A drake called across the water, and he remembered where he was. Erica would panic when she heard about the missing car, and he dreaded the scene—that perplexed squint threatening tears, the rush to accusation and despair: How could you let this happen? What will we do now? That crazy old lady must have a vehicle stashed somewhere on the property in order to get off the mountain for food, clothes, and other necessities. He could probably score the keys while Moo-maw and that imp slept and be down the road hours before the cock crowed next morning. Or they could hitch to Memphis and take their pick of cars. Or he could leave now, by himself, were it not for the money and his bag back in the cabin. Erica was just not as resilient and resourceful as he had expected; in fact, she was too stiff about the whole thing. Not a real rebel, not a true revolutionary, certainly no Patty Hearst. Hell, that high school chick—sexy girl in the round glasses—from whom they stole the car was probably more radical, and why had Erica given him such grief over his invitation to her to join them? What did Erica expect, really, that she would be his one and only? Did she think that her life would be remotely like the one they had left behind? The revolution's coming, baby, and we need to give our love away. “I am too young to die,” he said aloud, and the ducks on the lake replied with strings of nervous chatter.
Taking the pistol from his jacket pocket, he stood and sighted down the barrel at the nearest mallard and squeezed the trigger. The retort masked the splash of the round on the water's surface and the ensuing frenzy of the birds. “Next time!” he shouted into the air. Reorienting himself, Wiley headed back to the road in search of the buried guns. Eyes to the ground, he tried to remember their hiding place, wandering like a man who has lost his glasses only to find them atop his head, and when he stumbled at last upon the package under the pile of leaves, some measure of hope was restored. Unwrapping the sodden stadium blanket, he was dismayed at the wet arsenal, which he would have to break down to clean and dry, but the weapons, at least, could be salvaged. Guns cradled in his arms, he began the long march back to the cabin, mulling every step of the way what he might say to Erica.
18
A week after their daughter left, Paul awoke at his usual early hour, showered and dressed, and announced at the breakfast table that he was going back to work. “Just for a few hours,” he told her. “I've got patients.” Staying at home with Margaret for those seven days proved more than he could manage, both of them anxious for police reports that never came. He left the house only to prowl his daughter's haunts and interview her dead-end friends, all the time obsessing over the unanswerable why. The high school students proved unhelpful—blank looks, shrugged shoulders, no confessions forthcoming. Beneath their stonewalling, he felt certain that they knew the truth but chose to protect and romanticize the pair, for even the most cynical longed for Erica and Wiley to get away with it.
Unsure of how to comfort his wife, how to read in her resolved stoicism hints of hope or despair, Paul kept to their tacit understanding. They had unraveled all possible plots and decided that they simply did not know, would wait, and wait they did. She ate little, slept less. Sometimes she would catch him watching her, certain that her lips had been moving in the running conversation she had with herself. And he knew she could not bear his internal pacing. He felt her madness creeping into his soul and rejected it, leaving her to tend the phone, isolated as a lighthouse keeper.
Margaret did not argue with his decision to return to the clinic, but let him go without a syllable of protest, relieved when he finally shut the front door behind him. His worries had grown by accretion till he was made gravid by his thoughts. Long after she was alone in the house, she went to the window to check for his car in the drive, and a scree of leaves danced like ghosts in the empty space. Those first few days had been a horror to bear, the godforsaken vacancy in their house, in their lives, the slow realization of how utterly missing she was. The detective, who came by their place the morning after the encounter at the Rinnicks’, had said that most missing children return within hours, at worst a day, but if Erica hadn't returned—and she had already been missing three days by Margaret's reckoning—the percentages diminished. Being realistic, he had said, pretending reality offered any solace. Each day, as soon as the hour was decent, she telephoned the police station, then again in the afternoon, and then again in the evening until everyone remotely connected with the case simply avoided her altogether or took a message, until finally telling her to simply wait, and wait she did, her sorrow mingled with self-recrimination and regrets. Mrs. Delarosa sat with her for two hours the first day, one hour the second, and zero by week's end. Word had spread through the town, and neighbors came calling, to help they said, but Margaret sensed the morbid curiosity of each good Samaritan who drew close merely to measure how she would feel if in Margaret's situation. Or, worse still, the unspoken accusation: what kind of mother would let her only child run away? She resolved not to allow such judgment any purchase. She never cried once when another soul was around, and she was blessedly alone until Diane arrived to keep vigil with her.
When Margaret opened the door, the two sisters collapsed into each other's entwining arms. As usual Diane swept in, done up in the latest fashion—a high-waisted red tunic dress with contrasting black and white Bakelite bangles on her wrists. But as soon as she was with Margaret, they were young girls again, confederates against their long-gone parents and the history of their husbands, chained by DNA and five thousand nights and days together. No one else could understand the degree of loss, and their presumption of empathy allowed them to move at once to frankness.