At first, I found the laminated cards that Dr. Richards gave to me to pass along to the families of the missing quaint and sweet. I had praised him for being compassionate enough to come up with the poem written on the front. His response had been an academic frown.
“It wasn’t my idea. I honestly don’t know why we hand them out. We started doing it about five years ago. I suppose it’s supposed to be comforting, but I think it’s a bit much. We’re all instructed to do it, so it’s become our calling card. Every family gets one.”
I often sent them by mail, always with a handwritten note. I reread the poem each time I placed one in an envelope.
PRAYER FOR THE MISSING
You are not gone, as long as I remember.
You are not away, as long as I weep.
You have not vanished, as long as I can picture your face.
You are with me.
You are in the rain.
You are in my tears.
You are where the water falls.
Being an English major, I wasn’t overly impressed with the poem, but it was a nice sentiment. And knowing Dr. Richards was atheist, handing out anything that resembled a prayer was a real stretch for him.
He told me to send one to Barbara Rush when she insisted on meeting with him.
“Her family is against our involvement,” he said.
“She wants your help,” I replied, flipping through her brother’s case file.
Barbara was only eighteen, four years younger than me. Her twin brother, Don, had gone missing in a snowstorm in St. Joseph, Michigan, a small tourist town on a dramatic arch of Lake Michigan. Her parents had fallen apart after his disappearance, leaving the girl to search for her brother on her own. That led her to a missing-persons support groups, and ultimately to one of Dr. Richards’s colleagues who attended such meetings to seek out questionable disappearances. When he heard her story, he encouraged her to call to the University of Illinois’s astronomy department.
She had asked for Dr. Richards, and I took the call.
Don had casually smoked marijuana, Barbara explained, so the St. Joseph police thought he got stoned and wandered into the storm. Probably got too close to the lake, they surmised. His body will wash up soon with the ice balls, she heard one whisper to the other.
But she insisted that her brother—despite being a lifelong Michigander—hated the cold. Even high, he would have never gone out. And when she had awoken that night and found light streaming through her bedroom, she’d assumed a car was shining its headlights into her room—maybe one of Don’s friends from the bowling alley had come to pick him up for a quick nip at the bar. She had parted the curtains and saw Don standing on the street, in the snow, looking up. Then the lights were gone, and so was Don.
“I told my parents,” Barbara had said. “They thought I was sleepwalking. But I don’t sleepwalk. Never have.”
I had talked to her off and on for several weeks. But then her parents listened in on one of the calls and forbid her from calling “those whackos in Illinois” again. So she called from pay phones when she got off work at the restaurant around the corner from her house. I stayed late at work to accept her calls.
A month after her first call, Barbara showed up at the office.
“I took the bus all night. I had to see your face,” she had said to my astonished expression. “You’re as nice as I pictured.”
Barbara sat and talked with Dr. Richards and me for hours, pleading with us to come to Michigan to help her search. The more she talked, the more she twisted a strand of hair on the back of her neck. “Nervous habit,” she said, smiling sheepishly.
Dr. Richards had explained they didn’t have a budget for traveling. She vowed to give them all her money. Steven shook his head. “I can get you in touch again with my colleague at the University of Michigan, who told you about us—”
“I don’t want him. I want you. And Lynn. He talked about theories of missing people, including something called … Argentum? Am I saying that right?”
Dr. Richards frowned. “I’m sorry, Barbara. I can’t help you, especially with that.”
Even though I didn’t have the money either, I had paid for her bus ticket back to Michigan. I gave her one of the laminated poems. She had cried at the bus terminal, and I cried along with her.
“That can never happen again,” Dr. Richards later said. “Sometimes people expect us to drop everything and find their loved ones. Give them one of the cards and end it with that. It can’t work any other way. We only gather information, take careful notes—”
“If all we’re doing is gathering facts, how does this ever help anyone?”
“Because it might not now. Might not in ten years, twenty years. But one day, we’ll have enough cases to show that this can’t be ignored.”
