The Missing

10

When I get back to the dock, the sun has slipped behind the clouds. I tie up the boat as best I can. While I’m fumbling with the mooring line, I picture Alex’s hands, so dexterous they are as they loop and knot. Something gleams between his fingers. A black silk tie. I jump up, trembling, and wrap my thin cardigan tighter around me. My hand flutters automatically to my throat, and I take several deep breaths.

Instead of taking the narrow path up to the cabin, I choose to detour along the gravel road that snakes around the lake. I need to widen my search area. On one side, I pass several red-painted cabins. I walk up to the houses and shout hello, but no one answers. The windows and doors are closed, the rooms visible behind the lace curtains dark and empty. Yet I can still see patio furniture and flowerpots outside. On the weekend, these cabins will once again be filled with lively activity. Cars will pull into the yards, and doors will open. Tired but happy grown-ups will carry in suitcases while eager children run around, restless after sitting still for so long. Bright voices and infectious laughter will echo between the buildings. But right now it’s quiet and desolate. Or is it?

Like a trespasser, I sneak even closer. I can’t stop myself. I peer through the dirty windowpanes, try the door handle on an outbuilding. But nowhere do I see any sign that Alex and Smilla have been here, much less that they’re here now. Of course not. I continue along the road, pausing now and then at a cabin that is more isolated or looks especially dilapidated. My imagination runs wild. I picture Alex and Smilla, bound and gagged in some cramped and windowless space. My shouts grow more frantic, my footsteps more rushed. Once again, I’m struck by a feeling of phoniness, like there’s something fake and affected about my thoughts and actions. As if my search is nothing but a chimera. As if I do have access to the truth, but I choose not to see it. In front of a timbered cabin with gingerbread trim, a solitary yellow plastic swing hangs from a big willow tree, swaying gently in the wind. Smilla loved to swing. My throat tightens. Loves. Not loved.

The nausea is back, and I have to slow down. I try to throw up, but nothing comes out. My body feels both listless and agitated. As if my whole being is the object of an internal battle, a tug-of-war between cool logic and irrational emotion. And it’s not just because Alex and Smilla have disappeared. The fact is that it’s been like this ever since the day I staggered out of the clinic, shaken and dumbstruck, with the doctor’s words ringing in my ears. Even though it’s impossible to see the lake from here, I automatically turn in that direction. I picture myself out in the boat a short while ago and recall how the thought of joining Papa had briefly occurred to me. To be or not to be, that is the question. And now it demands an answer.

I walk with my eyes on the ground, not wanting to see any more swings hanging from trees or abandoned toys on lawns. Instead, I concentrate on placing one foot in front of the other. My pink sneakers keep moving forward. I left my new sandals with the ankle straps and heels back at the cabin. This hasn’t turned out to be the sort of vacation I was expecting. My feet work their way forward, one step at a time. I walk and walk. Past more cabins and gardens, and then, as the gravel road curves, I keep going into the woods.

Papa would have liked my sandals. He appreciated pretty things, had an eye for beauty. Every time I dressed up as a princess—and that was frequently—he would clap his hands and shower me with praise about how lovely I looked. Mama, on the other hand, merely shook her head and pressed her lips together. Papa would sometimes come home and hand me a package containing a glittery tiara, stick-on earrings in garish colors, or even lipstick. Mama would take away the lipstick and remark sharply that there were more important things for little girls to focus on than how they looked.

On those rare occasions when my parents would fight in the daytime, Papa might come find me afterward and ask me to put on one of the tulle dresses he’d given me and then offer to pretend we were going to a royal ball together. Mama never came to find me. Not even once. In the aftermath of a heated argument, she would instead withdraw somewhere to be alone, to the bathroom or bedroom, though what she preferred most was to go out for a long walk.

If I showed her my high-heeled sandals, she would call them impractical and wonder how I could walk in them. Didn’t they hurt my feet? That’s how Mama is. Her disappointment in me has always been disguised as concern. Even though she’s never actually said so, I know that she thinks I could’ve done much better for myself. Sometimes I think she’s ashamed of me and the choices I’ve made. Her job involves dealing with human relationships and conflicts, people’s lives. And that sort of thing has real value. Yet she has a daughter whose professional life is devoted to façades, to outward appearances. A daughter who is following in her father’s dubious footsteps. Even—perhaps most importantly—when it comes to her personal life. Alex. Thinking about him and Mama in the same breath heightens my discomfort. At the very beginning of our relationship, I’d told Mama about him. I couldn’t help it. But of course she displayed no joy; she had no sympathy or understanding to offer me. How could you, Greta? was all she said. How on earth could you?

A movement by the side of the road pulls me out of my brooding. I stop abruptly, looking at a black shape huddled in the ditch before it slowly rises. Before my eyes, the figure takes on human form. I see arms and legs and long, straggly hair, but no eyes. No face at all. I feel my whole body freeze in terror. My fingers instinctively curl into fists. Then the creature turns and something pale, almost ghostly, becomes visible under the mane of hair. The face of a girl.