The Gap Year

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010



Gone? Gone where?” My fingers clutch at the inner rim of the order window as if I’m preparing to leap into the food trailer.

The younger woman with the noose of thorns around her neck steps forward, snarls, “Why do you need to know?”

“I’m her mother, for Christ’s sake. She’s supposed to meet me today so we can go to the bank and get the money my a*shole ex left for her college education.”

The older woman waves the younger one aside in the peremptory fashion that only a mother can get away with and I see that the younger woman is her daughter, not her lover. Mention of the a*shole ex seems to have forged a common bond, because the mother’s tone is been-there sympathetic when she leans down on her elbows so that her eyes are level with mine and says, “Darlin’, I wish I knew more to tell you, but I don’t. I know she’s not anywhere around here, though. Pete makes everyone sign one of those noncompete deals.”

“Ten days?” I mumble, too stunned to form a coherent question.

“Least that. Pete demands two weeks’ notice or he keeps your deposit. But we just finished switching everything over yesterday and she gave us the keys last night.”

I try to wedge this new piece into the puzzle, but it won’t go. All I keep thinking is, Does this mean it is more or less likely that she’s pregnant?

“Did you check the bank?” the woman asks. “Maybe she thinks you’re meeting her there.”

Her daughter leans in. “Mom and I are always getting our wires crossed like that. She’ll think she said, ‘Meet me at the Safeway,’ but she really said Albertsons. So I’m over there twiddling my thumbs for an hour.”

“You weren’t there for an hour, and what’s so hard about keeping your phone turned on? Darlin’, are you okay?”

I realize that she’s asking me and mutter that I’m fine.

“It’s gonna get better,” she tells me.

Recognizing that I am talking to a woman who’s spent her whole life waiting for it to get better, I try to pull myself together and move out of the way of her customers. Instead, I hear myself saying, “Today’s her birthday. She turned eighteen today.”

The mother puts her hand on top of mine and sounds exactly like me talking to one of my mothers when she says, “Oh, sweetie, they always know exactly how to hurt you the most, don’t they?”

I nod numbly and back away.

“Good luck,” she calls out to me.

Back at the car, Dori’s response to this new development is “What the f*ck?” Then she brightens. “Maybe the woman’s right. Maybe Aubrey got confused and is waiting for you at the bank right now.”

“Anything is possible, but why would she? She knows that the trust stipulates that we both have to be present for her to make the withdrawal for the first year’s tuition. As many times as I’ve hammered that into her, she should know that. What if she is pregnant? She could be God knows where, doing God knows what right now.”

“You mean an abortion?”

“I don’t know what I mean. I’m in shock. Why isn’t she here?”

“Cam, really, Aubrey is the sensible one. She’s going to be fine.”

“Fine? Like Twyla’s fine?” I regret the words before they’re out of my mouth. “Dor, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m a bitch. I don’t know why I said that.”

“No prob. You’re under a lot of pressure.”

I nod.

“And you are a bitch. So, we have to find her. What now? Coach Tighty Whitie?”

“No. There is no way on earth I am ever going to speak to that a*shole again.” Coach Tighty Whitie is Coach Hines, the football coach Tyler lived with until graduation. As I understood it from what sketchy information I could gather from my limited Parkhaven High mom contacts, Tyler had been “recruited” from another school district by Hines. Hines let Tyler live with his family so that he’d have an official address within Parkhaven High boundaries.

Early in the summer I’d gone to Hines’s house trying to find Aubrey. When I introduced myself, he’d made a sour face at the mention of Aubrey’s name. While I explained my mission, Coach Hines had shifted his jaw back and forth like his dentures were bothering him, except that he didn’t wear dentures. Probably a tooth grinder. He was the type. He told me in his self-righteous way that he had “severed all ties with Tyler Moldenhauer.” Except that he’d pronounced “severed” like the adjective “severe.” Which described him pretty well. He’d probably “severed” a lot of people in his life.

