Lost (17 page)

“My little girl is missing,” Cindy cried helplessly.

“I’ll get you some water,” Sean offered. “Stay where you are. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the convenience store.

But when he returned, Cindy was already gone.

“W
HERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”
her sister asked as Cindy walked through the front door, Elvis immediately at her feet. “Your phone’s been ringing all morning.”

“Julia …?” Cindy asked, staring at her sister, afraid to say more.

“No,” Leigh said, following Cindy into the kitchen. “Nobody’s heard from her. I can’t believe she’s been missing for two days and you didn’t tell me. I had to hear it from Mom.”

Norma Appleton shrugged from her seat at the kitchen table as Leigh crossed the room. “I made some fresh coffee,” Leigh said. “You want some?”

“Thank you.” Cindy sank into the chair beside her mother, feeling displaced, like an unwelcome guest in her own home, admiring the effortless way her sister had assumed control. Elvis stretched himself heavily across her feet. “When did you get here?”

“Couple of hours ago.” Leigh deposited the cup of black coffee on the table in front of Cindy. “Where have you been? It’s almost one.”

“I talked to a friend of Julia’s.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll have another cup of coffee,” her mother said.

“You’ve had enough coffee today.”

“Leigh.…”

“Mom, don’t argue with me, okay? It’s lunchtime. I’ll make you some soup.”

“I don’t want soup. What kind of soup?”

Leigh crossed to the cupboards, her eyes scanning the shelves. “Cream of mushroom, cream of asparagus, split pea.”

“Split pea.”

“Where’s the can opener?”

Cindy pointed to a corner of the crowded counter, next to a spice rack that had fallen off the wall, and behind a stack of unopened mail and old fashion magazines Julia had been saving.

“You’ve been gone all morning. Where else did you go?” Leigh opened the soup tin and poured its contents into a waiting pot.

Cindy retraced in her mind all the streets she’d traveled since leaving Sean. North on Poplar Plains, east along St. Clair, north on Yonge, east on Eglinton, south on Mount Pleasant, east on Elm, circling blindly through the expensive, old-money labyrinth that was Rosedale, escaping to the blossoming seediness of Sherbourne, heading south to the downtown core, then west, then north again, up and down, back and forth, eyes scanning each pedestrian on both sides of the streets, peering into parked cars, squinting into the sun, hoping the shadow on the opposite corner might be Julia’s. “Who phoned?” she asked, not bothering to answer Leigh’s question, and thinking how much softer her sister looked without her
normal layers of makeup, how much prettier she looked with her hair brushed away from her face.

“Meg. Wondered how you were feeling. Said she’d call you later. And Trish. Said to tell you she picked up the tickets for the film festival. I take it they don’t know about Julia.”

Cindy nodded, feeling both guilty and relieved. Guilty she hadn’t yet confided in her two best friends, relieved her sister knew that.

“And your neighbor. Faith? Is that her name? It was hard to make out what she was saying with that baby screaming in the background.”

Again Cindy pictured Ryan, saw his phone number scribbled across the scrap of paper she’d found in Julia’s room. What would Julia be doing with Ryan’s phone number at work? Was it possible he was the mystery man her daughter was involved with? Or was it someone else at Granger, McAllister? “What did she want?”

“Just to tell you she’s feeling a hundred percent better, she and her husband are off to Lake Simcoe for the day, she’ll call you tomorrow, she didn’t want you to worry.”

So Ryan would have to wait till tomorrow.

“Oh, and Heather called to see if Julia was back yet.”

Cindy looked toward the hall. “What about Duncan? Is he here?”

“Haven’t seen him. You want some soup?”

“No.”

“You should eat,” Leigh said. “It’s important to keep up your strength. Mom says you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“She had a bad dream,” their mother explained. “Thought she forgot to take her pills.”

“What pills?”

“It was just a dream,” Cindy said.

“Wish bad dreams were all I had.” Leigh carefully measured out two bowls of soup. “Me, I have something called benign positional vertigo.”

“What’s that?” her mother asked.

“Apparently the calcium stones in my inner ear have come loose, and they send a signal to my brain that I’m moving when I’m not. So the minute I lie down on my back or turn over on my side—only my right side, mind you, good thing I sleep on my left—the next thing I know, the room is spinning around like I’m on one of those crazy rides at the Exhibition. The doctor says it’s benign positional vertigo.” She put the bowls of soup on the table. “Don’t let it get cold.”

