Kate

KATE

11 YEARS BEFORE

May

Bea and I meet Josh in his yard just shy of eight o’clock. It’s early in the morning, but already he’s gathered about a dozen people to search for his missing family. There are more on the way. Still, ours is a grassroots effort. We gather in a circle and talk about places Meredith and Delilah might be. Some ask for details about yesterday, and Josh, rubbing at his forehead, fills them in. He looks wired and high-strung, but also exhausted. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s twitchy. I doubt he slept much, if at all. I look around. Leo isn’t here. Josh left him with the sitter, Charlotte, I assume. Charlotte watches many kids in the neighborhood. Even Bea and me, without kids of our own, know who she is. She’s a staple around here. We see her and the kids out when the weather is nice, parading around the neighborhood. Charlotte is in her late fifties, sixty, maybe. She lives alone with her husband.

I wonder if Leo knows what’s happening, if Josh told him. Does he know that Meredith and Delilah are missing? I doubt it, thinking that would be indigestible to a four-year-old boy. Crayons go missing. Puzzle pieces go missing. Moms and sisters do not go missing. I wonder where Josh told Leo that they are. He would have had to be confused when he woke up and Delilah wasn’t there.

Among our search party is the woman who owns the yoga studio where Meredith works. Josh goes to her and apologizes for Meredith’s absence yesterday. He says, “I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

She says it was no inconvenience at all, that she and another teacher split Meredith’s classes among themselves, same as they did last week when Meredith was sick, and the week before.

Josh is taken aback, as are Bea and me. We exchange a glance. “What do you mean?” Josh asks, because as far as any of us know, yesterday was the first time Meredith called in sick. I watch Josh’s reaction. He’s a tall man, a brunette with cool blue eyes. His eyes are moist, the blue turning somehow even more blue because of his tears. Leo, wherever he is, has the same eyes.

The woman feels stupid. She turns red. She’s misspoken. She fights for words, saying, “It’s just that yesterday was like the third time in two weeks that Meredith has called in sick. You didn’t know?” she asks Josh, and he shakes his head. “We were worried. Until a couple weeks ago, Meredith was always so conscientious. This wasn’t like her. We thought there was some real health crisis, like cancer or something,” and it sounds to me as if she’s trying to make light of that—Meredith having cancer—though I wonder if cancer would be preferable to whatever’s happened. With cancer she’d have a fighting chance. With this, I don’t know.

Another woman speaks. She introduces herself as Jeanette, a midwife with whom Meredith works on occasion. “If I may,” she says, explaining that Meredith had very recently made the decision to cut back on her workload, to spend more time with her family. She told Jeanette a week or so ago that she’d be taking on fewer clients, and asked for recommendations of other doulas that she could send inquiries to.

I see in Josh’s reaction that he didn’t know this, either. His expression turns thoughtful, contemplative, but also sad. He runs his fingers over a mustache and beard. Frown lines appear between his eyes, one deeper than the other. Josh, like Meredith, must be in his midthirties, just slightly older than Bea and me. He’s not yet forty. I remember a conversation about whether they would go somewhere exotic when they both turned forty. It wasn’t around the corner, but something they had time to think about and decide, years away but still on the horizon.

Bea is the one who comes up with a strategy. It’s so like Bea to take charge and be a planner. She divides us into groups with plans to search the town. Bea tells people to drive around looking for Meredith’s car, to stop in restaurants and shops and see if Meredith or Delilah has been there recently. Josh gives us the make and model of Meredith’s car, as well as the license plate number. The volunteers carve up the town among themselves, using major roads as their guide. Bea and I will stay and canvass the neighborhood, because we live here. Because we know the neighbors, and we know our way around.

Before anyone splits, Bea takes cell phone numbers. She starts a group chat, so we can update each other with news. Josh sends a picture of Meredith over the group chat so we have it to show around. He gets choked up when he scrolls through and finds the image on his own phone. It’s a picture of Meredith with Delilah and Leo, taken recently. Meredith is a beautiful woman. In the picture, her hair is gathered into a loose bun on the top of her head. Her skin is fair, covered in freckles, and her eyes are a stunning mineral green. She’s clearly of Irish descent, dressed in some kind of embroidered shift dress that’s as red as the hair on her head.