“Why was she asking about Argentum? Who is that? What is that?”
“I’m going to have a long talk with my esteemed colleague in Michigan about that. He knows better. It’s a theory about extraterrestrials that we are all instructed to dismiss outright. I’ve heard some talk that it’s about aliens inhabiting human form, or that it refers to interdimensional travel. It’s our Loch Ness monster—everyone has heard of it, and no one has any proof.” Dr. Richards didn’t bother to hide his irritation.
“Perhaps I should refer her to some of the other organizations. I’ve read quite a bit about UFO theorists—”
“For God’s sake, don’t do that. Me and my … peers … we aren’t like the others in those other groups. I mean, I appreciate the work APRO and NICAP are doing—”
“But you don’t belong to them. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena are quite open with their mission. Why not join them?”
When he raised his eyebrows, I shrugged. “I do research. I pay attention.”
“Good organizations, good people, their focus is just different than ours.”
“How?”
“We have a primary mission of trying to connect people who have gone missing to abductions. APRO and NICAP are doing admirable work on people who are returned quickly from abductions. My theory, and the theory that I share with my peers, is that unexplained disappearances of people all over the world can be tied to the abductions.”
“Where’s your proof, besides the stories told by people they leave behind?”
He chewed on the end of his pencil. “I wonder what you think…”
“What I think?”
He jotted down something on the paper in front of him. “You have a brilliant mind, Lynn.” He looked once more, intently, at his writing.
I pulled my cardigan tighter around me.
I left work early, taking Barbara’s file home with me. At home, I read through it five more times. Then I grabbed my coat. Tom had come home at that exact moment, and I told him I’d be back later. When he asked about dinner, I pretended I didn’t hear.
Dr. Richards had already left his office, but he recently had given me a key, for emergencies. I figured this counted.
Three hours later, I found what I was looking for. I cleared off the battered couch in his office and lay down to read. At midnight, I’d meant to only close my eyes for a moment.
I awoke to Dr. Richards standing over me. “Your husband is banging on the doors outside the Curry Hall entrance. You better go.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven A.M. Did you sleep here all night?”
“I have to tell you what I found.”
“No, you have to go.”
“It’s the weather. That’s the commonality. It’s the weather.”
“We can talk about this later. Go home. Take the day off and get some rest—”
“I have to tell you about this.”
“Not a good time. Not only is your husband outside, but I have a faculty review today. I will have no time today.”
“Then I will be here at the end of the day. Wait for me.”
Tom and I had fought all day. I called him a stranger, he called me disconnected. I cried, he paced. I was grateful at dusk when he announced he needed to go out for a run. I lied about going to a coffee shop to work on my book.
I didn’t even knock when I reached Dr. Richards’s office. He put on his glasses as I sat down.
“You may not remember the Soothe case in Alaska; we don’t have much on it,” I began. “But something jogged my memory about the date. I realized why when I studied Barbara’s case. A man went missing there, exactly two years to the day Barbara’s brother went missing. In a snowstorm.”
“There’s always a snowstorm in Alaska in winter.”
“His wife told police she saw lights in the snowstorm. You mentioned the abductions in Arkansas and on that Greek island. But you failed to mention it was during blistering nights of temperatures in the upper nineties—ninety-eight degrees to be precise—with scattered storms producing heavy downpours that lasted mere minutes. Same dates, almost exact same weather pattern. What if that’s what happens? If we started to piece together all those dates, and match them up with the weather…”
I then slowly shook my head in realization. “That’s what you’ve been having me do, isn’t it? You’re not putting them in some kind of chronological order. You’re matching the dates of the missing and comparing the weather.”
Dr. Richards slid back his chair and walked around the desk, clearly uncomfortable in his proximity to me. “I think they come on the same days, in different years, but in the same weather. And I think they return to the same places, too, over and over again. But the abductions can come years, even decades apart. I don’t know why. But that’s the key, I think. Lynn, it took me my whole life to figure this out. You put it together in a few months. I hoped you would help me get organized. But I never expected you’d become a colleague.”
