I shook my head, sinking to a seat on the porch steps. “I don’t think I can go in there, Adam. What if she’s . . . ?” I blanched, squeezing my eyes shut to block out terrible images of my sister’s lifeless body that suddenly materialized.
Adam sighed and sat down beside me. “You’ve been gone a long time, Josie. I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live with Lanie.”
“You’re saying you think this is just a stunt?”
“No, of course not. But disappearing isn’t entirely out of character. A couple of months ago, I came home from work to find the house locked and Ann sitting on the porch. Lanie hadn’t picked her up from school, and she’d walked the whole way home. Lanie wouldn’t answer the phone, and no one knew where she was. Lanie finally showed up at eight that night, eyes all glazed, and do you know where she was? At the library. I’d been panicked for hours, calling the hospitals, certain something horrible had happened to her, and she’d just been downtown reading Gone with the fucking Wind all day.” He shook his head a little. “I know this is different. She’s been agitated for weeks about the podcast, and there’s that note. I’m just saying that I don’t think we should immediately jump to the worst conclusion.”
“God, I hope you’re right.”
“Listen,” Adam said, standing up. “I’ll check the house, okay? You call your aunt to see if Ann’s said anything else, and then we’ll regroup.”
I nodded, biting back hot tears. I hadn’t taken care of her, and I could only hope that it wasn’t too late.
Adam and I spent hours combing the town for evidence of my sister. We talked to the doughnut shop employees (who remembered Ann but not Lanie). We checked the park, the gym, and the public library. Adam checked Lanie’s credit card usage, and we drove to a gas station where it had been used and showed Lanie’s picture around, hoping someone would remember her, that she might have given some hint of her destination to the cashier. No one remembered anything. Adam called everyone he could think of who might have crossed Lanie’s path while I searched the #Reconsidered hashtag on Twitter. Nothing.
It was nearly nine o’clock by the time we returned to Adam’s house, numb and exhausted. We plodded up the front steps, and I paused with my hand on the doorknob, a sudden memory of Lanie opening the door wearing that ridiculous apron stealing my breath. It had just been days since she had stood there, smiling and hugging me. Where had she gone?
“I really thought we’d find her,” Adam said hollowly.
“We will,” I said without conviction.
“Maybe she’ll come home.”
It pained me to hear the hope in his voice; I had spent the last twelve years nurturing the same kind of hope, thinking that someday my mother might come home. I couldn’t bear to remind Adam of the similarities, though, and instead I pushed open the front door.
Inside, we found Ellen seated cross-legged on his living room floor, paging through a phone book.
“Ellen, hi. What are you doing here?”
“Going through the phone book to see if Lanie circled any numbers.” She frowned at my surprise. “Don’t give me that look. I might not get along with Lanie, but that doesn’t mean I want her to die. God.”
“You’re back,” Caleb said, entering the living room. “Any news?”
I shook my head in defeat. “No. Anything over here?”
“Sorry, love,” Caleb said. To Adam, he said, “Amelia’s helping Ann get ready for bed.”
“Great, thanks.” Adam nodded. “Does she seem upset?”
“Not yet. She still thinks it’s all part of some adventure.”
“Poor dear,” Ellen said, putting a hand over her heart.
“We’ve looked everywhere for Lanie,” I lamented. “No one has seen her. I don’t get it. How could she just disappear?”
“Your mom did,” Adam said. “You didn’t know where she was for weeks.”
“Oh,” I said, an idea forming suddenly in my head. “You’re right. I didn’t think of that. Maybe Lanie’s in California.”
Ellen wrinkled her nose. “You mean the LFC? I can no more imagine Lanie joining that sunny commune than I can imagine her enlisting in the armed forces.”
“Not to join,” I said impatiently. “But what if she went there to connect with Mom’s memory? She’s been thinking about her a lot. And we’ve looked everywhere else. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“But she hasn’t bought any plane tickets,” Adam protested. “Remember? I checked her credit card statements. She hasn’t charged anything other than that gas.”
“So maybe she’s driving there.”
“On one tank of gas?”
“So she hasn’t needed to refill yet,” I argued desperately. “Come on, guys. It’s the last possible place she might be. You know I’m right. I’ll get a flight in the morning. I’ll beat her to California.”
“Jo, even if that’s where she is, you’d never find her,” Caleb said gently. “It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Worse—a needle in a barnful of hay. We don’t even know where the Life Force Collective compound is located.”
“No,” I agreed slowly. “But I might know someone who could tell me. Five years ago, I met an LFC member named Sister Amamus in San Francisco. I bet I still have her information. She told me never to contact her again, but she might at least tell us if any of them have heard from Lanie. Or maybe she could give her a message.”
I scrolled through my archived correspondence for Sister Amamus’s phone number, and quickly dialed. The call was immediately answered by a mechanical voice informing me that the number was out of service. Frowning, I composed an email to the author who had provided me with Amamus’s contact information, sketching out the dire situation and begging for an alternate lead. Almost instantly, I received an automated message stating the email address was no longer valid.
I flung my phone to the ground, cursing loudly. As I bent to retrieve it, my eyes caught sight of a composition book resting on an end table.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
“Baseball stats,” Adam said. “I like to keep score while I watch the games.”
“Lanie used to journal in a notebook just like that one when we were kids. Does she still keep a journal?”
Adam shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen. Where do you think she’d keep it?”
“She used to hide it under her mattress,” I remembered.
“Come on. Let’s go look.”
I followed Adam upstairs to the bedroom, pausing outside a closed door to listen to Aunt A’s calm, quiet voice reading aloud to Ann. I distinctly remembered the tenderness in Lanie’s expression when she had been discussing her daughter on Saturday night, and it was hard to reconcile that with the fact that Lanie was now gone. Surely she couldn’t believe that her daughter was better off without her.