The Missing Place (17 page)

“Yes. Good.”

“You look like you're about to fall over. You can't do anything more right now. Get some sleep, Colleen.”

“What about you?”

“In a minute. I just need to check a few things. I've been reading all these blogs and I got on Facebook and found six people who either work for Hunter-Cole now or have in the past. I mean, some of them are private so I can't learn much until they friend me back, but it's a start. I'm looking at the reservation site now.”

“My best friend back home is doing that too. Andy said she's been trying to get the word out.”

“What's her name? I'll friend her and see if we can join efforts.”

“Vicki—Victoria, actually. Victoria Wilson.”

“Victoria Wilson, Sudbury, Mass? Oh, here we go . . . good, got it.”

Colleen set her phone alarm for six, knowing she'd be up even earlier. She was suddenly unable to keep her eyes open as she slid down under the blankets.

VICTORIA WILSON WAS
about what Shay expected—a slightly flashier version of Colleen, same smooth haircut, same understated earrings, trendy eyeglasses.

She was also a night owl, at least this week. She accepted Shay's friendship request within moments. Shay was about to message her, explain who she was, but then for some reason she hesitated. Instead, she scrolled down through several pages of updates and other people's wall posts. It looked like Vicki had cranked up the effort as soon as Colleen had left Boston. Vicki had posted on websites and blogs for every school Paul had ever attended, from the looks of it. Community bulletin boards. Neighbors, friends, old teachers—all of them were adding their best wishes and prayers on Vicki's wall.

A woman named Laura Schmidt-with-a-D had set up a CaringBridge page, which, from the looks of it, was designed to feed Andy. Already three weeks' worth of “healthy meals and snacks” had been signed up for, his preferences—did Laura already know them, or had Colleen's friends conferred, putting together the information from years of acquaintance with the Mitchells?—listed for all to see. “No lamb or shellfish please. Low-fat where possible. CHOCOLATE always welcome! Please no white flour.”

Vicki was no slouch. From the looks of it, she'd managed to find most of the same resources that Shay had, and several she hadn't. Of course, she had an advantage—she was doing this around the clock, probably from some
Better Homes and Gardens
kitchen while the nanny took care of her kids.

“Stop it,” Shay whispered to herself. God, she could be such a bitch. She was lucky to have Vicki on her side, even if only by proxy. She read through enough of the comments to see that Vicki mentioned Taylor in nearly every comment and post in which she mentioned Paul. Already, pictures of the boys were popping up,
along with dozens of prayers and “thinking of you” comments by strangers.

Shay blinked and took a sip of her beer. She really ought to get some sleep. She clicked over to her Etsy account; there'd been half a dozen new orders in the last couple of days. She'd set up an auto-responder before she left California, explaining to would-be customers of CaliGirl Designs that due to personal issues, her orders were backlogged. Which was going to be hell on her business. But fuck it. Until she got Taylor back, all of that had to wait, even if it meant she had to start over from zero.

“Love the Medium Box with Curved Drawers,” a woman named MitzyD wrote. “I was wondering can you make me one custom for my daughter. She is graduating from 8th grade. Can you put an S in the middle of the design and some of the ruby crystals because ruby is her birthstone. Also she loves horses flute and dance.”

Shay stared at the note for a long time, trying to imagine the little girl. The custom work wasn't cheap; the Swarovski crystals cost a bundle even through the wholesaler, and Shay had increased her prices as her customer base grew. For one of the medium jewelry boxes, with either images that the customer sent or that Shay selected, she charged two hundred dollars. It took a while, because every step of the paint and découpage process had to dry for the right amount of time, and Shay didn't take any shortcuts—didn't skimp on the sanding, made sure the fittings were secure, added her own custom paint work.

Still, she cleared about a hundred seventy in profit, money that she could really use, even if Colleen did keep picking up the tab for everything. But it wasn't just the money that kept Shay's attention fixed on the note. MitzyD's tiny little square profile picture didn't reveal much—a cartoonish pose with outsize glasses and a pink wig. A
cool mom, then—a fun-loving mom who celebrated her kid's milestones and made her feel special. Shay approved.

She dug in her purse for her cigarettes and put one in her mouth. Not to smoke, not to light up. Maybe if Colleen wasn't here . . . But Brenda was being such a bitch; Shay was pretty sure she was over there in the house thinking about what she could charge the next person to rent the motor home. Too bad she didn't realize Colleen would pay her whatever she wanted. Well, Shay wasn't going to be the one to tell her.

She rolled the cigarette back and forth in her lips, inhaling the smell of the tobacco. They ought to make a perfume out of that. Tobacco and whiskey and maybe some vanilla or something to bind it all together. No—throw in some Polo Explorer. The thought of Mack's aftershave traveled through her tired body, making her miss him so powerfully it was like the memory of him was more real than this moment, this trailer, this image on the screen in front of her. Mack wore aftershave only on days when he had to put on a tie and go up to the office in Sacramento, but those were good days because he could usually see her on the way back; Caroline never expected him home for dinner on those days. Sometimes, he got away on weekends, and then he came to her smelling of woodsmoke and grass clippings and sweat, and Shay loved that even more, drinking him in, inhaling him, trying to make him last.

He'd email her again tomorrow. He emailed every day. But she wouldn't be weak, she wouldn't go looking for comfort rereading his note, not when she had this job to do. They were grown-ups. God, how many times had they reminded each other of that? They weren't teenagers. Hell, he was going to be fifty in the spring; Caroline was talking about throwing him a huge party when the kids came home from college for the summer. It was good. It was fine. Mack was a
piece of her life that Shay goddamn well deserved, that she refused to feel guilty about, but she wasn't about to go making him into something he wasn't. And he wasn't the man who held her when she couldn't go on—because Shay never, ever let herself get to that place.