I feel a pang of sadness at seeing the image of Meredith, with little Leo and Delilah wrapped beneath each of her slight arms. I pray nothing bad has happened to her or Delilah, who sits beside Meredith in the photograph, tiny and nearly toothless, staring lovingly at her mom and smiling so sweetly it makes my heart hurt.

I may never have kids. Bea and I talked about the possibility of using donor sperm to get one of us pregnant. We got so far as to discuss which of us would be better equipped to carry a baby—Bea, who’s larger in stature but also more maternal than me—and whether we’d want a sperm donor we knew or if we’d prefer to keep it anonymous. I wanted to keep it anonymous, but that was too impersonal for Bea. Too cold. She wanted to use the sperm of someone we knew, which felt weird to me. Bea and some man we knew having a child together. That’s where the conversation ended.

My eyes move to Bea’s now. She stares over my shoulder at the picture. Her eyes are misty like mine.

“They’ll turn up,” she says, her hand on my arm, and though she sounds so certain, she’s thinking the same thing as me: What if they never come back? We’ve grown close to Josh and Meredith over the years; we’ve grown close to their kids. “They’re fine. They have to be fine,” Bea says, voice trembling, fighting tears, and I wonder if it’s only wishful thinking.

Are they fine? My gut tells me they’re not.

One by one people get in their cars. They pull away, dispersing in different directions. Bea and I turn and move slowly down the sidewalk. We’re quiet, each processing what’s happening. The idea of something bad having happened to Meredith and Delilah is unfathomable. I won’t let my mind go there, no matter how much it keeps drifting. I have to stay positive, for Josh’s sake. For Bea’s sake. For mine. As we walk, Bea slips her hand into mine. It feels good, having something to hold on to.

We make our way to the first home. I knock and, when Roger Thames answers, I ask if he’s seen Meredith. Roger is limping. He threw his back out working on his car, he tells us. That was last week, and he’s hardly left the sofa since. He hasn’t seen Meredith.

“What’s the matter with her?” he asks abruptly.

Bea says, “If you see her, can you just let Josh or us know?” I’ve never liked Roger much.

We turn and make our way back down the walkway and to the sidewalk, moving on.

“Could she just be at a birth?” asks Gwen, the woman who lives on the opposite side of Meredith and Josh. Gwen is a widower. For three years now, her husband has been dead. Lou Gehrig’s disease. I didn’t know him well, but I remember that he went quickly. To me it seemed like I’d no sooner heard the news than I read the obituary in the paper.

I tell Gwen no, that we don’t think Meredith is at a birth because of the fact that Delilah is also missing. “Little Delilah?” she gasps, her hand going to her mouth.

“I’m afraid so,” Bea says. Delilah is high-spirited. She’s full of life. Everyone adores her.

“Delilah colors pictures for me on my sidewalk with chalk. I find bouquets of dandelions on my front porch from her. Last year, when I broke my hip, she carried my mail to the door every day. She’s a darling girl.” Her voice cracks as she says it. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen Delilah or her mother for a couple of days. The weather,” she tells us, “has kept me inside.”

I say, “The weather has kept many people inside, I fear.” Because of the relentless rain, everyone has been cooped up for days, blind to what’s happening on our streets.

Bea tells Gwen the whole story. As she does, Gwen’s eyes fill with tears.

“You’ll let me know when there’s news?” she asks. Gwen would join the search party if she could, but Gwen is nearing eighty and not as mobile as she used to be.

“We’ll let you know the minute we hear a thing,” I say.

Most of our immediate neighbors know Meredith. Though no one has seen her, they almost all want to talk. They step out onto their front porches and ask for details.

