Three Days Missing Read online

  “God, I’m going to miss you.” I pull him into a hug, one that’s quick and fierce and strong enough he can’t wriggle away. I inhale his familiar smell—shampoo and detergent and the tiniest whiff of stinky puppy.

  “You ready, Ethan?” Miss Emma, holding out a hand to him. She looks at me and smiles. “We’ll take good care of him, I promise.”

  I nod and hand him off, telling myself he’ll be fine. Ethan will be cared for and looked after. Maybe outside of schoolyard and classroom constraints, he’ll even make a friend.

  Please, God, let him make a friend.

  With one last wave, Miss Emma nudges Ethan toward the rumbling bus. Hours from now, it will be this very moment I keep returning to, replaying the images over and over and over in my mind, not the part where my son disappears behind the smoky glass, but the part where an icy chill creeping up my spine almost makes me stop him.

  KAT

  3 hours, 13 minutes missing

  I’m awakened before dawn by a commotion outside my front door, and my first thought is of Andrew. Not the sweet, charming Andrew who used to hook his pinkie around mine in the grocery store or wash my car every Saturday, but the drunken, domineering version who’d appeared more and more often the further we got into our marriage. The stack of self-help books on my nightstand would call my thinking of him now a textbook example of conditioning, a learned response to a repeated stimuli, like ducking from an oncoming backhand. I don’t need a book or a psychologist to tell me it’s Andrew’s fist downstairs now, beating on my front door.

  I drag a pillow over my head and wait for the sound of his wails to worm their way through my wooden bedroom door. Kat, I can fix this. Why won’t you let me fix this?

  But Andrew’s voice doesn’t come. Only a steady rain drumming the roof and the old, rickety house holding its breath.

  I toss the pillow aside and check the alarm pad on the far wall, an electronic line of defense I installed after things in my house kept getting moved around. My framed photographs crooked on the walls. A pile of papers, shuffled and shifted. The woven throw rug, pulled out from the easy chair’s legs. It was Andrew’s way of fucking with me, of letting me know that even though he didn’t have a key, he was still the one in control. It stopped six months ago, on the day a DeKalb County judge signed a paper ordering him to stay two hundred feet away. Just in case, I stabbed an alarm company sign into the dirt by the front steps. This place is secured by ADT, asshole. Don’t even try it.

  A glowing red light tells me the system is armed, but another thumping from downstairs tells me Andrew is as determined as ever to haul me out of bed. The restraining order is great in theory, but so far mine has proved to be useless. I know from experience that by the time the police arrive, Andrew will be long gone. I reach for my phone, then remember I left it downstairs in the kitchen.

  From downstairs comes another pounding, five sharp thuds on the door with a fist.

  Normally, this would be the moment when Ethan comes stumbling into my room, his curls sticking up every which way from his pillow, his fingers scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. I’ve tried to protect him from his father’s and my histrionics, but there have been enough moments like this one to make me wonder if our constant fighting hasn’t left permanent scars. Divorce is a cesspool of soul-sucking sorrow, especially for the innocent child stuck in the middle.

  As I push back the covers and step out of bed, I worry that Andrew’s ruckus will wake the neighbors. I worry he’ll take his frustration out on my rosebushes or punch a fist through the glass. That this might be something else has yet to cross my mind.

  And then I open my bedroom door.

  The upstairs hallway, normally lit up with the muted yellow glow of a streetlight, is a blaze of red and blue. The colors crawl up the walls and slash across the ceiling and send me hurling across the carpet. I trip over an overflowing laundry hamper and a pair of Ethan’s ratty sneakers, catching myself just in time to fly down the stairs. I take them by twos and threes, my legs suddenly wobbly with terror. It’s the middle of the night, my son is who-knows-how-many miles away and there’s a police car in my driveway.

  God forgive me, I’m praying this is somehow about Andrew.

  He had an accident. He was arrested.

  Just please, God. Don’t let it be about Ethan.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a man fills the vertical window next to the door. He’s huge, six feet and then some, with wide shoulders and the kind of bulk that comes from kickboxing and barbells, not doughnuts. His blue eyes lock onto mine, and the hairs rise, one at a time, on the back of my neck.

  He presses a badge to the window. “Brent Macintosh, Atlanta Police Department. I’m looking for Kathryn Jenkins.”

  Everything inside me turns to stone. If I open this door, if I verify that yes, I’m Kat Jenkins, he’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. For the longest moment, there’s no sound except for my breathing, too hard and too harsh.

  He’s not in uniform but his clothes are dark. Dark shirt, dark pants, the fabric inky as the sky behind him. “Ma’am, are you Kathryn Jenkins?”

  I clear my throat. Nod. “It’s Kat.”

  He slips his badge into his pocket, stepping back to reveal his car on my driveway behind him. The siren lights turn the falling raindrops red and blue, dots of color swirling through the sky like a kaleidoscope. “Could you please open the door?”

  I turn on the foyer light, flip the locks and tug on the handle, and a siren splits the air. Oh shit, I think in that half second before my body snaps into action, lurching to the pad to punch in the code. My shaking fingers won’t cooperate. It takes me three fumbling tries to get the sequence right.

