“Can I help you?” he asked.
It was too late to run. Her only choice was to calm the hell down. “Um, yeah,” she said softly. “I’m looking for my mom. She didn’t come home the night before last. She was with some friend right before she left work—or I don’t really know if she was a friend. The people my mom works with think she was . . . some woman with blond hair, they said. She was the last person to see my mom, I guess, but they didn’t get her name, so I have no way to find her.” Now that Sandy had gotten herself talking, she could not shut up. “And she— Well, my mom isn’t always the most dependable person, but she always comes home, you know, eventually.”
“Hmm.” The police officer’s brow furrowed. He looked less suspicious and more concerned. “How long since you last spoke to her?”
“The night before last,” she said.
“And how old are you?”
Shit. Child Protective Services—Sandy hadn’t thought of that. But she couldn’t lie now. Too big a risk that she would get caught. She just had to hope that leaving a kid her age alone wasn’t some kind of crime.
“Sixteen. But I don’t want to get her in trouble or anything. She’s a great mom, really.”
Except Sandy had already said that Jenna wasn’t that dependable. Why had she said that? The police officer stared at her some more, squinting now, like he was trying to figure out where he’d seen Sandy before. But no one had seen her. She was sure of that much. He reached over the desk and held out his hand. “I’m Steve,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Sandy.”
“Okay, Sandy. Lucky for you, I’ve got a soft spot for daughters.” He waved for her to follow him into the next room. “If I put your mom in the system, there’s a chance this will end up getting bounced to Social Services, and that could make a mess of things for both of you when your mom shows up an hour from now. Why don’t we start with a quick off-the-record search, just to make sure she hasn’t been in an accident or anything.”
“Thanks,” Sandy said. “A lot.”
“No problem,” Steve said, leading the way to his office.
Sandy sat in the chair in front of Steve’s desk as he hunted and pecked his way across the keyboard, finally getting to a screen filled with numbers and blank lines. Then he reached for some reading glasses, peering down his nose through them at the screen. At this rate, Sandy could be there for hours.
He turned to her and smiled. “As you can see, I don’t do this much.”
And judging from his big office, Steve wasn’t a regular police officer. He was the police officer, the one in charge. Sandy looked up at the bookcase over his head: a couple of framed certificates, a diploma, and a trophy with a basketball player on top. On the second shelf, she noticed the pictures. Dozens of family snapshots. Her eyes settled on one in the middle: a family of four, clustered together on the beach, all smiles and lit up by the sun. And right there, in the center, a face she fucking recognized: Hannah.
Jesus Christ. That would have been something nice to know. You know: Hey, FWIW, my dad’s the chief of police. But it wasn’t like Hannah had lied. They’d never talked about their dads, only their moms. Always their moms.
“Wait, your mom wouldn’t let you what?” Sandy had asked a month or two into their sessions, choking on her coffee. Hannah had been telling another insane story about her mom—they seemed extra insane because Hannah seemed to think they were totally normal. At least Sandy knew Jenna was screwed up.
They’d been studying at the Black Cat again. Hannah always wanted to go there, said she felt more comfortable around the college kids, though Sandy always felt like Hannah was waiting to see someone. Like maybe she had a crush on a barista or something. Sandy even asked once whether there was someone, and Hannah had blown her off with the usual “You know I don’t date yet.”
“My mom wouldn’t let me wear sparkles,” Hannah said.
“Sparkles? What are you, Dora the Explorer?”
Hannah started laughing so hard that her face got all red. “I mean when I was little,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “I always wanted to wear those sneakers that are all covered in glitter. You know?”
“No, I don’t know,” Sandy said. Like the junk drawer, glitter sneakers: another of life’s mysteries. “But I gotta be honest, they sound ugly as shit.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said this time with a forced laugh. But she looked kind of sad as she turned to look out the window. She was so pretty in the light. Delicate and soft in a way Sandy would never be. As Hannah’s smile sank, Sandy watched her try to lift it back up. “They were ugly, I guess. But I cried for so long when she said no. I couldn’t stop crying, which only made my mom madder.” Her eyes got wide, remembering. “Like she really, really hated me.”
I’m sure she doesn’t hate you, Sandy thought about saying. But she didn’t like it when people said that kind of bullshit to her. As if them thinking the world was always so perfect and right would make it so.
“That’s messed up. What did you do?”
“Do?” Hannah blinked at Sandy. “With my mom, there’s nothing to do except try not to make her mad the next time. I’m always trying to do that. To be the person she wants me to be.”
“Is it working?”
“Not really.” Hannah shook her head. Her eyes were glassy.
“Don’t you ever just want to say fuck off instead?” Sandy asked. “I mean, no offense, but isn’t she supposed to be the person who loves you no matter what?” Even Jenna did that.
“I think about it sometimes—a lot, even,” Hannah said, looking down. She was quiet for a while before she looked up. “But that would just make her hate me forever.”