“Has something happened to her?” they ask, everyone concerned. Meredith, like Delilah, is well liked throughout the neighborhood. She’s been known to drop everything to help a neighbor in need. When Gwen’s husband was gravely ill, she helped get him in the car and drove him to doctor appointments when she could. When the Timmonses’ little dog got out, Meredith walked miles around town, pushing Delilah and Leo in the double stroller, until she found it.

Bea and I share the little we know with our neighbors, but the information we gather in return is unremarkable. Jan Fleisher remembers Meredith’s car parked in back; Tim Smith saw her pull down the alley.

“Were the kids with her?” I ask Tim. He doesn’t know. He didn’t get a good look inside the car because there was a glare. He just knows that it was Meredith’s car.

“What time was this?”

He shrugs. “Eight, maybe. Or nine.” He thinks hard. “I had an appointment at eleven so I left the house around ten-thirty. It was before that. Sometime before ten-thirty, I’d say,” he decides, apologizing for being unintentionally vague. He feels badly for it, knowing he may have been one of the last to see her before she disappeared.

Bea and I move on. This morning it isn’t raining. Still, the sky is full of heavy clouds. We feel the moisture in the air. The trees drip rain from last night’s storm down on us, making us wet in spots. We carry umbrellas, but we don’t need them, not yet, though the humid weather does nothing for my hair.

There are twigs everywhere, torn savagely from the trees and tossed to the street by the rain and wind. The sidewalk is riddled with puddles; Bea and I part ways and step around them. It’s chilly outside, no more than sixty degrees, but the gray skies, the threat of rain and the relentless wind make it feel more like fifty. I didn’t think to bring a coat, and I regret it.

We cross the street and go to the house directly opposite Josh and Meredith’s. It’s a gray house that belongs to a young couple with kids. Bea and I don’t know the Hanakas well because families with kids tend to bond better with other families with kids, and Bea and I don’t have any kids. But I’ve met them once.

The Hanakas are friendly with the Dickeys. I’ve seen Delilah and Leo riding bikes on the sidewalk with their daughter. I’ve seen Meredith and the other woman, Cassandra, talking on the street, laughing. Meredith likes Cassandra, I can tell. She speaks of her often on the nights Meredith, Josh, Bea and me share a drink on the porch. It’s never anything much, but somehow her name always makes its way into a conversation. Cassandra said the new bakery on Jackson has the best cinnamon scones. Cassandra and Marty are planning one of those Alaskan cruises next summer, with the kids. Cassandra told me that a little baking soda and vinegar in the drains will get rid of those annoying fruit flies.

Josh teased Meredith about it, said she had a girl crush on Cassandra, before looking mortified and apologizing to Bea and me, as if he’d said something to offend us.

I don’t know much about Cassandra and her husband, Marty. Most of what I’ve heard is secondhand from Meredith. I know that they moved from the city. I know that, like Bea, they didn’t relish the idea of suburban living. Yet, as their daughter approached school age, they had to choose between an extortionate private school education, a shoddy public school system or moving to the suburbs. They came here.

Bea and I step up to the door and knock. Cassandra comes. When she draws the door open, the house behind her is quiet, still.

“I hope we’re not bothering you,” Bea says.

“No,” Cassandra says, “not at all. I just put my little guy down for a nap.” A cat circles her ankles. Cassandra scoops it into her arms and invites us inside. “You two look cold. Let me get you some coffee,” she says, and we step out of our shoes and follow her down the hallway and to the kitchen. Cassandra’s home is tastefully decorated. Everything is in neutral tones and a touch too nice to belong in a home with little kids. It’s also immaculately clean. Cassandra seems like the type. She’s immaculate herself.

She sets the cat on the ground. “You’re here about Meredith,” she says, taking the glass carafe from the coffeemaker and filling it at the sink. Cassandra is tall like Bea. She’s blonde, with shoulder-length hair that parts at the center and frames her face. She wears a maxi dress that a woman my height could never get away with. I envy her for it.

Cassandra knows about Meredith. Of course she does. She, like us, would have been one of the first people that Josh went to when he realized Meredith was missing.

