“Mrs. McGillycuddy,” whispered the nurse with the purple-laced tennis shoes.
The nurse was standing beside the recliner chair in which Serendipity had spent a second fitful, uncomfortable night at Denis’s bedside. He put a gentle hand on Serendipity’s shoulder and whispered again.
“Mrs. McGillycuddy … it’s Tuesday.”
Serendipity sat bolt upright.
“What? Where? Is she back? Is she all right?”
Serendipity’s eyes adjusted to the light in the hospital room, and she remembered where she was. Denis was unchanged. Her eyes scanned the room, but there was no sign of Tuesday.
“Where is she?” Serendipity asked the nurse. “Is she here?”
“I meant it’s Tuesday morning, and you’ve been here—” explained the nurse.
“Oh, I thought you meant my daughter,” said Serendipity, sinking back into the chair. “I thought…”
“Your girl is called Tuesday?” the nurse asked. “Not the one that’s gone missing?”
Serendipity stared at him. “What do you know?”
“I heard it on the news at midnight. There’s been a huge search going on through City Park all night. I didn’t realize … I thought ‘McGillycuddy’ was a coincidence. I mean, you didn’t seem like a mother whose daughter was missing.”
With a groan, Serendipity realized she hadn’t returned to Brown Street as she’d arranged with Miss Digby. She’d been so overwhelmed by all that had happened to Denis, she’d completely forgotten. She’d eaten a rather grim hospital meal and fallen asleep in the recliner chair, exhausted from the events of the previous night. Miss Digby must have been alone at Brown Street for hours. Miss Digby would have seen the notes Serendipity had left and Tuesday’s bed clearly not slept in.
“I have to get home,” said Serendipity, scrambling up and collecting her things.
“Of course,” the nurse was saying. “I promise the hospital will call the moment there is any change in Mr. McGillycuddy’s condition. Any change at all. And I’m so sorry about your daughter … I had no idea…”
* * *
In the taxi that took her home, the radio repeated the overnight news of a girl called Tuesday McGillycuddy, who had been missing since Sunday afternoon. Serendipity recognized the voice of her next-door neighbor, old Mr. Garfunkle.
“They’re a very quiet family. Tuesday is a lovely girl, and her dog never digs up my garden like some of the dogs in the street do. I want whoever has taken her to bring her back immediately. It’s outrageous to think that a child can’t take her dog for a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon without something going wrong.”
Serendipity had never realized how much she liked Mr. Garfunkle until then.
“The police search began in earnest at midnight last night and will continue today,” the newsreader said, and gave a description of Tuesday and a number to call if anyone had information. After the report, the taxi driver turned down the volume, and Serendipity could barely hear the rest of the news, which was about the latest writers to have been discovered in Mongolia and Beirut and the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
“Terrible about that young girl, isn’t it?” the driver said as he turned the corner onto Brown Street.
Before Serendipity could answer, she saw something that filled her with horror. Outside her home was a flotilla of journalists and camera people, their tripods set up on the footpath, their lenses trained on her curtained windows. Serendipity handed a bunch of bills to the driver and scrambled out of the cab and up her front steps. As she fumbled with her key in the lock, she was assailed by the clicking of cameras, the sudden flares of flashes, and the hubbub of twenty or more people asking questions all at once. She was quite accustomed to media attention, but she was usually dressed for it as Serendipity Smith in a long red wig and high-heeled boots and a glamorous velvet coat. She was not used to facing this sort of thing with a bare face and in her crumpled black Sarah McGillycuddy clothes that she had been wearing since Sunday.
“Where is your daughter, Mrs. McGillycuddy?” someone shouted.
“Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?” another journalist asked.
“Have you got any clues at all? Mrs. McGillycuddy? Mrs. McGillycuddy? Mrs. McGillycuddy?”
Serendipity offered no comment and at last made it through the front door to stand, panting, on the other side of it. And there in the hallway, twisting her hands together nervously, was her assistant.
“Miss Digby, what have you done?”
Miss Digby, it turned out, had done quite a few things. Miss Digby had called the City Police and set off a citywide search for Tuesday. Through the night, no park bench or paddle boat had been left uninspected. Every pathway, tree, rocky outcrop, cave, and underpass was scoured for signs, then scoured again. Several people, Miss Digby reported, hearing the overnight news, had come forward to inform the police that they had seen Tuesday and Baxterr walking through the park on Sunday afternoon. Someone even remembered seeing her at the phone booth. But no one could say where she had gone after that.
“I came here, as planned, to make dinner,” Miss Digby explained. “I waited and waited. I called the school principal and was told Tuesday had not attended classes yesterday. I called you at the hospital, but you were asleep, and there had been no other visitors, so clearly Tuesday was not with you, nor was she here, nor had she been here, it appeared, for two nights.”
