Written by guest author Emily Amsel

This story is part of the project A Writer’s Shindig. Emily Amsel’s story is the fourth of 6 short stories written for the project. You can read more about our collaboration and read all the stories posted thus far at A Writer’s Shindig.

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When she woke, her muscles twanged and a headache greeted her, and lifting her head produced another bolt of pain. Someone had filled her mouth with paste, an interesting feat considering how she’d slept. She staggered into the bathroom and a ghoul looked back at her from the mirror.

At the center of the vanity was the clock-slash-radio-slash-wireless charging station where she put her phone in the mornings to listen to music while she fixed her hair and did her makeup and Hugh complained good-naturedly about her taste in music. The neon blue numbers switched to a new minute, but it must have been broken, because it informed her it was not only afternoon, it had been twenty four hours since Hugh had gone out back and announced he couldn’t see his son.

The first twenty four hours were crucial, that was repeated in every crime show she had ever come across, and she almost never watched them. She trotted downstairs in hopes that they had forgotten to wake her after some big development, but Hugh and Kara were in the living room, her husband on the couch, his ex seated in the chair Elle hated like it was some sort of throne. When Kara saw her, his upper lip curled like she was something she scraped off her shoe, but it quickly melted back into indifference.

“Nothing?” Elle said, and Hugh looked up at her as if surprised to see her there.

“They brought out dogs,” he said. “I gave them some old laundry to use for scent. They haven’t found anything. Maybe the fire is interfering with them—”

An electric shock jolted her. “Fire?”

“Your stupid neighbors next door left something on the stove when they went out looking for Justin,” Kara said.

The light around her was now too bright, bleaching the world of color. Elle rested a hand on the wall before she fell, feeling her way over to the kitchen counter stool. Clearly unimpressed with the performance, Kara stood, something bitter making her face twitch.

“I need to head home,” she said. “I need to talk to my mother.”

Her steps resonated with sharp clicks on the floor, now scuffed and caked in mud. When she threw the door open, the bang of it hitting the wall made Elle yelp and jump back to her feet. Hugh grabbed her hand and squeezed for dear life, and a stranger appeared in the door. This man had a badge on his belt, and he wore scuffed jeans, like he’d been out with the search party. He wiped his boots on the welcome mat before he came inside.

“Everything all right in here?” the man asked.

“My ex wife is careless in her stress,” Hugh said, and Elle had to shake free of his hands before her fingers snapped.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” the stranger said, holding his hand out towards Elle. “I’m Phillip Michelakis. Detective with the state police.”

She took his hand. His grip was firmer than hers.

I’m sorry, I practically fell unconscious when I went to bed,” she told him, because she needed to justify her absence. He shook his head like it didn’t matter to him. But that did not mean it was so.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he said. “In private?”

His eyes remained fixed on her, and she wanted so badly to squirm. He’d be registering every movement, another clue to hang her with.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Hugh said in a low rasp. Then he lumbered up the stairs with heavy footfalls, leaving her with this man who put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels while his eyes continued to bore holes into her. A hint of smoke bit into her eyes, and the haze masking the outside light made her walk to the still open door. The windows of the Holloway house were open with a fan had been stuck in one to suck out the remaining smoke.

“The kid left soup on the stove for hours,” Michelakis said. “Water boiled away, then the stuff inside turned to char. There’s a couple of firefighters here and they ran over when the smoke alarm went off. No serious damage.”

“That’s a relief,” Elle said, and she shut the door.

“This is starting to look serious,” he said. “The dogs haven’t been able to pick up a scent, but it’s starting to look like it isn’t a case where he wandered off.”

Elle sucked in air. “You think someone took him?”

“It’s a possibility. We have an emergency alert out, and everyone in your neighborhood is being interviewed. Was there anything at all out of place yesterday? Did you see a person or a vehicle that didn’t belong?”

She leaned against the door, not caring about the knob jabbing into her back. The day had been sunny, the sky full of puffy white clouds that did not threaten rain. It was cool enough that she regretted not bringing a jacket, but only for about ten minutes. The entire time she was outside, nothing felt wrong, she didn’t feel like she was being watched—unlike now, where the eyes crawling over her made her skin prickle.

“No,” she said. “God, I wish there were. No, wait, no, definitely not. But the only cars in driveways were ones I knew, no one had parked on the street, and everyone outside had belonged.”