“It’s awful what’s happened,” she says, back at the coffeemaker, generously scooping ground coffee into the filter. “I can’t believe that she and Delilah are just—” she pauses, a pregnant pause “—gone.” She reaches inside a cabinet and pulls out three matching mugs. She sets them on the countertop. As the coffee begins to percolate, Cassandra suggests that we sit down at the kitchen table and talk.

“I haven’t seen her in a few days if that’s why you’re here. This weather,” she laments, sliding gracefully into a wooden chair across from Bea and me, “is ridiculous. We’ve hardly been able to get outside at all. Piper has been begging for a playdate with Delilah. She absolutely adores her. Just this morning, Piper was asking if Delilah could come over after school. I put her off, told her I thought the Dickeys had plans this afternoon and that Delilah wouldn’t be able to play. I’ve never lied to my kids before. But I didn’t know what else to say. Piper is inquisitive, always asking questions. She wanted to know what the Dickeys were doing that Delilah couldn’t play. I said they were going to the dentist. She asked if Delilah had any cavities. I said I didn’t know. I hate lying to her. If Delilah doesn’t come home soon, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to tell Piper that something terrible has happened to her little friend,” she says.

This would be hard for a child to understand. It’s hard for me to understand. The area where we live is an area of low crime. Compared to national statistics or even the statistics of suburbs nearby, crime is nearly negligible.

“I’m so worried,” Cassandra says about Meredith and Delilah. “Josh must be beside himself.”

“He’s organized a search party,” I say, and she tells us she knows, that she plans to join the search just as soon as Arlo is up from his nap.

Bea tells her that Josh is in the process of pulling together a list of phone numbers for Meredith’s clients, family and friends. “When he does,” Bea says, “there will be people to call. Perhaps you can help with that while your son is napping.”

“Of course. Anything I can do. They’ll be okay, won’t they?” Cassandra asks. Neither Bea nor I reply. We’re quiet, contemplating the question. Will they be okay? No one knows. No one can say for certain. But Cassandra is staring at us, asking earnestly whether Meredith and Delilah will be okay. A tear leaves her eye, weaves down her cheek. I’m moved by the sudden show of emotion.

Cassandra pushes herself from the table and goes to the coffeemaker. She fills the mugs, asks how we take our coffee. She gathers the sugar and milk.

With her back turned to us, she says, “I saw something.”

Her words are quiet but charged, full of meaning. They send a sudden shiver up my spine. I find myself wanting, desperate for more.

Did Cassandra see something having to do with Meredith and Delilah’s disappearance?

She goes on, back still to us. “I’d forgotten all about it,” she says. “It came to me only after Josh called to tell me Meredith and Delilah were missing.”

“What’d you see?” Bea asks. Only then does Cassandra turn back to face us.

“Someone outside their house. In the middle of the night,” she says, and then she makes the first of three trips to the kitchen table to deliver the coffees.

“When?” I ask.

“A couple weeks ago,” she says.

“Did you tell Josh?” I ask.

“No,” she admits. “I haven’t. Not yet. I forgot. I only remembered late last night, when it was too late to call and wake him.” This morning her daughter, Piper, was around and so she couldn’t call and tell Josh then; she didn’t want to scare Piper. By the time Piper went to school, the search was in full swing. Cassandra didn’t feel right stealing Josh’s attention away from the search.

“Arlo, my son,” she explains, “he’s a lousy sleeper. We’re trying to sleep train, but easier said than done. Anyway, that night—the night that I saw someone—he was wide awake, crying. I was in his room trying to rock him to sleep. His room faces the street,” she says, and without her saying it, I understand that Arlo’s bedroom has a bird’s-eye view of Josh and Meredith’s home. “We never do pull the shades. We didn’t when we lived in Chicago. You know what they say about old habits.”

“They die hard,” I say. There’s a tremor to Cassandra’s voice when she speaks. Whatever she witnessed out Arlo’s bedroom window that night has her suddenly spooked.

“What exactly did you see?” Bea prompts. My pulse quickens in anticipation. I wrap my hands around my coffee but I don’t drink it. I hang on to Cassandra’s every word.

