At three minutes to four, Kay pulled into the parking lot at Kamp Wahoo. She felt the old elation, her mind putting pieces together, her hand moving clearly across the pages of her notebook. Ben and Frank, running a scam, drugs and logging. How did that fit together? She recalled Ammon: “Ask yer boyfriend.” She recalled Candice: “I think Ben knows.”
Other parents waited in idling cars, windows sealed up against the heat. Kay put aside the notebooks; she was almost proud to join the line-up on time. Here I am: a good mother.
At last, children straggled out from the building, dragging towels and backpacks. Hitting open air, they began to run or skip or dance, it was impossible for them to walk. Tom and Freya always ran out from school as if they were late or in a hurry, and Kay sometimes wanted to stop them, slow them, tell them to be careful and remember this—this weightless lightness in the world, because you will have years and years to be a grown-up, heavy as lead.
The cars moved ahead of her, an orderly procession. She let several pass in front of her, their children lined up on the side walk. But not hers, Tom and Freya did not appear.
Like bags from the carousel at the airport, surely, the next round would bring Tom and Frey. Kay waited, children came, children went.
Until all the other cars were gone, all the other children being ferried home for supper.
Still hers did not appear.
Kay turned off the car, stepped out into the sun, seeking, searching. Again, again, straining to see them over the blue lake water, only here, instead, a building, a playground, today. She was continually losing her children as if they were car keys. The feeling of unease inside her again, a nut in its loose shell, rattling.
A final clot of children burst from the doors, one, two stragglers. She glanced at her watch: 4:30.
A boy went missing in the woods. His parents looked everywhere. Their friends and family joined in, they called the police who came with a dog, and they found the boy asleep in a pile of leaves.
A boy went missing in the woods and was never found. Or was found.
Phoebe Figgs exited, locking the doors behind her.
“Mrs. Figgs? Phoebe?”
She turned, and Kay felt as if she must perform, must present the right mother—not the mother who had nearly let them drown less than 48 hours ago.
“Freya and Tom…?”
Phoebe frowned. “They’ve left already.”
“No, they haven’t.”
“Yes. Their father—”
“What father?”
“He came earlier to pick them up.”
“But he’s not here. He’s in Côte d’Ivoire.”
“I’m sure he—”
Kay was close to her. Kay wanted to grab her throat. She shouted: “Where are they? Where are my children?”
For a brief moment, panic flashed in Phoebe’s eyes—doubt and headlines in national papers. Then she regrouped. “Michael. Their father. They said he was their father and he said he was their father and he’s on the list approved for pickup.”
Kay’s mouth, dry as ash. “What?”
“You put him on the list, don’t you remember? In the application?”
“But he’s not here!”
“Apparently he is.”
“He can’t be!”
Phoebe made a little shrug.
“What time did this happen?”
“Right after lunch.”
“And they went with him?”
“Yes, they went with him.”
“And you never thought to call me?”
Phoebe raised her hand, a stop sign between herself and Kay. “Look, Mrs. Ward, I don’t know what’s going on, if this is a custody issue or what. Your husband—their father’s name is on the list. He came, the kids went with him, they were perfectly happy. That’s the end of the story as far as I’m concerned.”
Perfectly happy.
Phoebe very nearly let a delicate smile of victory touch her lips as she walked away from Kay, confirming her opinion. Not even opinion: the ruinous facts of Kay. Phoebe got into her Honda Pilot and drove off.
Kay’s hands were trembling as she turned on her phone. One message, received earlier in the afternoon. While she was interviewing Candice for a story that didn’t even exist.
“I’ve got the kids,” Michael was saying. “They’re fine, they’re safe. We’ll talk later.” His tired, jet-lagged, man-of-the-world voice. His superior voice.
They’re safe. And perfectly happy.
Despite the heat, goose bumps sprouted on her skin. She began to shiver. Freya. Of course, it would be Freya. Kay scrolled through her phone’s call log. Four calls to Michael’s phone between 4 and 5 a.m. So, Freya’d woken up, she’d taken Kay’s phone, she’d crouched on the toilet. “Daddy,” she’d have said, sobbed, her face illuminated by the slab of the screen. “I love you, please come and get me, I don’t want to stay with Mum.”
But it must have been further back, because Michael had to come from West Africa, not a spur-of-the-moment trip. He was in the airport yesterday—she recalled the gate numbers she’d seen during their Facetime. He’d already been coming back.
And there they were: a half-dozen calls at random times over the past few days—all made in the middle of the night. Freya, getting up in the dark house, an angry ghost, a disappointed ghost. “Daddy, Daddy, I miss you.”
Kay’s heart both broke and contracted like a fist. She let her forehead rest on the steering wheel and sobbed, ugly, heaving, snotty sobs of despair. Then the sobs ran out, and she was empty. All she contained was approximately 20 sobs, a few milliliters of tears. A dram of tears. She stared through her hands, over the rim of the steering wheel, out the windshield at the summer afternoon. Her hand was throbbing as if her pulse was a baseball bat. She started the car.
The Dirty Ditty was down near the railroad that bisected East Montrose. She’d passed it every day, she knew exactly where to go, the tiny Siri in her head giving perfect instructions: park the car, three steps down, open the door, and pass into the forgiving gloom.
She did not regard the other customers, that would have been impolite, but she ascertained there were three or four scattered along the bar. Private drinkers. She sat down. The barman, thin, long-haired, middle-aged, Black Sabbath t-shirt, his face incurious: “What kin I git you, hon?”
“Bourbon, straight, no ice. Wild Turkey is fine.”
The glass came, the lovely amber glow catching what there was of sunlight. The bartender moved off, having done his part. Kay drank, the warm liquid furring her throat, curling in her belly. She’d waited a long time for this moment, a simple drink in a bar, all by herself.
Because she could, she ordered another. There was no rush. The day was long and she had no supper to cook, no dishes to wash, no shoes AWOL, no child’s turd abandoned on a fantastic floating lily of toilet paper. Who forgot to flush the toilet? It would never be claimed, not me, not me, pixies or Santa must have left it there.
She watched the barman wipe down the glasses, glide back and forth behind the bar, smoothly wheeled, ferrying drinks of regret or solace, depending. How much time there was, suddenly. She felt time stretch out and lie down, a cat in a sunny window. She had three drinks, that was enough. Her limbs felt looser in their sockets, her vertebrae soft and snakey.