  The house plunges into a silence so intense it’s like a whole other sound ringing in my ears.

  His expression is carefully blank, but his body language makes me brace for what he says next: “Is your son, Ethan Maddox, with you?”

  “No.” My heart gives an ominous thud. “He’s away, on a school trip.”

  “Then I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Ethan has been reported missing from Camp Crosby.”

  Static hisses in my ears. My mind has shoved aside all of his words but one—the most important.

  “Ethan is missing?” I need this man to explain it to me. I need him to be exact and specific.

  He does so without consulting his notes. “Ethan’s teacher conducted a head count sometime around 2:30 a.m. and found Ethan missing. She and another chaperone searched the surrounding area, and when they couldn’t find any sign of your son, they alerted the authorities at 3:07. The Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene shortly thereafter and has initiated an organized search of the camp. So far they’ve been unable to locate him.”

  “I’m sure he... He probably just...went to the bathroom or something and couldn’t find his way back.”

  “It’s one of the scenarios they’re looking at. A city kid in the woods could get turned around easily, especially in the dark.”

  “What... What are the other scenarios?”

  “At this point, they’re not ruling anything out.”

  I picture my son out there in woods darker than a nightmare, and there’s a teetering in my balance, a slow unraveling in my chest. Ethan still sleeps with a night-light. He still insists on leaving his bedroom door cracked and the hallway sconces on, so the light can creep across the carpet to the foot of his bed. I think of him out there in the cold, dark woods, and I feel his panic, as tangible as electricity in the air.

  Every mother lives with this secret terror. The kind we let creep into our consciousness in our darker moments. It wheezes with hot, sour breath in our ears our most primal fear—that some sort of harm will come to our babies. We console ourselves by dismissing it as an impossibility. Not us, we tell ourselves. Not our children. It’s how we survive the danger th
at the worst could happen, by shoving our terrors to the dustiest, most forgotten corners of our mind.

  But sometimes, when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep, we allow ourselves to wonder. What would I do? How would I respond?

  I respond with legs of jelly and lungs of concrete, no air moving in or out. My skin goes hot and my blood goes cold and my vision goes blurry with tears or lack of oxygen or both. Something sharp and biting tears into my stomach, doubling me over at the waist.

  Ethan is missing.

  The words play over and over in my mind, along with images of him in the pitch-black woods, a pack of wild animals nipping at his toes or dragging him by the skin of his neck through the underbrush. Is he hurt? Is he conscious? Is he alive?

  I lurch upright, my breath returning with a series of choked sobs.

  The policeman steps inside, shutting the door with a soft click and reaches for my elbow. “Let’s find you a place to sit down.”

  I swat his hand away. “How long have they been searching?” My voice is too high and too shrill. The hysteria has thickened into a spiky knot in the center of my chest. I can barely talk around it. “How long?”

  He checks his watch. “Somebody’s been looking for just under three hours now. We’ve been trying to reach you for most of that.”

  “Three hours! Three... How many people?”

  “I don’t know the exact number, ma’am, but a missing child is about as high priority as you can get. If they don’t have the staff on hand, they’ll be calling in nearby precincts and recruiting volunteers. It takes a little longer to pull a search party together in the middle of the night, but the sheriff knows what he’s doing, and his guys know those woods like the backs of their hands.”

  If that were true, if the sheriff and his guys knew every moss-covered stone, every cave and fallen tree trunk Ethan could be hiding in or under or behind, wouldn’t they have found him by now?

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask. What time did you arrive home last night?”

  Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the shock or the terror, but my brain can’t process his question. “What?”

  “Last night.” His gaze wanders over my shoulder to peer down the dark hall. “What time did you get home, and is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?”

  My throat funnels shut, because that’s when it occurs to me: he’s asking me for an alibi. My child is lost in a forest hours from here, and this man has been sent to accuse me of taking him.

  “I was at work until almost nine,” I say through gritted teeth. “After that I came straight home. I haven’t left since. You can check with the alarm company if you don’t believe me. I’m sure they have a record of when I turned it off and back on.”

  And then I realize something else, something that buzzes under my skin like an electric current. “Oh my God. Do you think someone took him?”

  “Not necessarily, but when we couldn’t reach you... Like I said, I had to ask.” His tone is almost apologetic, but there’s a relaxed alertness to him that tightens my gut. “The sheriff would like you up in Dahlonega as soon as possible. Do you know where you’re going, or do you need me to write down the address for you?”

  I spin on my heel and sprint down the hallway, the robe flapping at my ankles. In the kitchen, I fumble in the junk on the counter for my phone, wake it up to find twenty-seven missed calls. Twenty-seven.

  A good mother would have slept with her cell phone next to her bed while her son was away. She wouldn’t have been oblivious the very moment he vanished into the night. She would have known.

  “Do you have someone you can call? A friend or family member who can give you a ride?” The cop looms in my kitchen, his gaze taking in the shadowy debris of a working mom and a messy eight-year-old. A sink overflowing with dirty mugs and crumb-strewn plates, a mini mountain of school notes and papers and mail, the pair of cereal bowls on the table, crudded with the remains of our breakfasts.