“It was dark out,” Cassandra says, “a moonless night. The streetlight outside has been out a month or two. My husband, Marty, called the city about it a while ago, but it still hasn’t been fixed. Our tax dollars,” she quips, “hard at work. The only light came from whatever porch lights were left on overnight.

“For as dark as it was, I still saw movement in Josh and Meredith’s yard. At first I thought it was my imagination. That I was seeing things. It was late and I was tired. Then, when it didn’t go away, I told myself it was their trees or a deer. A coyote, maybe. But the longer I watched, I realized it was someone, people, in Josh and Meredith’s yard. I watched for a while, not sure what they were doing, wondering if I should call the police.”

“Did you call the police?” Bea asks, knowing the answer.

“I wish I had,” Cassandra says regretfully.

“How many people did you see?” I ask.

“Two,” she says. “It didn’t look like a break-in attempt. The people I saw, they weren’t flush against the house. They were farther back, away from the door. I convinced myself—once I knew that what I was looking at was human—that they were college students heading home from the bars. It was after one. The timing felt right,” she says.

Bars in town close at one o’clock during the week. There is student housing, both off-campus housing and residence halls, just blocks from our home. It’s entirely possible that whoever Cassandra saw that night were overserved college students heading home from a night at the bar—in which case they were most likely doing something stupid but harmless that didn’t require intervention by the police. I probably wouldn’t have called the police, either.

“Did you get a good look at them? Do you know what they look like?”

She shakes her head. “It was so dark.”

“What were they doing?” I ask. “Could you tell?”

“I couldn’t,” she says. “But whatever it was, it didn’t last long.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she says. “Arlo had me distracted. He was all worked up, totally inconsolable that night. I was worried about him waking Piper, and then having to deal with two crying kids in the middle of the night. I thought about opening the window a crack to see if I could hear something, but with Arlo crying,” she says, “it would have had the adverse effect. He would have just scared them away. I should have called the police. Or, at the very least, thought to tell Josh and Meredith about it the next day.”

“Why would you?” Bea asks, trying to buoy Cassandra up. “Drunk college kids is hardly news. They probably stopped to take a pee on the lawn.”

“But what if it wasn’t just drunk college kids?” she asks.

“Listen,” Bea says, reaching out to lay a reassuring hand on Cassandra’s arm. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. The police will be at the Dickeys today. I’ll talk to them. Maybe someone on the block has a home security system they can pull. Video surveillance.”

I tell her, “That’s a good idea, Bea.”

I don’t know that any of our neighbors have video surveillance on their homes. Even if they do, I don’t know how much storage those cameras have. I don’t know if they keep footage for weeks, or if it’s the kind of thing that disappears after a day or two. But it’s worth a try because maybe it was drunk college kids heading home from a night in the bars, or maybe it was someone else.

Bea and I drink our coffees quickly. I’m anxious to get back on the street and continue the search. We say our goodbyes. Cassandra walks us to the door, stepping outside with us. She watches us leave.

We move on, following a path of stepping stones through her sodden lawn, leaving Cassandra on her front porch alone. We stop at other homes on the block. When we reach the end of it, we turn the corner and keep going. Along this next block, many of the houses belong to the college. Some are administrative buildings or the private homes of professors, while others, the more unkempt of them—those with sofas on porches and beer bottles in plain sight—belong to students. Graduation was a few weeks ago; the summer session hasn’t begun. Most of the houses we come to are vacant; no one is home. We keep walking.

It’s midafternoon when, a few blocks from our own home, we come to the house of Shelby Tebow. We know which is hers because it’s been all over the news. Hers sits outside the historic district, and is one of the last original homes that remains on a block of teardowns. It’s midcentury, surrounded by brand-new custom homes that start in the seven figures. There are yellow ribbons tied to the trees up and down the street. A street pole bears Shelby’s face, the word Missing in big, black print, the sign itself encased in a plastic sheet protector to save it from the rain. I’ve seen this same sign around town, in store windows and on restaurant doors. There are flowers laid on the sidewalk just before her home. A kind gesture and also a grim reminder of what’s happened here.

