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“So… you’re saying… he escaped?” she said, for clarification.
“Escaped?” Shaw said. “No, we’d never use that word.”
What word would they use?
“He escaped,” she said again, to herself but loud enough for Shaw to hear.
“No,” said Shaw. “But he did leave. We cannot find him.”
Dr. Parks shook her head. Maybe Lulu had been right all along. Her son busted loose. He broke out of Dodge. She was almost proud of him for a moment as she leaned forward and slid her elbow onto the bar. She placed her forehead into her hand, closed her eyes, and kept them closed.
“He was coming home Wednesday,” she whispered. “He was supposed to be back here in three days.”
“This rarely happens, Mrs. Parks.”
Now Josh was a runaway, too? A drug-addicted, bipolar runaway?
“What do we do?” she said barely, almost to herself and the placemat.
“Excuse me?”
“What do we do?” she asked again, raising her voice with a dangerous snap. “You’re the expert!”
Shaw paused. Then he said, “Well. First. We take a deep breath.”
He was so condescending.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dr. Parks asked. “Are you? Take a deep breath? What the fuck?” She could hardly believe the man’s gall, trying to calm her, to placate her with his New Age crap. Then she heard the door slam and she whipped around—and froze.
Sophie stood in the mudroom doorway.
“My fault,” Sophie said, and turned to leave the way she came in. “I’m not here.”
Dr. Parks did not try to stop her. She watched her go, then took a deep breath, like Shaw said, and composed herself.
“What do we do?” she asked again, this time with phony, exaggerated calm.
Shaw continued. “Well, first we respond, Mrs. Parks. We do not react. We respond.”
This? Again? From this poser? Seriously? Was he actually using the royal we? After she’d paid sixty-two grand, and her son escaped? She looked up at the clock on the range. It was just after noon.
If Josh had sneaked out—if he had been missing for twelve hours now—he could be anywhere. On foot, he could’ve gone to Wyoming. The Dakotas even. If he’d hopped a ride, hitchhiked, he could be in Canada by now. If he’d hopped a flight, New York or Florida. Mexico even. He could be halfway around the globe.
He could be injured.
He could be dead.
She thought of Lulu. “I thought you took his boots away.”
“Excuse me?” said Shaw.
“Josh’s girlfriend… she stopped by, concerned, a couple months ago. She said you took his boots away and hid them at night, so he couldn’t escape.”
“We do that sometimes,” Shaw said. “With the rare child we consider a flight risk, but no. Not Josh. In the meantime, Mrs. Parks, we’ve contacted local police. You’ll be hearing from them soon.”
“The police are looking for him?”
“Yes.”
