Missing Persons

34

The clock read just shy of 8:30 when I walked in the front door of my house. Emily greeted me exuberantly, but I found my other two girls sound asleep in the master bedroom curled into the familiar big spoon/ little spoon configuration. They were surrounded by that night’s bedtime books and Grace’s favorite stuffed animals. Our not-so-stuffed poodle, Anvil, was curled into a tight ball at Grace’s knees.

I was feeling remorse that I’d been missing out on the bedtime ritual so often.

Sound asleep at Grace’s bedtime was a little early, even for Lauren, but the energy depletion that she suffered as a result of multiple sclerosis wasn’t always easy to predict. If you asked her on a day when she wasn’t suffering any of the acute effects of one of the disease’s myriad symptoms, she’d tell you that what she hated most about the illness was that it made her days so much shorter. As each successive year took its toll, Lauren had fewer good hours, fewer strong hours, fewer waking hours, fewer hours when pain or weakness didn’t drive her to bed. Ask her what she’d most like to change about having MS, and she’d tell you she wished her days were longer. She’d tell you that on most days her energy lasts about as long as daylight endures on a December day in Anchorage.

This had apparently been one of those Yukon days. That’s what she called them. I’d call her from work and find her at her desk at the DA’s office. I’d ask how she was doing. Too often she’d say, “You know, babe. It’s a Yukon day.”

I rearranged the comforter so that it provided some cover for both mother and daughter, kissed the tops of their heads, lifted Anvil from the sheets, and led the dogs outside to pee. Once the odd canine couple had done their thing and our little parade was safely inside the house, I checked for a message from Raoul or, even better, Diane.

Nothing.

I scrambled a couple of eggs, folded them into some honey wheat toast, and carried my plate into the living room. I ate standing up at the big windows that faced down into Boulder, trying to spot the house where Jenifer Donald was visiting her grandparents, trying to spot the overpriced house with the water park up near the foothills on Twelfth, trying to spot the small house on Broadway where Hannah Grant had died.

Far to the west, on the other side of the vast mountains, I wondered if Raoul was on his date with the woman from Venetian security. Or was he still chatting up gamblers at the craps tables trying to find someone who remembered his wife?

And where the hell in all those lights were Bob and his cherry Camaro?

What answers, if any, were sitting in a Kinko’s box in my office?

My impulse was to charge downtown and find out.

I reminded myself that what Bob had written was part of a novel.

Fiction.

Stuff he’d made up.

Stuff I was supposed to wait to read.