I tell Bea that I think we should skip the Tebows’ house. Something about going to the home of a missing woman to inquire about another missing woman feels in poor taste. But Bea disagrees. “We should go to their house because of the similarity, not despite it,” she says, and I know then that she’s right.

I’ve heard Jason Tebow has a temper. I’ve seen it in press conferences on TV. But Bea isn’t scared. She takes the lead and, again, I envy her assertiveness. Bea is a born leader. With hesitation, I follow her down the narrow walkway, up a single stoop and to the front door. She knocks on the storm door. The sound of it is empty, hollow. It would never get someone’s attention. She rings the doorbell instead and immediately the sound of footsteps on the other side of the front door startles me. I’d been wishing no one was home.

The door pulls abruptly open. Jason Tebow stands there before us. There’s an infant in his large arms, drinking from a bottle that Jason holds. He’s bullnecked. He’s not tall, but he’s well built and wide. He fills the doorway, the storm door still separating us.

I can tell straightaway that he’s annoyed we’re here. He huffs, curses under his breath. “For fuck’s sake,” he says, words full of vitriol, and instinctively I step backward. Bea doesn’t. She’s not scared. I don’t think there’s a thing in the world that could scare Bea. He scowls and asks, “What’s the problem? Can’t you read?” while pointing to a No Soliciting sign on the front door. Truth be told, I didn’t see the sign. But I don’t know that it would have stopped Bea if she did. He looks us up and down, taking in our sweatshirts and jeans, our sneakers.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” Bea says. “Mr. Tebow, isn’t it?” she asks, introducing herself and then me. I watch the manner in which he holds that baby. It’s awkward and stiff. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Our friend,” Bea begins, “has been missing for almost a day. Since yesterday morning. We’re out knocking on doors, to see if anyone has seen her.”

At this, Jason Tebow turns gray. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple prominent in his neck. I watch him. Jason is built like a bodybuilder. His arms are as big as my thigh.

“Is this some kind of fucking joke?” Jason asks, stepping outside, letting the storm door slam shut, as the baby begins to cry. The bottle has moved from its mouth and is dripping milk onto its cheek. I don’t know if the baby is a boy or girl because the onesie it wears is white but dirty, stained with spit-up.

There’s hardly a person in town who doesn’t think that he did something to hurt his wife. Twice that I know of he’s been hauled down to the police station for questioning. At random times, police cars are parked in the street outside his house, watching him. He thinks we’re harassing him, baiting him.

I speak up. “You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with your wife, Mr. Tebow. Our friend, our next-door neighbor, didn’t come home last night. Neither she nor her little girl. Her husband is worried sick. His little girl, Delilah, is only six years old. You, more than anyone, can understand what he’s going through. We’re just trying to help find them. We’ve been to every house for three blocks, asking if anyone has seen them. Meredith Dickey,” I say, reaching into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone, so I can show him the picture. We’re a few blocks from where we live. Jason Tebow wouldn’t know who she is.

But he does. The recognition is evident right away. He falls a step back, turns slowly to me and asks, “Did you say Meredith?”

I take a breath. “You know Meredith?”

He pauses. As he does, his anger wanes. His tone softens, becoming civil, less vitriolic. “I know Meredith,” he says.

“How?” I ask.

“She was Shelby’s doula,” he says.

I stiffen. My stomach churns.

“She was?” I ask, my mouth like cotton. It’s gone suddenly dry at the realization that Meredith and Shelby knew one another. I try and swallow but the saliva gets stuck in my throat. Meredith and Shelby had a connection. Now they’re both gone. Is that a coincidence? Or is that something more?

“How long had Shelby known Meredith?” Bea asks.

Jason shrugs. “Not too long. A few months.”

“They were friends?”

“Not really. Shelby liked her, sure,” he tells us. “But it was a business arrangement. Shelby was worried about giving birth. This was her first, and she doesn’t have a high threshold for pain.”

