Authors: Monica McGurk
She dragged her suitcase behind her and suddenly realized how bone tired she was. Every bump of the staircase her wheeled bag took seemed to jolt an ache she didn’t even know she had. It didn’t matter what class of service she flew; a flight from London was still a damn long time to sit still, trapped. She wasn’t one for sleeping, and she used every minute of her travel time to knock out that extra memo, edit a report, or draft e-mails she could later send on to clients, and her habit of working through each flight had intensified after Hope had come to live with her. She wanted to be there for Hope, fully present, when she was at home.
She knocked on Hope’s door, waiting for an answer. When none came, she swung the door open.
Hope’s room was empty. Her schoolbooks were strewn haphazardly across the floor. Her closet doors were hanging open, with several shirts falling off the hangers that looked like they’d been rifled through. Hope’s pajamas were in a wad on the floor, presumably exactly where she’d stripped them off, and the bed was still unmade.
Mona felt a surge of irritation as she looked at the mess. She backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Clearly Hope had left in a hurry.
Remember, she didn’t expect you back so soon
, Mona reminded herself.
And you were much worse at keeping your room clean when you were a teenager
.
She blew out a breath, trying to shake off her annoyance, and she went on to her bedroom to unpack her bags.
Thirty minutes later, she was downstairs, waiting. She picked up her phone and double-checked her texts and calls. Nothing from Hope.
She might as well make herself useful, she thought. She looked into the mail bin on the counter, quickly sorting through the newspapers and junk mail. She noticed she was short on newspapers and went out through the front door to fetch them. She almost fell into the box from Wright’s.
She picked up the box, which had a delivery notice marked for today. “No answer—left at door,” the notice read.
“Really, Hope,” she muttered, bringing the box back into the kitchen. She lifted the lid to double-check that no critters or bugs had gotten into it. It was untouched, the beautiful “Happy Sweet Sixteen” script laid out in black against the rest of the pink icing. It was a good thing it hadn’t rained.
Mona then backtracked, going outside to swipe up two
Wall Street Journals
and check the mailbox. It was stuffed. She made a mental note to remind Hope to pick up the mail when she was out and, balancing it precariously in two arms, carried it all back inside.
More sorting. More checking messages and e-mails. She let her eyes stray over to the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. Nine o’clock.
She sighed and moved the cake into the refrigerator so the icing wouldn’t melt. Her irritation had shifted to disappointment. The adrenaline and anticipation that had kept her going to this point had melted away, exhaustion—chased by a little bit of worry—taking its place.
She considered calling Hope again, but she decided against it. The last thing she wanted to do was make Hope feel like she was being monitored, as if she were at her dad’s house. Mona snapped closed the lid of her laptop with a firm click and pushed away from the table.
There was nothing to do but wait. She took down a wine glass from the cupboard and reached into the wine cooler for a bottle. She pulled out a dark red, and then shook her head; that would knock her out. She replaced the bottle and looked around once more. A nice Pinot Grigio; that would do.
She poured the glass half full, holding it to the light to admire its soft greenish-yellow tone, before walking into the family room to wait. She sank into the couch, curling her feet up under her and tucking a blanket around her legs. She set the glass down on the side table and picked through the stack of magazines and books she kept meaning to get to.
“Good ol’
People
magazine,” she sighed aloud to the empty room, looking at the posing celebrities and headlines shouting out the latest scandals on the cover. “Just the thing to distract me.”
It wasn’t ten minutes before her eyes started fluttering closed. She told herself she would just rest for a minute. Her eyes shut.
A pain in her neck woke her up. The little lamp on the side table still glowed, beating back the darkness. The magazine, still open to
the page she’d been reading, was draped across her stomach. She shifted, and her joints protested.
She looked down at her watch: 5:00 a.m.
Annoyed, she pushed off her blanket and stood up, padding to the kitchen. She’d fallen asleep without arming the alarm system, which was still glowing green from the keypad. She frowned. She’d told Hope a million times to activate the alarm before she went to bed.
She went to the back door and flicked on the light switch before looking into the garage.
Still empty.