When I smiled, he did too. I was surprised at how his entire face lit up, his usual downtrodden eyes forming crescent moons.
* * *
I’ve found that life has no tolerance for dwelling in memories. I may have wanted to stay in bed, examining those thrilling and confusing times to seek clues that could help find William. But my recollection was ended by an exhausted sleep, and then the cat pawing at my face, ready to be fed. Since school hadn’t let out for fall break yet, I had to rush to get Greg to school and check in on Brian, followed by a complete collapse by Anne, in which she sobbed on the couch for an hour, and then a call from Tom that we needed to have dinner together tonight to discuss some important things. I’d put some salmon in the oven, but when we sat down to dinner, I quickly lost my appetite over what my husband had to say.
As he started scraping his fork to gather the last remnants of the angel hair pasta, I rubbed my temples. When the base of his wineglass caught the edge of his plate and made a sharp clang, I scooted my chair back, walked over to the sink, and began to rinse the plates before putting them in the dishwasher.
“I guess you don’t think we should do it,” he muttered under his breath.
“Of course I think you should do it. We aren’t doing it.”
“It’s Diane Sawyer, Lynn. She’s giving us an hour in prime time.”
“I know who she is, Tom. And I think it’s the right decision. For you to do.”
“Lynn, you need to take part in it. People are going to be more sympathetic to someone like you than some perceived beltway insider. You or Anne—”
“No,” I laid the dishrag down on the countertop. “Not Anne. Not Chris. No one but you. This family is hanging on by a thread. I won’t put Anne through it—”
The knock came at the door, and he checked his watch. “Deanna said she’d be here at seven. Listen to what she has to say, Lynn. She’s a communications expert; she’s been a valuable asset. And the FBI has already signed on to this.”
I dried my hands, then put on too much lotion. The October air was already wreaking havoc on my skin. When I turned back around, Deanna Ruck, Tom’s communication manager, who I’d met on the porch the day of the news conference, was setting down her briefcase.
“Hi Mrs. Roseworth. Nice to see you again.”
“Hi Deanna. Can I offer you some coffee?”
“No, thank you, I’ve smoked too much for one evening, and I don’t think my nervous system can handle caffeine too.”
“Have a seat,” Tom said quickly, knowing I refused to clean his clothes when he’d been smoking.
Deanna produced a thick folder. “So here are the talking points, all approved by the FBI. ABC is giving you an hour, so they will need a lot; enough to keep the story line moving along until the last quarter hour—”
“Story line?” I winced.
“Lynn…” Tom gave me a weary glance. “She means we want to keep viewers tuned in until the end of the hour, when I reveal the increase in the reward.”
“We’re not a TV drama,” I replied softly.
“Please go on,” he said to Deanna.
“As we discussed, you’ll take Diane and the crew through the woods. You’ll provide all of the new photos of William approved by your daughter. ABC is asking again if Anne or Chris—”
“No,” I insisted. “They will not be doing an interview. No other member of the family.”
“Have you given any thought…” she began.
“I won’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.”
She nodded. “Here’s where we have to have a tough discussion. Senator, Mrs. Roseworth, forgive me, but I have to ask: Is there anything—anything at all—that could be considered controversial about your family that you haven’t already disclosed? No pattern of runaway behavior by William? No affairs by Anne or her husband? Drug use? Nothing that would make the tabloids?”
“We’ve gone over this repeatedly with the FBI. We’re terribly boring,” Tom said.
“Because if there’s one single bit of information that’s outrageous, anything that casts doubt on the family or your sensibilities, you will lose the public’s sympathy in a heartbeat. A sideshow will disrupt what really matters. I’m sorry to be so crass. The producers have made it clear: The information about Brian is a nonnegotiable.”
“Nonnegotiable?” I asked.
“Lynn, they have to have something to tease,” he said.
“Tease?” I was gripping the side of the table now.
