Erin still wasn’t home.
Mary Bliss called every friend she could think of. She drove by the mall to see if the manager at the Gap had seen her. She hadn’t.
By five she was frantic. Her daughter had been gone nearly twenty-four hours. Where? Where would Erin go? As far as Mary Bliss knew, she had only her car and her pocketbook. Should she call the police? She sat at the kitchen table and picked at the long acrylic nails. They were driving her crazy. They itched. She couldn’t even dial the phone properly with the damned things.
Finally she went back upstairs and tore into Erin’s room. The place was a land mine. Somewhere in there, there must be a clue to her daughter’s secret life.
This time, she didn’t bother to fold or neaten. Mary Bliss dumped out the dresser drawers and combed through their contents. She emptied the closet, dug under Erin’s bed, even tossed her trash can on the floor and picked through the discarded Coke cans and used tissues.
Nothing.
In desperation, she stripped Erin’s bed, throwing the sheets and quilts and pillows to the floor. When she’d removed the mattress pad too, she noticed a slight lump in the mattress. She slid her hand under the mattress, dreading what she would find. Her fingers closed around something small, smooth, and plastic.
A cell phone. It was a tiny Nokia, smaller than Mary Bliss’s own bulky old phone. Mary Bliss turned it over. She’d never seen it before. Erin’s own cell phone was just like Mary Bliss’s, but since she couldn’t afford to keep up the cell service, both phones were in the kitchen, still plugged into their chargers.
Mary Bliss carried the Nokia downstairs. She tried turning it on but got only a digital readout that said “Low Battery.”
Neither of the old cell phone chargers fit this one. She chewed on one of the ragged acrylic nails. Where had Erin gotten this phone? Was this how she was conducting her clandestine affair? And if she wasn’t sleeping with Josh, who was she sleeping with? She turned the phone over and over again, hoping it would suddenly come to life and start providing answers.
Josh. He knew something, she was sure of it. He’d become Erin’s most trusted confidant. She picked up her own phone and called the Bowdens. No answer. She got up and looked out the front window. No cars were parked in the driveway. Sunday. Was this Nancye’s day to have custody of the kids?
She had to do something. This inactivity was driving her nuts. But driving around in circles wasn’t the answer.
She went to the refrigerator to look for something to eat or drink, something to calm her nerves. The pink wrist corsage sat in the middle of the top shelf. Mary Bliss took it out. She put it on her wrist and held the roses up to her nose and inhaled. Last night seemed a world away. Last night she had allowed herself a few hours away, to laugh and dance. She thought of one of the songs she and Matt had danced to. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy.” She’d been all of that, and where had it gotten her?
She ruffled the roses with her fingertips. Already the pink petals were tinged with brown.
Call me, Matt had said last night. She bit her lip. She needed help. She’d been trying to deal with her family secrets all summer, and she’d made a mess of it. Maybe, she thought, it was time to let go. Time to get help.
He answered on the first ring.
“Matt?”
“Hey there,” he said warmly. “Did you change your mind?”
“No. Yes.” She hesitated. “Erin never came home last night. I think she’s run away.”
“I’ll be right over,” he said.
And he was. She told him again about the fight, about Erin’s movements the previous night.
“So,” he said, taking notes. “She was at Jessica’s at eight. Then she went to the nursing home. She left her grandmother around midnight. And nobody’s seen her since?”
“Nobody that I can find,” Mary Bliss said. “I talked to Josh this morning. He says he didn’t see her last night, but I think maybe he knows something. He’s her best friend.”
“Did she have any money?”
“Her grandmother gave her fifty dollars,” Mary Bliss said. “But she doesn’t get paid until this Friday.”
“What does she do with her paycheck?” he asked.
“She puts it in the bank,” Mary Bliss said. “She’s had her own checking account since she was thirteen.”
“So she could have, what? Several hundred dollars?”
Mary Bliss’s face paled. “I don’t know. I tried not to talk to her too much about money. I didn’t want her to know just how tight things have been.”
Matt picked up the Nokia. “I’ll be right back.”
She followed him out to the car. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
He was driving his own car, a black Explorer. He slid into the driver’s seat, turned on the motor, and plugged the little Nokia into an adapter mounted on the dashboard. “This is the same kind as mine,” he said. He let the motor run for ten minutes, and when he was satisfied the battery had charged enough, he unplugged the phone and she followed him back inside.
He sat down at the kitchen table again and began pushing buttons on the Nokia.
