A sliver of sunshine peeked in through the blinds, stirring Lenworth fully awake. Seven already. The rooms above were still. He drew his legs toward the chair, pulled himself up, and tottered to the kitchen to put water on to boil, anxious to escape with Opal before Pauline or the boys woke. Opal’s bed was neatly made, the pillows at the head of the bed, forming a slight mound beneath the comforter, and the oversized orange bear still in its usual place in the middle of the pillows. He remained at the door, staring back at the stuffed bear’s glass eyes, his body stiff, as if waiting for someone to cast a rod and reel him further in. The window was closed, but he walked toward it to convince himself that it was indeed latched from the inside. As he passed the bed he ran his palm on the comforter, confirming what he already suspected: the bed was cold.
Next door, in the boys’ bedroom he counted the shapes—two—and kept time with the rhythm of their breaths. He walked the hall again, and descended the stairs slowly and deliberately. He jiggled the locks and checked each room, peering underneath tables and in the closet as if he were again a young father playing hide-and-seek with his young daughter. And as he moved, he thought back to the previous night, Pauline coming in, jangling her keys as usual and calling out as she walked from the front door to the kitchen. He hadn’t moved from his desk, pausing only long enough to throw his greeting over his shoulder. He didn’t recall Opal’s voice, and he wouldn’t have thought anything of her not coming back with Pauline that Friday night because she often stayed later and returned home with the boys who lived next door.
He headed up the stairs again, a little quicker this time around, calling Pauline’s name the moment his feet landed on the top step. Even before she opened her eyes, he asked, “Where’s Opal? She’s not here. Where is she?”
“Look at how long you’ve been awake. Why are you asking me?”
“She’s not in her bed. She didn’t come back with you last night?”
“I left her there with the boys from next door. They were there at the church. In the gym.”
“So she didn’t come home at all?” Even as he asked, Lenworth realized his question made him sound like a disconnected parent. How could he not have known his own daughter hadn’t come home? He pulled the robe tight around his body. “I’m going next door.”
“Dressed like that? In your pajamas and robe?”
“Yes, dressed like this. My daughter is missing and all you care about is what people will think of how I look?” He was already at the bedroom door when he finished speaking, moving so fast he nearly slipped on the rug, and again on the stairs. He heard Pauline struggling with a dress, her slippers flapping on the wood floor.
But he didn’t stop running until he was on the neighbors’ stoop, two footsteps away from the door, his finger already reaching for the doorbell. He pressed once, twice, three times, stopping when he heard shuffling behind the door. Carl, the father of the boys, opened the door a crack, looked out.
“Sorry, I know it’s early. But Opal . . .” Lenworth paused, waiting for Carl to fling open the security gate, then stepped back out of reach of the gate. “It’s Opal,” he said again, taking a step forward away from the morning light to the dark interior, keeping his voice low. “She’s missing. Don’t know if she even came home last night and I thought that maybe the boys would know where she is. Pauline said she left Opal with the boys there last night.”
“You don’t think . . .”
“I don’t know what to think.” Lenworth was inside the house now, waiting for his eyes to readjust to the dark. Pauline slid in behind him, her breath on his neck, her bare hand brushing his.
“Let me get the boys.”
Pauline leaned in to him, laying her fingers on his shoulder. But he stepped away from her ever so slightly, then moved again to lean fully against the back of a sofa. Upstairs, feet padded around on squeaking floors and squeaking steps, and he straightened himself as the boys and their parents came toward him, asking as he stood if the boys—still sleepy, still rubbing their eyes—knew anything about Opal’s whereabouts.
“We thought she left with you,” the older of the two boys said, leaning slightly to look at Pauline. “One minute she was there and then she was gone. So we thought she left with you. And that woman left too.”
“What woman?” Lenworth asked.
“A woman who was there asking for you. She too just disappeared.”
“Woman? What woman?” He turned to Pauline. “You didn’t tell me about a woman.”
Both boys lifted their shoulders up into a shrug, the answer Lenworth hated most of all.
“She said her name was Plum.” Pauline opened her mouth at last.
“Plum?” He didn’t recognize his own voice, the squeak that escaped his lips. “Plum?”
“She wanted to talk to you but since you were home with the boys I didn’t call. I figured whatever it was could wait.”
Beyond repeating Plum’s name, Lenworth had no words at all. He had no strength in his legs either and he reached behind for something to hold, but his hand simply flapped like an awkward fin. He caught himself, pulled his hand in against his body, nodded and left, struggling, as he walked, to maintain his composure. It was, after all, what was expected of him. Everyone expected a priest to be composed at all times, whether he prayed over the living or dying or counseled a couple not yet ready for marriage. He held himself together only by repeating a question he couldn’t answer. Why now? Why now? Why now? He sensed the neighbors and Pauline staring at him walking so fast he was almost trotting, his robe, open now, flapping behind him. He slowed his steps and his breathing and then he asked himself the other pressing question: How did Plum find Opal? Or was it the other way around: how did Opal find Plum?
From his own front door, he heard the urgent and insistent whistle from the kettle, the boys, awake and alone, calling and crying. The sounds spurted outward and even after he turned off the flame and Pauline quieted the boys, the raucous sounds lingered in his mind, rising to a grating, irritating crescendo. He couldn’t panic and yet he did, knocking a stack of papers loose. He sensed Pauline’s presence. She stood in the doorway with her hands around the boys’ shoulders, waiting for him to speak.
“Go,” he said, quietly. But the second time he uttered the word it was a sharp bark that seemed to spurt from the depths of his stomach. He bent over the desk and breathed in deeply, closing his eyes as he concentrated on sucking in air. He thought of the secrets that would come tumbling out now: the very first scandal that had chased him from the high school for girls in Brown’s Town, Jamaica, his own daughter whom he had taken and kept all these years from Plum, the incident that prompted his escape to the seminary. His past was hurtling forward, rapidly tumbling into his present and shattering his vision of the future.