SHE WAS WATCHING THAT ONE MOVIE SHE’D FORGOTTEN she’d downloaded. Amanda looked in the girl’s bedroom, but the girl was not there. She was in the bathroom. Amanda went to look, but the girl was not there. Back to the living room. “I can’t find Rose?”
They all agreed this made no sense. Clay went back to the master bedroom, which was empty. Amanda looked out the back door at the perfect day then in progress. Amanda looked into the laundry room, then went back to the master bedroom herself, not trusting Clay to be thorough. She looked in the walk-in closet, she looked under the bed, as though Rose were a house cat. She looked in the master bathroom, which still smelled of the violent rejections of their bodies.
Clay found his wife in the hallway. “I don’t understand. Where is she?”
Amanda returned to the girl’s room and peeled back the covers to see the foot of the bed, not sure, exactly, what she expected to find there. She hesitated before the bedroom closet like someone in a movie. Did the director intend a feint (Rose curled up with a book), or a shock (a stranger wielding a knife), or a puzzle (nothing at all)? There was just the smell of the cedar balls left to dissuade moths with a taste for cashmere. Now, then: panic, and at last, a concrete target upon which it could fix.
Back to the living room, where Rose was not watching television or sitting with a book, to the kitchen, where Rose was not eating or working the too-hard Oriental-rug jigsaw puzzle, to the door overlooking the pool, but no, Rose had been forbidden to swim alone (just sensible). Amanda opened the front door as though she’d find the girl there, Trick or treat! Nope, just the grass, darkened by the fallen rain, and the chatter of birds.
The girl was downstairs in the part of the house that most belonged to the Washingtons. She’d gone out to the garage to see what diversions it might hold. She was sitting in the car’s back seat, obedient as a certain kind of dog, ready for the trip home. Okay, louder: “Rosie!”
“Rosie, Rosie.” Amanda said it to herself. She went back into the bathroom. Once the girl had loved to hide and surprise them. Amanda pulled back the shower curtain to find only the tub full of an inch of water. She’d told Clay to fill the tub, and this was what he’d come up with? She went back to the living room. “I can’t find Rose.”
Clay wanted another glass of water. “Well, she has to be here somewhere.” He gestured toward the bedrooms.
“She’s not there—” Why wasn’t he listening?
“She’s taking a shower?”
“She’s not—” She was not stupid!
“She’s in the—” He didn’t know what he meant any longer.
“She’s not, she’s not, I looked, she’s not anywhere, where is she?” Amanda was not yelling, but she was not whispering.
“Did you look downstairs?” Archie’s tone was withering.
“I’ll look downstairs.” G. H. stood. “She’s probably just exploring the house.”
“I can’t find her?” Amanda put it as a question because it seemed so silly—I can’t find her! I can’t find my child! Like saying you couldn’t find your earlobes or your clitoris.
Amanda went and stood in the kitchen, unsure what to do next. Ruth followed because she was moved to reassure her. That damnable instinct. She had to help. They were colleagues not as mothers but humans. This—all this—was a problem to be shared. “She must be outside.” Ruth could picture the girl, watching monarchs flex their wings on the milkweed. “She’s gone to play.”
“I looked out front.”
“Let’s go outside.”
Clay sat beside his son again. “Amanda. Calm down. Let’s think. She could be in the garage, or out past the hedge, let’s just go find her—”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing, Clay? I’m going to get my shoes to go find her.” Amanda rushed toward the bedroom.
“Archie, do you know where your sister went?” Clay was patient.
Archie spoke softly. Did he? He had an instinct, but it didn’t make sense. “No.”
Amanda came back in her slip-on Keds. She didn’t even have tears in her anymore. “I feel insane. Where is Rose?”
“I’m sure she’s just outside.” Ruth wasn’t all that sure of anything.
Amanda should have screamed, but there was no scream. The fact that she was so quiet was somehow more unsettling. “Get your shoes on and help me fucking look for her.”
Through the door, Clay could see his rubber thongs by the hot tub. “I’ll go out front, by the herb garden. I’ll look past the hedge.”
“She’s just wandered somewhere.” Ruth tried to convince. “There’s no television, so she’s playing the way we used to, just wandering about. There’s nothing to worry about here.” She meant: there was no traffic, there were no kidnappers. There were no bears or mountain lions. There were no rapists or perverts, no people at all. They were equipped to handle certain fears. This was something else. It was hard to remind yourself to be rational in a world where that seemed not to matter as much, but maybe it never had.
Downstairs, G. H. found his closet, packed with supplies, his bed, tidily made, his bathroom, the mute and useless television, the broken back door, his cell phone plugged into its optimistic white cables. He put the phone into his pocket.
In the living room, Archie stuffed his feet into his Vans and used his tongue to contemplate the tender empty pockets in his gums. They were soft and pleasant, like the recesses of the human body his own was designed to fit into, something he’d never know firsthand. Could he forgive the universe that denial of his own particular purpose? He wouldn’t get the chance. He opened the back door and went to join his father, went to find his sister.
“There’s nothing to worry about?” Amanda’s imagination, exhausted, had given up. She went outside with the rest of her family, into that beautiful day, too distracted to notice if it was different from the thousands of other days of her life thus far. Her “Rose! Rose!” was loud and impassioned enough to startle animals she couldn’t see and would never know were there.
Amanda had theories. A mother always did. An errant step into an unused well, a hundred feet deep, disguised by the fulsome St. Augustine grass. A bough, sundered by that noise, falling from overhead. A snake bite, a twisted ankle, a bee sting, maybe she simply got turned around. They couldn’t call 911! Who would save them?
G. H. took the downstairs door, closed it gingerly. The grass was damp and thick.
“I’m going up front.” Clay did just that.
Ruth was afraid; once you had a kid, you knew to be afraid. “We should look in the garage.” Ruth led the way.
Amanda followed her.
Archie walked past the yard to the little shed. He knew his sister wasn’t in there, but he had to look. The door stood open, and Archie leaned against the structure, looked back at the house. Stupid little kid. He knew she’d gone back into the woods. Why wasn’t he able to say this out loud? And how did he know it? It didn’t matter. Archie shivered the way you might when you walk into a spiderweb, the way you might if you saw a spider dart from beneath your pillow and lose itself in your mosaic-printed bedsheets, the way you might if a spider crept from your shoulder up your neck and nestled into the comforting cave of your ear, the way you might if a spider dropped from the ceiling and landed on your hair and then picked its way forward carefully down the slope of your nose so you could barely see it with your wide-set eyes, the way you might if a spider started and bit you and its poison dripped into your bloodstream and then became a part of you, inextricable as your DNA, the thing that made you. His left knee felt funny, then gave out beneath him, and Archie doubled over, and he started to vomit but it wasn’t vomit, just water, a bit of blood. Guess what? It was pink like—