From the other room we heard a crash—a table overturning—and then the detective’s sister saying it was okay, not a big deal. In seconds, Gavin’s brother-in-law was in the kitchen with us, grabbing a dishtowel off the handle of the stove and the entire roll of paper towels on the counter. “Fruit punch spill,” he said. “Nothing to worry about, unless you care about the beige upholstery on the couch.”
“Need help?” the detective asked.
“No. We can’t fit another person in the living room. Would be a fire code violation.”
When he was gone, I said, “You just can’t have a kid’s birthday party without a spill. Trust me, I know.”
“You’re good with kids.”
“I like them. You couldn’t do what I do, if you didn’t.”
“I got the sense the day I came to your house that you’re good with your sister, too.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Oh, sometimes she’s still her own search party. She’s still out there looking for clues.”
“Find any?”
“Nope.”
“What else?”
“She tries to get on with her life, I guess. She goes to school and does homework. She sees her friends. She swims.”
“And you?”
My answer was brutally honest. “Me? I just wait.”
“For your mom to walk in the front door…”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I wait for something.”
“You wish you were back at college?”
“Yes and no. I miss my friends. I miss classes and studying. I miss my life. But I want to be here for my dad and Paige. I need to be here for them. I mean, it hasn’t even been a month yet since Mom disappeared. And, I have to admit, I don’t think I’d be able to focus away from home right now.”
For a moment we were quiet. We had both felt the air in the room grow heavy. Then I took a breath and asked, “Is there any news about her? Any new leads?”
“We get fewer new leads now than the first couple of days. A lot fewer. But someone will spot a homeless woman who looks even a teeny bit like your mom in Rutland or Albany, and we follow up. Someone will see something in the river or the lake that they think might be your mom, and we follow up.”
“But it’s never her.”
“No. It’s never even a clue.”
“At first, it was the biggest story in Vermont. Now, it hasn’t been in the papers in days. I don’t think there’s been a mention on the TV news in over a week.”
“The news cycles move on. The media interest wanes.”
“And the police interest?”
“Sadly, that wanes, too. Human nature. Detectives lose interest when we’re getting nowhere. When we’ve exhausted every possibility. And, for better or worse, we don’t have any reason to believe this is a homicide investigation.”
“No.”
“At one point, there must have been a dozen of us working on the case. But once we’d talked to your mother’s friends and her clients, once forensics had analyzed her computer and phone, once we’d followed up on every crazy sighting”—he put his soda down on the counter and extended his hands, palms up, a universal sign for capitulation—“what’s left? So we wait for a break. We work on other things.”
“Do you still think her body is in the river?”
“If it is, the drought helps. Maybe eventually the water will get so low that we find it. We dragged part of the river, but maybe it was wedged perfectly under a rock.”
I bit my lip and looked away, hoping Gavin wouldn’t notice how the image had unnerved me. As painful as it was for me to hear the conjecture, I didn’t want him to stop.
“I said too much,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
“No. I need to know. Go on.”
He took a sip of his soda. “Maybe the divers stirred up just enough sediment in the water that they missed her,” he said. “It happens. Think of that poor kid from Dartmouth.”
I nodded. I recalled the story. When I’d been in elementary school, a junior there had disappeared the first Friday in February. He’d left a friend’s dorm room late at night and vanished. But no one seriously suspected foul play, because there were footprints his boot size that led to the crew team’s boathouse near the Connecticut River. He’d been a member of the team his first two years at the college, a rower in the shell’s engine room. He was no longer on the team, and apparently he grieved that loss immensely. His friend said he had been drunk when he had left that last night.
“The kid’s body wasn’t found until June,” the detective said. “But it had been in the water the whole time, in that very spot no more than a half mile from the boathouse. So tragic. So sad.”
He finished his soda and rinsed out the bottle in the sink. “But your mom? We just don’t know. We assume she’s there because of a scrap of nightshirt and because one night years ago she walked to the river—to the bridge. But there are no footprints in the snow this time.”
“Then she might be alive?”
“I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up. But, yes, without a body, we can’t rule out that possibility.”
“But she wouldn’t just leave my dad and Paige and me. You said that yourself.”
“I did, yes. I believe that.”