“Walk me through what you remember about yesterday,” he said, and she did, and once she finished, he asked her to go through it all once more. After finishing again, her throat hurt and she went to the kitchen for a glass of water, and she could not ignore the clok-clok of his boots against the laminate floor as he followed.

“But you hadn’t seen or heard him since your husband left.”

Tears blurred her vision. She put down the glass before she dropped it.

“I meant to look,” she said, voice now a rasp. “I really did. He’s never wandered off before. The farthest he’s gone without telling us is into the neighbor’s yard, and he was still within sight.

Michelakis nodded, once up and down, his eyes never moving. Everyone was thinking the same thing, she left a five year old unsupervised, she deserved what was coming to her.

“It could happen to anyone,” he said. “I’ve done the same thing with my girls. You live in a safe place, you think they’ll be safe if you look away. Most of the time they are.”

God, he couldn’t sound more phony if he had a script in front of him.

“Now this is a little personal,” he said in that same, cozening tone. “How are things at home? Between you and your husband, you and Justin, Hugh and his son?”

No wonder he wanted her buttered up. All the better to grease out the details.

“Nothing notable,” she said. “Justin’s five, and when Hugh uses a firm tone, he always goes along with it.”

“Never does the old ‘you’re not my mom’ thing?”

Elle shook her head. “I don’t make the rules, just enforce them, and he knows if I say something, it’s because Mom and Dad say so. And Hugh’s always patient with him. I can get tired of Justin’s bouncing off the walls and shrieking every other syllable, but Hugh rolls with everything. He’s always been an easy going guy. It’s one of the reasons I like him.”

“So the marriage is good.”

“Yes, I’d say so. I never wanted to have screaming matches like my parents did, and he’s the same.”

He looked down at her feet, the pale pink nail polish getting chipped. Usually she redid them on Sunday. The detective licked his lips. Elle’s jaw clenched, not sure if it was predatory or thoughtful.

“But that isn’t how it was with Kara,” he said.

“I didn’t know them then, so I could only tell you what he told me. They were heading towards divorce before she got pregnant, and after just broke them apart completely.”

“Yes, that’s what he said. Her too, for the most part.” His eyes, threaded with red, focused on her. “How do they coparent together?” “

In my experience, fine. There’s hiccups, like when Justin got his first bike, Hugh was upset he wasn’t there in person and just had the video. Kara apologized. Same if he screws up.”

“Hm. Okay, thank you. I have more people to talk to, so I’ll—”

“Do you think someone took Justin?”

The question burst out before she could stop it. His eyebrows twitched up in what may have been surprised. Elle was certainly no poker player.

“Honestly, we have no evidence of that. None of your neighbors reported anything out of the ordinary, except one car that belongs to the boyfriend of a girl on the next street. They didn’t want her parents to find out they were still dating. We’re doing background checks on people, but the worst so far is a guy who peed outside across from a school last winter, and a guy who slept with a fifteen year old when he was nineteen.” He shut his eyes and sighed. “I don’t suppose anyone around here’s made you feel uneasy, have they?”

Her shoulders slumped. She moved from in front of the door so he could make his escape.

“Nothing. It’s why I love this place. Such a good neighborhood.”

“We’re still looking for him,” he said, hurriedly, as if to reassure. “No one has any intentions of giving up.”

He opened the door and in came a waft of bitter air. Some haze still, but it was starting to clear. Maybe the dogs would find something soon.

No, they had to find something soon.

She sat on the couch to wait. Her phone went off, and when Elle heard her sister’s voice, the dam finally burst. It was such a relief to get it out, opening an infected wound in an attempt to flush out the disease. If the low battery indicator didn’t start flashing, she might never have stopped.

“I’ll call Dad, tell him what’s going on,” Amy said. He’d express concern, maybe even leave a voicemail, and never follow up.

“Thanks,” Elle said dully. Tried to come up with something else. Failed.

“Call me tomorrow,” Amy said. “I’m off work.”

Work!

The call disconnected, and Elle plugged her phone in. There was no way she could sit at a desk and stare at marketing reports like they actually mattered. Her manager was going to be pissed, badmouthing her to others, sending passive aggressive messages that were a hair below being actionable. Elle sent a message to Veronika, she’d be out next week, family emergency, take it from her vacation time. She left her phone on the kitchen counter where she wouldn’t have to look at it for a while.