“We have a daughter who works in television news, Lynn, who has spoken to us at length about this. Kate has spoken to you about this. The more the producers can tease that they have obtained new information, the more people will watch, and the more people will be on the lookout for William. I will discuss briefly that Brian may have witnessed it and has been in a traumatized state ever since. End of discussion, Lynn. Deanna, do we have a list of questions?”
I envisioned walking over to the cake plate, calmly taking the last piece of iced banana bread, and throwing it in Tom’s direction. But instead I sat with my hands on the table.
“The network won’t provide questions, but we know the ballpark. You need to be prepared. That’s what’s in the talking points—”
“I need to assume questions about the VP offer. And if William was a troubled kid; if we acted quickly enough in contacting police; domestic terrorism—”
“Does it have to go there?” I asked.
“It can go there and it will, Lynn.” Tom was getting angry now. “You don’t get it: ISIS is converting suburban high school kids into extremists and teaching them through social media to shoot up military institutions and attack the government any way they can. I’ve read the files. You couldn’t stomach them. Of course, they could have staked out our family and waited for just the right moment. You think kidnapping a family member of the only Democratic senator who led the charge to increase military presence in Iran to bomb those fuckers is out of the question?”
“It could have been any of you, truly,” Deanna said. “But after the magazine came out…”
I stood up and walked to the stairs.
“I’m sorry, but that question will certainly be asked.” She sounded more irritated than apologetic.
Tom was on his feet. “Lynn! Come on, Lynn. God dammit!”
I hurried up the stairs, my hand on my mouth. I went through the bedroom and into the bathroom, closing the door. I ran the water to mask my sobbing.
Nothing outrageous, Deanna warned. Nothing salacious or controversial should come out about any of us.
I roughly wiped the tears from my face. The small amount of mascara I’d earlier applied streamed down my cheeks. I grabbed a Kleenex and leaned into the mirror.
I stopped. A flushed face with weepy eyes and smudges of black beneath reflected back.
The desire to smash the mirror was so strong that I actually began to step back, to contain myself. But instead, I leaned in closer, looking at every detail of my pathetic face.
I would burn that image in my memory to use as ammunition, should I begin to doubt what I had to do.
* * *
The bells above the door to the Peddler announced my arrival, and I could see Barry Manilow’s face on the computer screen reflected in Roxy’s glasses. She was obviously so engrossed in her online research into his denials of plastic surgeries that she only held up her finger. “Be with you in a minute.”
“Don’t keep the customers waiting too long,” I responded.
“Well, good morning. What a nice surprise.”
I rubbed my shoulders. “It’s cold this morning. You’ve done a nice job with the Thanksgiving decorations. I can’t thank you enough for tending to the shop during all this. And I’ve been such a terrible friend, I haven’t even asked about how Ed was doing this month.”
“A few more rounds of chemo and he’s done for a while, I hope.”
“I am so sorry, Roxy. I should be checking on him at least once a week.”
“Ed’s tough. He’ll beat it, like he’s beat it twice before. In fact, he practically shoves me out the door every day. Imagine if the two of us were pecking on him all the time—he barely survived being around us every day of high school. He doesn’t even the let the boys do work around the house for him.”
I bit my lip. “I hate to ask you this, but do you think that Ed is well enough for you to go visit your brother in Little Rock?”
“Excuse me? You know I hate my brother’s wife.”
“I was hoping you’d like to go. And that you’d insist I come with you.”
Roxy tried to hide in the pity in her smile. “Honey, say the word and we’ll be out the door in two shakes. Tom stopped by and told me about the interview with ABC tomorrow. I know you don’t want to be here when they come. You need a break from all this. But I do think we should screw Little Rock, let’s go to Tunica—”
I shook my head. “No one would believe that. Certainly not the girls. They have to believe I’m going to Little Rock. And you have to go—for a week, that’s all. Then you can come back. We’ll schedule it that we arrive back at the same time.”
“You’ve lost me. I’m going to Little Rock … but you aren’t coming with me?”