“You called the school?” Serendipity confirmed.
“Absolutely. She is missing, Serendipity. You do know that, don’t you? I can only assume that Denis’s condition is causing you to behave in this most unorthodox way. I’m sorry—I could no longer stand back. I had to take action. So a police search is under way. And they are on their way here. They will want to question you, and they will want to search the house.”
Miss Digby went on to say she had also put out a press release to advise that Serendipity Smith, the world’s most famous author, had been delayed from returning to the Mirage Hotel, but that she was perfectly well and exactly where she was meant to be. Serendipity Smith is not missing. She is currently engaged in fruitful research toward her new series of adventure novels, the release had said.
“I have a small problem,” said Miss Digby. “You see, I can’t leave the house. Not with all these reporters here! Of course, I’ve been most careful to have all the curtains drawn, so none of them could know that I’m here or make a connection between me and the very famous you. But I can’t go anywhere at all.”
Serendipity led the way to the kitchen, where she saw that Miss Digby had done a truly incredible job of cleaning up. There was a pie on the bench. Serendipity thought it may be chicken. She realized she was famished. Serendipity lifted back one corner of the kitchen blind to discover that Miss Digby was absolutely correct. There was no way out of the house that wouldn’t take her past curious reporters and very long, probing camera lenses.
“So what do you suggest that we do next?” she asked Miss Digby.
Before Miss Digby could reply, Serendipity plopped into a chair at the kitchen table and began to cry.
* * *
After Miss Digby had fed Serendipity pie (it was chicken, and very good, and despite being breakfast time, it was the perfect thing to eat), and made cups of tea, and issued several handfuls of tissues, and sent her upstairs for a shower, the police arrived. Serendipity came out of the bathroom to find four police officers in Tuesday’s bedroom, going through every drawer and cupboard. After their search, the police interviewed Serendipity and Miss Digby, separately and together.
“We’ll need to go to the hospital, to interview Mr. McGillycuddy,” said an officer.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” said Serendipity.
“We’ll be the judge of that,” the officer said.
Serendipity began to protest, but the officer interrupted.
“You know it doesn’t look good for you,” he said. “Your daughter goes missing, and you don’t even report it. It takes your friend here to raise the alarm. I think you’d better come back to the hospital with us, in case we have more questions. Please get your things.”
The sight of Serendipity being marched from the front door of her house to a waiting police car was enough to draw all the journalists from the back of the house around to the front. And this gave Miss Digby time to dash across a temporarily empty backyard and let herself out the gate.
It wasn’t until the police officers were standing right at the door to Denis’s hospital room—thankfully, the nurse with the tennis shoes wouldn’t let them go any farther—that they believed what Serendipity had been telling them: Denis was unable to be questioned.
The officers went away, but two others came to the hospital later that afternoon to see if Denis had woken. Finding that he hadn’t, they interviewed Serendipity all over again, this time in a small office down the corridor from Denis’s room that was used to store towels, boxes of plastic gloves, and large containers of pink handwash. Serendipity said, as she had said before, that she didn’t know where Tuesday was, that Tuesday had gone for a walk on Sunday afternoon, with her dog, and hadn’t come back.
“So why didn’t you call us on Sunday night?”
“Well … um…,” Serendipity said, knowing how hopeless she sounded. “I can’t really answer that.”
Serendipity wondered if she would eventually have to tell the truth. But each time she imagined how that would go, she bit her tongue and kept quiet.
“So, you’re telling us that your daughter has gone to a mysterious, otherworldly place that writers go to write stories?”
“Yes.”
“And how exactly do you know this?”
“Oh, because I’m actually Serendipity Smith, the most famous writer in the world, and I’ve spent a great deal of my life there.”
“I see. So why don’t you go and find her and bring her home?”
“Well, it’s very dangerous out there at the moment, and since Tuesday has a Winged Dog with her, she’s actually much safer…”
She would sound like a complete lunatic.
Serendipity longed for Denis to wake up. She longed for him to open his eyes and say, “Hello, my love.” She longed for him to ask for tea and toast. She also worried about what the police would do when Denis did wake up. Would they charge him with some crime in relation to Tuesday going missing?
That evening, Serendipity sat watching Denis sleep, the bandage around his head, the tubes and drips, and the machine breathing for him with its rhythmic rush of air in and out.
“You know she’s there, Denis, don’t you?” Serendipity whispered when there were no doctors or nurses around to hear. “She’s not really missing. She’s probably having the time of her life. But I need you to come back. Please, please come back. Please be Denis again. Please come back from wherever you’ve gone.”