“Hines already told me everything he knows, which was nothing.”

“I guess this means …”

“What other choice do I have?”

“Animal House it is.”

Animal House is what Dori had dubbed the shack that Tyler has been renting with some of his football-player buddies since graduation. We’d located it after my visit with Hines, when the one thing he’d told me then was that Tyler had moved “out past El Dorado Estates somewhere.”

Drawing on Dori’s extensive training in reconnaissance acquired during her years as a groupie, we had taken her Toyota RAV4 and done a drive-by. That’s when we discovered that El Dorado Estates was located on a farm-to-market road just off the interstate and that the Golden Estates consisted of a few acres of mobile homes permanently immobilized on blocks curtained behind sheets of flimsy wooden lattice. A few miles farther down the country road that had once been surrounded by nothing but acres of sorghum and alfalfa, we had spotted Tyler’s truck parked in front of a shotgun shack.

Headbanger music had boomed out of the house. A couple of football players who looked like they’d been carved on Easter Island sat transfixed on a broken-down brown Herculon tweed couch, the blue light of the TV they stared into flickering across their faces. One other light was on in the house. I had edged the car forward so we could peek into that window.

“Are they playing Monopoly?” Dori asked when we caught a glimpse of Aubrey and Tyler seated at the kitchen table beneath a wagon-wheel chandelier.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“What do you want to do?” Dori had asked.

“Hmm.” I pretended to ponder the question. “I guess I could either have a screaming fight with her, drag her out by her hair, shove her into the car that I’ve removed the inner door handles from like a serial killer so she won’t immediately bolt, or just accept that she’s safe and go home.”

That day Dori and I had gone home. Today, I am determined, will be different. I am going to go completely Jerry Springer on her “sorry ass!” Even if bodily force is required, I will drag my daughter to the bank with me.

Once we’re on the highway, Dori turns the radio on, hitting “seek” until something comes on that’s loud enough and mindless enough to derail the worry loop that’s twisting my expression.

Slow ride! Take it easy!

“Oh, Foghat, can you do no wrong?” Dori asks, cranking the volume, then screaming along, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”

I turn the volume up even louder and scream with her, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”

Dori throws in a “Woot!” and, for a split second, it’s almost like we’re having fun.

We exit onto the farm-to-market road and follow it past the crusty rash of El Dorado Estates trailers. A few miles on, we find the shotgun shack again. Tyler’s truck is nowhere in sight. We pull off onto the shoulder, the car tipping a bit where the road slopes into the drainage ditch running alongside it.

We cross the yard that has been reduced to a few patches of abused grass making a last stand on the hard-packed, cracked dirt. With the toe of her sandal, Dori taps a rusty Road Runner–and–Coyote whirligig and makes it spin so that Coyote is forever, futilely, chasing Roadrunner, and says, “I see the boys have decorated.”

I climb the concrete steps up to the front door and knock, dreading having to face whatever bullet-headed throwback answers and the white-trash extravaganza that is sure to ensue. But there is no response. I knock again, harder.

Dori leaves me on the porch and walks around, trying to find a window not covered from the inside by blinds. When she does, she stands on tiptoe, shades her eyes, peeks in, and yells back to me, “Check this out!”

I take her place at the window and stare into a living room that is completely empty except for a few scattered crushed beer cans and a poster of “Chopper Babes” drooping from one tack.

A “Chopper Babes” poster? That is where they have all led, all the lies that started in earnest when? Sometime last November? What would I have done if I’d known that this was where they were heading? What would I not have done?

I face Dori. “Okay, I am officially worried now.”





NOVEMBER 2, 2009



All right! The quarry. That is the correct answer, Aubrey Jean.”

We keep the windows rolled down and our seat belts unbuckled. He looks over at the tornado of hair whipping around my face and I know that he likes it that I don’t roll up my window or hold my hair in a ponytail clutched at the side of my face. He hits the gas and we leave the cramped little cars and minivans behind.

