“Came home one day and she was just gone. I had been shopping, you know. Mitchell was at school. No sign of a struggle. That’s what the cops say, isn’t it? It was like she walked out and vanished into... nothingness. Only I know she didn’t go into nothingness. Her spirit is still out there.”
A coldness had filled Ruby. Her lips were numb.
“What did local law enforcement say?”
“I wouldn’t call him that. Got the same fat sheriff now as we did back then, and to answer your question, he said nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“You got me. I tried, miss, I did. I went everywhere. Got to be a pest.You see Charise?I’d ask everyone. Over and over again, until people started crossing the street when they saw me coming. I went into Portland and talked to the police there. They told me it was a local matter.”
“Was a missing person report filed?” she asked, thinking that it wasn’t in Mitchell’s file—but then, why would it be? More important to her, it wasn’t in her own copious files of missing women.
“So the sheriff said. I tried to get the newspapers interested, do anything I could. But no. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can tell you mean that, miss. Thank you.”
She was quiet for a moment, trying to get her own beating heart under control. This house, the startling similarity to her own life—it had briefly unmoored her.
“I raised Mitchell after that,” he said. “It always felt like he was my boy. God gave him to me to raise.” His thin lips trembled just a little, and his voice caught. “Now God is going to kill my son.”
She got up and put the photograph back on the mantel. Something in the corner of the room caught her eye. It was a tall, dark basket, sitting in the shadows, and it gave her the haunts.
She sat back down again, wondering what to ask him next. Getting backstory on the client was important—when you had months to work up a case. But every moment counted now.
“After he lost his mother, did Mitchell act out?”
He knew what she was asking.
“No. I told him,Go cry at the river, son. Let it all out.”
“What about therapy?”
His face creased into a hundred wrinkles. “Here?”
They fell into a warm silence, but she felt unnerved in the home. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it felt like someone else was listening.
“You’ll come again?” he asked.
“I’ll come again.”
“Maybe... maybe if they do it, you can come be with me,” he said. “Or will you be there?”
“I’ll be there. Would you want to go? They would let you then.”
He turned away, and she saw the glimmer of tears.
“I don’t think Mitchell would want that. It’s been ten years since I’ve seen my boy. It would pain him, to have me watch him go.”
After Ruby left, the old man stayed in his chair for a long time. When he was certain she was gone, he got up and made his sure, trembling way to the basket in the corner. He lifted the woven lid.
“How did I do?” he asked the bone.
The bone hummed an answer.
He lifted the bone, reverentially, and carried it in its shroud of quilt—a remnant of his own childhood quilt, made by his grandmotherand passed down to his own daughter—to the chair. He sat, tucking down his trousers. He could feel his soft belly. His own bones responded to this one.
