“But I got it back from the pawnshop,” he said, like he thought he deserved some credit, “when I had a good stretch.”
“A good stretch?” I said. Evan glanced at me, realizing he’d made a slip. “A good stretch of what?” I took a shot. “Luck?”
“I guess.”
“What?” Susanne said to me, sensing I had figured something out.
“Gambling,” I guessed. “Online gambling.”
“It’s just once in a while,” Evan said. “Just for fun.”
“So you’re stealing money to pay off your credit card bills,” I said.
Evan didn’t respond. His father jumped in. “I gave you a card for emergencies, not for playing poker on the Internet.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Just, like, a thousand or so.”
“Or so?” Bob said.
“About four thousand,” Evan muttered.
“Christ on a cracker,” Bob said.
“Evan,” I said, “did you ever steal any money out of my house?”
He shook his head violently. “Never, swear to God, I never took anything from your place.” He paused. “But… I’ve borrowed some from friends.”
“In addition to the four grand on your Visa?” Bob asked.
Evan nodded sheepishly. “Like, about six hundred.”
All of us, except Evan, were doing a variation of the same thing. Looking down, shaking our heads, thinking, is there no end to the kind of shit that kids can get into?
Susanne turned to me and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
We took a few steps back in the direction of the office. I let her put some weight on my arm.
“This thing, the gambling debts?” she said. “That’s Bob’s problem.”
I wasn’t sure. I wondered whether Evan’s debt problems could have drawn Sydney in somehow, but I let Susanne continue.
“Maybe the reason she’s gone… is she’s pregnant. She’s too afraid to tell us and she’s run off to have the baby.”
I wasn’t buying it, although, in some ways, it would be a relief to learn this was the reason for Sydney’s disappearing act. At least it would mean she was okay. That she was alive. I could welcome home a pregnant daughter if there was a pregnant daughter to welcome home.
And yet.
“Why run off now?” I said. “If she is pregnant, it’s just at the beginning. Is she going to be gone for eight months? If she were going to run off to have a baby, wouldn’t she have waited a little longer?”
Susanne nodded. “I know, I know. Maybe she ran off to have it dealt with. To get an abortion.”
“She’s been gone for weeks, Suze. How long would she need to do that? And don’t you think, even if she was scared, and embarrassed, that eventually she’d screw up her courage and come to us for help? Something like this, wouldn’t she have come to you, if not me?”
Susanne was starting to tear up. “Maybe not if she blamed me. Because I’d moved us in with Bob, and then Evan. Because she’d think it was my fault.”
I thought there was something to that, but kept it to myself.
“It doesn’t explain other things,” I said. “What about that van you said has been watching your house? Syd’s abandoned car? Or me being tricked into flying to Seattle? My house getting torn apart?”
Susanne shook her head in frustration. “The van, that’s probably just my imagination. I’m so tense, I’m seeing things that aren’t there. You know?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“And it could have been kids who broke into your house. Just stupid vandalism.”
I didn’t bother to tell her about the phone I’d found, how that discovery tightened the knot that brought all these things together.
“And maybe the Seattle thing,” Susanne continued, “was just some prankster. You know there are some pretty sick people out there. It could have been someone who saw the website, just wanted to mess with you.”
How comforting it would be to believe what Susanne wanted to believe, that our daughter was out there, pregnant but safe, just waiting for the right time to come back home.
“Suppose I talk to Detective Jennings,” I said, “and tell her they should check with Planned Parenthood offices, abortion clinics, that kind of thing. See if anyone there has seen Sydney.”
Susanne sniffed and nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said.
“Okay,” she said again.
“Excuse me.” It was Bob, with a contrite Evan standing at his side. Susanne and I looked at the two of them without saying anything. “Evan has something he’d like to say to the both of you.”
Susanne and I waited. Evan cleared his throat twice and said, “I’m sorry.”
Bob offered up several small nods, smiled. Susanne and I looked at each other, then back at Evan.
“Well,” I said. “Everything’s just peachy now, isn’t it?”
TWENTY-TWO