“Eight hours,” she said. “At least. I woke up at 7:00 and he was already gone.”
“We’ll give it a while longer,” said Liston. “I called my friend Bobby in the police department, and he told me they wouldn’t start searching until tomorrow anyway. Even if we called in.” And she must have seen the nervous look on Ada’s face, for she assured her that he would most likely be back before then.
“I bet you he’ll be back by dinnertime,” said Liston, but she, too, looked worried.
He had not been into Tran’s, said Tran. “Is he okay?” he asked, and the two lines between his eyebrows deepened. He loved David.
Ada assured him that David was fine—digging down deep into her reserves of strength to do so—and then returned to Liston’s car. They continued along for a time. Ada slumped against the seat, her head against the headrest, scanning the sidewalks on either side of the road for David. She searched the roadsides for his shining head, for a tall man in a T-shirt and shorts, or in trousers and a threadbare oxford, jangling his limbs about in a way that seemed incompatible with speed, and yet propelled him forcefully ahead.
Liston tried to make small talk with her, telling her one or another little anecdote about the grad students or about Martha, the division secretary—“All she wants, poor thing, is a date with a normal man”—but Ada could only muster the briefest of replies.
David was nowhere they looked.
Their drive became a silent one, strange and uncomfortable. For the first time, Ada allowed herself to truly wonder if her father was gone completely—disappeared altogether. Kidnapped. Dead on some lonesome road in the mountains of New Hampshire or New York. Or injured badly, unable to call for help. Or—worst of all—gone of his own volition. Was it possible, she wondered, that he had abandoned her? It was such a contrast to anything she understood about her father that she could not process the idea.
At last, they pulled back onto Shawmut Way, and Liston stopped in David’s driveway, where his car was still parked. For several seconds neither of them moved. It was quiet: Ada could hear children playing a block away. Small clicks and pings emanated from beneath the hood of Liston’s station wagon as the engine settled and cooled.
The house looked too still.
“I’ll come in with you,” said Liston, and together they exited the car and approached the house. Would her father be inside? Would he be frantic, apologetic? Would he have an explanation for them both?
Inside, it was quiet. “David?” called Ada, once, twice. But there was no response.
Liston turned to her. On her face Ada saw an expression that was meant to register as cheerfulness but came off as doubt.
Liston checked her watch, and Ada did the same: 5:00 in the evening.
“Tell you what,” said Liston brightly. “Why don’t you come over for a while? Pack some overnight things just in case. I’ll go get a room ready back at the house.”
Ada’s heart increased its pace. The idea of spending time at Liston’s, while her sons were there, was simultaneously appealing and terrifying.
“Come on,” said Liston. “We’ll get you a snack, too.”
It was only then that Ada realized she had not eaten all day.
Upstairs, alone, Ada packed a nightgown, her hairbrush, some clothes for the next day (to pack more than these seemed pessimistic), and seven books, all into the little blue suitcase that was hers to use. David had a matching one in green. Then she went downstairs and wrote a new note for David.
David, it said. I am really scared. Where are you? I’m at Liston’s. Please call right away.
And then, just in case, she wrote down Liston’s number, too, which David knew like his own pulse.
She exited the kitchen, leaving the door unlocked for her father. She walked toward Liston’s.
Liston’s house had a front porch, and on it were two boys’ bicycles leaned in toward one another, and a girl’s pink bicycle with its tassels chopped off an inch from each handle. Someone had begun to color the pink seat black with a permanent marker, but had only gotten halfway. Like all the houses on the block, Liston’s was a colorful Victorian, painted a different color every ten years or so. That decade it was light blue with dark blue shutters and edges. The porch itself had been painted the color of the trim, so that walking on it gave one the feeling of being underwater. It was nearly time for a new paint job; the existing color had begun to come up off the wooden floor and down from the ceiling, and small unsettled piles of paint chips had made their way into crevices and corners. Once or twice, Ada had seen Liston briskly sweeping the porch and the front walkway, but mainly she had no time for such details, preferring instead to maintain, she told Ada, the highest level of cleanliness her busy schedule would allow. She would not have dreamed of bringing in a cleaning service—to her they were for rich people.
Ada walked up the steps with great apprehension and raised her fist to knock softly on the door. No one answered. She looked at her watch and told herself that if, after two minutes, no one had answered, she would try again.
She did, with slightly greater force. And this time quick footsteps came rushing toward the door, and Matty opened it.
He said nothing. He was nine years old at the time, tall for his age. He had a feathery haircut, and he wore denim cutoffs and a red-striped tank top. Both knees were scraped up, and as he appraised Ada, he reached down to scratch at one of his scabs absentmindedly.
“Hi,” Ada said.
“Hi.”
“I’m here to see your mom,” she told him. She felt ridiculous saying it: only four years older than he was, and yet playing the role of an adult, a friend of his mother’s.
But at that moment Liston came into sight behind Matty, sock-footed.
“What are you doing, Matty? Open the door for Ada,” she said, and then did it herself, and Matty shrugged and ran upstairs.
“No manners,” said Liston, after Ada had stepped inside. Liston shut the inner door behind them. Liston hated the heat more than anyone Ada had ever met, and several years before had installed central air in her hundred-year-old house, which cost her more than she cared to admit. All spring Ada had seen men working on Liston’s roof, coming and going through the front door. Now a large metal box occupied a space in her backyard, near the patio, and inside the house it felt calm and cool and shadowy. The sweat on Ada’s neck cooled and disappeared.