“About what?”
“About anything. About everything. Will you try to talk to her? It’s going to be hard, going back to school . . . ”
It wasn’t as if she was asking him to do her job, only that he would do it better, have a better chance of doing it right, of making some difference.
“I’m not going to make her talk. That’s not what she needs.”
“What do you think she needs?”
“How should I know? I’ve never almost been kidnapped before.”
“But you know her. And you know what it’s like to . . . ”
“To what? Get hit in the face? She didn’t get hit in the face, Mom. She got out of the way.”
“Evan,” she said. He was on the other side of the kitchen table and she could have reached out and touched him, almost, but the table was too big. She would have had to practically lay herself across the table to do it because he was leaning back in his chair, in his defensive position now, and what was she supposed to do, flatten herself across the tabletop just to reach him with the tips of her fingers?
“She trusts you,” she said. “Anything you can say to her, anything will help. Even just being funny. That will help. She just needs to know you’re there for her.”
“Well, obviously,” he said. “Where else would I be?”
9
Meredith hadn’t looked very long at the books, but now, in her bed, it seemed like she could vividly recall every page, every face. How could there be so many suspects? How could it be that so many men might have taken Lisa? Surely if that were true then people were being taken all the time, every day, all over the country, girls brought to their feet inside a hundred Deli Barns, walked briskly to unidentified cars, bells ringing in their wakes.
But probably most of those men were not real criminals. Right? Probably they were potheads or deadbeat dads or petty thieves—the ones who broke into minivans left unlocked in driveways, who fished change out of unused ashtrays. Probably there were not so many men (were all of those men from around here? was that a local book?) who were capable of real crimes, serious crimes, crimes where detectives came to your house and laid books across your dining-room table, the table where a long time ago, before baseball, you ate dinner, and sometimes still did. Probably good, too, that she did not recognize any of those faces as the half face glimpsed in that moment when she’d first looked up from the counter and realized what was happening. She had seen enough movies to know what happened next, what happened when you could positively identify the criminal.
What happened was that the criminal came back for you.
She rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 5:15. No one else was awake. Except maybe the intolerant cat, who sometimes moved about in the night, when there was no one to bother him, and sometimes made noises that sounded like a window sliding open, or footsteps on the stairs, or the creak of a door.
Lisa could sleep late, which was nice for her. There would be no one hassling her to get out of bed so she could catch the bus, no one asking her if she’d finished her homework or if the field trip form had been turned in, or reminding her to pick up a sandwich on the way home. That was weird, right? Getting your mother a sandwich at Deli Barn? Of course Meredith understood it was nice, it was thoughtful, but it was also kind of weird, like your mother couldn’t stop on her own way home to pick up a sandwich? Because by the time she got home after work that sandwich would have been in the fridge for like four hours and the bread would be cold and hard, and there was almost nothing worse in the world than cold, hard bread.
So not for the boyfriend, the lacrosse player, the boy on the beach, not for him those onions, but for her mother. Her mother who remembered some party from like three years ago, some party where not only had she not even talked to Lisa but also definitely had not participated in any stupid limbo contest. And her mother knew, somehow, that their lockers were beside each other this year? What had Lisa said: “Hey, Mom, can you see if you can get me a new locker, because I’m next to Meredith Oliver who is a total loser”? Her mother looked like a grown-up version of Lisa, like the kind of mother who was dying to be confused for an older sister. Not that she, Meredith, should be a jerk about it because, after all, Mrs. Bellow’s house was completely empty now, and there was no one to bring her a sandwich.
He’d gotten Lisa some clothes, almost definitely. Right? She was not still wearing the same clothes from Wednesday, the cold-shoulder peasant top and the black leggings. Certainly, he’d picked up something for her—most likely some sweats she wouldn’t be caught dead in in public, but what else would she need, she’d have her sweats and her couch and her daytime television. And probably a bag of chips or something. It was sort of blissful, when you thought about it, that part at least, although probably there was a little part of Lisa this morning that was wishing she were going to school, despite all the hassle and pain in the ass of it, wished she were sliding her folders into her Vera Bradley backpack and strapping on the gladiator sandals, wished she could glide through the halls on those sandals like she always had instead of sitting on the couch, all alone.
But she wasn’t all alone, Meredith reminded herself. Of course not. Where was little Annie? She listened hard for the jingle of Annie’s collar. And then there she was, right on cue, jingling into Lisa’s lap.
Lisa smiled. Meredith smiled. The house was quiet. She went back to sleep.
?
“We’ll give you a ride,” her father said as they were finishing their breakfast. “It’s on our way.”
“That’s okay,” Meredith said.
“It’s on our way,” her mother repeated, both of them determined not to acknowledge the fact that in three years of middle school—six, actually, if you counted Evan’s years—it had never once been on their way to drop a child off. “And we’ll pick you up after.”
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever.”
“And it’s still okay to not go,” her father said. “You can come to the office with us. You can hang out there for the day.”
“No,” she said. “I’m good. It’s not like anyone knows about me, anyway.”
?
“Just drop me off at the corner,” she said, when she saw Kristy and Jules standing there, waiting for her.
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Her father pulled up to the girls and waved at them and they waved back. Meredith could instantly tell that Jules had told Kristy everything.
“Call us if you want,” her mother said. “It’s fine. We can come get you.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “See ya.”
She slammed the door and turned to Jules before Kristy could say anything, Kristy who was just standing there with an open mouth anyway.
“I can’t believe you told her,” she said.