“I’m not done. I need you to rent a car for me. I don’t want to use my debit card for Tom to see. Of course, I’ll pay you back immediately. I also hope you can drive me to the Enterprise over on Charlotte Avenue. And then when we both get back, you can pick me up there. It will look like we’ve been together the entire time.”
“Where are you actually going?”
“I need to go somewhere alone. And the girls would be too worried if they knew.”
“If you’re going to have me lie, which I only do under the most important of occasions—such as telling Ruth Boster last week that the bleach is really hiding the hair on her upper lip—then the tradeoff is that I’m going with you. I don’t know where you’re going or why, but I will be going. I lie, I travel. Comprende?”
* * *
I slowly opened the door to the room Brian had shared with William. Two twin beds were tucked into the corners, one with Spider-Man sheets and the other with Batman. The red sheets with webs had remained untouched since summer.
As he did each day, Brian sat in a chair facing a bay window overlooking his backyard. The books that Stephanie, the tutor, had read aloud, trying to get him to respond, were stacked near his ankles. I gave Stephanie two more weeks, tops.
“Brian bear, it’s Nanna.”
He continued to stare, motionless. Even his blinking seemed mechanical.
“Honey, Nanna has to take a trip. I really wish you would talk to me before I leave.”
A strand of hair drifted across his eye. When he made no effort to remove it, I gently brushed it back. I’ve never just come out and asked him. I have to do it.
“Brian. Brian, honey, did William … disappear into lights? Lights from the sky?”
When Brian failed to respond, I closed my eyes. I might as well have been talking to a statue. I looked out the window at the trees beyond.
Not wanting to look again at his vacant face, I leaned down and kissed his cheek, and started to walk out, when I stopped at the door.
I tasted his tear on my lips.
* * *
West Side Story took us from Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky. Camelot blared as we blew through Southern Illinois. After a dramatic accompaniment to “If Ever I Would Leave You,” Roxy frowned at the construction off Interstate 57 onto Route 13. “Glad we got to avoid that mess. I suppose you’ll tell me when I actually need to get off the interstate?”
I nodded.
“Thinking about the girls?”
“Kate—and Tom, for that matter—seemed relieved I was leaving. They’re both practical thinkers and know the TV shoot will go easier without me acting like an old guard dog. Stella was suspicious; she knows it’s not like me to leave in a crisis. Anne looked so panicked when I told her I was going with you to Little Rock. I know she won’t take part in the interview, but I feel like I’m abandoning her. It was like seeing her again at six years old, after I took her to the first day of kindergarten. I promised to call her twice a day, and I told her I would only be about five or six hours away, which really isn’t that untrue.”
“Ah-ha! At last, a clue. So we’re going five hours away, then. Took us three and a half to get here, so…”
“You know we’re going to Champaign, Roxy. You’ve known since I first told you I had to go to Illinois.”
“Well, I guessed it, but I thought maybe you needed to go to Chicago. Or maybe Springfield. I still don’t understand why, though.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back. Roxy took a swig of her Diet Pepsi and pointed to the console. “If you’re still going to be evasive you’re going to have to listen to Evita. And not that Madonna crap, I’m talking Patti LuPone.”
After Evita came Phantom of the Opera, and then Chicago. Roxy was about to launch into “All that Jazz” when she spied a Cracker Barrel and announced her bladder was full.
After lunch, as Roxy puttered around the souvenir shop, I sat in the booth and stared out at the leafless trees. We were nearing Mattoon now, which meant I was close to breaking the vow I’d made to myself all those years ago, whispering to the baby inside me, promising to never return to this desolate part of the world. It was spring then, and I felt with every mile the world was getting greener. I was escaping, I had my baby girl with me, and Tom could join us once he graduated. If I had had to walk home to Tennessee, I would have. More likely, I would have run.
“OK, I’ve overloaded myself with crap, including those peg puzzles no one can ever figure out but that still get passed on to grandchildren,” Roxy announced as she returned to the table. “I bought one for each of your brood, they were on sale. Of course, my sons are depriving me of grandchildren, only giving me tattooed girlfriends. I’ve paid. Thelma, it’s time to tell Louise what exactly we’re doing.”