  I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. I am an only child, an orphan, and the people I have left to call are not even remotely local. High school friends from back home, a tiny town at the top end of Tennessee. Lucas, my brother in every way but blood. Izzy—the only Atlanta friend I kept from my life Before Divorce—sailing the British Virgin Islands with her latest lover, Tristan or Tanner or some other pompous T-name. The only one left is Andrew.

  Not going to happen.

  I drop my cell onto the counter with a clatter and bolt to the back door. The key hook next to the alarm pad is empty. I swipe a hand across it just to be sure. No keys. I flip on the lights and search the floor, kicking away Ethan’s schoolbags, the jacket he can never remember to hang up, a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. Not there, either.

  Where are they?

  Another wave of panic rolls in, flickering under my scalp like a swarm of angry mosquitoes. I need to be in Dahlonega. I need to be out there in the woods, screaming Ethan’s name until my throat is raw. I need to help them find my son. No—I need to somehow figure out a way to travel back in time to yesterday morning, so I could floor the gas and whiz right past the turnoff for school and none of this would have ever happened. Ethan would be safe and snoring upstairs in his bed. I would be on the other side of the wall, lurching from my mattress with a gasp, tangled in sweaty sheets, limp with relief that it was only an awful, terrifying nightmare.

  I whirl around, knocking into the cop’s massive body, solid as a brick wall. He edges back to let me pass, saying something that hits my frenzied thoughts like elevator Muzak—background noise where not a single note registers.

  I need to find my keys. Think, dammit.

  Back in the kitchen, I fumble through my purse, flinging the contents on the counter. My wallet, a ridiculous amount of crumpled-up receipts, a handful of mints, but no keys.

  The cop is still talking, something about slowing down, sitting down, calming down, and I can’t think with him here. I shove my hands in my hair and squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out his voice, trying to remember where I left the damn things. I came in last night, dropped my purse and phone on the counter, poured a glass of wine and—I shove past the cop and yank on the refrigerator handle and hallelujah, the jumble of silver metal, glinting under a golden Whirlpool light.

  I grab for my keys, but I’m not fast enough. A long arm reaches around me, a giant fist closing around them before mine can get there.

  I slam the door and pivot around, and suddenly it’s all too much. The fear, the shock, the worry, combined with my exhaustion and the key-snatching cop, the fact that there’s nobody here but me. The tears come in a well of frustration and helplessness and maybe a tiny bit of self-pity.

  The cop’s shoulders soften, and he drops my keys into his pants pocket. “Go get dressed. Make sure whatever you put on is comfortable, and wear sneakers. Pack an overnight bag with the basics—change of clothes, your toothbrush, any toiletries you need. Pack one for Ethan, too, and toss in any toys or stuffed animals he might want for when we find him.” He plucks my cell phone off the counter, waves it in the air by his ear. “Where’s the charger for this thing?”

  I’m too shocked to answer with anything but, “Upstairs, I think.”

  “Pack it, too. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  KAT

  3 hours, 23 minutes missing

  My east-Atlanta neighborhood, a ramshackle development on the wrong end of Tucker, is the kind of neighborhood that’s used to seeing cop cars roll by in the middle of the night. The people who live on my street are rough—chain-smoking women waving their fists at strangers from the stoop, potbellied men with gold teeth and sleeves of faded tattoos, teens with saggy pants lounging on the curbs with kids too young to be smoking. The houses aren’t much better—run-down and raggedy, with drooping gutters, peeling and patchy paint jobs, overgrown yards choked by weeds. I
watch them pass by on the other side of the cop’s rain-soaked passenger-side window, taking in their sad state under the dingy glow of the streetlamps and the occasional front porch light. I thought marrying Andrew would save me from a neighborhood like this one, yet thanks to the countless sneaky smoke screens Andrew erected to hide his company’s money and assets, here I am all over again.

  “How you holding up?” the cop asks, and I startle. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “How come you’re not in uniform?” The question comes out unsteady and without rhythm. I am surprised I am able to speak at all; my throat is desert-dry, and my tongue feels like a deadweight, swollen to twice its size.

  “Because I’m not a patrol officer. I’m a detective working the night shift.”

  “Isn’t this a little above your pay grade?”

  “What, a missing child?”

  “No. Carting me all the way to Dahlonega. What is it, fifty miles?”

  Without taking his eyes from the road, he says, “More like sixty-five.”

  The number makes me more than a little uncomfortable. I know this man has sworn to protect and serve, but it’s the middle of the night and I’m a stranger—one he initially suspected of having a hand in her own son’s disappearance. Does he still see me as a suspect? Did he offer to drive me in order to stay close, to watch for signs? I try to push my suspicions away, but I can’t. Ever since Andrew, my once-sharp instincts have gone haywire. Who knows why anybody does anything?

  And speaking of Andrew, has someone called him? Did an officer bang on his door and haul him out of bed, too? The thought of seeing him again, of having our first face-to-face in months at the camp, makes my skin itchy with nerves.

  I dig through the bag by my feet, fumbling for my cell phone. “I need to call Lucas.”