“Aren’t you having any?” Cindy asked.

“Nah. I hate canned soups. If I have time tomorrow, I’ll make you some real soup.”

Tomorrow, Cindy thought, desperately hoping that by this time tomorrow, Julia would be standing where her sister was now.

Tomorrow, she thought, silently repeating the word as if it were a prayer.

Tomorrow.

W
HEN
C
INDY WOKE
up the next morning, Leigh was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast.

“Bacon and eggs.” Heather marveled, smiling at her mother from her seat at the kitchen table. She was wearing an old pair of pink pajamas Cindy hadn’t seen in years. Elvis was sitting beside her expectantly, clearly hoping a few errant scraps might come his way.

“You’re up early.” Cindy kissed her daughter’s cheek, patted the top of Elvis’s head.

“I smelled the bacon.”

“You didn’t have to do this.” Cindy said as her sister handed her a plate of crispy bacon slices and two depressingly perfect sunny-side up eggs.

Leigh popped two pieces of raisin bread into the toaster. “How’d you sleep?”

“Okay,” Cindy lied, sitting down and cutting into the eggs. “You?”

“Not great. That mattress downstairs is a killer. But what can you expect from a sofabed? Mom still asleep?”

Cindy nodded. “What about Duncan?” she asked Heather.

The familiar shrug. “Don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“He slept at Mac’s last night.”

“Mac?” Leigh repeated, turning the name over on her tongue. “Why does that name …? Oh, my God.” She turned to Cindy. “You had a call yesterday from a Neil Mac-something. I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize the name and I couldn’t find a piece of paper to write on, so I forgot all about him. You really should keep a pad and pencil by the phone. Then this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.”

“It’s okay, Leigh,” Cindy said, Neil’s face appearing before her eyes, only to smudge, fade, be blinked to the periphery of her line of sight. Bad timing, she thought again, banishing the image altogether. She had enough on her plate at the moment. When Julia came home, maybe.… “Why is Duncan sleeping over at Mac’s?”

“Why shouldn’t he sleep at Mac’s?” came Heather’s too-quick reply.

“Well, it’s the long weekend. I assumed you’d have plans.”

“Trouble in Paradise?” asked Leigh, grabbing the pieces of raisin bread as they popped from the toaster.

“Everything’s fine,” Heather said. “No toast for me, thanks.” She swallowed the last of her bacon, and carried her plate to the sink. “I have to get dressed.”

“It’s not even eight o’clock,” Leigh said. “Where are you going?”

“Thanks for the breakfast,” Heather said sweetly. “It was a real treat.”

“Is she always so forthcoming?” Leigh asked after Heather left the room.

“She’s not used to getting the third degree.”

“You’re not curious where she’s off to? Coffee?” Leigh asked in the same breath.

“Yes, and no,” Cindy said. “Yes to the coffee.”

“You were always way too lenient with them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m just saying that it doesn’t hurt to ask a few simple questions.” Leigh poured her sister a cup of coffee, and put it on the table along with the raisin toast. “Honestly, Cindy, I just don’t understand you. I mean, it’s one thing to respect your kids’ privacy, but you always go too far.”

“I go too far?” Cindy repeated numbly.

“You’re almost pathologically fair.”

“Pathologically
fair? What does that mean?”

“It means you can’t be both their mother
and
their friend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please don’t take that tone with me.”

“Then stop talking to me like I’m one of your kids.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Well, news flash—this isn’t helping.”

“Look, I know you’re upset, but don’t try to make me feel badly because I made some polite inquiries.”

“Bad,”
Cindy snapped.

“What?”

“Don’t try to make me feel
bad,”
Cindy continued, feeling the anger rise in her throat. “You don’t say, ‘I feel sadly,’ do you? No. You say, ‘I feel sad.’ In the same way, you shouldn’t say, ‘I feel badly.’ You should say, ‘I feel bad.’ You feel
what
, not
how
. It’s an emotion, not an adverb.”

Leigh’s mouth fell open. “You’re correcting my grammar?”