I slid out from the booth and swept Roxy’s hand. “Not yet.”
* * *
When we at last arrived in Champaign, I repeatedly blinked; a bad habit that surfaced when I was surprised at something. Logic suggested that a college town I hadn’t seen in forty years would of course look very different. But I had seen towns in Tennessee sit unaltered for longer than that.
As Roxy gassed up her pickup truck, I marveled at the sprawl of neighborhoods and gas stations, feeling a surprising twinge of fondness for the brick buildings. It was what I remembered the most about Champaign: the red brick, as if the founders of the university and the town knew that if the people were to survive the blistering winds and mounds of snow of winter, wooden structures weren’t going to cut it. The buildings on campus were brick, the restaurants were brick, even many of the new gas stations were brick.
“OK, sister, where to now?” Roxy tapped on the window.
I gave the directions, relying mostly on Google Maps on my iPhone, which was one of only two apps I had mastered. I had no choice but to conquer texting or else Stella would have driven me insane, and Tom insisted I understand the map app in case I got lost in Atlanta or Savannah. Though the streets surrounding the university had multiplied and the campus expanded, I was able to rest the phone on my thigh as we entered the school and give directions by memory. When I directed Roxy into the parking lot of the mostly plain (brick) building, my throat started to tighten.
Roxy threw the truck into park. “Says I need a sticker to park here, but maybe the truck looks beat up enough that they’ll assume I’m a student. Are we going in?”
I swallowed. “Give me a minute. Keep the truck running.”
Roxy looked out the window. “Having done this now, I feel like a moron that I never came to visit you here. Six hours away in Illinois seemed like driving to Canada to me when I was twenty-two. Now, I know I should have gassed up that Chevy and headed up here all the time. It may have eased the pain.”
“The pain?”
“It was the worst time in my life when you came here. We’d been together every day since the second grade. I felt like I’d lost you to the north, like some pining widow of the Confederacy. Do you remember how we cried when you moved? I think Tom had to pry us apart.”
“The feeling was mutual.”
“I don’t remember much about all those years you were away. Did we not talk on the phone? Why do I have so few letters from you? Do I need to be taking gingko for memory loss?”
“I made a firm decision not to talk about my life here. It wasn’t a happy time.”
“Then why are we back here?”
I sighed and pivoted in the truck to face her. “Remember when I worked for the astronomy department here, while Tom was in school? I ended up doing extra work for a professor on a project. He was involved … in researching missing people. Now … I just want to see if maybe his research could help us.”
“For God’s sake, Lynnie. It’s completely against your nature to do anything irrational, and I know that grief can cause a lot of smart people to do a lot of stupid things, but this isn’t ridiculous at all. Why wouldn’t you tell me from the beginning? And why would an astronomy professor do research into missing people?”
“Let’s go in before I lose my nerve.”
We walked across the lawn, brown grass crunching beneath our shoes. Roxie bemoaned her lack of scarf and hat. “Good God, this wind is so strong! And cold! Does it blow down all the way from Chicago? How can anyone stand this?”
“There’s nothing to block the wind,” I replied, turning up the collar on my coat.
While the astronomy building too had been remodeled over the decades, it still clung to its original boxy shape. I was so taken back by the familiar silence of the building, and the smells of coffee and old paper, that I stopped, my hands fidgeting.
“What time are they expecting you?” Roxy asked.
“I didn’t make an appointment,” I said, turning away from what I knew would be a look of exasperation on her face. I led her down the main halls, past the grandiose photographs of the former deans of the department, to the office where I began my new life as a wife. The door was closed and a yellowed sign read, “Supply closet.”
A female student passed by and I quietly asked where we could find the office manager for the professors. The girl shrugged and mentioned there was a student worker at the front desk, around the corner.
We headed in that direction and found a room with a long desk and a very bored-looking young woman checking her cell phone. She smiled at our approach and set the phone to vibrate. I appreciated the gesture.