She went to find Hugh and he was upstairs lying on their bed, curled up on his side and hugging his pillow. She climbed in beside him and draped her arm over him, murmuring apologies for leaving him alone for so long. He squeezed her hand in acknowledgement.

“What if they don’t bring him home today?” he said.

“They will,” she said, and it should have been the truth.

The sun set on the second day. Kara returned with her mother in tow, and after five minutes of screaming and crying, Elle excused herself. One of them spat something at her, she nodded though she did not know if that was the appropriate response, and she headed to the master bathroom and shut the door. At the bottom of her makeup drawer was a zippered bag of old brushes and tools. Amongst the dust and dulled eyebrow pencils was a pill bottle leftover from her dental surgery. They had to be expired at this point, but Elle popped a couple anyway, then flushed the toilet and went back downstairs to stand next to Hugh.

More screaming, and Elle floated over all of it, even when it was turned her way. She took out her phone, not sure who she was going to call, and Faith slapped it out of her hand, and Elle snatched the item up a second before Faith’s foot slammed onto the spot where it had fallen.

“You need to leave,” Hugh said, his voice bigger than the crying woman. Elle pressed her face into his arm. Warm. Safe.

“I’ll be back later,” Kara said, almost a threat.

“I’ll leave the lights on for you.”

The other woman gave Elle a puzzled look, but then Kara was distracted by her wailing mother. “You said you’d hold it together,” Kara muttered.

Finally, they were gone, and Elle and Hugh sat together on the couch as the light faded. The doorbell rang and Hugh’s hand squeezed hers before he went to answer it.

The man was vaguely familiar, in rugged jeans and flannel and smelling faintly of mud and wet grass. The search was done. The volunteers had to go back to work, to their own children.

“We haven’t seen any sign of him,” he said. “I don’t think he’s anywhere around here.”

“What about the dogs?” Hugh asked.

The man shook his head. More conversation. Hugh started crying and the man squirmed and excused himself.

Hugh grabbed Elle and shook her, fingers pinching into her shoulders. “This isn’t happening, this can’t be happening.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, prying his fingers from her shoulders. “If I looked. If I just looked!”

He shook his head, and she did not know what it meant, absolution or condemnation.

It grew dark. Elle kept her promise and flipped on the outside lights, and returned to her husband to wait for Kara. By the time the woman returned, Elle’s head wasn’t drifting away from her body as much, but she wished it was. When Kara cried, it wasn’t the banshee wails of her mother. It was a soft, painful sob that made her heart hurt.

“We have to go out there ourselves,” Kara said through the tears. She started to rise from the hassock she’d been sitting on. “We can’t give up. We can still find him!”

“He’s not out there,” Hugh said. “They would have seen something. The police will track him down. They’ll bring him home before he’s hurt.”

Kara dropped back down. The gut-twisting sobs started again and Hugh moved next to her, arm around his shoulders, and Elle reached over to take her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Once again, her words received no response.

The crying tapered into sniffles, then into empty silence. “What are we supposed to do now?” Kara said.

Elle sat back on the couch, staring at the black television screen. She could have turned it on, drowned out some of her thoughts with a bad show, but she didn’t deserve it. Hugh moved next to her, pressed against her, staring out the sliding glass doors that led to the patio. For a few minutes, Kara sat with them, but she started tapping her fingers, then her feet, then got up to pace through the house. It was funny how much her restlessness was reminiscent of Justin, who never sat in one place for more than five minutes.

The question Kara posed had an answer, Elle began to think, and it was not one anyone would want to hear. They could do nothing.

“I’m going to go lie down,” she said. “Because otherwise I’m going to throw up.”

“Did you have dinner?” Hugh asked, and Elle couldn’t remember. Perhaps that was why her stomach was contemplating suicide.

The night was quiet, but at dawn, Hugh’s mother arrived, and Leslie did not yell, she did not accuse, but her grief was as overpowering as her perfume. Throughout the week, when they were still trying to hope, people kept coming by and they said it was for support, sometimes they even brought food, but they were prying for details. That’s all it ever was.

Any news? Have you thought of anything? What were you doing when you first noticed he was gone? Have you looked here? There? Where? Who? When?

