This much I knew already. My father writes popular medical mysteries, the kind you read in airports. Since I was little I’ve been sneaking his books into my room, books with thick spines and blood spatters on the covers, and reading them under my blanket. They’re all about a handsome forensic pathologist who solves deaths that seem extraordinary but are in fact perfectly explainable. Someone poisoned the dead man’s salmon fillet, or switched the dead woman’s asthma medicine with dry ice. Nobody’s organs ever turn to stone. There’s no magic in his books at all.
But I believed my dad about the heart. I still believe. He had proof—the half left behind—and though I haven’t seen it in forever, I remember it perfectly. A semicircle of gray stone, its inside sharp with small crystals. He would show it to me at night and, sitting in my nest of stuffed bears, I’d run one finger over the roughness of it. “It wasn’t your mother’s fault,” Dad would say with a sigh, “or her mother’s. The women in that family were cursed. They could be lonely wherever they were. But not us, Immy. We have each other. So we’ll never, ever have to feel that way.”
As he spoke, Dad cradled our piece of the rock, which I was never allowed to hold. He clasped it to his own chest as if to protect it, as if it weren’t already broken.
TWO
It’s after ten on Thursday night when Lindy hands Officer Griffin her second cup of coffee. While they talk, I splash what’s left in the pot into my own Mystery Writers of America mug. It’s thick and semicool and tastes like horribly burned toast. Dad has always been the master of coffee in this house. That’s how it works: Lindy is the appointment keeper, the bills mailer, the tax filer, while Dad’s the coffee maker, the grocery shopper, the homework checker. At the moment my homework sits upstairs untouched, my English essay blank but for my name, date, and class number. I’m not worried. Lindy will write me a note. Something like:
Dear Mr. McCormick,
Please excuse Imogene Scott’s incomplete homework. We were up late filing a missing persons report for Immy’s father, and the time just got away from us.
Sincerely,
Lindy Scott
Fanned out across the kitchen table are pictures of Dad taken in the past few years. Officer Griffin examines the black-and-white headshot from the back cover of his latest novel, No Shirt, No Pulse, No Problem. Dad is sitting in his home office behind a fortress of books and weird paperweights and framed photos, miniature Lindys and Imogenes unidentifiable in their smallness. He chews the stem of a pipe and stares into the distance, as if a story is writing itself while he waits for the click of the camera. If this picture were to wash up on a foreign shore years from now and a stranger plucked it out of the sand, they’d think Dad was some pompous literary great. But he isn’t either of those things. It isn’t even a real pipe in the headshot, just a plastic joke pipe I bought him in honor of his tenth published book. It blows goddamn bubbles.
How could anyone recognize him from this picture?
Officer Griffin sets the headshot down gently and turns to her notebook, where for two hours she’s been taking notes such as: a description of the individual (tall-ish, pale-ish, gray-ish hair, half Asian-ish, fifty-ish, Dad-ish), full name (Joshua Zhi Scott), last known location (his bed, beside Lindy, Wednesday night), known locations frequented by the individual (the local Starbucks, his home office, whichever of our two and a half bathrooms has whatever book he’s currently reading in the rack beside the toilet), means of travel available to the individual (he left his car and credit card behind, but according to the bank, withdrew $1,500 two days ago—so pretty much any means).
As I slip into my seat she turns to me.
“You’re a senior in high school, Imogene?”
“At Sugarbrook High, yeah.”
“Tough year. College applications, SATs, prom dates . . .”
“Immy’s in the honor society,” Lindy jumps in. “And mock trial, aren’t you?”
“That’s great! What colleges have you applied to?”
“Um, Emerson? And Amherst and BU. And Simmons.”
“Local schools, huh?”
“I want to be close to home. My friend’s brother even commutes from home, and he likes it.” Beneath the table I wrap my right fist around my left thumb, just above the knuckle, and pull until it cracks. I do the same with each finger one by one, a nervous habit Dad says will one day require that my ruined joints be replaced by a robot hand.
The officer nods. “Sure. I told my own daughter how nice it’d be for her to stay local, but she can’t wait to get across the country. Bet your parents are real proud of you.”
I shrug.
“Is he in the habit of pulling you from school, your dad?”
“No,” Lindy says at once. “Absolutely not.”
“Uh-huh.” Officer Griffin jots a note. “So why’d he take you out yesterday, do you think?”