We drive far out into the country. When we get to the quarry, no one else is there. Before it was abandoned, the quarry supplied the granite for all the state buildings constructed around the turn of the century. Since then it has filled up with rainwater supposedly a hundred feet deep. The water is clean, but the quarry has a dirty reputation. It is where the wild kids hang out to drink, do drugs, have sex. I don’t know about water depth or drugs. I have never been to the quarry before.

“Great idea to come here on a weekday, Aubrey Janine,” Tyler says, parking at the edge of the cliff that is one wall of the quarry. “We have the place all to ourselves.” He hops out of the truck, careful to land on his good foot, and has his shirt off before he hits the ground.

Swimming. Of course, I should have realized that swimming would be involved.

Already unbuckling his belt, he looks back at me still sitting in the truck and asks, “Shirts or skin?”

I don’t know what he means, but neither one sounds good. I know it is already too late to introduce “parasol and bloomers by the side of the water” as an option. I take off my shoes and T-shirt since I am wearing an exercise bra that covers up more than a bikini top would. The Nike shorts are definitely not coming off. Outside the truck window, Tyler makes a big oval of his arms above his head as he tugs off his T-shirt. His jeans drop. He leaves his underpants on. Boxer briefs. Gray. He hops to the long rope hanging from an immense cypress tree at our backs and grabs onto it. “Come on, Lightsey! Let’s see some hustle, girl!”

I climb out of the truck in time to catch a glimpse of him pushing off from the edge of the cliff with his good foot. He swings far out above the quarry. At the top of the arc, he lets go of the rope. Arms thrown out wide, face tilted up to the sun, water forty feet down, nothing behind him but sky, Tyler hangs in the air for one impossibly long moment.

Suspended.

The water in its granite tub far below is almost black.

Tyler flips in midair, makes a wedge of his hands, and, without even a splash, slides into the dark water clean as a knife. I peer over the edge, down the sheer face, and wait for him to reappear. In my mind, I see him popping back up to the surface, slinging a high Mohawk of water into the air as he whips his hair out of his eyes.

But he doesn’t pop back up.

“Tyler?” My voice echoes off the stone cliff. There is no answer. “Tyler!”

I will his head to burst up. It doesn’t. I imagine him trapped underwater, his arm driven into a crack in the stone, leg tangled in a sunken tree, eyes bulging, hair floating around his head like ink swirled into water as he fights to come up. Maybe the water only looks a hundred feet deep. Maybe it is actually shallow and he dove into stone and is paralyzed, his head lolling forward on his spine like a wilted tulip.

I am afraid of deep water, more afraid of heights. Getting up on a stool to change a lightbulb makes me swoony. I don’t jump off cliffs. I had planned to crawl down, slowly picking my way along the path looping almost to the far side of the quarry before reaching the water. Tyler will be dead by the time I get down. I think about living the rest of my life as the girl who was with Tyler Moldenhauer at the quarry when he died and did nothing, and I jump.





FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010



What now?” I ask Dori as we drive away from Chopper Babe Palace.

“The bank?”

“What good would that do? Aubrey and I both have to be there.”

“Well, who knows? Maybe they can tell you if there are any extraordinary circumstances clauses or something. Or you can get them to just transfer the money straight to Peninsula. I don’t know. Do you have a better idea?”

“Besides beating Tyler Moldenhauer like a circus mule? Not really.”

Which is how I end up in a line at the bank while Dori takes my car to zip over to PETCO and pick up the gourmet cat food that her grumpy, obese cats, Three-Way and Green Beer, insist upon.

When, at last, I actually get to speak to a teller she looks maybe thirteen. I thrust the irrevocable trust document at her and explain that I know I can’t withdraw any money without my daughter being present, but I just have a few questions.