Mary Bliss leaned over his shoulder to watch, but his fingers moved so fast that they were a blur. She saw him punch the “Menu” button, and then select “Messages.” He paused. “I need a code to get in here. Does she have a special or lucky number?”
“Her birthday is nine fifteen,” Mary Bliss suggested. He tried it but shook his head. “We’ll come back to that,” he said. He pushed some more buttons, then got a list of what appeared to be phone numbers.
“What are those?” Mary Bliss asked.
Matt was jotting down the list of numbers. “This is the call log. It lists all the numbers dialed, either in or out, on this phone. It also lists missed calls. You recognize any of these?”
Mary Bliss scanned the list. “No. It looks like most of them are local area codes, though.”
“Only three or four numbers,” Matt pointed out. “She’s been dialing them over and over again.” He pointed to another number with an area code Mary Bliss didn’t recognize. “This is a South Florida exchange.”
“A lot of her girlfriends are at the beach,” Mary Bliss said. “I guess they could be down in Florida. Now what do we do?”
“First, we dial the numbers, see who picks up,” Matt said.
He dialed the number, listened, frowned, then handed the phone to Mary Bliss.
“Hey,” a man’s voice said. “Hit me back later.”
“You recognize him?” Matt asked.
“No,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s not Parker, if that’s what you were wondering. And it’s not Josh either.”
He dialed the next number and handed it to her. This time it was a woman’s voice. “We can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a name and number and we’ll call you back,” she said.
Mary Bliss shook her head again.
He dialed the next number. She listened, confused.
“It’s just the school,” Mary Bliss said. “Fair Oaks Academy. Erin’s school. She was probably calling about soccer practice.”
Matt punched in the last number. He listened, but didn’t hand the phone to Mary Bliss this time.
“What?” she asked. “Who was it? What was that last number?”
“It was for a hotline,” Matt said.
“What kind of hotline?” she demanded. “Tell me. I need to know.”
“It was for a pregnancy support hotline,” Matt said.
Mary Bliss’s nails itched unbearably. She pulled the right thumbnail off.
“It’s what I was afraid of,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “She was asking Meemaw questions. About birth control. She had unprotected sex. She’s pregnant. And now she’s gone.”
“You don’t know that,” Matt said firmly.
“It’s why she ran away,” Mary Bliss insisted. “I let her down. She needed me to be strong, to be there for her, and I just…wasn’t.”
“If she were pregnant, where would she go?” Matt asked. “What would she do?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Bliss said, biting her knuckle. “We don’t have any other family. Just Meemaw and Parker.”
“And the baby’s father,” Matt reminded her. “If there is a baby.”
He kept looking down at the phone. “AirOne is the provider,” he said, tapping his pen on the edge of the table. “We need to find out who this phone is billed to.”
“Will they tell us if we ask?” Mary Bliss asked.
“Probably not. Privacy is a big issue these days. The companies guard that information like it was Fort Knox.”
“But we know who she’s calling,” Mary Bliss said, feeling more hopeful. “I can just call them back and ask them to call me. Right?”
“You can ask, but that doesn’t mean they’ll do it,” Matt said. “Also, this log only lists the last ten calls received or dialed. If Erin was upset, and calling the same numbers, this might only reflect a day or so of phone calls.”
“Can we get all the phone records?” Mary Bliss asked.
“It’s tricky,” Matt admitted. “Legally, you need a subpoena. And that takes time.” He took a deep breath. “I think maybe you should file a missing persons report. With the police. It’s been twenty-four hours, she’s a minor. They have resources to look for her that we don’t.”
Mary Bliss chewed her thumbnail. She looked over at Matt.
“I can’t call the police,” she said, her voice low. “What if Erin’s just hiding out with a friend I haven’t thought of? If I call in the police, she’d never forgive me. Anyway, I can’t really call the police, after what happened with Parker, can I?”
He winced. “Good point.”
“Isn’t there another way to find out more about this phone?” she asked.
“I could call in a favor,” he said slowly. “I know a guy. He used to work at AirOne when I was with the GBI. He left there a few months ago, but maybe he could pull some strings for me.”
“Can you call him?” Mary Bliss asked. “I hate to ask, but I have to.”
“I’ll have to track him down,” Matt said. “It’s Sunday. He’s a big golfer. No telling where he is this time of day.”
“We’ve got to find her,” Mary Bliss said. “We’ve got to.”