“You heard the emptiness?” he said.
Apparently that wasn’t a normal response. But the house was never empty. It had a feeling, a stillness that resounded.
“And you decided not to call the police?” he asked.
Ryan groaned. “I should’ve,” he said.
“I called Annika,” I said. “I called her first. And then I sent a text to Jan.”
He consulted his notes. “This would be Janice Murray, then?”
I nodded.
He flipped through pages and pages of everything we’d given him. “Other than this emptiness you speak of, what else was there that made you think your mother had been taken?” he asked.
Ryan stood, pushing the chair back. “Is the fact that there were two men with a gun who forced their way into her house not enough?”
Detective Mahoney raised his hands again, as if he was used to calming people. He waited for Ryan to sit down before speaking again. “Okay. Here’s what we know, and what we’re trying to figure out. The house was empty when we arrived. We saw where the gate had been tampered with out back, and the bullet in the window, which all happened after you returned home, yes?”
I nodded.
He continued. “Nothing seems disturbed inside. Other than the smoke, which you yourselves admitted to.”
He paused, waiting for it to sink in. “You’ve heard the saying that the simplest explanation is most likely the right one?” he asked.
I leaned forward. “Yes. The simplest explanation is that the people who were in my house took my mother.”
He leaned forward as well. Folding his hands on top of his desk. “We have people looking. I promise. But here’s what the simplest explanation looks like to me: it looks like someone noticed your mother left, and they thought the house was empty, and they tried to rob it, and you were caught up in it.”
I shook my head, felt the need to rise from my chair like Ryan had, made myself speak calmly, rationally. “She’s agoraphobic. She can’t leave the house.”
Annika caught my eye. She kept staring over his shoulder, or at the blank wall, and every time someone spoke, she looked surprised. “Someone said her name,” she said. “Someone asked for Kelsey Thomas by name.”
The detective leaned forward again, and Annika slouched lower in her chair. “There’s another option, of course,” he said, “and I don’t want to worry you. But your name was just in the paper, along with your picture. And the timing makes sense. Look, you’re a pretty girl. It’s possible someone became fixated with you after the story. It’s possible.”
As if being a girl was a reason in and of itself not to feel safe. My mother did not cast her net wide enough, it seemed. The dangers were everywhere.
Ryan straightened his back, looked at me. I knew what he was thinking—my name in the paper still came back to him. But the police were grasping. They were finding a story that made sense. “And my mother, then? What happened to my mother?”
“We will need to talk some more to Janice Murray before making any conclusions. But we have a bulletin out to all departments. We have people at the house, searching for evidence. We’re going through your mother’s computer and her phone records. We’re interviewing neighbors.” He leaned forward, placed a hand over mine. “If she was taken, we will find her.”
“If? If?” My voice was rising, my frustration was rising, and something was rising in the back of my throat.
“Just a few more questions. You say you got out from a tunnel under the floor in the safe room of the basement?”
For the third time, I didn’t answer.
Detective Mahoney didn’t speak, but the man behind him took a step forward. “The house is a crime scene, Kelsey. We’re still processing, trying to piece together the story. We’re going to need that code.”
And I hadn’t given it yet. Kept saying I didn’t remember, but that was a lie, and Ryan knew it. I thought of the fact I wasn’t supposed to give the code to anyone. Ever, my mother had said. But she had also promised to always be there. She had been taken. And they didn’t believe it.
“Twenty-three, twelve, thirty-seven,” I said. The numbers felt like sandpaper in my mouth.
The other detective wrote it down, excused himself from the room, already reaching for his phone. “Yeah, this is Conrad….” His voice faded out in the hall. Ryan reached a hand down for mine.
“We’ve spoken briefly with Janice Murray, and she said she has power of attorney over you,” Detective Mahoney said.
“Right,” I said.
“You’ll stay with her?”
I hadn’t thought of the logistics of where I’d stay, who would take me in. Hadn’t realized yet that I’d have to keep moving, even as my life had seemingly halted. “Yes,” I whispered.
“I’ll arrange for someone to bring you to her house, then.”
“Not necessary,” Ryan said, and the detective looked to me for confirmation.
He turned to Annika. “Your mother should be here within the hour. Do you want to wait for her here or at home?”
Annika didn’t look me in the eye. “Here,” she said, and my heart sank. She was scared. She was scared of home, the one place that should keep us safe.
“Annika,” I said, reaching for her. But she didn’t look up. Just flinched at the sound of my voice. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Come on,” Ryan said, a hand on my back. Once we were out of the room, he said, “She’ll come around. Give her some time.”
When we rounded the corner to the lobby, Ryan stopped in his tracks. A man faced him—same height, same hair, broader-shouldered and softer all around. “Dad,” Ryan said.
“Son.” His face was impassive, and then he reached for Ryan, pulled him closer, brought Ryan’s head down to his shoulder, his large hand around the back of his head. The distress on his face broke through only when Ryan couldn’t see. He took a shuddering breath before releasing him. “You call me—”
“Dad, I’m—”
“Oh, I know. You’re an adult. You’re part of the company. It’s part of the job. I know. But I’m your father, and I got a call from the captain, and I had to pretend that it was no big deal in front of your mother so she wouldn’t lose it. So don’t ‘Dad, I’m an adult’ me, okay? I know the game. I know it.”
Ryan swallowed. “Okay.”
“Okay,” his dad said. He rolled his shoulders, let out a long breath. “You guys okay, then?” He looked between the both of us.
Ryan looked at me, then his dad. “We’re okay,” he said.
“They had Kent bring your car down. If you’re all done here, follow me home. Your mother has insisted that she see you in the flesh.”
And then I felt it. The emptiness. That Annika’s mother was coming, and Ryan’s father was here, and Cole was at the hospital with his parents and Emma—and who did I have? Where was my mother? The room tilted and spun, and I couldn’t ground myself. I grabbed on to Ryan’s sleeve, as if I might slip through the cracks otherwise.
“I will, Dad. I’ll be right home. But I’m driving Kelsey to where she’s staying first.”
A muscle in his dad’s jaw twitched. “All right. We’ll see you at home, then.” We were almost out of earshot when he called, “And, Ryan?” Ryan paused, turned back. “Drive safe, son.”
—
It felt like déjà vu, getting into Ryan’s car, directing him to the house I’d be staying at. That same silence sat between us, because there was too much to say and not enough to make sense of. I couldn’t give voice to any of the terrible things I was thinking: my mother was gone, and there were no witnesses. And wondering…what if the same had happened to me? Could I just disappear like that? Would people give explanations and let me fade away in their memories? Would anyone even notice?
Ryan stopped in front of Jan’s two-story blue house. The street was dark, except for a few porch lights on the block. Jan’s house was closed up and completely dark.