Lily wrapped her hands around the mug, took a sip, and began. “Morgan didn’t want to go out to dinner. She said she had cramps, and that she wasn’t hungry, so I let her rest. I ordered in food from a diner, and I think she had a little soup, and we watched a movie, and we were both in bed at eleven. Then, this morning, I woke up and she was gone.” Lily sipped more coffee, then licked her lips, the same anxious gesture Abby had seen Morgan make, before she turned to Kayla. “Did Andy say anything to you last night? Did something happen yesterday when Morgan was with you?”
Abby exchanged a quick look with her mother. Lily saw it, and her expression shifted from bewildered to suspicious. “Did something happen?” she asked. When no one answered, she said in a loud, jagged voice, “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Eileen pressed her lips together. Kayla looked at her feet. “Is Morgan’s bike still here?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know.” Lily looked slightly less furious. Maybe she was just relieved to have a task on which she could focus. “I’ll check.”
Abby nodded. “Once we know whether she’s got her bike or not, we can make a list of everywhere she might have gone, and then we’ll start looking.”
“Should we call the police?” Lily asked. “What if she’s been kidnapped? What if there’s… I don’t know, child traffickers—”
Abby held up her hand. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours, and at least we’re pretty sure she’s with Andy. I don’t think the police are going to take it seriously yet. We can call them, but I think we should also look ourselves.”
“I want to call the police,” Lily said, her hands balled on her hips.
“Okay,” said Abby. “Do you have a recent picture of Morgan? They might ask for one.”
“Oh, God,” Lily said. Her body seemed to crumple. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and started to cry. Eileen put her hand on the other woman’s back.
“Come on,” Eileen said. “Let’s go see if her bike is here or not.” Abby felt grateful… along with the unsettling sensation that came with feeling something other than frustration and anger toward her mom.
The elevator doors slid open, and Sebastian, looking adorably rumpled in a tee shirt and shorts, scanned the lobby until he saw her.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Morgan and Andy are missing,” Abby said.
He gave a businesslike nod. “How can I help?”
Ten minutes later, Sebastian was on his bike, riding into downtown Seneca Falls to look in the coffee shops, and Kayla and Lily were working their phones in opposite corners of the lobby. When Lily was occupied, Abby gave her mother an interrogative glance—Do you know anything? Eileen pressed her lips together and shook her head. Abby’s shoulders slumped. Where are you, Morgan? she wondered as she looked up the phone number for the hospital. Where are you, and are you all right?
Morgan
All night long, Morgan had lain awake, staring up at the hotel room ceiling, with her mother sleeping in the bed beside her and the prescription bottle containing the second round of pills clutched tight in her hand. I have cramps, she’d told Lily. Her mother had given her a puzzled look, a look that had burned like grabbing a hot pan’s handle and felt like it lasted a month. Morgan had made herself meet Lily’s gaze until, finally, her mother had said, “I’ll get you some Advil,” and had left her alone.
Morgan pretended to be asleep when her mom ordered dinner. She’d pretended to wake up long enough to eat a few mouthfuls of soup, which was all her knotted belly could tolerate. She’d watched the movie her mother found, or at least she’d kept her eyes on the screen, and she’d faked sleep again after Lily turned off the lights and came over to kiss Morgan’s cheek. She had come so close in that moment, so close to telling Lily the truth, to opening her mouth and blurting out everything. But Morgan had pressed her lips together and she’d made herself keep quiet, and finally, her mom had gone to the bathroom to brush her teeth and had climbed into her own bed. The shades were drawn, and the room was dark, quiet except for her mother’s gentle exhalations, and Morgan’s heart, loud as thunder in her ears.
I can’t do this, Morgan had thought to herself. Not with Lily in the room. Not with Lily around. She was convinced that, once it began, her mother would look at her and know exactly what was happening; exactly what Morgan had done.
At six in the morning, she’d texted Andy. Can u talk? She’d been prepared to wait for a response, but he’d written back right away. What’s wrong?
She couldn’t begin to tell him, couldn’t type those words and watch them appear on the screen (and what if someone got her carrier to turn over her messages, like they’d done to that poor girl in Nebraska, the one Olivia had told her about?). Instead she wrote, Is there somewhere we can go?
Meet me by the elevators in 10, Andy had written. Morgan pulled back the covers and slipped on her shoes. She’d worn her sweatpants and a tee shirt to bed, so she didn’t even have to get dressed. She’d set her phone on her bed before she eased the door open and padded down the hall with the room key and the medications in her pocket and the heating pad Abby had given her tucked under her arm.
Andy was waiting in the hallway, yawning and rumpled, smelling of sleep. He was carrying a blanket and a pillow.
“Are you okay?” he asked her. “Did you take the rest of the pills?”
“Not yet,” Morgan said. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours yet. Her body felt exactly the same as it had the day before, and the day before that—her breasts achy and tender, her nose suddenly a hundred times more attuned to smells. Just then, she could catch a whiff of cleanser and the ghost of the previous day’s sunscreen on Andy’s skin. “They said to wait twenty-four hours. That’s at eleven. I just couldn’t be in the room when I did it.” She lowered her voice. “With my mom.”
Andy nodded. “There’s a gym on the ground floor,” he said. “There’s a treadmill and yoga mats and stuff like that. No one’s in there. I checked. I know it’s not—not great,” he said, stammering, “but it’s quiet, and there’s a TV, and I can bring you more blankets, and…”
“That’s a good idea,” Morgan said. “Will you stay with me?”
Andy swallowed audibly. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”
Morgan followed him down the stairs. She was thinking about her mother, and how Lily would feel when she woke up and saw Morgan’s bed empty, and Morgan’s phone on the bed. She knew she should have left a note or sent a text. Too late for that now, though.
“Follow me.” Andy led her down a hallway on the hotel’s first floor and used his room key to open the door marked FITNESS CENTER, which turned out to be a small room with a mirrored wall and a padded, wipeable rubber floor. Lined up in front of the mirrors were a single treadmill, an elliptical machine, a pyramid of hand weights, and a stack of yoga mats. A television hung on the wall in the corner, and below it, there was a table with a miniature refrigerator full of pint-size bottles of water, a stack of hand towels, and a bowl of oranges and waxy-looking apples.
Andy piled the yoga mats against the wall, arranging the pillow and the blanket on top. Morgan sat down, cross-legged, and after a minute, Andy sat beside her.
“Do you want some water?” he asked. “Or—or tea, maybe? They put out tea and coffee in the lobby.”
She nodded. “Tea, please,” she said. Andy went to get it, and Morgan watched him go, wondering why she couldn’t have dated a nice guy like Andy. His attention made her feel soft inside, sweet and gooey, like when she and her mom used to make candy, and the hot sugar would change from individual grains to a soft ball of caramel on the stove.