Something is not right
, she thought, real unease sweeping through her. She slammed the door and started first walking, then running to the staircase.
“Hope!” she yelled as she took the stairs two at a time. “Hope, are you awake?”
In the back of her mind, she imagined Hope laughing at her for being afraid. Or chastising her for waking her up so early. But when she opened the door to Hope’s bedroom, she found it just as she had left it.
She crumpled to the floor, dumbfounded. Hope was not the kind of kid who didn’t come home at night. She was not the kind of kid to rebel—not against normal rules, anyway.
“There has to be a logical explanation,” Mona whispered to herself. “There has to be.” She pushed down the feelings of panic she remembered from when Hope had been abducted, chiding herself for being so weak.
She traced her steps back to the couch where she’d fallen asleep, and she fished her cell phone out from between the cushions. Her fingers danced over a few buttons to speed-dial Hope. It rolled right over into Hope’s voice mail.
Mona’s mind raced.
You can’t panic
, she thought to herself.
Think, Mona. Who would know where Hope is? Who could she be with?
Michael. But I don’t know how to reach him
.
She practically ran to her laptop and searched for his number and address, but came up with nothing.
Tabitha?
She put that thought firmly out of her mind. She didn’t want Tabitha’s family to think she didn’t have a handle on her own daughter.
Mrs. Bibeau?
She sighed with relief. Mrs. Bibeau always kept tabs on Hope, might even have talked to her. And if she had gone with Michael, Mrs. Bibeau surely would have noticed.
She looked at the kitchen clock again. It was only 5:15. She couldn’t call or go over to her neighbor’s house this early, could she? She went to the front door and peeked out. The windows at the Bibeau house were still dark. She sighed, resigned, and settled in to watch the house.
The kitchen and porch lights went on at 6:30. Mona, still in the sweatpants she’d put on the night before, was at their door by 6:32. Her hand floated over the doorbell, hesitating. Somehow, it seemed more civilized to knock at this hour.
She rapped firmly on the door, praying they didn’t think she was crazy.
The door swung open wide. Her neighbor was clutching the neck of her bathrobe, her hair pulled off her face.
“Mona, my goodness. You’re up early.” She paused, taking in Mona’s disheveled appearance. “What is it, dear? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come in here,” she said, clucking in her motherly way as she pulled Mona in the door.
Mona was barely inside the door when she burst out, “Do you know where Hope is?”
Mrs. Bibeau tilted her head as she considered the question. She moved to the coffeepot and poured a cup.
“What do you mean, Mona?” she drawled as she passed a cup to Mona.
Frustrated, Mona stomped her foot.
Patience
, she reminded herself. “She didn’t come home last night, and I’m starting to think that she hasn’t been home for a few days. She hasn’t responded to my calls or texts. I was hoping you might have talked with her and know what happened.”
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Bibeau soothed, ushering Mona to a chair and making her sit. “I think you must be working too hard. Of course I know where Hope is. Don’t you remember? You called me and told me she was going to visit her father back in Alabama for a few days.”
Mona’s heart froze, but Mrs. Bibeau continued on, oblivious.
“It’s so generous of you,” she said. “The way y’all had worked it out in advance. All because you didn’t want her to spend her birthday alone.”
Mona dropped the coffee cup. It broke into shards on the tile floor, splattering coffee across the room.
“Oh, my!” Mrs. Bibeau jumped to her feet, flustered. She looked around the room, trying to remember where her mop was, her brain still clicking into gear at the early hour. “It’s all right, now. Don’t you worry, Mona, I’ll clean that right up. You sit right there.”
“I didn’t call you,” Mona barely whispered.
“What’s that, dear?” The older woman stopped. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I didn’t call you.” Mona’s voice was clear and strong, her meaning unmistakable.
“Why, of course you did. You called me just—when was it now? Just two days ago. I have it right here.” She walked over to her desk.
She quickly rummaged in a little basket and perched a pair of reading glasses on her nose before leaning over the phone. “You even asked me to keep an eye on the house while it was empty. See, I’ll just scroll through the numbers and find yours.”
