LITMIR.BIZ

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only time he let her speak to reporters.

      Later, at home, she saw herself on the nightly news

      Walking slowly to the TV, she kneeled in front of it, her jeans skidding on the carpet, and did the oddest thing.

      She put her arms around it, like it was a teddy bear, a child.

      “Where is she?” she whispered. “Where is she?”

      And he wished the reporters could see this, the mystifying way grief was settling into her like a fever.

      But he was also glad they couldn’t.

      It was the middle of the night, close to dawn, and she wasn’t next to him.

      He looked all over the house, his chest pounding. He thought he must be dreaming, calling out her name, both their names.

      He found her in the backyard, a lithe shadow in the middle of the yard.

      She was sitting on the grass, her phone lighting her face.

      “I feel closer to her out here,” she said. “I found this.”

      He could barely see, but moving closer saw the smallest of earrings, an enamel butterfly, caught between her fingers.

      They had had a big fight when she came home with Shelby, her ears pierced, thick gold posts plugged in such tiny lobes. Her ears red, her face red, her eyes soft with tears.

      “Where did she go, babe?” Lorie said to him now. “Where did she go?”

      He was soaked with sweat and was pulling his T-shirt from his chest.

      “Look, Mr. Ferguson,” the detective said, “you’ve cooperated with us fully. I get that. But understand our position. No one can confirm her story. The employee who saw your wife spill her coffee remembers seeing her leave with Shelby. She doesn’t remember another woman at all.”

      “How many people were in there? Did you talk to all of them?”

      “There’s something else too, Mr. Ferguson.”

      “What?”

      “One of the other employees said Lorie was really mad about the coffee spill. She told Shelby it was her fault. That everything was her fault. And that Lorie then grabbed your daughter by the arm and shook her.”

      “That’s not true,” he said. He’d never seen Lorie touch Shelby roughly. Sometimes it seemed she barely knew she was there.

      “Mr. Ferguson, I need to ask you: Has your wife had a history of emotional problems?”

      “What kind of question is that?”

      “It’s a standard question in cases like this,” the detective said. “And we’ve had some reports.”

      “Are you talking about the local news?”

      “No, Mr. Ferguson. We don’t collect evidence from TV.”

      “Collecting evidence? What kind of evidence would you need to collect about Lorie? It’s Shelby who’s missing. Aren’t you—”

      “Mr. Ferguson, did you know your wife spent three hours at Your Place Lounge on Charlevoix yesterday afternoon?”

      “Are you following her?”

      “Several patrons and one of the bartenders contacted us. They were concerned.”

      “Concerned? Is that what they were?” His head was throbbing.

      “Shouldn’t they be concerned, Mr. Ferguson? This is a woman whose baby is missing.”

      “If they were so concerned, why didn’t they call me?”

      “One of them asked Lorie if he could call you for her. Apparently, she told him not to.”

      He looked at the detective. “She didn’t want to worry me.”

      The detective looked back at him. “Okay.”

      “You can’t tell how people are going to act when something like this happens to you,” he said, feeling his head dipping. Suddenly his shoulders felt very heavy and he had these pictures of Lorie in his head, at the far corner of the long black lacquered bar, eyes heavy with makeup and filled with dark feelings. Feelings he could never touch. Never once did he feel sure he knew what she was thinking. That was part of it. Part of the throb in his chest, the longing there that never left.

      “No,” he said, suddenly.

      “What?” the detective asked, leaning forward.

      “She has no history of emotional problems. My wife.”

      It was the fourth week, the fourth week of false leads and crying and sleeping pills and night terrors. And he had to go back to work or they wouldn’t make the mortgage payment. They’d talked about Lorie returning to her part-time job at the candle store, but somebody needed to be home, to be waiting.

      (Though what, really, were they waiting for? Did toddlers suddenly toddle home after twenty-seven days? That’s what he could tell the cops were thinking.)

      “I guess I’ll call the office tomorrow,” he said. “And make a plan.”

      “And I’ll be here,” she said. “You’ll be there and I’ll be here.”

      It was a terrible conversation, like a lot of those conversations couples have in dark bedrooms, late into the night, when you know the decisions you’ve been avoiding all day won’t wait anymore.

      After they talked, she took four big pills and pushed her face into her pillow.

      He couldn’t sleep and went into Shelby’s room, which he only ever did at night. He leaned over the crib, which was too small for her but Lorie wouldn’t use the bed yet, said it wasn’t time, not nearly.

      He put his fingers on the soft baby bumpers, festooned with bright yellow fish. He remembered telling Shelby they were goldfish, but she kept saying Nana, nana, which was what she called bananas.

      Her hands were always covered with the pearly slime of bananas, holding on to the front of Lorie’s shirt.

      One night, sliding his hand under Lorie’s bra clasp, between her breasts, he felt a daub of banana even there.

      “It’s everywhere,” Lorie had sighed. “It’s like she’s made of bananas.”

      He loved that smell, and his daughter’s forever-glazed hands.

      At some point, remembering this, he started crying, but then he stopped and sat in the rocking chair until he fell asleep.

      In part, he was relieved to go back to work, all those days with neighbors and families and friends huddling in the house, trading Internet rumors, organizing vigils and searches. But now there were fewer family members, only a couple friends who had no other place to go, and no neighbors left at all.

      The woman from the corner house came late one evening and asked for her casserole dish back.

      “I didn’t know you’d keep it so long,” she said, eyes narrowing.

      She seemed to be trying to look over his shoulder, into the living room. Lorie was watching a show, loudly, about a group of blond women with tight lacquered faces and angry mouths. She watched it all the time; it seemed to be the only show on TV anymore.

      “I didn’t know,” the woman said, taking her dish, inspecting it, “how things were going to turn out.”

      you sexy, sexy boy, Lorie’s text said. i want your hands on me. come home and handle me, rough as u like. rough me up.

      He swiveled at his desk chair hard, almost like he needed to cover the phone, cover his act of reading the text.

      He left the office right away, driving as fast as he could. Telling himself that something was wrong with her. That this had to be some side effect of the

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