“No. Gone.” He ran a hand over his hair. “Kristin had the locks changed, but when no one answered, I was worried—I broke in through a back window. It looks like they’ve taken off. There are suitcases missing. Stuffed animals. Clothes. Even her mother’s china out of the dining room cabinet. And the minivan isn’t here.”
She frowned. “That’s strange. She didn’t mention going anywhere. In fact, she was talking about helping to organize some end-of-summer party Abby and Aaron had today.”
“That’s why the school was so concerned. And there are half-done crafts for that spread all over the kitchen table. Like she just walked out midway through, planning to come back and finish.”
Izzy wrinkled her forehead. This didn’t seem right at all. “Is her phone going straight to voice mail? I assume you’ve left messages?”
He removed his hand from his pocket, and in it was a cell phone she recognized instantly. The pink case was customized with a photo of the twins as onesie-clad newborns, curled into one another as if they hadn’t yet left the womb.
“Also left on the kitchen table,” he said.
A cold chill ran through Izzy.
He turned to gaze at his old house for a minute, then back toward her, looking both paler and more solemn than he had a moment ago. “I guess I’m going to have to call the police.”
3
It is not without sadness that I tenure my resignation. The staff here truly has been like a family to me from the start—like all families, we’ve been through good times and bad, and I’ll never forget—but now that I have my own family to raise, my priorities have to change. I would love to make myself available for freelance work—maybe once the baby is more settled into a routine? I hope you understand.
—Draft of Clara Tiffin’s resignation letter, a later version of which was submitted exactly two weeks before the designated end of her maternity leave
Hallie was perched on a counter stool at the peninsula of Clara’s kitchen, eating an after-school snack of graham crackers and peanut butter and watching Clara assemble lasagna in a large glass pan. It was not a pretty lasagna, which irked Clara, though she knew Benny wouldn’t notice, let alone care. She just couldn’t understand why the ricotta, beef, and sauce mixtures had yet again intermin gled in clumps rather than thin, smooth layers. She was relieved every time it was the noodles’ turn. They produced a clean slate upon which to start again.
“Mama says you used to be an editor,” Hallie said, her mouth full.
“That’s right.” Clara was surprised Natalie had remembered that. She always seemed distracted—though understandably so, with Hallie’s dad deployed overseas. Despite its proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Yellow Springs wasn’t exactly a hotbed of military families—“too many hippies, too many anarchy A’s,” Natalie joked to her once—but Natalie, who’d gotten married out of high school after getting pregnant with Hallie, had come here to enroll at Antioch College part-time. Clara had been happy to help out by agreeing to get her precocious twelve-year-old off the bus on the days when Natalie had a late class.
Of course, that had been before she’d realized just how persistent Hallie’s otherwise adorable precociousness could be. But still, she was happy to help.
Mostly.
“Was that before you were a mommy?”
Clara nodded. The girl said it so matter-of-factly, as if it were common knowledge that Clara had been biologically meant to have two distinctive life phases all along: caterpillar, butterfly. It wasn’t a bad metaphor if you reversed the order—the shedding of wings and the storing of calories coming in the latter phase. Had it really been just over four years ago she’d found out she was pregnant with Thomas? Looking back, it wasn’t the nine-to-five editorial role that felt like another lifetime to her now. It was the fact that she’d showered, dressed, made up her face, and flat-ironed her hair every morning to go do it.
Still, she loved it here in this cozy cocoon, with their snuggly sweet preschooler and chubby-legged baby and same old Benny, who claimed he was glad she hadn’t touched a blow dryer in a year. She doubted that was actually true, but he really was so convincing when he said it that maybe, it occurred to her now, she should try harder to find out. On the off chance that he did prefer it this way, the implications would be revolutionary for women everywhere.
“Perfect!” Hallie chirped.
Clara turned to grab the mozzarella from the fridge, stepping over Maddie, who had emptied the contents of the Tupperware cupboard onto the floor. “Why is it perfect?” she asked, frowning at the mess around her feet. Every lid would need to be washed.
“Because I want to start a newspaper. Like, a real neighborhood gazette. And I need someone who can help,” she said smartly. “A professional!”
“Oh, kiddo, I wasn’t that kind of editor.” Clara nodded to the bookshelves bridging the open space between the kitchen and the family room, where Thomas was zoned out on the couch watching PBS Kids. She’d helped Benny knock down the wall that once stood there and could still feel the satisfaction of it giving way, one primitive sledgehammer whack at a time. “See those art books, near the bottom there? The tall ones? I used to work with artists to create those.”
Hallie’s long, poker-straight blond hair whipped around and back again. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “that doesn’t matter. You know about writing. And grammar. And facts!” She splayed her hands dramatically on the counter. “This is about the facts.”
“Really.” Clara eyed her. “Is there something going on around here I should know about?”
“Probably.”
She laughed, then checked to make sure Hallie didn’t think she was laughing at her. But as usual the girl didn’t seem bothered. She’d been the first neighbor Clara and Benny met when they were unloading their moving van last summer. She’d rolled up on her bike and said, “Can I talk to you?” Most people who selected that particular opening had an aim in mind for the conversation, but it turned out that Hallie just really wanted to talk. Responses from the listening party were largely optional.
“I’d have to do interviews to find out, to get to the bottom of things. If you worked with the artists, you’ve probably done interviews, right?”
“Well, some, but—”
“Great! I even have a name for it: The Color-Blind Gazette.”
Clara stared at her blankly.
“Get it? Because the Yellow Springs aren’t yellow. They’re, like, rust. Orange, maybe, but definitely not yellow. Whoever named this town must have been color-blind.”
Having been a little disappointed the first time she’d seen the springs, Clara couldn’t argue with that.
“I’m sure your mom could help about as well as I could,” she told Hallie. “She’s at a writing class now, in fact.”
“She said no. She has too many papers of her own to do.” Hallie wiped the crumbs from her last graham cracker onto her napkin and jumped to her feet. “Please? I only need, like, a little bit of help—on the days I come here anyway. I just don’t want it to be obvious a kid made it.”
As she emptied the bag of cheese over the top of the lasagna, Clara tried to picture the sort of adult who might publish something called The Color-Blind Gazette but came up empty.
“Please?”
Hallie offered her broad, gap-toothed smile, and Clara wavered. These days with Hallie were meant to be the ones she would welcome Benny home from the office with a clean house and an atmosphere of calm control. Not that she had achieved that yet, exactly, but Hallie was capable enough of entertaining the kids, at least, that Clara could avoid that horrible what-on-earth-have-you-been-doing-all-day? feeling that came over her sometimes when he walked through the door, looking handsome and accomplished in his shirt and tie, to find her outnumbered and undone. She still hadn’t quite worked out how 1950s housewives had done it, but she suspected it involved far more ignoring of the children and far less guilt in doing so.