Elle received them all, even Hugh’s friend from college who they hadn’t seen since their engagement party. The next time Kara showed up, she brought her father, and while he kept his mouth shut, his eyes were full of black fire. He would blame his former son in law for every woe for the rest of his life.

The first week passed, then the second. Elle’s manager called to ask her when she was coming back because she was out of vacation and sick time.

“Do you want to take family leave?” Veronika asked, and without the exasperation normally present in the woman’s words, and voice, and general existence of time off work. Elle took the phone from her ear to make sure she had dialed the right number.

“I’m going to have to,” Elle said. “I could try to work, but I…”

Her throat pinched. A noise came out, but she wasn’t sure the phone picked it up.

“I’m going to send you the names of some therapists,” Veronika said. “Um, they’re on our insurance plan, so please, call, make an appointment.”

Who the hell even are you? Elle did not say, because speaking was beyond her. She did manage to squeak out a thanks before she hung up, and somehow Veronika had actually meant it and sent a bunch of names and numbers.

She had turned into a figure of pity, which was probably better than being a figure of suspicion. The cops came back a few times, and while their questions were always personal, Elle never got the impression that she was being interrogated. Maybe that was the point, that she shouldn’t know she was under suspicion. Then came the day Michelakis arrived, hang dog expression on his face, like she caught him sending racist memes and he wasn’t really sorry but he had to act like he was.

“We’ve exhausted every lead,” he said, mostly to Hugh. “The tip line hasn’t brought anything substantive. We’ve talked to everyone. We’re not giving up, but until we have something more to go on…”

He sighed and for a moment, Elle believed he was as miserable as he seemed.

“We’re putting the case to the side. I promise, I’ll keep looking over it, and anything that comes up, I will leap on with both feet.”

Hugh stared, mouth slightly open. He hadn’t shaved in three days and his whiskers were uneven, and a lot grayer than she expected.

“Have you told Kara yet?” Elle asked.

“I’m on my way there after I finish with you.” He stood. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Hugh gasped, eyes wide and twitching. Elle put her hand on his leg and squeezed before he screamed.

It was the first time anyone ever said it. Justin was gone. He was not coming back.

Days. Weeks. Months. Candlelight vigils. Interviews to get the word out. Therapy. Crying. Screaming. Silence.

Hugh came home while Elle was in the kitchen. Her night to cook dinner. Stew from a can. She’d had a long day and didn’t feel like using knives.

He sat down at the kitchen table. “They let me go today.”

It was only then she turned and noticed the backpack he kept his laptop in was crammed full, and next to it rested a plastic container full of the fidget toys he kept on his desk, photos (their wedding, Justin), and his speaker, among other odds and ends.

“How could they—”

“They showed a lot of patience,” he said, his tone one of despair muffled by forced enthusiasm. “I should have been fired months ago. I show up and barely do anything. I can’t…” His forehead wrinkled and he blinked several times. “Concentrate.”

She moved next to him, rested her head on his shoulder, rubbed his hand.

“What do you want to do now?” she asked.

“I can pick up some freelance stuff until I find something else,” he said, eagerly, earnestly. He meant it, but that didn’t mean he was always capable of doing so. Some months it wasn’t even a thousand, others it was closer to four. It depended on whether he was able to do more than stare at the screen.

Sometimes, he called different agencies. He even got a phone call with an FBI agent once, but it never yielded anything. On the one year anniversary, they were interviewed by two different news stations, and it was around that time Elle noticed she’d been blocked by Kara on social media. After the interview on the second anniversary, she’d realized she only talked to her husband’s ex once in the past year, to hand over some toys Kara wanted as keepsakes.

Year three brought even less attention. It was probably for the best. Hugh had taken to pulling out strands of his hair. Intensive therapy helped, at least a little.

Before the third anniversary, the Boudreaus moved away. Laine came to say goodbye, because Deion still asked about Justin at times. Elle texted her a picture in case she wanted to print it out for him.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Laine said. They hugged. A week later, the moving van in front of their house was fully packed. When the doorbell rang, Elle expected Laine or Michelle had brought Deion for one final farewell, but it was Kara standing on the other side.

She must have lost thirty pounds over the past few years, and she’d never been a large woman. Her frame was skeletal, and her skin was rough, pores dilated, a lot of wrinkles that hadn’t been there before. It had been some time since they’d seen each other, but that long?

