Maggie
Maggie’s eyes closed as she waited at the curb. Elbows on knees, head in hands. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or how long Kaplan had been inside the house when he jostled her shoulder and told her that Taylor was no longer there.
“How is that possible?” she said.
“Well, there’s more than one door, a lot of windows, and I’m only one person.”
They headed back to the dorm together. Later now, quieter. Inside the hallways, the common rooms, just an occasional girl in flannel pants and a T-shirt, shuffling in Ugg slippers or worn moccasins.
“I’ll text the RA one more time,” he said.
“The door might be open.”
He blinked. “Should I ask you how you know that?”
“Some of them leave their doors open. That’s all I’m saying.”
The door was still open, but Kaplan knocked, loudly, waiting for an answer, getting none, before going inside. He announced their arrival, turned on his flashlight, but there was no point. No one was home.
“Too early,” she said.
“I guess so,” he agreed.
He pulled out a business card and taped it to the refrigerator.
They stood in the hallway, and he said he’d follow up the next day.
“It is the next day,” she said. Well past midnight.
“You know what I mean. Time to call it,” he said, and the words stung. The words of a surgeon when the patient couldn’t be revived.
“There’s more to do,” she said.
“Maybe. And if there is, I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“You have to collect evidence, get fingerprints. You—”
“We’ve been over this. There’s no crime scene. Her stuff is gone. The witnesses say she’s staying somewhere else. I know you don’t like it, but you have to accept it. I’ll file a report, though, and we’ll go fr—”
“Accept it?” She let out a low laugh. “I’m a mother. I don’t have to accept anything but what I feel in my gut. And my gut says my girl needs help.”
“Well, a gut isn’t evidence. We—”
“No, I want more than the report. I want fingerprints, crime tape—”
“I want you to sleep. And if there’s still no word from her, after she gets wind of how hard we’re looking for her? Then we’ll talk.”
That he was sounding reasonable and negotiable and almost made sense was the first sign that she knew he was right—she was tired, and she did need sleep.
He pushed the elevator button.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “You go ahead.”
“Okay,” he said. “There’s a ladies’ room around the corner.”
“I know.”
“But you can’t stay here. You know that, right?”
“I know that, too.”
He left, and she pretended to go to the bathroom in the hallway, then headed straight back to the suite. Kaplan didn’t know as much as he thought he knew. She didn’t really want to stay there. Didn’t want to smell the mix of vomit and hair spray in the hallway. Didn’t want to confront a bunch of drunk girls with smeared makeup and slurred words and hope they’d tell her what they wouldn’t tell him. No, that was not her idea of a fun evening. And she knew it was probably fruitless. But so, too, was going home. What would going home do but make her feel far away, that the clock was ticking, that she was wasting her time? She needed to be on campus, somewhere, and she needed to reach Sarah Franco. It was late, but she would call her mother’s house in Ardmore. She would wake them, scare them, but that was okay. It was all okay when your daughter was at risk.
She realized as she walked once again through the warren of rooms that she didn’t feel the presence of her daughter in any of them. No mug, no hair tie, nothing familiar. Not anymore. Was Kaplan right? Had her daughter simply moved and not told anybody?
It wasn’t the first time since his death that she missed her husband, missed having a spouse, a partner. But right now, she missed him as cop, not man. What would he glean from this? What would he see or know?
She went to their shared bathroom. In the mirror, she confronted her own worn face, mascara fallen onto her cheeks. She opened a drawer, looking for soap, and there it was. A tiny tub of Lush face wash, Emma’s favorite. She lathered the strawberry foam in her hands and slid it across her nose and cheeks. Strawberry, salt, mint. It could have been a drink. She splashed her face, letting it all go down the drain. Watching the pink bubbles pop in the bottom of the sink, she felt the enormity of the sob working up from her diaphragm. A train. An earthquake. A tornado. She gripped the edges of the vanity and let the tears come.
She dried her eyes on the edge of her shirt and walked toward the door. On the way, she had to pass her daughter’s room, the crumpled bed, the empty one. She blinked in the low light, stepped in. She was the one who argued it was a crime scene, but no one had listened. She wouldn’t touch anything, she told herself, wouldn’t turn on a light, open another drawer, wouldn’t leave fingerprints, wouldn’t obscure whatever evidence was still here.
She sat on the thin mattress and felt the featherbed liner beneath her give way. She lowered her head onto the lone remaining pillow. Emma had come to college with two. Her head sunk in deep. Memory foam. How ironic, Maggie thought. How she wished it was true. How she longed for something that retained her daughter’s thoughts and fears. But enough of that. Finally, all those thoughts slid away.
Maggie fell into a deep sleep, a practical sleep, the sleep of someone who was paying for this room, who was owed that much, so why the hell not.