He does so without consulting his notes. “Ethan’s teacher conducted a head count sometime around 2:30 a.m. and found Ethan missing. She and another chaperone searched the surrounding area, and when they couldn’t find any sign of your son, they alerted the authorities at 3:07. The Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene shortly thereafter and has initiated an organized search of the camp. So far they’ve been unable to locate him.”
“I’m sure he... He probably just...went to the bathroom or something and couldn’t find his way back.”
“It’s one of the scenarios they’re looking at. A city kid in the woods could get turned around easily, especially in the dark.”
“What... What are the other scenarios?”
“At this point, they’re not ruling anything out.”
I picture my son out there in woods darker than a nightmare, and there’s a teetering in my balance, a slow unraveling in my chest. Ethan still sleeps with a night-light. He still insists on leaving his bedroom door cracked and the hallway sconces on, so the light can creep across the carpet to the foot of his bed. I think of him out there in the cold, dark woods, and I feel his panic, as tangible as electricity in the air.
Every mother lives with this secret terror. The kind we let creep into our consciousness in our darker moments. It wheezes with hot, sour breath in our ears our most primal fear—that some sort of harm will come to our babies. We console ourselves by dismissing it as an impossibility. Not us, we tell ourselves. Not our children. It’s how we survive the danger that the worst could happen, by shoving our terrors to the dustiest, most forgotten corners of our mind.
But sometimes, when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep, we allow ourselves to wonder. What would I do? How would I respond?
I respond with legs of jelly and lungs of concrete, no air moving in or out. My skin goes hot and my blood goes cold and my vision goes blurry with tears or lack of oxygen or both. Something sharp and biting tears into my stomach, doubling me over at the waist.
Ethan is missing.
The words play over and over in my mind, along with images of him in the pitch-black woods, a pack of wild animals nipping at his toes or dragging him by the skin of his neck through the underbrush. Is he hurt? Is he conscious? Is he alive?
I lurch upright, my breath returning with a series of choked sobs.
The policeman steps inside, shutting the door with a soft click and reaches for my elbow. “Let’s find you a place to sit down.”
I swat his hand away. “How long have they been searching?” My voice is too high and too shrill. The hysteria has thickened into a spiky knot in the center of my chest. I can barely talk around it. “How long?”
He checks his watch. “Somebody’s been looking for just under three hours now. We’ve been trying to reach you for most of that.”
“Three hours! Three... How many people?”
“I don’t know the exact number, ma’am, but a missing child is about as high priority as you can get. If they don’t have the staff on hand, they’ll be calling in nearby precincts and recruiting volunteers. It takes a little longer to pull a search party together in the middle of the night, but the sheriff knows what he’s doing, and his guys know those woods like the backs of their hands.”
If that were true, if the sheriff and his guys knew every moss-covered stone, every cave and fallen tree trunk Ethan could be hiding in or under or behind, wouldn’t they have found him by now?
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask. What time did you arrive home last night?”
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the shock or the terror, but my brain can’t process his question. “What?”
“Last night.” His gaze wanders over my shoulder to peer down the dark hall. “What time did you get home, and is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?”
My throat funnels shut, because that’s when it occurs to me: he’s asking me for an alibi. My child is lost in a forest hours from here, and this man has been sent to accuse me of taking him.
“I was at work until almost nine,” I say through gritted teeth. “After that I came straight home. I haven’t left since. You can check with the alarm company if you don’t believe me. I’m sure they have a record of when I turned it off and back on.”
And then I realize something else, something that buzzes under my skin like an electric current. “Oh my God. Do you think someone took him?”
“Not necessarily, but when we couldn’t reach you... Like I said, I had to ask.” His tone is almost apologetic, but there’s a relaxed alertness to him that tightens my gut. “The sheriff would like you up in Dahlonega as soon as possible. Do you know where you’re going, or do you need me to write down the address for you?”
I spin on my heel and sprint down the hallway, the robe flapping at my ankles. In the kitchen, I fumble in the junk on the counter for my phone, wake it up to find twenty-seven missed calls. Twenty-seven.
A good mother would have slept with her cell phone next to her bed while her son was away. She wouldn’t have been oblivious the very moment he vanished into the night. She would have known.
“Do you have someone you can call? A friend or family member who can give you a ride?” The cop looms in my kitchen, his gaze taking in the shadowy debris of a working mom and a messy eight-year-old. A sink overflowing with dirty mugs and crumb-strewn plates, a mini mountain of school notes and papers and mail, the pair of cereal bowls on the table, crudded with the remains of our breakfasts.
I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. I am an only child, an orphan, and the people I have left to call are not even remotely local. High school friends from back home, a tiny town at the top end of Tennessee. Lucas, my brother in every way but blood. Izzy—the only Atlanta friend I kept from my life Before Divorce—sailing the British Virgin Islands with her latest lover, Tristan or Tanner or some other pompous T-name. The only one left is Andrew.
Not going to happen.
I drop my cell onto the counter with a clatter and bolt to the back door. The key hook next to the alarm pad is empty. I swipe a hand across it just to be sure. No keys. I flip on the lights and search the floor, kicking away Ethan’s schoolbags, the jacket he can never remember to hang up, a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. Not there, either.
Where are they?
Another wave of panic rolls in, flickering under my scalp like a swarm of angry mosquitoes. I need to be in Dahlonega. I need to be out there in the woods, screaming Ethan’s name until my throat is raw. I need to help them find my son. No—I need to somehow figure out a way to travel back in time to yesterday morning, so I could floor the gas and whiz right past the turnoff for school and none of this would have ever happened. Ethan would be safe and snoring upstairs in his bed. I would be on the other side of the wall, lurching from my mattress with a gasp, tangled in sweaty sheets, limp with relief that it was only an awful, terrifying nightmare.
I whirl around, knocking into the cop’s massive body, solid as a brick wall. He edges back to let me pass, saying something that hits my frenzied thoughts like elevator Muzak—background noise where not a single note registers.
I need to find my keys. Think, dammit.
Back in the kitchen, I fumble through my purse, flinging the contents on the counter. My wallet, a ridiculous amount of crumpled-up receipts, a handful of mints, but no keys.
The cop is still talking, something about slowing down, sitting down, calming down, and I can’t think with him here. I shove my hands in my hair and squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out his voice, trying to remember where I left the damn things. I came in last night, dropped my purse and phone on the counter, poured a glass of wine and—I