Cindy lowered her head. Not even eight o’clock in the morning and already she was exhausted. Maybe she’d spend the day in bed. Maybe she’d go to church and pray. Maybe she’d badger the police, even though she knew they were waiting until the end of the long weekend, confident Julia would turn up on her own.

Would she?

There had to be something she could do. Something to keep her from going out of her mind. She just couldn’t sit idly by and wait until Tuesday, especially with Supermom hovering, telegraphing her disapproval with every look and utterance. “Look. I can manage here,” she told her sister. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I’ll stay.”

“You have your own family to look after.”

“You’re my family.”

Tears filled Cindy’s eyes. “Where is she, Leigh?” she asked, burying her face in her hands.

“Have you checked her voice-mail for messages?”

Cindy was immediately on her feet and at the telephone. Why hadn’t she thought to check her daughter’s voice-mail? What was the matter with her? “I don’t know her code,” she whispered, suspecting that Leigh knew all her children’s voice-mail codes by heart.

Cindy heard Heather’s footsteps on the stairs. “Everything okay?” Heather asked, freshly changed into jeans and a light blue jersey.

“Heather,” Leigh said, “do you know your sister’s voice-mail code?”

Heather quickly rattled off the four digits. “I’ve got to go.” She kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll call you later. Try not to worry.”

Even before the front door closed, Cindy was entering the code to Julia’s voice-mail, feeling guilty for snooping into her daughter’s personal life. When Julia got home, she’d apologize, Cindy decided, hearing her sister’s earlier pronouncement ringing in her ear. Almost pathologically fair, she’d said.

“You have seven new messages,” a recorded voice chirped in Cindy’s ear.

“Seven new messages,” Cindy repeated, looking around in vain for a pencil and a piece of paper.

Her sister lifted her hands in the air.
Told you so
, said the expression on her face.

In the end there was no need for paper and pencil. Five of the messages were from Cindy, forwarded from Julia’s cell phone, one was from Lindsey, the last one was a hang-up. Cindy replaced the receiver, desperation gnawing at her insides, like a dull hunger.

“Are you all right?” Cindy heard Leigh asking through
the ringing in her ears. “You don’t look so hot.”

Cindy watched the room sway precariously from side to side, as if she were riding on a high swing, the earth pulling away from her feet. Benign positional vertigo, she thought, watching the ceiling swoop toward her, like a giant bird. It plucked her into the air, shaking her this way and that, leaving her limp and helpless, before abuptly letting go. Cindy felt herself plummeting to the ground. Just before she landed, she heard Elvis yelp, saw her sister’s eyes widen in alarm. “What are you doing?” Leigh demanded, hands on her hips.

Cindy’s last thought before the darkness overtook her was that she hoped Leigh could move fast enough to catch her before her head hit the floor.

W
HEN
Cindy opened her eyes, she saw Neil Macfarlane’s handsome face. I’m in heaven, she thought, watching her mother and sister insert themselves into the frame. I’m in hell, she thought, quickly amending her earlier assessment.

The tan leather of the living room sofa groaned as Cindy pushed herself into a sitting position. “What’s going on?”

“Apparently you fainted,” Neil said from the seat beside her. He was casually dressed in jeans and a yellow golf shirt. His amazingly blue eyes were flecked with worry.

“Scared the hell out of me,” Leigh said, backing away from the sofa and rubbing her right hand with her left. “I think I may have done something to my wrist when I blocked your fall.”

Cindy tried shaking the heavy fog from inside her head, but it hung on, like a dead weight. “I don’t understand. How long was I out?”

“Not more than a couple of minutes,” her mother answered. “I was in the bathroom when I heard your sister screaming.”

“Well, she scared the hell out of me,” Leigh repeated.

“And then the doorbell was ringing.”

“That was me,” Neil said with a smile.

“He brought bagels,” Cindy’s mother said.

“He helped me lift you onto the sofa,” Leigh told her.

“And so concludes our up-to-the-minute report,” Neil said.

Cindy shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever fainted before.”

“It’s because you don’t eat enough,” her sister pronounced.

“Which is why I brought bagels,” Neil said.

“Maybe later.” Cindy smiled, so grateful for his presence she almost cried. “You’ve obviously met my mother and sister.”

“The necessary introductions have all been made.”

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Macfarlane?” Leigh asked, hovering like a waiting helicopter.