Elle tried to cover her shock at the other woman’s appearance. The blank expression on Kara’s face made it hard to tell if it worked.

“I didn’t expect you to come by,” Elle said. “It’s been so long since we’ve talked. How’ve you been?”

“Is Hugh here,” Kara said. “I’m afraid not. He’ll be home in an hour. You can wait if you—”

“I’m moving,” she said. “Near to my sister. I need some distance.”

Elle nodded. “I can understand that. If we ever hear anything, I’ll let you know right away.”

“Let the police do it,” Kara said. Then she turned and went back to her car, which she left idling at the curb.

I’m never going to see her again, Elle thought. That thought brought neither sadness nor relief. It didn’t really bring anything.

Hugh reacted more strongly than she expected, perhaps because there was no clearer sign that the mother of his child was giving up. Therapy was upped to twice a week for a while.

Kara left. The two of them stayed, five years, then ten. Hugh’s father died, a stroke, right around the time Elle had a lump in her breast removed. After the surgery, when Hugh brought her home, mounting dread engulfed her as she entered the house. She let it sit for a while, but her job had turned to garbage the past few years and there were better prospects in other states.

“It’s time for us to move,” she said to Hugh.

He blinked, then left the room. They didn’t talk much for the next three days, and Elle didn’t want to admit she was looking up divorce lawyers on her laptop. Then he sat her down and asked where she’d want to settle.

“You’re okay with this?” she asked.

“I know you’re right,” he said. “I’ve known this for a while. Sometimes when you get stuck, that first step takes some preparation.”

“We’re never going to forget,” she promised.

A real estate agent was contacted, a bright woman with too-white teeth and roots at the top of her bleached hair. She walked through their home pointing out things that would need to be moved or repaired in order to present the house at its best.

“That dishwasher’s got to go,” she said, heading out the sliding glass doors. Then there was a crack in the patio that needed fixing, and she suggested a fence would make parents with young kids feel safer. “You don’t want them thinking their babies might wander off.”

Tears filled Elle’s eyes and she would have excused herself if Hugh hadn’t darted in the house first. She told the agent they’d get on the fence tomorrow.

The fence guy came a week later, followed by the property evaluator who put down wooden stakes with pink plastic flags tied to them. While he was hammering one down, he moved around and fell forward, avoiding the stake but hitting the ground. Elle ran out to check on him but he was young and already getting to his feet.

“Is that an animal burrow?” he asked.

“There are some limestone caverns in the area,” she said. “There are openings everywhere, though I didn’t know one that big was on our property.”

“Man, I could’ve broken an ankle in there.” He glanced back at it. “Better have the contractor fill it in.”

The boundary stakes were done, and the fence would be started next Monday. He headed back towards the front and she checked the hole, the only opening that was actually on their property. They never mowed this far back and most of it was obscured by long grass and vines twisting out of the woods, and she swept these aside for a better look. Maybe two feet across, an almost vertical shaft. In the shadows was a glimmer that shouldn’t have been there.

Wincing preemptively for her knees, Elle knelt and took out her phone, hoping this wouldn’t be the exact moment her phone slipped from her grip. She hit the flashlight app and the light came on, and the glimmer, which may have been neon green before years of dirt settled on it, had a familiar pattern. A soccer ball pattern, in fact.

She stretched her arm farther and a scream stuck in her throat. Her arm trembled and she pulled it back before she really did lose her phone. She’d never be able to reach in there to retrieve it, and she could never allow anyone else to. The hole wasn’t that wide, but damn, it was deep, and the evaluator was lucky he hadn’t slid in deeper. If he’d been any smaller and at a worse angle, he might have fallen, and he’d never be able to wriggle out of that shaft. Well, maybe it was possible. He was an adult, after all.

The fence guys would fill in the hole, and she and Hugh could move away and they could finally live again. Even if not knowing hurt, the truth would be worse. It would kill him faster than a stroke. A single, barking laugh escaped her, but if she gave into it, it would never stop, and she’d be bashing her head against the rocky soil in an attempt to contain the avalanche.

The night it happened. She’d been dreaming. Dreaming of Justin crying out for his father.

“Ma’am!” the evaluator yelled. “Can you sign this?”

Elle straightened. “Right with you!”

She walked quickly to catch up with him. The past was buried. Let it stay that way.