFE. If hot chocolate guy ever asks about u, I’m gonna send him to your dorm.
It felt like I’d been turned into ice water.
My mom’s expression darkened. “Who’s hot chocolate guy?”
“Yes,” I prompted, standing up. The can lights in the lobby flickered, and the espresso machine blinked erratically. “That’s right. That’s him.”
Ken side-eyed the flickering lights. “Just one of our regulars. Inside joke. I teased her that she should ask him out all the time, write her phone number on his cup, but she never did.”
My mom’s face fell. “You don’t think he has something to do with it?”