The teller’s long, silky brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a gray empire-waist dress with a tiny white cardigan pulled over it. Her smooth skin wrinkles as she studies the trust agreement. “You’ll have to speak with an officer of the bank. If you’ll just have a seat in our waiting area, someone will be with you as soon—”

“No,” I interrupt. “You don’t understand. I’m not cashing out or anything. I just need to know—”

“If you could just step over to the waiting area,” she repeats, already holding her hand out for the deposit slip the man behind me is passing her over my shoulder. He eddies around me and I am edged out of line.

In the waiting area, I mechanically drink bad coffee until I realize that I’m sending myself into tachycardia and my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s. This causes me to recall that I hate coffee and never drink the stuff. After a long wait, I’m ushered into an actual office inhabited by an actual grown-up wearing a reassuring blue shirt with white cuffs and collar. He looks familiar, but it’s not until he leans across his desk, and sticks his hand out for me to shake that I remember him. “Brad Chaffee.”

Perfect. Of course. Of course I would get Joyce Chaffee’s husband. Luckily, it doesn’t appear that he remembers me. “What can I help you with today?”

I hand over the trust agreement. “Actually, as I tried to explain earlier, I just have a few questions.”

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He spreads the trust out on the desk. Turning it toward me like a car salesman, he produces a Cross pen, touches Aubrey’s name, and says, “And the beneficiary?” He glances up, looks around.

“Aubrey’s not here. Again, just fact-finding. I know I can’t get any money unless she’s here.”

“And the grantor is …” He searches the document, finds Martin’s new, famous name, takes another look to make certain he’s reading correctly, and asks, “Stokely Blizzard?”

The first time Martin used his new Next name was when he had the trust drawn up sixteen years ago.

“The Stokely Blizzard who’s …” He rumples his eyebrows in my direction, prompting me to fill in the blank if his suspicion is correct and not wanting to insult me if it’s wrong. “With all those pictures with …?” He holds his hand out as if to block the lens of an intrusive paparazzo. Next has been in the news quite a bit lately, what with Singapore banning Nextarians from entering the country and an IRS investigation into their status as a church.

I give Brad a nod tight with censure, warning him to back off the celebrity chicken-hawking and be professional. “Could you check on this account? I’d like to see if there might be a way to just direct-deposit it as tuition payment. Or, really, all I want to do is find out what the options are, since Aubrey is … unavailable.”

“I can do that for you.” Brad swivels to face the computer screen. “Let’s take a look.” His fingers skitter over the keyboard. He works the mouse with needless flourishes, as if to emphasize the heroic measures he is taking on my behalf. “Come on, come on,” he urges his computer, circling his hand in a hurry-up gesture.

While he waits, he asks, “Where is Aubrey going this fall?”

I am flustered that, apparently, Brad Chaffee does remember me. But, of course, any boob-whispering single mom would be a Parkhaven gossip staple.

“Uh, Peninsula. That’s what the trust is for. And Madison? Duke, right?”

“Yeah. She’ll be closer to her mother out there.”

“Joyce? Joyce is …”

What? Going to college with Madison? Sharing a dorm room?

“She moved out to Chapel Hill. After the divorce last winter. Joyce has family there. We made sure Madison got into Duke before we filed.”

“Oh. I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, you know. These things happen.” Brad is a little too cavalier: Joyce must have been the dumpee. I search his desk and spot a photo of Brad and a petite, dark-haired woman who looks young enough to be one of Madison’s friends. They’re both wearing running shorts that show off their matching long, muscular legs. Numbers are pinned to their tank tops. Gleaming with sweat, they hang on to each other and grin, having obviously just clocked a couple of personal bests.

“All right,” Brad announces, beaming at his monitor. “That’s the page I was looking for. Just have to access that account now.” He places his finger beneath a number on the document, types it in, hits “enter.” A few seconds later Brad’s smile fades and he hunches forward, squinting at the screen with his head poked out between hunched shoulders like a vulture.

