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I push the memory from my mind and make my way back to the dining room—but before I get back to the list, I turn toward my computer and launch a new browser window, Googling myself. My name auto-populates immediately—I’ve done this so many times before—and once the results load, I click onNewsand sort chronologically.
As predicted, there’s an article, less than two hours old, about my keynote at TrueCrimeCon.I wonder if Ben has Google Alerts set up to notify him anytime my name is mentioned. The thought is endearing for a second, until I realize that he isn’t keeping tabs on me because he cares. He’s keeping tabs because he’s angry.
I click on the link and skim.
Isabelle Drake headlined at TrueCrimeCon this weekend, the largest true crime conference in the world, which draws a global attendance of over 10,000. The keynote focused on her son, Mason Drake, who disappeared from his bedroom on March 6, 2022, and has yet to be found.
While the case has captivated the curiosity of true crime fans across the country, it remains unsolved one year later, with no viable suspectsor legitimate leads. Detective Arthur Dozier of the Savannah Police Department implores the public to exercise “patience and trust” as they continue to investigate, although Drake has taken matters into her own hands, speaking openly about the case at conferences and events across the country.
While some see Drake as a determined mother fighting to find her son, others believe her intrusion into an open investigation may come with consequences.
I stare at the picture of myself, openmouthed as I speak into the microphone. I’ve managed to do a pretty good job of hiding my insomnia from others: white eyeliner to make my eyes pop, extra blush for a pretty convincing kick of life. Nobody knows, other than Ben, what my existence really looks like now.
How long the days drag on; the nights, even longer.
The bright auditorium lights are reflecting off the wedding ring I still wear in public, and I snake my hand down the neck of my shirt again, feeling the cool metal of Ben’s ring around my throat. It isn’t his wedding ring—I couldn’t get away with taking that—but a gold college signet ring with his name and graduation date engraved around the outside. I found it, months ago, tossed on top of our dresser as he packed his belongings into various boxes. I remember picking it up, feeling the familiar well of tears erupt at the thought of losing yet another person in my life that I loved.
Then, before I could think twice, I shoved it in my pocket.
I don’t even know why I did it. I guess it was because he was leaving, leavingme, and this was a part of him that I could hold on to. Or maybe it was becausebyleaving me, he was taking the very last scrap of hope from me—hope that things would somehow wind up okay—and I had wanted to take something from him, too. Even if it was something small, something replaceable. I didn’t even know if he would notice it was missing, but if he did, I wanted him to know how it felt: to look for something and never find it. To wonder whereit could have possibly gone, the same way I looked into his eyes and searched for the feelings for me I knew he no longer had.
My eyes flicker across the rest of the image, taking in the crowd. I recognize some of them: the one with the T-shirt and the mousey woman in the front row, tears dripping. They’re watching me hungrily, like vultures ready to pick at something not yet dead. The flash from the camera has done something strange to their eyes, making them look even more ravenous. Making them glow.
They look like they want to devour me whole and lick the blood from my bones.
I stifle a shudder and scroll down to the comments, the real meat of the story. Already, there are dozens.
That poor woman. Can’t imagine. Her talk was great!
Let’s not act like she’s doing this for any reason other than self-promotion. She’s a writer. You know there’s a book deal coming.
Shut up. I hope your kid gets taken so you know how it feels.
Isabelle Drake is a baby killer. Change my mind.
I slap my laptop shut, and Roscoe jumps at the sound. Then I press my thumbs into my temples and exhale.
Isabelle Drake is a baby killer.
I know these comments shouldn’t get to me; I know they’re just noise. I’ve experienced firsthand the sick fascination people have with other people’s pain. The way they cling to it like static. The way they interpret every move as the wrong move, as if they could possibly know. As if they could possibly know what they’d do in my shoes. How they would feel.
The morning after Mason was taken, I’ll never forget the way our neighbors poked their noses into our yard, smelling a story. They had seen the police cruisers in our driveway, uniformed cops snooping around our house. They had offered their condolences—genuine concern, at first—their hair tousled and sleep still stuck to the corners of their eyes as they pushed a warm mug of coffee into my hands, whispering words of encouragement in my ear. But as time went by,they started to retreat. They didn’t come into our yard anymore; they stayed at arm’s length, watching from their porches, like someone had erected an invisible fence around our property. Like they were afraid that if they came too close, the violence would come for them, too. Consume their life as it had consumed mine. So they glared as the police tape was cut away; they whispered no longer to me, butaboutme. Because at first, they had wanted to assume that there was an innocent explanation: He had slipped out in the middle of the night, that’s all. He would be found, of course he would, somewhere in the neighborhood. Lost and confused but entirely unharmed.
But after one day, two days, a week, a month, it became harder and harder to cling to any kind of hope. So without someone to blame, they decided to blame me.
That’s why it’s so hard to do these talks, knowing what half of the audience is thinking. Their eyes on me, scrutinizing. Waiting for me to slip up. They think I killed my baby: another Susan Smith or Casey Anthony, woefullyunmaternal. Some of them actually think that I did it—that I smothered him in his sleep, maybe, fingers twitching after one too many restless nights—while others simply say that I was asking for it. That I didn’t do enough to keep him safe.
Either way, it always comes back to me: the mother. It’s always my fault.
I tell myself I don’t care, that their opinions won’t bring Mason back, but I would be lying if a little part of me—somewhere, deep down, the debris of self-preservation floating across the murky depths of my subconscious—wasn’t trying to prove something to them. Wasn’t trying to convince them that Iammaternal. Iama good mother.
Or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself.
I look up from the table and glance out the window, the afternoon stretching ahead of me like a prison sentence. I’m practically counting down the hours until the sun sets again, the metaphorical marking of that grim milestone no family of a missing child ever wants to reach.
One year.
It’s almost three o’clock now; Mason’s vigil is downtown at six. Ben and I planned it together, albeit for entirely different reasons. He wanted something to remember—I can’t bring myself to say the wordmemorial, but that’s really what it is. As for me, I wanted something to draw a crowd. Like sitting on the dock with that string, bobbing the bait and waiting for something to bite.
