When Sophie was through, I carried her in my arms when I knocked on Phillip’s door.
“Roe?” His voice was heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find Virginia.” I hadn’t switched on a light yet, and I was still talking in the lowest voice I could manage. I don’t know whom I was afraid of waking. But something was very wrong, and it was time to get all hands on deck.
“Okay,” he said, sounding a lot more awake. “Okay. I’m coming.” After a moment, the door opened. Phillip looked at me blearily. By the tiny glow of the hall night-light, I could see that he was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His hair was a rumpled mess.
“You’ve lost Virginia?” he said, as if he couldn’t get the idea through his head.
“She’s lost herself,” I said impatiently. “I can’t find her.”
Phillip looked a bit more alert. “Have you gone over the whole house?”
“No. Sophie woke me up crying, and I had to take care of her.” I was jiggling her gently, and for the moment, she was content.
“Okay,” Phillip said valiantly. “Okay.” He shook himself, trying to wake up. I could see him assume the mantle of the man of the house. Phillip walked briskly into the living room and switched on one of the lamps while I hung back a little. “No one here,” he called.
If there had been something awful out there, I hadn’t wanted Sophie to see it. I knew that was ridiculous. If Phillip was trying to be brave, I had to try, too. We had to find out where Virginia had gone; I had been angry at the woman, but now I was frightened for her. I deposited Sophie on the playmat on the floor and ripped off the mask and gloves.
We began to search the house, room by room.
Phillip looked in Robin’s office. I could hear him opening the closet, which held all kinds of office supplies. I checked the hall bathroom, which was very simple. Nowhere to hide. Or be hidden.
I opened Sophie’s closet. I glanced under her crib. I went into my own room and looked in the closets there, and scanned every inch of the bathroom. I went in Phillip’s room, since he was such a heavy sleeper it was possible Virginia could have gone in without him knowing it. But all I learned was that Phillip needed to pick up his dirty clothes.
That was the end of that wing of the house, so I carried Sophie back to the kitchen area. I looked behind the big island, the only space I couldn’t see from the living room.
Phillip was with me by that time. He was wide awake.
There wasn’t much more to check. Phillip opened the pantry door and stepped inside. Nothing. Next we opened the kitchen door leading to the garage. Robin’s car was crowded in by mine, because it was supposed to rain while he was gone. His car was locked. I checked with my keypad to be sure my own car was, too.
I couldn’t imagine how anyone could open the automatic garage doors and then hide in my locked car—unless such a person came through the house and stole my keys—but I was compelled to verify it. Handing Sophie off to her uncle, I circled both vehicles, and I made sure they were both empty of everything but car seats and extra pacifiers. I stepped back inside the house, and I closed and locked the garage door before taking Sophie back from Phillip.
We’d been turning on lights as we moved around the house. Every corner was illuminated. We looked at each other, baffled.
“This is so weird,” Phillip said. “Did you see a note? Did she maybe leave a message on your phone?”
I hadn’t checked for a note. I’d never even thought of it. Now I made a quick tour of the obvious places Virginia might have left one. I fetched my cell phone from the bedroom charger and checked it.
No phone call was logged since Robin’s, and I didn’t have a text message. I glanced at the light on the answering machine attached to the landline, and it stared back at me without blinking.
Though I wanted to keep the baby near me, I could not carry her any longer. My arms were exhausted. Thank God, her eyes had fluttered shut.
After I put Sophie to bed (and made sure her window was locked), I made a detour to my room to collect the baby monitor. I also took a second to put on a dry nightgown and a different robe.
I think I was hoping—still—that we’d find Virginia asleep somewhere, and we’d all get to go back to bed, and everything would be okay. If I kept on my nightclothes, that would happen, right?
Phillip was pouring a glass of orange juice. He said, “Sorry, Sis. I just haven’t seen a thing. Have you checked to see if her car is parked on the street?”
“What does she drive?”
“A black Impreza.”
I must have looked blank.
“A small car,” he said, in an annoyingly tolerant way. “Not too expensive.”
I switched on the light over the front door, which just barely reached the curb. “A car’s out there,” I said. “I can’t tell what’s inside. We have to go see if … if she’s in there.”
Before I could say, “I’ll do it,” Phillip was out the door, walking across the grass with bare feet. He paused for a moment to look up. The sky flashed with distant lightning. There was a grumble of thunder.
Phillip had had the foresight to grab a flashlight from the coat stand by the door. Thanks to Robin’s flashlight fetish, we had one or two in every room of the house. This one was Robin’s favorite, one of the big lantern-style ones. Phillip swept the beam across the front yard as he moved slowly to the curb, checking the ground in front of his feet all the way. When he didn’t pause, I knew he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. At the curb, he directed the beam into the car.
I held my breath.
Phillip turned and shook his head.
No Virginia.
As he hurried back, I realized that the only place we hadn’t searched was the backyard. Since we lived in an area full of older homes, the yard was large, with a couple of big trees, a brick patio, a lot of grass, and a professionally planted bed of bushes and flowers softening the lines of the black aluminum fence, Robin’s pride.
I turned off the front door light and went to the back door, just in the hall leading back to our library/office, to switch on the back lights (which pretty much illuminated the patio and cast only a dim light on the grass around it). I moved to the living room picture window and stared out. Of course, I couldn’t see a thing.
With great intelligence, Phillip switched off every overhead light and lamp before he joined me at the window. We could see much better, naturally.
Sadly.
“Oh, no,” I whispered. I could just discern a dark mass partly hidden by the mimosa tree growing close to the southeast corner of the yard. I couldn’t make out what it was, exactly: it was as far from the light as anything could get in our yard. But whatever it was, it didn’t belong in our yard.
Phillip said something sharp and to the point.