“We’ll need to have a list of her friends, starting with the ones she is closest to. Also her teachers. Her coach. The other members on the team. Anyone you can think of she might be with. Neighbors. Maybe a family she babysits for. Relatives who live nearby.”
I let Sophie handle this, listened as she gave the names, watched Slovak write them down. Names of friends I recognized. Rain LaBrea, of course. And the Hayes family, our neighbors she used to sit for before they divorced and Ellen moved away with their son, a boy so disabled he couldn’t walk, a fact Sophie believed led to their divorce. A few names I didn’t know, specifics of our daughter’s life I’d missed. I checked my watch and saw another hour had passed since the police had first arrived.
“Would anyone like coffee?” Sophie asked.
“Please,” Gordon said.
“Not for me,” Slovak said. He picked up the list he’d made of Lucy’s friends, her teachers and coach. “I’m going to follow up on some of these.”
We watched him leave. I poured three mugs of coffee, brought them to the table. One of the mugs had a slight chip on the lip, and I gave that to Gordon. “Sugar?” I asked.
“If it isn’t a bother.”
Sophie started to rise, but I rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently. “Sit,” I said. “I’ll get it.” We both watched as he shoveled spoonful after spoonful into the cup until I couldn’t imagine how it could be drinkable. He took a sip, then returned to the questions.
“Have you noticed anything unusual lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“How has Lucy been acting? Has there been any change in her mood or behavior? Has she been depressed?”
“Lucy? No. Not at all.”
“Any problems at school? Have her grades dropped?”
“No.”
“What about at home?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any reason she might be upset? An argument with one of you?”
The idea was ludicrous. “No,” I said, my voice tight.
“Maybe something she wanted to get back at you for. Has she wanted to go to a party or a concert, something you’ve forbidden?” Gordon smiled, as if to say, You know how teenage girls can be.
Not Lucy. Not our teenage girl. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Does she use social media?”
“What?”
“Twitter. Facebook?”
“She’s on Facebook,” Sophie said.
Again I remembered that morning, Lucy texting at the breakfast table.
“Do you know her password?”
“No,” I said.
“Selkie,” Sophie said.
“I didn’t know that,” I said, feeling a spark of what?—jealousy—that Lucy had shared this with Sophie and not with me.
“Selkie?” Gordon said. “Could you spell that?”
“S-E-L-K-I-E,” I said. “From the Irish myth.” Sophie and I exchanged a quick look, and I knew she was remembering too. Lucy swimming, her long hair plastered against her scalp as her arms knifed though the water, and then emerging. You’re like an otter child, Sophie had told her. Or a selkie, I’d said and told her about the mythological sea creature who shed her sealskin to take the form of a woman and how a fisherman had hidden the skin and taken her for his wife. How enchanted Lucy had been by the tale, and being Lucy and curious about everything, she had researched the subject until she knew every version of the myth.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“No. I mean, she has a group of friends, boys and girls, but no one special. She isn’t dating anyone.” Sophie’s voice was steady, but I heard the urgent undertone and knew she too was aware of the minutes ticking off on the wall clock.
“What about alcohol? Drugs?”
I stared out the far window into October darkness. “This is ridiculous.”
“Please.” Sophie leaned in toward Gordon, her voice pleading. “You aren’t listening to us. Lucy is a good student with a group of good kids as friends. She doesn’t drink or use drugs. She’s the president of SADD, for God’s sake. And she would never just not come home. She always calls if she’s going to be late. Always. Why aren’t you out trying to find out what happened to our daughter?”
“Mrs. Light, until there is a reason to think otherwise, we start with the premise that she left voluntarily.”
Until there is a reason to think otherwise. The words hung in the air, stunning us with their implication.
“What about a driver’s license? Does she have one?”
“Christ, weren’t you paying attention? She’s fifteen. Of course she doesn’t have a license.”
Gordon ignored the outburst. “Does Lucy have her own cell phone?”
“Yes.” I recited the number.
“Good. This will help. We’ll contact the service, ping her phone. If it’s turned on, we’ll get the exact location. If it’s off, we’ll get the time and location where it was last used.”
All the times I had wanted to take the damn phone and toss it, now I was grateful Lucy had it, prayed it was on and the battery was charged.
“Like I said, as soon as this info goes out, we’ll get a report from every hospital and police department in a fifty-mile radius.”
Sophie rose. “I can’t,” she said to me. “I can’t do this. This can’t be happening.”
Gordon looked up from the computer. “Please, Mrs. Light. I promise you, we’ll do everything possible to find your daughter. Believe me, I know what you must be feeling.”
“Do you?”
He started to say something then stopped. “Just a few more questions. Help us out here, okay.”
Sophie sank back into her chair, the little fight she had in her gone.
“What about a credit or debit card? Does she have one?”
Sophie nodded. She found her purse, handed two cards to Gordon. “She’s on both of our accounts.”
Gordon copied down the numbers. The radio on his hip squawked—the words indistinguishable—and without looking, he reached down and lowered the volume.
“I’m almost done here. One last thing. Is there a recent photo of Lucy you could let us have?”
Sophie left and reappeared moments later with two photos—one from Lucy’s bureau, the photo taken of the three of us in Maine, and the other her freshman class picture—and laid them on the table. Lucy smiled up at the three of us.
“We’ll get these back to you,” Gordon said as he picked them up.
After he left, Sophie came to me, leaned against me. “This can’t be happening,” she said again.