1:26 p.m.
Pasadena, California ~ Friday, August 15, 2014
Jay finally called me back.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up?”
The words came out of me like the spurt of a ruptured vessel. “Charlie didn’t show up for work today and no one seems to know where he is. Did he tell you anything? Say he had plans for a long weekend?”
I heard my son’s bafflement in his silence, even before he said, “No. Nada. But I’m sure he’s fine, Mom. Probably just some mix up.”
Yeah. That’s what we all thought, too, when Gideon and Jeremy first disappeared.
“The secretary at his work told me that even Cassandra didn’t know,” I added.
I’d been in touch with Gloria again since our earlier conversation. Charlie still hadn’t appeared at work or called in. “We had to reschedule the plastics people,” the woman dared to say with an irritated sniff.
Screw the plastics people. Where the hell is my son?
I hadn’t trusted myself to reply to her aloud.
Jay cleared his throat. “Well, uh, no. Cassandra probably wouldn’t know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They broke up, you know. Like—” He paused. “About three weeks ago. A month, maybe.”
“What?”
“Oh, he didn’t tell you yet?” Jay laughed, in that nervous way he did when he was embarrassed. “Sorry. I thought you knew. Didn’t seem like a big deal to him. I think he needed space...or she did...or something. He was totally fine.”
Clearly, this was not true. There were signals I’d missed. There must have been. No one broke up with someone he’d dated exclusively for over a year and remained “totally fine.” Unless, maybe, it hadn’t been so exclusive after all. Hmm.
And me...who’d always prided myself on my intuition. Who’d rarely missed a mood change in my boys when they were toddlers or teens. Where had my perceptions gone this time? What had I failed to notice? I felt like a fraud.
Granted, I hadn’t seen Charlie and Cassandra together in person since—when? Mother’s Day? I’d talked with him on the phone two-dozen times since then, at least. He’d met us for a family dinner on my birthday and stopped by on a number of other occasions during the summer. Just not, admittedly, with his now ex-girlfriend.
“Jay, just promise you’ll call me if you think of anything else,” I said. “Or if you hear from him, okay? I’ll be up late.”
“Sure, Mom,” he promised easily (too easily) before hanging up and leaving me to my fears—a purgatory of what-ifs.