“We talked about this with the doctor,” she said.
He nodded. “Bad things happen in the world every day,” he said in bored monotone, the tired repetition of a phrase he’d been forced to memorize but didn’t believe. “Good things happen every day, too. There are no patterns.”
Since the day in the woods when a strange man shot him and his father, then took his sister, Jackson had been obsessed with the news. They’d catch him on his computer with ten windows open, shuffling back and forth between CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Hollows Gazette, BBC. Murders, abductions, terrorist attacks, mall and school shootings. He had developed the idea that by monitoring world events, he could make sure that their family didn’t fall victim to any more tragedies.
“The worst thing can happen to any of us any day,” their family therapist had told Jackson. “We can’t control how events unfold, even through constant vigilance. Watching and waiting will only serve to rob us of the joy of the normal, good days.”
But Jackson had an idea in his head that he couldn’t get out. He claimed that he knew something bad was going to happen that day in the woods. He knew because when the news had been on in the morning, there had been a story about two missing children who had never been found. And he’d had a feeling.
“It makes me feel better,” he’d said, rinsing his bowl in the sink and putting it in the dishwasher. “To know what’s happening.”
“I don’t think it makes you feel better,” said Merri.
In fact, it kept him up at night. It fed his idea that the world was a terrible and unsafe place, which was why he wouldn’t leave the house without one of them, couldn’t be alone in the apartment. It was lucky that Wolf’s parents were so present in their lives; otherwise things would be really hard. Harder.
“It does,” he said, solemn, certain.
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to argue right before she was going to leave. So she decided to drop it, walked around to the other side of the island to rinse her own bowl and put it in the dishwasher.
“Mom,” he said, careful, tentative. “I saw something online last night.”
This was the other thing. He thought that by scanning all the various local and international news sites that he might find something that would lead them to Abbey. It was compulsive behavior, not pathological exactly. He didn’t have OCD, per se, according to their doctor. More like a mild case of PTSD. But both Merri and Wolf were against medication for him if they could help it. Nobody knew better than she did what a rabbit hole that was.
“Jackson.”
“Just listen,” he said. He had that kind of nervous energy that he got these days. He grabbed onto the hand she was reaching toward him. “Somebody else went missing up there.”
She shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t encourage him. But if another child had gone missing . . . “Who?”
“A real estate developer,” he said. He already had his phone out of his pocket, was holding it up to Merri. “He’s been missing a couple of days.”
She looked at the article, squinting and holding it away from her because she wasn’t wearing her glasses. A man in his late forties had left his office in Manhattan for a meeting in The Hollows for which he never turned up. There was a photo—smiling, clean cut, bespectacled.
She handed the phone back to her son. “It doesn’t mean anything, sweetie.”
They stood eye-to-eye, which was the weirdest thing. Jackson, her baby, would probably be taller than she was in a few months.
“It gave me a feeling,” he said. “It made me think about Abbey.”
“Sweetie.”
“She’s alive, Mom.” He took his glasses off and a big tear fell down his cheek. She reached up to wipe it away, feeling a dump of anxiety.
“If she is,” said Merri. “I’ll find her. I swear it, Jackson. I swear.”
It was irresponsible to make promises like that. She couldn’t help it; she wanted it so badly to be true. She took him into her arms and let him cling, trying not to cling back.
*
Now, Merri walked up the porch steps at the B and B and into the foyer, where a pretty young woman sat at a desk. Strawberry blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail, freckles, a youthful sweetness—just the kind of girl Wolf would like. He liked them young and bubbly, the opposite of his uptight middle-aged wife. She pushed in a door and a little bell rang.
“Miss Lovely?” Merri asked.
The girl smiled warm and bright, getting up from her seat and walking over with outstretched hand. “I’m her daughter Peggy. Mrs. Gleason?”
“Yes,” said Merri. “Call me Merri.”
Her hand was warm, her energy so welcoming. No, she was too smart, too genuine for Wolf. She wouldn’t fit the bill as a fling. He liked his side dishes (as Merri came to think of them) a little empty, that way he could fill them up with himself.