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“Well, it’s more that she hasn’t come home,” Andy said, from behind me. “She broke up with Simon and he thinks she was upset. He thinks she went away to stay with friends for a while, but she hasn’t called us or messaged us, and your mom and I are worried.”
“That’s not good.”
Grace wasn’t scared, yet. Her thumbs flicked across her phone screen. She raised the phone to her ear. I was close enough that I heard Nina’s voice mail message. The same message I’d listened to maybe twenty times since Saturday. Grace hung up.
“Do you have Simon’s number? We should call him. I think there’s been a mix-up or something. Nina and Simon wouldn’t break up. There’s no way.”
Of all times, this was the time that I needed to stay calm and controlled. But despite my best efforts, my voice was sharp when I replied.
“Well, that’s what Simon says happened.”
“I don’t understand. You don’t believe him?”
I said nothing. It was so goddamn hard to know how to handle this. I didn’t want her to be afraid. But we were about to go to a police press conference about her missing sister. There was only so much patting down we could do here.
“That’s not it,” Andy said. “And there’s no need for you to be upsetting yourself. You know Nina. Probably she went to Boston to stay with friends. But your mom and I don’t want to just wait around for Nina to come home. We want to find her.”
I turned away and cracked some eggs into a bowl. This wasn’t right. We were going to have to do a better job than this. I tried to find the right words, but my brain wasn’t working as it should. My thinking felt jerky, like a film that had been badly edited, with abrupt cuts and no transitions.
“Okay, but we should just call her friends in Boston, right?”
“We’ve tried, Grace,” I said.
“What about email?”
“She’s not answering right now,” I said. “But then she doesn’t have her laptop, and if her phone’s not working...”
“We don’t want you to worry,” Andy said again, but his voice was less reassuring than desperate.
“That’s right,” I said. I turned to face her. I gripped the kitchen counter with my left hand. I felt nauseous. “But we do want you to know that some things might be happening that might seem really intense for a couple of days. Your dad and I have called the police to help us to find Nina.”
Grace looked from me to Andy and back again. She was paler than usual.
“What the fuck?” she said.
“Grace,” said Andy. She ignored him completely. Her eyes were on me.
“There’s a detective. His name is Matthew Wright, and he’s going to help us to find Nina.” I didn’t look at Andy. I knew he’d be staring straight at me, willing me to stop talking, trying to let me know that we’d already said enough. But we couldn’t hold back. Grace had to go to school. If they weren’t already talking about it when she went in today, they sure as hell would be talking about it tomorrow.
“Matthew thinks it’s a good idea for us to go on TV and ask people to let us know if they’ve seen Nina.” Using his first name with her was a weak attempt to make everything seem less frightening. “Your dad and I have said yes. We’ll be doing that this morning.”
Grace’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away roughly with the back of her hand.
“You’re lying,” she said. “The police don’t hold press conferences because they’re, like, mildly worried about someone. They must think that someone kidnapped Nina, or...” She wasn’t able to finish the sentence.
I went to her. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight. Hugging Grace was so different from hugging Nina. Grace was taller. She leaned into the hug. Even when she was mad at you, Grace sought comfort.
“I don’t believe you, Mom.”
“We’re not lying to you, baby. We’re telling you everything. This is scary. Of course it is. But Nina could walk in the door any minute.” For a moment I saw it. I saw Nina walking in the back door, hair a little wild, mud on her pants and color in her cheeks. A little embarrassed, a little sorry, but mostly eager to tell us about the adventure that had kept her away. The picture was clean and clear, and I wanted to hold on to it. And then Andy spoke, and it slipped through my fingers and was gone.
“That’s what we think will happen,” he said. “But we don’t want to wait, so we’re just going to get help from everyone we can to find her. And if that means the police and the TV, then that’s what we’re going to do, okay? I don’t want you to make too much of these things.”
Grace leaned out of my hug.
“But do you think, you must think that someone, like, hurt her, or something,” Grace said. She wiped her nose again with the back of her hand.
“We have no reason to think that,” I said. “Really, Grace. We don’t.” I sounded convincing, and maybe because it was me who was saying it, rather than Andy, she seemed to believe me. Because I was the tougher one, maybe she didn’t expect me to lie to comfort her. I let her go. I took out plates and filled glasses with orange juice from the fridge.
