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She came around the desk. Took his hand again. “We’ll find him, Grant.”
She didn’t look him straight in the eye when she said it. But he was glad she’d cared enough to say the words anyway.
* * *
THE POLICE CAME. Took Grant’s statement. They talked to Angelica and Carmelita, too. And many of the residents who were gathered together in a recreation hall in the main building.
Maria Cleveland was absent. She was in a private counseling session with Sara, being encouraged to press charges against her husband for spousal abuse so the police could keep him locked up and away from her.
A few of the residents had seen Darin that morning. None of them remembered anything different about him. Or knew anything about where he could be.
But in the past ten days, he’d been seen all around the grounds helping Grant with the landscaping. He could mow now. And trim. And had been doing a lot of both. The ladies were used to having him around. They might not have noticed anything amiss.
Darin had been gone two hours, and Lynn could tell that Grant was starting to let his panic get the better of him. She was surprised he’d remained calm as long as he had. For seventeen years his life had revolved around Darin.
“It’s almost time to go get Kara,” she said. “Let’s pick her up early and take another walk around the grounds.”
Maybe her precocious offspring would distract Grant a little bit. Either way, Lynn was going to collect her. There’d been too much danger that day. Lynn needed Kara close.
She took his hand as they walked through subdued hallways toward the private day care where Kara had been taking dance class that afternoon. “Did we look in here?” Grant asked, stopping by a janitor door. “Maybe he got locked in someplace by accident….” He didn’t let go of her hand.
With her free hand, Lynn pulled open the door. There wasn’t room in the supply closet for a man of Darin’s size to stand, let alone hide.
Security had already checked the landscaping garage. And they’d been back a second time.
“I don’t understand this,” Grant said. “If Darin wasn’t missing, I’d be thrilled to hear that he’d actually gone someplace on his own. He clings to the familiar. Always.”
“Other than that one time he wet himself, he’s never just wandered off but found his way back?”
“Not once. In seventeen years, not once.”
They’d reached the day care. Grant squeezed her hand and let it go, standing off to the side as she opened the door and stepped into the small foyer.
“You can come in,” she told him, holding open the door.
Leaving him in the front entryway, she went through another door, down a small hallway and peeked into the dance class, praying that it was ending. Kara wouldn’t be happy about being pulled out early.
The class was still underway.
But she couldn’t see Kara at first. So she moved over to get a different view from the big window into the room. And still, even when she peered in the mirror straight ahead of her to get a view of the back of the room, she couldn’t find Kara.
With all that had been going on that day, Lynn’s nerves were frayed. She was staff. A nurse. She could interrupt any function on campus. So she did. Pulling open the door, she stepped inside, an apology to the teacher on her lips as she sought her toddler out from the other seven or eight kids, male and female, absently registering that they’d brought kids over from the public day care to take part in the class.
But not really caring at the moment.
“Where’s Kara?” she blurted out over the children’s music blaring from a boom box on the floor by the instructor.
“Kara?” The twentysomething woman asked. She’d been abused by her mother’s boyfriend, if Lynn remembered correctly. Sexually. Thankfully there’d been no internal damage.
“My daughter. She was signed up to take this class.”
“I thought she was with Maddie,” the girl said. “I saw her in the hallway…walking behind Maddie. They told me Maddie has jurisdiction over her and I thought she’d decided not to put Kara in class….”
The girl was babbling. Seemingly unaware of the other kids in her care—most of whom were standing there staring, as if someone was getting in trouble and they didn’t want it to be them.
