“No,” I said. That didn’t sound like the Abby I knew.
“Dear,” she said, “the girl you met at that summer camp wasn’t the same girl she was at home, with us, you can be sure.”
I was sensing there were things Abby hadn’t told me. A grave, troublesome part of her story she’d completely left out. When had she run away before?
Why hadn’t she mentioned this? What more didn’t I know?
Abby’s grandmother’s eyes flicked to the side table beside the couch, and mine followed. There was a frame standing upright, a two-in-one. The frame met in the center, drawing the two sides together
and
connecting
them
symbolically.
Almost as if her gaze had given me permission, I found my hands reaching for the picture frame. I picked it up.
On the left side of the frame was Abby; I recognized her immediately. It was the school portrait, the same one used for her Missing flyer, but this was the first time I was seeing it in color.
Her skin had a pink glow she didn’t have anymore,
and
her
teeth
were
extraordinarily white. Someone must have said, “Cheese!” to her before snapping that photo, someone must have forced her to have a smile that showed teeth, because as I held the picture close I could see how wide her lips were opened, how prominent her teeth were made to be, like an unseen hand was holding a hard, cold object to the back of her neck and telling her to grin or that would be the end of her.
On the right side of the frame was a woman with a pigtailed little girl in her arms. Abby’s mother and young Abby.
Abby hadn’t told me what happened to her mother, and now I wondered.
Because she wasn’t in this house, was she? She wasn’t in Abby’s life. She wasn’t here.
Her grandmother sensed the question.
“I’m sure Abigail told you about Colleen.”
“A little,” I said.
“Abigail is exactly like her, I should have guessed. Colleen ran off and Abigail gets it in her head to do the same.”
“How old was she, Colleen, her mom, when she . . . ran off?”
“Old enough to know better. Twenty-three.”
So she wasn’t one of them, then.
“That’s awful. I mean it must have been, for Abby.”
“Drugs,” she said, and snipped it closed. “Miss Woodman. Lauren, may I call you Lauren? Do you have a mother?”
It took me a moment to nod. Of course I had a mother.
“And your mother, she’s still with you?”
I nodded again.
I expected her to say, Good for you.
So I could then say, if I dared, how it didn’t matter: Having a mother couldn’t stop it, and not having a mother wouldn’t make a girl go. Having brown hair wouldn’t make it happen; having black hair or yellow hair or green-dyed hair or a shaved head wouldn’t keep a girl here, in this world, if she was destined to go.
Staying home every day or going out every night. Taking drugs or not taking them. Wearing that or wearing this.
Talking to strangers or talking to nobody. Hooking up with boys or hooking up with other girls or saving herself for “the one.” There was no way to know. If a girl was meant to go, she just did. I believed that.
Abby’s grandmother stubbed out her cigarette. “Abby always did want to be like Colleen. Let’s hope she has fun.”
She breathed out, and the last of her smoke made its way toward my face. I coughed. I could see she’d decided what had happened to Abby a long time ago, and that was why she wasn’t even reported missing for more than a month.
But I was there. I was there for a reason, and maybe it was only to say this:
“Mrs. Sinclair,” I said, “I have to tell you. She didn’t run away. Abby. I know her mother did, but she didn’t.
Something happened to her. She went missing. You have to keep looking.
Please believe me. Please.”
My face was on fire from letting those words out, my breath gone heavy and hard to catch, but all she did was shake her head. Then she had her hands out for something, and it took me some moments to realize she wanted the picture frame I was holding.