I ask who’s looking for her. Certainly someone has figured out she’s gone.
“I don’t know,” she says. But she can assume. “My co-workers are worried, my students confused. But my family? I honestly don’t know. And you?” she asks. “Who is looking for you?”
I shrug. “No one gives a damn that I’m gone.”
“Your mother,” she says.
I turn and look at her. I say nothing. Neither of us is sure if it’s a question or not. What I know is that I feel something change inside me every time she looks at me. Her eyes no longer look through me. Now, when she talks, she looks at me. The anger and hate are gone.
I reach out and run a hand toasted by the heating vent across her cheek. I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. I feel her cheek press against my hand and linger there awhile. She doesn’t object.
And then I say to her, “We should get inside. It’s only going to get harder the longer we stay out here.”
She isn’t quick to move. She hesitates. I think she’s gonna say something. She looks like she wants to, like she’s got something on the tip of her tongue.
And then she mentions Dalmar.
“What about Dalmar?” I ask, but she doesn’t tell me. She’s mute, ruminating on something or other. Like how it is that she ended up here. At least that’s what I guess she’s thinking about. How is it that the daughter of a rich judge ends up hiding out in a shitty little cabin with me?
“Never mind,” she says. She’s reconsidered. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
I could sweat it out of her, but I don’t. The last thing I want to talk about right now is Dalmar.
“Let’s go inside,” I say instead.
She nods her head slowly and says, “Okay. Let’s go.” And then we push the doors open against the weight of the wind. We retrace our steps back into the cold, dark cabin, where inside, we listen to the wind moan.
Gabe
After
I’m flipping through the sketch pad, desperate for clues, when it comes to me: that damn cat. I personally hate cats. Their elasticity scares the shit out of me. They have a tendency to become cozy on my lap, most certainly because they know it pisses me off. Their fur sheds and they make that bizarre purring noise.
My boss is all over me to wrap this thing up. He keeps reminding me that it’s been weeks since the Dennett girl came home and I’m not one step closer to finding out who did this to her. My problem is simple: Mia is the only one who can help. And Mia can hardly remember her own name, much less the details of the last few months of her life. I need to trigger her memory.
And so I stumble upon the picture of the cat. My mom tells my dad all the time she’d keep the schnauzer over him. I personally have been dumped over a parrot. I see my neighbor smooching her poodle all the damn time. People have a funny relationship with their pets. Not me personally. The last pet I had I ended up flushing down the john.
And so I call a guy up in Minnesota and ask him to do me a favor. I fax him the drawing and tell him we’re looking for a gray-and-white mackerel tabby cat, maybe about ten pounds. He sends a trooper from Grand Marais out to the cabin to have a look around.
No cat, but there are animal prints in the snow. At my suggestion—it didn’t seem like rocket science—he leaves a bowl of food and some water that will probably freeze overnight. Better than nothing. I ask him to check back in the morning and see if the cat ate the food. Can’t be much worth hunting this time of year, and the damn thing has to be cold. My pal suggests that finding stray cats isn’t their sole priority.
“What is?” I ask. “Arresting folks who exceed their daily limit of trout?” I remind him that this is a kidnapping case that’s made national headlines.
“All right, all right,” he says to me. “I’ll get back to you in the morning.”
Colin
Before
I tell her that my middle name is Michael, after my dad. She still doesn’t know my real name. She calls me Owen when she calls me anything at all. Generally I don’t call her anything. There’s no need. I have a scar near the bottom of my back that she’s seen when I’m coming out of the bathroom after a bath. She asks about it. I tell her it’s from a dog bite as a kid. But the scar on my shoulder I won’t talk about. I tell her I’ve broken three bones in my body: a collarbone in a car accident when I was a kid; my wrist playing football; and my nose in a fight.