“What?”

He ignores me.

“Brad, what is it?”

Brad straightens back up, swivels around to face me, states, “The available distribution has already been made.”

“In what sense do you mean ‘made,’ Brad? Because no distribution is possible since I wasn’t here.”

This is a mistake and it will be cleared up; Brad has confused me with some other boob-whispering ex-wife of a cult bigwig.

Brad resumes his vulture study of whatever carcass he’s seeing on the screen. “No, our records show that all available funds were distributed to Aubrey this morning.”





NOVEMBER 2, 2009



I hit wrong. The air and sense are knocked out of me and I sink under. The water that fills my mouth tastes like it came from a tin cup, cold, clean, metallic. I will drown. My body will drift all the way to the bottom of the dark quarry to rest on top of Tyler’s. I fear even more that he is not dead and will see that I have made a fool of myself. Again.

And then Tyler is dragging me back up through the water. I soar to the surface, where he yells, “Breathe, A.J.! Breathe!”

I can’t obey. My mouth is open, but no air pulls into my lungs. As I flail about, panicked, Tyler holds us both up, treading water. The water is a hundred feet deep. The shore is too far away. I am going to die. I hope my face won’t contort in agony as I drown. I hope that Tyler will carry an image of me dying with a serene, yet ultimately incredibly hot, beauty.

Tyler hugs me tight, stares into my eyes until I stop struggling, and orders, “Aubrey, chill. I’ve got you.” He sounds the way he did when he called that kid “Son.”

I stop struggling and let myself be held aloft by the strong, steady surge of his legs scissoring together. The air is still knocked out of me, though, and I can’t fill my lungs. His tone is casual, like he’s making a suggestion, when he says, “Breathe.”

I cough, sputter. When I can tread water, he lets me go.

“Seriously, Puke, you have got to regulate your fluids. First not enough. Now too much. Props for the jump, though. Not that many girls jump.”

In a mousy, embarrassed voice, I say, “I thought you were going to drown. Or that you were down there paralyzed.”

“Paralyzed?” He almost laughs, then doesn’t. “You jumped to save me?” He stares hard, checking whether I am joking. When he sees that I’m not, he says, “No one ever tried to save me before,” in a suspicious way.

I feel my hair plastered to my skull like Wednesday from the Addams Family, take a big breath, and dive under to wash it back off my face. Tyler plunges under and soars past me, going deeper and deeper. He goes so deep that his tan skin turns pale and blue. I follow him until he stops and we face each other with our hair swirling around our heads and patchwork squares of light wobbling across our faces. He puffs his cheeks out and flutters his hands under his jaw, imitating a blowfish. I stretch my arms out and wriggle in S shapes, curvy as an eel, then clamp Tyler’s face between my powerful moray eel jaw hands.

He acts like my jaw hands have forced all the air out of his puffer fish lungs. He blows bubbles into my face, then grimaces, squeezing his eyes together, challenging me to try to stay under longer than him. My lungs are on fire, but I mime a yawn, look at the watch I pretend I am wearing, tap my fingers on my chin like I’m bored. I am stretching out for a nap when he shakes his fist in my face, then blasts off toward the surface. I am a fraction of a second behind him.

With the first breath I suck in, I yell, “Loser!”

“I don’t think so!” Tyler inhales a lung-busting gulp of air. I do the same, then we plunge back down. Tyler flips backward in elegant circles, going farther and farther down. Then he stops, crosses his arms over his chest, and tilts his head up at me, cocky as a rapper in a battle who’s just spit out some deadly rhymes, challenging me to top him. I dive farther down, do some body popping and a goofy, jokey robot, then freeze with my arms crossed over my chest, throwing pretend gang signs with both hands. We go back down again and again, break-dancing and having rap battles and seeing who can stay under the longest.

I always win because I can hold my breath forever, since I know how to move on the outside and stay silent and still on the inside.

