“Good thing today’s a Sonny Day!” she called out, forcing cheer into her voice. She gathered her laptop, notes, and printouts of today’s agenda and motioned for them to follow her to the conference room for their briefing. She hoped she’d found enough clickbait to fill time—another boy band star posting ill-advised selfies, a survey about what men really think of their wives’ bodies postbaby, a reason working out less might actually be good for you.
“Oh boo!” Day replied. Sonny Keller’s name really was Sonny. And Amy Day’s surname really was Day. Coming up with their on-air monikers had been too easy—though tolerating them in the flesh was another matter. The listeners seemed to find Sonny and Day to be great company, but Izzy felt their particular brand of energy was a bit much. The fact that this made her perhaps not the best fit for this job was one she chose to ignore. Freshly Squeezed had been Dayton’s top morning show for five years running. It was an easy twenty-minute commute from Yellow Springs—better than the drive from Springfield had been—paid well, and looked great on her résumé. Not that she had any immediate plans to use her résumé for anything, but you never knew.
Sonny plopped heavily into a swivel chair and rubbed his hands together. “Tell me we’ve got something juicy for Second Date Update.”
Izzy settled at the table and glanced at the clock: 5:45. In fifteen minutes, she’d join the pair in the studio and feed them buzz from their social media accounts throughout the show, but she never spoke on air. Josh used to call her “The Wizard of Iz,” the woman behind the curtain—back when they’d been best friends who could tease each other about anything. And talk to each other about everything. Except the one thing she should have said but never did. And then, like a girl in a predictable rom-com, she’d missed her chance. In the movies, the guy always realized, just in time, what had been right in front of him all along: the perfect match of his gal pal, who looked beautiful with her hair down and her glasses off. In the movies, he did not actually go through with marrying her little sister. And if he did, what would happen next? How would the film end? It would have helped Izzy to have some model for how to shut off her feelings, though she was desperately trying. If Sonny and Day only knew about the silent drama playing out before them, they’d have a field day. She suspected they found her quite dull.
“We’ve got something juicy, all right, but we can’t air it.”
“Oh?”
“Our very first preemptive email requesting that just in case a certain woman were to write in about … what were his words?” Izzy riffled through her printouts. “Ah, yes. If she were to write in about what might have been misconstrued as a date, he does not want a call.”
“Yikes. She’s that bad?”
“No, he’s that married. With four kids.”
“That is good. Damn. They’re beating us to the punch now? Just when I thought this segment was getting easier now that it’s so popular.”
When they’d first launched Second Date Update, “adapted” (an industry term for thievery) from similar segments popular on other networks, the DJs had fallen all over themselves telling the people they called on-air that they didn’t mean to put them on the spot. It was just that so-and-so wanted to know why they hadn’t returned their texts or calls after their first date had seemingly gone so well. A reasonable enough request, can’t we agree? But they’d found that those on the receiving end were often more than willing to talk—because no matter what had gone wrong, the idea that someone found them appealing enough to publicly humiliate themselves over was evidently flattering in some backward way.
Izzy felt differently, but she supposed her lack of any first dates whatsoever disqualified her from having an opinion.
“What poor sap do we have on the hook?” Day asked.
“Today you will be making polite inquiries on behalf of a young man who managed to sound sweetly yet awkwardly perplexed in his impassioned email about a magical night at Applebee’s, in which he emphasized that he had ‘dressed appropriately—really nice.’” She slid a printout of the email across the table.
“I already think he sounds great!” Day chirped. “If this doesn’t work out, maybe he can call me!”
Izzy rolled her eyes. The calls essentially boiled down to three types: people who really had no way of knowing what had gone wrong (the girl whose ex-boyfriend had warned off her date while she was in the restroom, for instance), people who were genuinely clueless about their own flaws (mostly egotistical gym rats), and people who were about to get a raw deal for no fair reason.
As it fell to her to select their lucky honorees from the submissions that streamed in daily, Izzy would have shown a little bias toward that last camp if she could have. But it was hard to know what you were getting up front.
*
The first thing she noticed wasn’t so much Paul—an uncommon presence on the street these days—but the tension radiating from him as he stood, hands on hips, at the end of Kristin’s driveway, a look of confusion plain on his face. She knew Kristin and Paul’s divorce wasn’t finalized yet—Kristin had mentioned it Saturday night, with a matter-of-factness Izzy admired—but still, it was early afternoon on a weekday. Kristin would be at work, the twins at school. Paul had moved out at the start of the summer, just before Izzy moved in. She thought of the house as exclusively Kristin’s, though she recognized him from his stops to pick up and drop off the kids.
She swung the car into her driveway and glanced over her shoulder. He was heading her way, white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, hands in his pockets, head down. He must be on a late lunch break. Maybe he needed something from the house, but he was going to be out of luck. Izzy didn’t know Kristin nearly well enough to have a key, even for neighborly purposes.
“Hi there,” he called out as she swung open the door. “Sorry to bother you…” He jogged the rest of the long diagonal across the street and stopped in front of her with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, we haven’t officially met—not sure if you remember me. I’m Paul, Kristin’s husband?”
He wasn’t easily forgotten. An ob-gyn, he looked every bit the doctor even without the lab coat. It was something about the way he carried himself—with the authority of someone who exuded intelligence but the ease of someone with a practiced bedside manner. And he was good-looking—a polished, wealthy sort of handsome. No way would she have chosen him for her gynecologist, let alone as an obstetrician. It would be unnerving having someone so datable poking around down there, not to mention shepherding you through the dignity-destroying process of childbirth.
“Izzy.” She stuck out a hand, feeling suddenly self-conscious of her jeans and v-neck T, as if she hadn’t come from a real job like his. He enveloped it in a firm, warm shake.
“You haven’t by chance seen Kristin today, have you?”
She shook her head. “Not since Saturday night.”
He snapped to attention. “You saw her Saturday?”
“At Clara’s. She and Benny got a new fire pit, and we had sort of a girls’ night, helping them christen it.”
“Were the kids there too?”
“No, it was after their bedtime.”
He frowned disapprovingly, even though Clara’s house shared a side yard with his own, and suddenly Izzy felt defensive on Kristin’s behalf. “Your old baby monitor reached,” she said. “They did a test run during the day to be sure.”
“Did you happen to notice if she was around yesterday?”
“It was pouring. I never even got out of my pajamas.”
“Right. Well, if you see her, could you please have her call me? Immediately?”
She nodded. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. I got a call at the office. Kristin didn’t show up for work, and the twins were no-shows at school. She wasn’t answering her phone, so I drove over here. And … well, they’re gone.”
“Not home, you mean.”