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“That girl went missing the night you were out.”
Saber froze.
“Yeah…”
“Please make sure I know where you are from now on, ok? Just tell me, even if you think I won’t like it.”
“Ok, Dad. I will.”
She turned back to her painting, but it suddenly looked like something someone else had painted. She tugged it down from the easel, tore it in half, and threw it away.
The next day, she feigned illness and told her dad she needed to stay home from school. He laid a hand on her forehead and nodded, pretending he knew what a fever felt like, and left her in her bed, tangled in her cloud of sheets and warm, cozy comforters.
As soon as she knew he was gone she leaped from her bed, took a hot, refreshing shower, and dressed quickly. Then, she drove over to pick up Doug.
“Pu-erh tea?” he asked, handing her a mug. “Better than coffee.”
“Yes, please,” she said, putting the car in gear before they pulled away from the driveway in front of his house.
“How are you feeling today, young Saber?” he asked, sipping his own tea.
“A little excited, a little bit like I’m going completely insane.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Doug said, patting her hand on the gear shift. “Nice car by the way.”
“I didn’t grow up rich,” she said defensively. “My dad—”
“I was just complimenting your car, Saber, you don’t have to apologize for having it.”
She nodded and went quiet. There was something about the old man that calmed her anxiety, like his own life experience compensated for her lack of it. If he was calm and unbothered, so, too, could she be.
“Where to first?”
“To the house, I suppose.”
Saber flinched, then steeled herself.
“Let’s do it,” she said, driving toward the mansion where the parties were held.
As they got closer, she remembered something.
“They have a gate.”
“You said you walked away from the house onto the street.”
“Yeah, I guess the gate doesn’t go all the way around the house. It’s, like, just for the driveway and they use hedges and stuff otherwise. It only keeps cars out.”
“So we’ll walk up. What do you think we’ll find?”
“I really don’t know.”
They drove past the big, black metal gate and parked nearby on the side of the road. The whole area felt so different during the day. At night it seemed ominous, meaningful, eerie, but during the half-light of the cloudy northwestern day it felt dull, washed out, average, and unimportant. Saber wondered if she had, as Doug suggested, been imagining things, or there had been some kind of illusion.
Leaves crunched under their boots as they walked along the road’s shoulder past the gate and, Saber leading, through the woods and huckleberry bramble to the mansion. In the light, not that there was much of it, the house looked smaller, less grand, an average, big, boring house. There was one car parked out front, a small, late model VW Jetta.
They walked over the grass, up the driveway, and onto the sprawling veranda.
“Now what?” she asked.