“So you hired a doula?” I ask, and he nods. “Why Meredith?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t know how Shelby came upon Meredith.

“How old is your baby?” I ask.

“Six weeks. Grace, ’cause that was Shelby’s middle name. Shelby Grace,” he says. His use of his wife’s name in the past tense isn’t lost on me. “This one here is Grace Eloise.”

“That’s lovely,” I say.

Bea asks if Shelby and Meredith kept in touch after Grace was born. “Some,” Jason says, shrugging. From what we know, Meredith remained close to many of her clients even after they’d given birth. They’d call with questions on breastfeeding, diaper rash. Meredith humored them because she’s a selfless person, though contractually she wasn’t required to do anything after the baby was born.

“Were you at the birth?” asks Bea.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “It was a fucking nightmare.”

“A nightmare how?” I ask.

“It just was,” he says, turning reticent. “I can’t talk about it.” His eyes drop to the baby in his arms, and only then does he see the spilled milk, does he notice that the baby is fussing. He inserts the nipple back into the baby’s mouth and the baby settles. Her squirming limbs become inert. When Jason looks back up at us, his eyes are wet.

He asks about Meredith and Delilah. “How long have they been gone?”

“Her husband saw her yesterday morning. That was the last time,” Bea says.

“Shame,” says Jason. From his tone, I can’t tell if he’s being sincere. I find myself watching him. I wonder if he’s the kind of man capable of hurting his wife. And if he is, is he the kind of man capable of hurting Meredith and Delilah? But why would he?

What kind of person hurts a child?

There are holes in his story about the night Shelby disappeared. There are accounts from friends and neighbors that Jason and Shelby fought often, that Shelby was seen with bruises on her arms and legs. Jason’s excuse was that Shelby was on medication that made her easily bruise. It seemed he had an excuse for everything. Why had she gone out running so late that night? She’d just been given permission to exercise and was trying to shed the baby weight. According to Jason, Shelby thought that she was fat; after the baby was asleep was the only time she could run. The way he said it came off as misogynistic. I told her not to go,he said then. It’s not my fault that she’s gone. In essence, what he meant by that, was that it was Shelby’s fault. He tried to retract that later, in a press conference, when asked by a reporter. He said it wasn’t what he meant to say, that he wasn’t actually trying to blame his wife for her own disappearance. But by then, it had already run in the paper. There was no taking it back. Public opinion of him had already formed.

“Any leads on Shelby?” Bea asks.

“The cops used their dogs to track her scent a couple of blocks. Then it disappeared. They think that was where she was snatched. They used luminol and found blood there, on the street. Someone tried to clean it up. Or the rain washed it away.”

“No idea who?” she asks.

“None yet, but I’ve got my ideas.”

It surprises me. “You do?”

“Shelby didn’t have many enemies,” he says, “but she had one.”

“Who?” I ask, on edge. I don’t know Shelby. I don’t know what kind of person she is or was, or if she was the kind to make enemies.

He thinks awhile. He isn’t quick to say. He looks around, as if we’re being watched. “Dr. Feingold,” he tells us in time, his words weighty.

“Who’s that?” I ask.

He waits a beat. He’s already said more than he wants to say. But then he says, “Her obstetrician.”

“Why were they enemies?” I ask.

“I can’t talk about it,” he says, and our conversation ends abruptly there. Jason decides that he needs to get the baby back inside, out of the rain, which only then begins to fall. It starts as a drizzle, but soon comes down in sheets. Bea and I watch as Jason Tebow turns with that infant awkwardly in his arms and pushes his way through the door. He lets it slam loudly closed, startling both the baby and us. On the other side of the door, the baby begins to scream.

We turn and make our way back down the walkway. “What do you think he means by that?” I whisper as we reach the sidewalk.

Bea shakes her head. She isn’t sure.

We move on. We go to more houses; we knock on more doors. No one has seen Meredith or Delilah. The lack of information, of answers, is wearing on us. We’re getting nowhere.

But then, at nearly noon, a text comes through the group chat.

A body has been found.