1:13 A.M. NOVEMBER 2, 2009



=Is it a happy or a sad thing to feel like you just had the best day you will ever have in your entire life?



=For me, Aubrey, reading this, it is a very happy thing.



=Does it matter if there will never be another one as good?



=There will be.



=How do you know?



=You will. More than you can count. It’s late. Why aren’t you asleep?



=Good question. G’night.



=Sweet dreams.



=Sweet dreams to you, Dad.





FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010



I haven’t dabbled in drugs much since one unfortunate incident involving marijuana that should have been labeled “crack weed.” I suddenly have the same feeling that I had after smoking the crack weed: The world around me dissolves into wavy lines and recedes at a panic-inducing velocity. Though a roaring in my ears prevents me from hearing exactly what Brad is saying, I’m getting the picture and state it as clearly as I can: “Aubrey took the money? All the first-year money?”

Brad nods.

“That is not possible. The trust specifies that I, the guardian of record, have to be present. I was not present. My daughter doesn’t even have a copy of the trust agreement. You could not have given her the money. Or if you did, it was illegal and your bank is criminally liable.”

Brad is as calm as a yoga instructor as he murmurs, “Situations like these involving divorce and estrangement from the child are difficult, I know. It can be hard for everyone to get on the same page.”

Oh, shit. Brad is giving me Zen Banker.

“ ‘Page’! There is no ‘page’ to be on! I have the page! All the pages!” I hold the trust agreement up.

“Our records indicate …” Brad swivels away from me to study his monitor with the weary demeanor of a man who is tired of dealing with crazy, screaming bitches. Was Joyce a crazy, screaming bitch beneath her perfect highlights? Or did it make it easier for Brad to leave to pretend that she was? “… that we received a fully executed codicil to the original agreement that altered the terms of distribution with the principal trustee mandating that the beneficiary be given full and complete access to all funds designated in Section—”

“You gave the money to Aubrey? You didn’t send it to Peninsula State College?”

“That appears to be the case.”

“You just gave a child a year’s worth of college tuition?”

Brad scans the form on his computer. “Our records indicate that Aubrey’s birthday is today and she turned eighteen—”

“Oh, God! Her birthday. That’s what she was waiting for. F*cking ‘legal age.’ How much?”

Brad had taken his hand off the mouse at “f*cking,” and I already feel him distancing himself. “I’m going to need to check on a few things before we—” He means he’s going to talk to lawyers.

“Something in the vicinity of thirty thousand dollars, I guess.” The way Brad’s eyes flicker back to the screen confirms how close I am. “F*ck! F*ck! F*ck! F*cking Tyler Modenhauer, he put her up to this!”

I am now screeching like a howler monkey, which causes Brad to go to his ultimate Zen Banker level and start scribbling down the phone numbers of “someone in corporate” who might be “better able to assist” me. Then he uses the word “defund” and I come close to losing it altogether until I remember that I’m in a bank and that Brad, no doubt, has a button under his desk he can push and I’ll be eating industrial carpet with a security guard’s knee on the back of my neck if I don’t calm down.

I stumble outside into the parking lot. It takes me a second to remember what my car looks like. Dori is waiting for me in it with all the windows rolled down, texting madly, when I collapse into the passenger seat.

“Cam, what? You do not look good.”

I stare at her.

“Say something. You’re white. Greenish white. You want to lie down in the backseat? Come on, put your head between your legs. God, you’re trembling.”

Dori forces my head down. As I lean over, hyperventilating car rug fibers, I see, under the seat, a yellow Peeps bunny looking back at me. I try to recall what Easter he dates from and calculate that he must be a minimum of ten years old. And still as fresh as the day I tucked him into a nest of shredded green cellophane grass in Aubrey’s basket.

I sit back up.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day. Have a bite of my wrap.”