“Fuck,” she whispered. Quickly she typed a note back to MitzyD, saying that she was sorry she couldn't commit to a custom piece at the moment but that she'd be in touch as soon as she was able, and would throw in a 20 percent discount for her patience if she was still interested.

“Congratulations to your daughter,” she added, and when her throat went a little thick and her eyes watered, she hit Send more savagely than necessary and took a fake drag on her unlit cigarette.

The Facebook window was still open. There had been three more comments since she last looked. Two more God-be-with-you wishes.

And one in all caps that read,
“HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW, COLLEEN?”

SHAY LOOKED OVER
at Colleen, who slept with her hand on the pillow next to her cheek, prettily, like somebody posing for a mattress ad.

Her heart was pounding as she clicked over to Nan Terry's profile. It wasn't private; Shay was able to view her photos (twenty-two photos in two albums, profile pictures and everything else lumped together) and her posts (infrequent; she played Bubble Safari and Candy Crush and was fond of reposting inspirational pictures) and her friends (124 of them). She was married to Gerald Terry, whose profile was even more sparse. She was mother of Caryssa Terry, age seventeen and a junior at Sudbury High, and Darren Terry, age twenty, attending Massasoit Community College.

Shay enlarged Darren's profile picture as much as she could. He was a nice-looking kid with a shock of reddish hair that would mellow to auburn as he aged, a smattering of freckles, and a wide, confident grin.

And a scar that traced from one temple down past his cheek, ending an inch short of his jaw. It was faint, almost invisible, but as Shay clicked through his pictures it was more apparent in some of them, when his profile was turned toward the camera.

Shay looked at the time: almost two a.m. She started searching in earnest.

The motor home was completely silent other than Colleen's occasional sighs and the wind against the windows. It had stopped
snowing, and outside she could catch a glimpse of stars. The cold crept up through the floor, through Shay's feet, and now and then she tugged the blankets tighter around herself.

It took nearly half an hour, and dozens of blind alleys and dead ends, before she found it, and it wasn't in any news item or community posting, but rather in a Facebook post from a kid who'd gone to a high school that apparently had a rivalry with Sudbury High, where both Paul Mitchell and Darren Terry had played football their freshman year. Darren had been moved up to varsity halfway through the season, and Paul, who never made it past the freshman team, wasn't tagged in any of the same pictures as Darren and wasn't his friend on Facebook, but apparently they had once known each other.

In what would have been their junior year, a kid from Medfield wrote a long post that was commented on by dozens of kids from both high schools, in which he talked about an upcoming game between the Sudbury Panthers and the Medfield Warriors.

There wide receiver can't block worth shit. Remember when he was a freshman that retard nearly killed him he couldn't even take him in a fair fight. Paul Mitchell your my hero bro even if you are messed up. Go tell your boyz watch out because the WARRIORS are coming to fuck them up. Oh but dont hit TERRY again I want to take him down myself.

Adrenaline surged in Shay's veins. She narrowed her search to the months the boys would have played football their freshman year, tried a variety of search terms. Nothing. Then she turned her attention to the online white pages.

It was nearly three when she put her coat on and went outside. First she smoked the cigarette, its filter damp and limp from being
chewed on. She tossed the butt on the ground and toed snow over it. A truck drove by, trundling slowly, loaded with steel pipe. Shay barely registered the cold against her face.

She dialed.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Terry?”

“Who is this? It's barely four o'clock in the morning.”

“I'm really, really sorry to call you like this. I don't want to intrude on your privacy. But it's kind of important. Please don't hang up.”

There was a silence. Shay imagined the woman in her fancy New England home, clutching her nightgown around her, heart pounding from the middle-of-the-night ringing of the phone. She took a breath. She was about to lie, to betray. But it was the morning of the thirteenth day since her boy went missing, so Shay made herself not care. It wasn't the hardest thing she'd done by a long shot.

“My name is Anne Hutchins. I'm calling because my son Ben works with Paul Mitchell in Lawton, North Dakota.” Betting that Nan Terry wouldn't know a California area code when she saw one. Betting that she'd be unable to hang up when she heard what Shay said next. When her voice broke, she wasn't entirely faking. “Ben's in the hospital. He's beat up bad, Mrs. Terry. My husband and I . . . we just want to know what happened.”

“Oh, my God. He's done it
again.
Oh, God, I knew this would happen.”

“Done what?”

“I . . . can't talk about it. Look. That boy is dangerous, that's all I'll say. I'm legally obligated not to talk about it.”

Icy dread took hold of Shay. “Please. I won't repeat what you tell me to anyone, I swear it. I'm just trying to understand what happened. I won't mention your name, I won't—”

“If I talk to you, it's completely off the record, do you understand? If anyone contacts me, if you get a lawyer, I'm going to deny I ever talked to you—”

The woman's anguish was clear even two thousand miles away. “I understand. Please, just tell me what you can.”

“When my son was a freshman in high school, he said something to Paul Mitchell in the locker room after football practice one night. There were three of them getting dressed, and the other boy started it. He was making fun of Paul because of his dyslexia, calling him a retard, but it was only when Darren joined in that Paul snapped. What Darren said, it was a stupid thing to say, but you know how boys are at that age. I mean, God, they were all of fifteen. Darren's not a mean kid, and the other kid started it, but Paul came at him with both fists and kept pounding Darren even after he was down, and then he switched to kicking him. With his
cleats.
There was blood
everywhere
, I saw the pictures. By the time the other guy pulled Paul off of him, Darren was already unconscious. He lost three teeth, his jaw was broken, his eye socket was fractured, his face—oh, God, if it had gone to trial and they'd let the jury see those photos, they would have sent Paul away. If he'd been eighteen . . .”