For a moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock and the small beeps as Mrs. Bibeau scrolled through her calls.
“Well, that’s funny,” she said in a quiet voice. “I don’t see your name or number here, Mona.”
“Let me see,” Mona said, nestling up to her neighbor and peering at the phone.
“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Bibeau continued. “Here are all the calls from that day. And I have all your phone numbers programmed in here. But I don’t see it. Did you call me from your client’s phone?”
“You don’t have any international numbers here,” Mona said, impatiently scanning the call log. “What time did you get this call?”
“Well, let me think. I was just back from the Ladies’ Art League, and was getting ready to go to tennis. So it must have been about three o’clock?”
Mona scrolled through the calls, looking for the right time. She paused, her finger hovering over the buttons of the phone.
“Three o’clock, you said?”
“Yes, I believe so. Three o’clock.”
“There’s only one call at that time. And it came from Hope’s cell phone.”
Mrs. Bibeau leaned closer to the phone, peering through her glasses. “That can’t be. I just know I talked to you.”
“It wasn’t me. It was Hope. Her father must have put her up to this,” she said, biting the words through her anger.
“Well, I never,” Mrs. Bibeau said, straightening herself up. “I
never dreamed it wasn’t you, Mona. I swear she sounded just like you.” She clucked her tongue again, this time in disapproval. “I am just shocked, shocked, I tell you, that your husband would do such a thing. And manipulating that poor girl, too. He should be ashamed.”
Mona’s anger was growing from a small flame to a roaring fire. She could barely hear Mrs. Bibeau now. She moved to the door, her attention already turned to other things.
“I need to call my lawyer. I may have to ask you to speak with him. But first I need to call Don.” She slammed the door behind her, already framing the conversation with her husband in her head. She could think of nothing but her sheer rage as she took up her phone.
Her hands were shaking as she dialed his number. He picked up on the third ring.
“This is D—”
“How dare you!” Mona interrupted, giving full voice to her rage. “It’s bad enough you even contacted her behind my back, but to talk her into coming down with you, and lying about it!”
“Mona! Mona!” Don tried ineffectually to cut in. “Slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know damn well, Don, what I’m talking about. Put her on the phone.”
“Put who on the phone?”
“Don’t get cute with me, Don. I have played nice with you. All these years, I have bent over backwards, I—” Mona paused and took a deep breath. “Just put Hope on the phone.”
“Hope’s not here, Mona.” Her husband sounded confused.
“Well, where is she?” Mona demanded.
“Isn’t she in Atlanta, with you?”
There was a long silence. Mona could hear some distant radio station, background noise to their call, buzzing in her ear.
“That’s not funny,” she said.
“I’m not trying to be funny. She’s not here.”
“Tell me you haven’t gone behind my back. Go on, tell me.”
Don sighed, sending a trickle of static across the line. “I won’t deny it. I went up there to see her, found her running one afternoon.”
“I knew it!” Mona spat angrily. “I knew—”
“But that was weeks ago!” Don continued, his declaration causing Mona to break off. “I haven’t seen her or talked to her in weeks. Just like the court order said.”
More silence danced across the line.
“Mona, do you not know where Hope is?”
Mona didn’t answer.
“Mona? Is Hope missing?”
Mona rushed her answer. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I just got home early from a trip and she wasn’t here.”
“How long have you been back?” he demanded, a new, harder edge to his voice.
“Since last night,” she admitted reluctantly.
Don muttered something under his breath. It sounded like “I knew it,” but Mona couldn’t be sure.
“I’m coming up there,” Don declared. “I’m coming up there to help you find her.”
Mona shifted gears, trying to reassert her control over the situation, as if it was just a catfight between her warring, merging clients.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said coolly. “I think it best you stay where you are.”
“Like hell I will!” Don shouted. “This is exactly the reason I
demanded custody in the first place. You’re never there, Mona, you’re never home. You have no idea what she’s up against—”
“That’s enough, Don.” She cut him off abruptly, her voice husky. She didn’t want to hear another repetition of his crazy conspiracy theories. She fought back the tears that threatened to well over. “You stay where you are. The police will want to talk to you.”