Lena — Monday, November 16, 2026
The little girl had put her backpack in front of the kitchen door. Every time somebody came through, a shoe caught it and moved it nearer the wall. Every time, the girl moved it back.
Lena stepped over it. She had once left a coat beside a door and somebody had hung it up in a room she didn't want to go back into. She could still remember having to ask for it, although not what she'd said when she asked.
“Tessa,” Alma said. “Can you put that away?”
“It's not in anybody's way.”
The uniformed officer who had let Lena in looked down at his boot, caught in a strap. He quietly freed himself.
“This is Detective Ortiz. She's going to help us,” he said.
Alma Bell shook Lena's hand too hard. She had asked for somebody else to come, and now that somebody was here she didn't know where to start. The township officer had taken the report and begun the ordinary checks. Nadia hadn't arrived at work, had missed picking up Tessa, wasn't answering calls. There were reasons to be concerned beyond a woman deciding to have an afternoon to herself. Local police had asked the county for assistance. Lena had brought a notebook and the knowledge of how little those two things would look like.
“What time did you last speak to her?” she asked.
“I told him.”
“I know. I want to make sure I've understood.”
There wasn't enough room at the table for all of them. A basket of clean laundry occupied one chair; Alma shifted it to the floor, then picked it up again because something from supper had dripped there. Lena moved a pile of unopened mail and sat. Tessa remained at the counter, watching.
Alma talked about Sunday. An ordinary conversation about a school trip, money, which of the two sisters was collecting whom. Nadia had gone to work this morning. Her employer had confirmed she hadn't arrived. At first Alma had been annoyed. She said that before Lena asked, looking at Tessa when she did.
“She thought she'd been left waiting,” Alma said.
“I was left waiting,” Tessa said.
“Yes.”
“The office lady had to stay.”
Alma had reached the school after being called. She'd tried Nadia again from the car. Then home, the place Nadia worked through, people she might have stopped with. The calls were still coming back. Alma's phone lit up on the table while she spoke. She turned it over without looking at the message.
“You can answer,” Lena said.
Alma picked it up. A friend hadn't seen her. The friend had a long explanation of why she would have told Alma if she had. Alma listened to all of it before she could get off the phone.
“What car was Nadia driving?” Lena asked.
Alma supplied the description. The registration and a recent photograph had already gone to the officer's colleagues. Lena asked about any places Nadia would go if she had trouble with the car. Alma had suggestions, then disliked them, arguing with herself over which roads her sister used. She knew Nadia's habits intimately and couldn't produce a map of this morning. It was a helplessness Lena had seen people mistake for a failure of love.
Tessa put a blue-bordered form in front of her aunt.
“I need this done.”
“Not now.”
“By tomorrow.”
“I heard you.”
The officer's phone sounded. He excused himself and went into the hall, stepping over the backpack again. There would be people making calls, checking addresses, looking at things that had been quite ordinary twelve hours ago. Lena wanted to be one of them for a minute, doing something that ended with a person saying yes or no.
Instead she looked at the form. A school trip. Tessa had filled in the parts she could do and put a pencil beside the signature line.
“Grownups are always losing paperwork,” Lena said.
Tessa's face closed. She took the form from the table.
“She didn't lose it.”
“No. I didn't mean—”
“It's in her car. That's a new one.”
Alma reached for Tessa's elbow. The child moved away.
Lena shut her notebook. “I'm sorry, Tessa.”
Tessa gave her nothing. Beyond the doorway, the officer was spelling something into his phone. Lena waited, with both hands empty on the table, until Tessa had taken the form back to the counter.
“Do you want to tell me about the last time you saw your mother?”
“This morning.”
“Was she in a hurry?”
“She's always in a hurry.”
“Did she say anything about where she'd be later?”
Tessa looked at Alma. “Here.”
The word ended the questions for the moment. Alma asked her to go and see if the television was on. Tessa said it was. She stayed where she was.
“She's not going to be asked to leave school, is she?” Alma said.
“Why would I leave school?”
“You wouldn't. I'm asking.”
“I don't want everybody asking me.”
Lena said they could talk to the school about what Tessa wanted people told. Tessa asked which person at school she'd talk to. Lena wrote down the name Alma gave her. The girl watched her a little longer, then took the form and the backpack into the other room. There was a scrape as she put the bag in front of the living-room door instead.
Alma listened until she was sure the girl wasn't coming back.
“She's not normally like that.”
“She doesn't know me.”
“She's normally halfway through her homework by now.”
Lena nodded. Alma looked toward the doorway as if she might ask the girl to bring her books. Her phone lit again, and this time she let it ring.
They talked about Nadia's work and the people who relied on her. Alma described a woman who could arrive at a stranger's house and know where the clean towels ought to be, who would complain for fifteen minutes about an extra shift and then take it because she needed the money. She disliked being called an angel. She sometimes sounded unkind when she was tired. Tessa was allowed to be furious with her because she had someone she trusted to be furious with. Alma got halfway through that thought before she stopped and drank from a cup that had gone cold.
“I shouldn't have said the thing about money,” she said.
“It helps me understand her day.”
“Are you going to say she left because she couldn't pay something?”
“No.”
“Because she wouldn't do that. She'd borrow it off me and we'd have a fight, but she'd come home.”
Lena wrote down the last few words. They'd have a fight; she'd come home. She could almost hear that conversation, the two sisters trying to get past being annoyed long enough to settle what was needed. Across the kitchen a saucepan was starting to make a dry ticking noise. Alma turned the burner off, and for a second stood with her back to the room, both hands flat on the counter.
The officer returned. A service station was checking images in response to the inquiry. There was a possibility of Nadia there that morning, with another person. It had to be confirmed. He bent toward Lena to speak quietly, but Alma was already watching his mouth.
“What?” she said.
He explained what they had and what they didn't. Lena asked him to arrange for the actual images to be preserved and said she would follow up. Alma wanted to see them immediately. Tessa had come back to the doorway without the backpack.
“Is it Mom?”
“It might be,” Lena said.
“With who?”
“We don't know yet.”
Lena felt Alma's anger shift toward her. She could bear that, provided there was something at the far end of it. A man, a vehicle, a stop Nadia had actually made.
Before she left, Lena gave them a number that would reach the inquiry and wrote down when she would call again. Alma put it beside her phone. Tessa held out the form.
“Do we still have to do this?”
Lena read the whole page before giving it back. She found the school contact printed in small type at the bottom and pointed it out to Alma.
“Ask them in the morning. Tell them what you need. You don't have to decide everything tonight.”
Tessa took it from her. “I want to go.”
“Then tell them that too.”
Outside, the cold felt good. The officer stayed at the house. Lena went to her car and called Owen before she took her coat off. The images hadn't reached him yet. He gave her the name of the person getting them, and she called that number next.