I take the wrap and gnaw on rubbery tortilla and whatever vegan abomination she had them fill it with. My guess is nonegg tofu egg salad. Or tile grout.

“Is this,” I ask, holding up the wrap, “supposed to balance out smoking, drinking, drugs, and your powdered-sugar-doughnut binges?”

“Oh, good, you’re feeling well enough to bitch me out.” She snatches the wrap out of my hand. “Crisis over.” She eats and waits for the story.

I hold out for roughly thirty seconds. “She got it. They gave it to her.”

Dori’s mouth drops open and I am treated to the sight of half-mulched vegan egg salad. “The bank gave it to her? I thought you had to be present to sign off.”

“Martin, that psychotic, lying a*shole, added a codicil to the trust so that Aubrey could get the money without me. Something that, apparently, is possible the second she turns eighteen. The entire first-year tuition is gone.”

Heat waves shimmer off the parking lot pavement, but I am chilled to my bones. “What the hell has my life been about for the past sixteen years? I exiled myself here so she could get a good education, go to college, and have a wonderful, fabulous, exciting, fulfilling life.”

“You don’t know that. Aubrey is a sensible girl. Beside, worse comes to worst, it’s just the first year.”

“You don’t understand. This whole codicil thing means that Martin must have had contact with her.”

“Yes. And?”

“And any contact nullifies the trust agreement. It gives Next the right to defund the entire trust.”

“ ‘Defund.’ Is that even a word?”

“Brad Chaffee used it. He and Joyce broke up.”

“No! Ken and Barbie split up? Is he gay? Please tell me that Brad Chaffee is gay.”

“It’s gone. It’s all gone. I cannotcannotcannot believe this.”

“Maybe Next won’t find out.”

I squint, which gives Dori time to remember that article I showed her about Next hacking into the IRS system.

“Hmm. Probably not. Cam. Cammy, no, don’t cry. Oh, shit, yeah, cry.”

“What do I do now? What can I do? Please, will someone please tell me what I am supposed to do right now? I have no idea on earth where my daughter is. I no longer know any of her friends. And even if I could track her down, then what do I do? Stand outside a locked door and scream at her? Call the police to drag her home? At which point they ask how old she is and hang up when I say eighteen.”

“Preaching to the choir,” Dori agrees.

I’d been on the extension when, after Dori’s ex had told her that he didn’t know where Twyla was, Dori had called in a missing person report. The officer’s first question was, “How old is the missing person?” When Dori answered eighteen, the woman on the other end delivered a speech that she had obviously given a thousand times about “law enforcement guidelines” requiring that if the missing person is an adult there has to be “concrete, solid” evidence that he or she is in grave physical danger or will harm himself or others before a police report can be taken. The woman had ended the conversation with these words of wisdom: “Adults are free to roam about as they please.”

“So much for my delusion of easing her into college with dust ruffles and comforters. What kind of a fantasyland of denial was I living in? Even if I could get the money, I’d have had to drug her to get her on a plane for Peninsula.”

“That would have made for an interesting freshman orientation.”

“You know who has that money? Right now?”

Dori nods.

“That redneck, football-playing, swaggering, entitled …” As with Next, there are not words foul enough. “How could Martin have done it? How could he have let her have all that money? I can’t stand it that they’ve been conspiring behind my back. I wonder how long that’s been going on.”

“And, of course, there’s still the possibility that she’s—”

“Don’t. Don’t say the P-word. Please, not at this exact moment. I just cannot deal.”

“Not a problem. You know me. No deal is good deal.”

“So,” Dori asks, “cocktails?”

Apparently my shift as a mother is officially over and whatever higher purpose I might have deluded myself into believing my life in Parkhaven had no longer exists. At this point, a downward spiral into alcohol with maybe a little drug sidebar looks like my next logical move.

“Why not?”

I kick myself for not being more vigilant back when all this started. Shaniqua, the star of all Aubrey’s November lies. How could I have fallen for Shaniqua?