“Of course,” she said. “Of course she is.”
“I think she thought she might find some comfort in speaking with you. And in speaking with Meredith. I’ve told her that you all and Meredith are working with us, helping us in whatever way you all can. But I think this is more of an emotional question than a practical one. If you see what I’m saying.”
“Of course,” Claire said. Claire did not want Colleen Bellow in her living room or on her couch or at her dining-room table, did not want her reclining against her throw pillows or drinking out of her glasses, did not want her washing her hands in her bathroom sink, did not want her home and family polluted by that degree of agony. If she was being honest with herself—and there was no reason not to be—she would appreciate it if Colleen Bellow would keep her own tragedy off their doorstep. They—Meredith, the whole family—had dodged the bullet. It was a gruesome, awful bullet, but they had dodged it, goddammit. Could they not simply dust themselves off, breathe a sigh of relief, and move on? Did they have to become involved? She could not say any of this to the detective, of course. If she was going to be a terrible person, she was going to have to be a terrible person in private. This was something she had learned long ago.
“So it would be all right if someone brought her by later? You’ll talk to Meredith and make sure that’s okay? I think it would be a nice thing for Mrs.—Ms.—Bellow. I’m not sure she’s had one minute of sleep since Wednesday.”
“Anything we can do,” Claire said, because what other option did she have?
?
“Her mother?” Meredith said. Claire thought she looked more appalled than distressed. “Here?”
“We can tell them no,” Mark said. “If you’re not up to it.”
“We can’t really tell them no,” Claire said.
Mark gave her a pointed look. The look plainly said: You want to rethink that one? Because I’m pretty sure you want to rethink that one.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t feel we can say no,” Claire said. “The woman has lost her daughter. She would like to speak with Meredith. Meredith was the last person to speak with her. Her daughter—”
“You say that like—” Mark started.
“—before she was taken. The last person to speak with her before she was taken.”
“I’m not saying she doesn’t ever have to talk with her,” Mark said in his super-enunciated voice, normally reserved for elderly patients. “I’m saying that she doesn’t have to do it today.”
“Her daughter,” Claire said, “is missing.”
“It’s okay,” Meredith said, her game face on. “It’s okay. I can do it.”
Strangely, Claire had not fully understood the origin of Meredith’s game face until the day she’d caught the exact same expression in her own reflection in a car window. It was the determination and deliberate detachment made necessary by a difficult situation. Sometimes Claire imagined that one day, when Meredith was her age and she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, or Alzheimer’s, or whatever was going to kill her, she and Meredith might just stare at each other with their game faces on until Claire died. This frightened and heartened her simultaneously.
?
She arrived a little after 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. It was Detective Waller who brought her, the detective they’d seen at the hospital the morning Meredith woke up. Claire was certain she would recognize Colleen Bellow from school, that she’d remember her face from a band concert or open house, but the woman she saw bore no resemblance to anyone she knew. She seemed much too young to be the mother of a middle-schooler, looked closer in age to an eighth-grader than to a mother of one. She was shorter than Claire and had long straight blond hair, the kind (Claire always thought) that women who were not quite willing to grow up clung to as long as possible, especially if they had daughters. She was cute and dressed like the dental hygienists at the office, in clothes that came from stores Claire hadn’t set foot in for at least ten years.
Claire had also expected Colleen Bellow to look more like a wreck than she did. She’d imagined a crazy-woman with bloodshot eyes and tangled hair and splotchy skin—all the earmarks of a stricken woman—but Colleen Bellow did not look all that bad. She looked, in fact, better than Claire felt.
“Thanks for letting me come over,” she said to Mark, shaking his hand, identifying him quickly, as everyone always did, as the welcoming one, despite the fact that he’d been the one to try to rescind the invitation. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to be in a house.”
Claire thought it was an odd thing to say (surely Colleen Bellow lived in a house?), but she tried to smile warmly as she shook the woman’s hand. The hand was surprisingly strong, the grasp firm. Her daughter was missing but her grip was full of resolve.
“What can we do for you?” Claire asked. “Can we get you anything? Coffee?”
“I can’t stand another cup of coffee,” Colleen said. Her eyes moved to the staircase. “Is Meredith here? Is she in her room? Can I talk to her?”
The plan had been that she and Mark would talk to Colleen for a few minutes, evaluate her mental state, see if they thought talking to her was something Meredith was up for, before they brought her into it. They wanted to control the situation. They did not want to give Meredith more than she could handle.
“She’s . . . ” Mark started. He looked to Claire for support.
Of course you wouldn’t sleep, Claire thought. You wouldn’t dare. What your mind would do to you in the moments before sleep, the images held at bay while you talked to people, while you kept moving, kept drinking coffee, kept answering the phone, kept making lists—they’d have nothing to keep them back if you stopped and lay down in a dark and quiet room and closed your eyes. Of course you would look like this, not stricken but driven; of course your handshake would be firm, firmer than it ever had been before, knuckle bruising if necessary. In the first days, when that window of possibility was still open, her leftovers still in the refrigerator, the smell of her still on her sheets, when you could sense the window sliding shut but still feel her breath blowing through the opening, you would do nothing but do do do. There was only action, forward motion.
For a moment Claire was standing in Colleen Bellow’s home, their roles reversed, Meredith missing, Lisa left behind, and Claire was looking hopefully up the Bellows’ stairs in the direction of Lisa’s room and asking to speak with her, while just on the other side of the window in her mind was the horror of what might be happening to her daughter in this moment, this exact moment, and thus the need to go back to the last moment, the last moment that could possibly be accounted for. . . .