“Hello. Are the professors’ offices still that way?” I asked.
“I think so, but I’ve only had this job for a few days. Can I help you with something?”
“I wanted to see Dr. Steven Richards.”
The girl’s smile altered, and she looked quickly at her computer. “Uh, yes. He’s actually unavailable right now.”
“We should have called ahead—” Roxy began.
“I’m happy to take a message. I don’t know how soon he’ll be back.”
“Will he be back today?”
The girl’s face paled a bit. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s all right. Thank you, though.” I smiled pleasantly, took Roxy’s arm, and walked away.
She could feel me trembling. “That’s it? That’s all we’re doing?”
“I … thought he would be here.”
“Did you ever think to even call and see if he was still teaching? That was forty years ago, Lynn. He’s probably dead.”
“He was only twenty-nine when I was here. That would put him in his early seventies. And, the college’s website stated that he was here. The course schedule online even showed him teaching three classes this fall.”
“Well, clearly he’s not here, and that student is acting a little spooky about it. Maybe she’s failing his class. Maybe she has the hots for him. Was he good-looking? More importantly, what do you want to do now?”
“I want to go home. That’s what I really want to do. But I can’t just sit around that house, that big empty house, anymore. Every room feels empty. Everything feels empty without him.”
“Maybe we should find this professor’s office. See if maybe he’s in there, and the student didn’t see him come in.”
I looked around. “If I still remember the layout of the building, and I doubt that’s changed, he should be right around this corner—if he hasn’t moved in forty years.”
“Can’t hurt to check.”
We passed a row of nondescript doors with the names of the professors on the outside. I noted all the names had changed. All the professors I had worked for, except for Dr. Richards, were old when I was a young worker.
“He was handsome, in a messy kind of way,” I murmured.
I turned another corner, not surprised in the least to see the last door on the hall still marked with the name “Dr. Steve Richards, Astronomy.” He wouldn’t have ever wanted to move all his belongings and maps.
What was a surprise, however, was the note on the door, signed in flourishing cursive with the name of the dean. The message was typed and concise: “This office is closed. Any questions, please see your guidance counselor.”
“Strike two,” Roxy said. “Well, shall we see the guidance counselor? Perhaps ask her about some continuing adult education for two old chicks while we’re at it?”
I reached out and turned the door handle, but it was locked.
“Lynn, are you going to let yourself in?”
“I want to see his office.”
“Why?”
“He kept his information on the missing people in that office. I can’t have come all this way without seeing if any of my old work is still here. But what are we going to do? That girl won’t let us in, and I don’t think the dean will let us borrow a key.”
Roxy looked up and down the hallway. “Move aside.” She reached in her hand-quilted purse and dug around. She pulled out a hairpin. “When your hair is as ridiculous as mine, these things are a lifesaver.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “You just scolded me for trying to get in.”
“Yin and yang, kid. Only one of us is allowed to be the bad seed. If you do something wrong, the earth might break from its axis. Remember when we snuck into my dad’s locked liquor cabinet? I sampled it all, and all you did was fret and watch for his car to pull into the drive. I haven’t done this for years, but locks don’t change.”
After Roxy swore for a minute or two, I heard the click of the door, and the office opened. We shuffled inside and closed the door quickly.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Roxy said.
* * *
The campus street lamps were starting to come on outside, offering faint light to the rapidly darkening office. We didn’t dare turn on the overhead lights for fear of drawing attention from anyone walking outside. Roxy did a lot of huffing and sighing as I combed through drawers and file cabinets.
“Again I ask: Do you care to give me an idea of what we’re looking for?”
“Keep looking for anything that might explain where Dr. Richards might be. I went over his desk, and it’s a typical man desk: coffee stains, no organization, and dry pens. His calendar is blank, so clearly he does everything on his computer. And, as I found, it’s password protected, so I’ve come up with squat.”
