“I don’t know what I am,” Finley answered honestly.
Betty seemed to accept this with a nod, but her gaze kept returning to Finley. Betty went on to answer more questions from Jones about whether there had been any sign or word from her husband, or people close to him. There hadn’t been. Since the day eighteen months ago that they disappeared, there had been no cell phone or credit card activity, no word to friends or even his parents. The vehicle he’d been driving that day had never been located.
“Jed wouldn’t do this,” she said again. “He just was not that kind of man, not controlling or vengeful. He knew it would kill me to be away from my children. He didn’t love me anymore, but he didn’t hate me.”
Jones took notes while Betty spoke, and Finley watched the children playing on the floor. They were in a loop, a repeat of the same actions over and over. A show for Finley; she watched, wondering what it meant. Yes! Joshua said for the tenth time. That’s when she got it.
“Did your son ever play with trains?” asked Finley.
Betty stared at her, giving a slow blink. “My son is obsessed with trains. His father gave him a wooden train when he was two, and I swear that was all it took. It was nothing but trains for years.”
She rose and motioned for them to follow. They climbed a narrow staircase and into a room at the end of the hall. The space was dominated by a huge train track, a total environment with bridges and tunnels, a little town, a wooded area. The shelves on the wall were lined with engines in all sizes and colors. It was an extraordinary collection, which obviously took years and a great deal of parental indulgence to build.
“Lately, he’s more into his Xbox than his train collection,” she said. “But I guess that’s what happens.”
The bed was made and the room smelled freshly cleaned, waiting for its occupant to come home. Finley expected to see the little boy, but he wasn’t there. Strange.
“Can I see Eliza’s room?” asked Finley. And Betty led them to another room down the hall.
Pink, dolls, more stuffed animals and books than the shelves could hold. There were glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, an iPod Touch on the white bedside table, lamps shaped like flowers affixed to the wall. On the headboard a row of little birds had been painted and beneath them painted in a blue cursive: Little Bird.
“Little bird,” Finley said.
“That’s what her father calls her,” said Betty. “Well, that’s what we all call her. But it was my husband’s name for her when she was a baby because she used to make this little chirping noise that he thought sounded like a tiny birdcall.”
Finley waited for the flash of insight, the crashing into another space and time, a vision—anything. But there was nothing, just the flat, dead physical world.
Downstairs, Jones asked more questions about the days before the disappearance, where they were in town, where they ate. Other questions, too, about who worked at the house, local friends. Was there anything that made her uncomfortable, worried, seemed strange? It seemed dull, even pointless, to Finley but she got it. It was exactly like what she did on the computer, just searching for anything that offered the jolt of a connection being made. That’s all it was, detective work—asking, listening, looking, making connections, or discovering that there were no connections to be made.
The boy with the train. Little bird. What did it mean? She still didn’t know. Just pieces of a puzzle that she was unable to solve. Again, the rise of self-doubt, a restless kind of panic. She felt the urge to flee the house that had grown overwarm, the conversation that had grown dull and heavy, hopeless. But she didn’t run. She forced herself to sit and listen.
*
“See, I told you I wouldn’t embarrass you,” she said in the car.
“You did okay, actually,” Jones said. He cast her a grudging look. “But I’m used to working alone.”
He turned the ignition, and the car hummed to life, cool air breathing out of the vents, causing Finley to sit stiff with cold until it gradually warmed. She told him about the squeak-clink, about the rose-breasted grosbeak, about the boy with the train.
He kept his hands at ten and two on the wheel, his eyes on the road ahead, a muscle working in his jaw.
“So what does that mean?” he asked. “Who did you see in the woods?”
“I don’t know,” she said. The faces were fuzzy and indistinct, like on television when identities were being protected. She tried to explain it to him, but she could tell it wasn’t making a lot of sense.
“And ‘Little Bird,’ ” she told him. “That was the phrase I heard in my head when I found the rose-breasted grosbeak online.”
“Eliza’s nickname,” he said. “So that’s who you saw?”
“I’m just not sure.”