I want you to see two things before we go where we have to go. The first is a scene one day in late November out in front of the strip-mall church in Council Bluffs. Some men and women have gathered on the sidewalk—seven of them, all familiar to one another and to us. It’s cold by now; a few have old sweaters on, but for the most part these people are underdressed for the weather. The ones in sweaters are sitting. The others stand and pace a little. Inside, it’s warmer, but the glass doors are locked; Michael isn’t here yet.
A car pulls up; its headlights flood the gathering. Irene gets out and exchanges greetings as she heads around to the passenger side, opens the door, and retrieves the scraps pail. It’s been filled and emptied many times since Peter first saw Irene empty her breakfast into it and didn’t say anything. Tonight it has the ends of some spinach, and broccoli stalks, and generous potato peelings, and a whole helping of french toast from Saturday’s breakfast. It’s Sunday. She sets the bucket down on the sidewalk and they all join hands to give thanks, and together they eat.
They have finished all their supper and are sitting again in silence when Michael arrives on foot, trudging slowly across the parking lot, having spent the day who knows where. Everyone lowers their heads as he grows near; he brushes, with twitching fingers, the sleeves of a few congregants as he passes. Then he reaches into the pocket of his grubby gray slacks, takes out some keys, and, unlocking the door, goes in without holding it open behind him. Everyone follows in his wake; they find their seats and, in heavy silence, wait.
The second thing is Peter Sample waking up one morning about a month later expecting breakfast. The house is quiet; Lisa is still asleep. It’s a weekday. There’s a letter on the table in a sealed envelope: it’s a Christmas card from Irene, though Christmas was a few days ago. He opens it up. On the front there’s a night sky lit by a single star, immense in the blue darkness, a beacon. Inside the card there’s a preprinted greeting, which reads:
There’s a reason
for the season.
She’s signed it, a little happy face next to her signature: light and easy. That was all.
“Most times they leave a note. They want you to find them,” the detective from Omaha said in January, looking over the Christmas card at his desk down at the station while Peter scanned his face for signs of hope or despair. A police radio nearby squelched and skreed.
He handed the card back to Peter Sample. “This really isn’t much to go on,” he said.
6
Peter’s demands on life had been, up to this point, extremely modest. He lived in the town where he’d been raised, and was satisfied; when times had grown lean, there was enough in reserve to keep the wolf from the door. His wife had been his partner through the lean times, gardening and sewing and restricting leisure to things that were free—church on Sundays, thrift store shopping, Bible study. He had a beautiful daughter and a steady job and a Chevrolet and a television. These were the things you worked to get; they represented success. He’d made a home like the one his father had made for him to grow up in, embellishing it with his own personal touches: he spent time with his daughter in a way men of his father’s generation often hadn’t with their own kids, and he liked the way that husbands and wives seemed to talk to each other more now than they had in his parents’ time. The house felt warm even when it was drafty. It was a comfortable life. There is much to be said in defense of comfort.
Out in his driveway on the morning of December 29, 1975, he stood in the spot where the car ought to have been. He had a cardigan on over an undershirt; it was too cold to stay out here like this for long, but his body was sending him all kinds of unfamiliar panic signals and he couldn’t think straight. Irene hadn’t gotten him up for breakfast; it was Lisa who woke him up, running into the bedroom and pushing him with both hands, the way you might roll a log, until he woke up. “Where’s Mommy?” she said.
He didn’t know. “Church?” he said.
“Church was yesterday!” said Lisa, scowling.
Church was yesterday, he thought in the empty driveway, wondering if the church in Council Bluffs had some special holiday services going on that she’d maybe mentioned while his attention had been elsewhere, special services she’d left for in the quiet cold of the early morning without waking him, without setting anything out for breakfast, with only a note on the dining room table that didn’t say she was taking the car and didn’t say when she’d be back and gave no indication that anything unusual had happened or was about to happen or would continue happening without interruption in the days to follow.
*
He didn’t know how to tell her parents. He reached for the phone, reflexively by this point, then put it back down: he was still steady enough to imagine what it might feel like to the person on the other end of the line. To have your son-in-law call out of the clear blue sky with news like these. It was unthinkable. But it was also unthinkable not to call—what if she stayed missing? They’d want to know why he hadn’t called earlier, just to let them know.