ERIC GOLDEN

Eric peered out his front window at Lexi Blum, standing motionless on the sidewalk in front of her parents’ home. Red and blue lights from the police cruiser flashed a syncopated strobe pattern onto her beige jacket. Why was she just standing there instead of going inside? Wasn’t she anxious to hear the details about her mother?

He pressed his wife’s photo on the children’s gadget phone. Bea had pasted photos on the fat buttons—her own on top, then Eric’s—so their kids could reach them easily in an emergency. Why couldn’t the kids memorize the numbers or look at a list, like kids did when he was little? Besides, he was always home.

Bea’s voicemail didn’t pick up right away. Maybe for once she remembered to turn her cell phone back on when she finished her morning surgery schedule.

“What’s up?” Bea’s voice was muffled. He pictured her chewing the sandwich he had packed that morning. Fat-free cream cheese with chopped green olives on wheatberry for her, PB & J for the kids.

“We’ve got a situation next door,” Eric said. “You better meet the kids’ school bus.”

“What do you mean, ‘a situation’?”

“Street blocked by a police car. Like that.”

“On Azalea Court?” Bea scorned the dated architecture of the houses and regularly complained about the lack of closets. But she didn’t mind the easy commute to the hospital or living mortgage-free in exchange for Eric’s job as on-site manager, fix-it guy, and gardener. “Must be a mistake.”

“The cops look pretty authentic.” Eric heard the defensiveness in his voice. He wasn’t sure how he had become the poster boy for small-town living, but his wife had that effect on him lately. Nothing seemed to be happening on the street out front, so Eric sank into his favorite chair at the living room window.

“I’ve got clinic this afternoon,” she said. “Give me the bullet.”

Eric ignored the doctor-speak. “Iris seems to have gone missing.”

“What does Asher say? Don’t you two drink tea and gossip every day?”

Eric let that pass too. “Not since last Sunday. Some days he doesn’t feel so well. He’s ninety-four, you know?” He didn’t add that recently Asher wasn’t himself, and it wasn’t just about Iris being sick.

“Why all the cops?” Bea asked. “Do they think someone took her? Why would anyone kidnap a sick old lady?”

“I don’t know. But yesterday Evelyn told me she was very worried about Iris.”

“Evelyn?”

He couldn’t decide if Bea refused to learn their neighbors’ names out of disinterest or disdain. “Evelyn. The nurse in Number Three? Asher hasn’t let her in to visit Iris for three days.”

“Oh, the Nosy-Parker. What about the daughter?”

“I called Lexi a few minutes ago. She hasn’t spoken to her mom in a week.”

“Iris hasn’t spoken a complete sentence in longer than that,” Bea said. “She’s gone loony.”

Even though she hadn’t done more than wave at their next-door neighbors in ages, Bea claimed anything health-related as her area of expertise. When they first moved in, Iris had been very friendly, offering advice about the best fish markets and local farm stands, but recently she stopped coming outside. A couple of weeks earlier, Asher told him that Iris had dementia, probably Alzheimer’s. It’s usually a slow disease, he’d said, but Iris had a fulminant case. Eric looked up the word in the medical dictionary on Bea’s desk. Fulminant: occurring suddenly and with great intensity.

“Loony?” Eric asked. “Is that your professional opinion?” He heard voices out back and hurried to the window to watch a cop in Asher’s yard. The cop surveyed the stone barbecue pit Asher had built to celebrate his retirement forty years earlier, then poked around in the poison ivy beyond the mowed grass.

“Ha.” Bea said. “Aren’t the cops searching for Iris?”

“I guess so. I can’t tell what they’re doing.”

“What about our kids?” Bea’s voice grew worried. “They could be in danger too.”

“I doubt it’s anything like that,” Eric said. “But wait, a cop is coming to the front door. I’ll call you later. Just to be safe, why don’t you pick up the kids and take them back to work with you.”

“But I—”

The doorbell rang. “Gotta go.”

Bea’s sigh came across loud and clear. “Okay. But listen to me, Eric. You stay away from Asher and his trouble. Far away.”

A uniformed police officer was at the door. “Good morning, sir. Are you Eric Golden?”

Eric nodded.

“We’re investigating a missing person report. Have you seen Mrs. Iris Blum this morning?”

“Not for a few days. What’s going on?”

“We’ve just started gathering information,” the cop said.

“I’d like to help look for her,” Eric offered. “I’m sure other neighbors would too. What can we do?”

“The detectives will be here soon. They’ll be around to talk with everyone and will let you know when you can help. For now, please stay in your home.”

“Will do.”

“One other thing,” the cop said. “You’re the caretaker of this place, right? Do you have a key to the empty unit, Number Five? I’d like to check it out, just to make sure Mrs. Blum isn’t in there.”

“Sure. I’ll find the keys and meet you there in a few minutes.”

Rummaging through the drawer for the master keys to Number Five, he glanced at the family photos on his desktop. This year, Marc wouldn’t smile because of his braces, and Morgan went along in rare sibling solidarity. Bea looked great, as always. There were things about her he still loved, even when she made him feel small. Like the wild dancing thing she did with her fingers on a desk or the dinner table, a syncopated drumming.

She was doing that the first time Eric saw her, at his college roommate’s wedding. He and Bea were seated at the singles table with the other friends and cousins who came without a partner, and he noticed her fingers before her face. He couldn’t believe fingers could be that strong and smart and graceful. He fell in love with her hands and then with all of her. The first thing she said to him was, “You have the loveliest philtrum I’ve ever seen.”

“Loveliest what?” he’d asked, and she traced the indentation from his nose to upper lip with her finger.

“It’s cute,” she said, before reaching into her silver sequined purse for a miniature bottle of hand disinfectant. She was studying to be a surgeon and he hoped that wouldn’t ruin everything. When the phone rang again, Eric’s first thought was that Bea was calling back to apologize. He grabbed the keys with one hand and the phone with the other.

It was Asher, and his voice was shaky. “Eric?”

“Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Asher’s answer was a sigh so loud Eric could have heard it without the phone. “I need to talk to you. I messed up. Come to the back door, and don’t let the cops see you.”

Eric had no experience with missing persons or cops. He was a gardener. Well, he had an MBA, but selling things had never agreed with him the way growing things did. Bea made buckets of money and was saving up for a fancier house. Meanwhile, he could plant bulbs in the fall, mow lawns, weed around the lupine, repair broken porch railings, and build the occasional planter for tomatoes on someone’s back deck. Their kids were in school, but Eric was on call for stomachaches and bringing cupcakes to class on birthdays and riding the school bus on field trips. He spent a lot of time alone but was rarely lonely. That was partly because of Asher.

“Gotta let the cops into Number Five. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. “Hang in there.”

“Hurry,” Asher whispered. “Please hurry.”