Roxy leaned back in his chair and stretched out her legs, only to bang them harshly against something under the desk. I sighed, closing another cabinet. Every file, every drawer was filled with articles and research. Clearly, he had moved all his private research to his computer, and that was inaccessible. I slowly looked up at the maps that still covered the ceiling and walls, practically untouched over the decades. Apparently, he still needed that kind of visual reference—
“Care to explain this?”
Roxy was holding up a photograph, black-and-white and badly faded, of two people sitting together at a table. They were not touching, but they leaned in towards each other. I walked over and stared at the picture of myself and Dr. Richards
“Where did you find that?”
“Stuck on top of the safe under this desk. Which is locked, I might add. But that’s you, Lynn Roseworth. And I assume that’s Dr. Richards. So the question is—why does he have a minisafe with your picture stuck on top?”
“Are you sure it won’t open?”
“Yes, I’m sure, I tried it. And please answer my question.”
I looked around. The light was fading rapidly, and I began to run my fingers over the maps on the walls. I looked up and grabbed a chair to stand on.
“What are you doing?”
“Try this,” I gave her a key tied to a pushpin on the ceiling. She took it and knelt under the desk. “Did it open?”
“I think so.”
“Can we lift it?”
Roxy peered out. “We’re stealing now?”
“I have to see what’s in it, and we’re out of light.”
“It’s not heavy. It’s made out of that plastic stuff that won’t burn.”
“Stick your head out the door, see if anyone is out there.”
“Fine. But I want to know how you knew where that key was.”
I pointed up.
“Yes, I see it, it’s a star system. The fool has them all over this wacked-out office.”
“See the red pushpin?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where the key was hanging.”
“How did you guess it would be up there?”
“Because the pin marks my star.”
“What?”
“He named a star after me,” I said. “Let me carry the safe.”
* * *
At our room at the Hilton Garden Inn, on a table usually reserved for brochures on Champaign’s historic sites and loose change, sat takeout food from P.F. Chang’s and the safe. Roxy devoured her General Tso’s Chicken while I mostly played with my vegetable rice.
She at last put down her plastic fork. “Well, we’ve committed breaking and entering and burglary. If that’s my last meal before jail, I’ll be happy.”
“We’ll return all this tomorrow. No one will know.”
“Are you sure he won’t come back to his office tonight? Or first thing in the morning?”
“You saw the look on that girl’s face. I don’t think he’ll be coming back anytime soon.”
“What’s in this safe, Lynn?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you have your suspicions. Why was your picture taped to it?”
“Open it, Roxy. Tell me what’s in it.”
She stood up and slid the key into the safe. I continued to look out the window.
“Lynn.”
At the tone in her voice, I closed my eyes, afraid to turn around.
“Lynn, look at this.”
Roxy slowly slid a map out of a folder. It had yellowed and weathered, a relic now of a time before satellite mapping. The map was on a grid, with latitude and longitude markings. There were faded pencil marks, with arrows pointing to a forested area near a small square.
I recognized my home immediately.
Roxy was already sifting through dozens of newspaper clippings, all of which featured pictures of my family on election nights. The pile included the Southern Living magazine with William on the cover.
She reached out and took my trembling hand. “We need to go to the police with this.”
“We can’t.”
“We most certainly are.”
“I didn’t come here … because I suspected he might have taken William. I came because of his research into missing people. He’s spent his whole adult life dedicated to it. But when we showed up at that office and I saw that girl’s expression, I knew something bad had happened. I had to get into his office to see if I could find his research—or, more importantly, my own. But when you found that picture, and now this … I’m afraid he’s been gone from this university since William disappeared.”
“How did this happen, Lynn? When did this happen? You have to go to the FBI.”
“With what? A hunch? And destroy my marriage and what’s left of my family?”
“Why would it destroy your marriage and your family? This guy is obsessed with you, obviously—but that’s not your fault.”
I placed the Southern Living cover on the old photo of Dr. Richards and me, covering up my face. Side by side, Dr. Richards and William had the same dimples, the thick hair, the soft chin.
“Because it is my fault,” I said softly. “Dr. Richards is William’s grandfather.”