Ray — Tuesday, November 17, 2026, morning
Nessa sent the picture while she was still talking.
“That's her, isn't it?”
It was Nadia under a tree, one hand lifted toward whoever had taken it. She looked impatient and happy. The photograph had been cropped from something wider; a child's elbow remained at the edge.
“Ray?”
“I'm looking.”
He was sitting in his pickup outside the place where he bought oil and filters. Nothing he needed there this morning. He had pulled over to answer her.
“You said you gave somebody a ride.”
“Monday.”
“Yeah, Monday. At Henshaw's. I didn't say you did anything. I just thought you should call.”
“Of course I'll call.”
“The police have a picture, too. From the station.”
He could see a woman through the store window examining a display of gloves. She put a pair against one palm and spread her fingers. He was going to remember her doing that. He hated knowing it as it happened.
“I said I'd call, Ness.”
She apologized, and he made his voice easy enough to let her get away. He read the notice underneath Nadia's picture. Reported missing. Her age, her height, the telephone number. The service station. It would go to Ruth next, somebody would forward it with three question marks, and Ruth would have to telephone him to ask what was happening. Why let that happen when he could prevent it?
He pressed the number before he could get out of the pickup and buy gloves.
At the station he gave his name twice and watched it stop being an ordinary name. A uniformed man asked him to wait. Ray sat with his jacket on. The jacket was too warm; taking it off would mean he expected to stay. A television on the wall showed a man pushing leaves out of a gutter. The sound was off. Ray watched until the man had done the same four feet of gutter three times, and then a woman came through the door beside the desk.
“Mr. Mercer? Lena Ortiz.”
She didn't say he had done the right thing by coming. He'd been ready to be embarrassed by that, and without it he felt a little cheated.
The room she took him to was small, with a window overlooking parked cars. Another investigator introduced himself as Owen Shaw. Nobody stood between Ray and the door. Ortiz asked if he wanted coffee.
“I'll be up all night.”
“Then I'd better not.”
He hadn't meant he wanted her not to have any. She sat without getting herself a cup, and he wished he'd just said yes.
“You called about Nadia Bell.”
“That's right. I'd have called sooner if I'd known.”
She asked him to begin with where he'd met her. He told them about the car at the pull-off. Its hood was up. It had been raining a little. She had stepped back when he'd stopped, which had hurt his feelings at the time.
“Which pull-off?” Shaw asked.
Ray described the road, the last proper turn before it, the little widened strip beyond the bend. The road dipped there; a person passing in the other direction might not see the car until he was beside it. He asked for paper and drew something he knew would be no use as a map, then put the pen down and gave the directions again.
Ortiz had stopped writing.
“Her car's there?”
“Unless somebody's moved it.”
“You went back?”
“No. I'm saying. It's not a parking lot.”
Shaw left to pass the location along. Ray had expected them to know this already. For a second he wanted to tell her everything that would save time. Nadia's left rear tire had been low. She kept old receipts in the door pocket. She worried aloud about a woman who needed help dressing, somebody waiting for her. He had stood beside her car while she explained, and had known exactly what to offer.
“You tried to get it going?” Ortiz asked.
“Couldn't.”
“Did she use your phone?”
“She had her own.”
Ortiz waited. He could hear Shaw talking beyond the door and a mechanical hum overhead.
“She made calls,” he said. “I wasn't keeping track.”
“Was she upset?”
“About the car.”
“What did she say?”
He remembered her getting out, holding the phone away from her face while the person on the other end spoke. She had rolled her eyes, assuming an alliance between them for the time it took to finish the call. He'd liked being included. It had put him in a good mood before he knew what she looked like properly.
“She said it couldn't have happened on a better day,” he told Ortiz.
“She meant the opposite.”
“Yes. That's how she talks.”
The present tense bothered him. He glanced at Shaw's empty chair. Ortiz didn't correct it.
“Did she tell you why that day was a problem?”
“People depending on her. Her job.”
“A particular person?”
He could give the name. He'd heard it. But the woman waiting for Nadia to come and help her get dressed was suddenly so specific in his mind that he couldn't manage it. Would she still be sitting there? Someone else would have gone, surely. He imagined the trouble of a stranger trying to find things, opening the wrong drawers while a woman told her where to look. He couldn't remember the name now. He had thought he'd had it.
“I don't remember,” he said.
She made a note. He wanted the name back at once, not because she needed it but because the note might record the failure. He sat forward. She looked up, expecting more. He rubbed the back of his hand against his knee and shook his head.
It was unpleasant to hear himself. He had paid attention. He had liked the line of her hand around the phone. There was nothing he could say about it now that wouldn't make the room smaller.
He went on to Henshaw Service. She needed the bathroom; he'd bought a drink. Yes, both of them had gone inside. He knew they had a picture, so he didn't make them ask. It was surprisingly easy to give her this part. She seemed to appreciate an answer that started before the question.
“Where was she trying to get to?”
“Work, first. Then I think she wanted to get home.”
“And you took her?”
“To Wrenford. The bus stop. She said she could get somebody to meet her.”
“What time?”
He had chosen the time in the pickup. A time after the service station, far enough after to allow ordinary messing around.
“Five after ten.”
She glanced up.
“I remember checking. I had things to do.”
“Did you see anybody meet her?”
“No.”
“Did you see her get on a bus?”
He shook his head.
“You left her at the stop.”
“Yes.”
Now that she'd said it, his version sounded like a discourtesy. He wanted to amend it: I offered to wait. He had not offered to wait at a bus stop where he had not left her. A hot little laugh rose in him, so close to escaping that he bent to pull his wallet out. He gave her his license although she hadn't asked for it yet.
Shaw came back, carrying his own coffee. He looked at Ortiz, and she nodded very slightly. They had sent somebody for the car. Ray looked at the paper he'd drawn on. His directions had got somebody out of a chair and onto the road; now he was the one sitting here, waiting for the next question.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine. I suppose you know she was in my truck, anyway.”
“We know she was with you at Henshaw Service.”
“Pickup,” he said. “I say truck, people think the other thing. I drive for a living.”
“Your own pickup on Monday.”
“I'm off this week.”
Shaw asked about the pickup and wrote down what Ray gave him. Ortiz asked whether Nadia had said a name, where she lived, whom she planned to call. He wanted badly to know whether she had reached Alma this morning. Not this morning—Monday. Nadia was still at the cabin this morning. He could picture her asleep or pretending, her face turned from the overhead light. He had left them water. Enough, surely, until he could get back.
“A sister,” he said. “She talked about a sister.”
Ortiz asked if he could remember anything else Nadia had said. He told her about the woman waiting to be helped into her clothes. He had thought then that Nadia must be good at her job, though she didn't sound pleased to have it.
“A person can be good at something and want a day off,” Ortiz said.
He smiled before he meant to. “You tell my dispatcher.”
She smiled too, then asked him to go over the departure from Wrenford. He did. She asked which side of the road, whether he'd pulled in, what direction he'd gone afterward. Nothing dramatic. He began to resent her for not knowing when an answer was enough.
At the door she thanked him for the car location.
“If it's a help.”
“It is.”
He almost told her about the tire. That small gift of further information, something to leave her with. Instead he asked if he should call his wife before she saw the notice.
“That's up to you.”
“She worries.”
Ortiz said goodbye.
He put his jacket on outside. He'd carried it folded over his arm all the way through the station, like somebody leaving a disappointing job interview. In the pickup he looked at the missing notice again. Nadia's lifted hand, the child's elbow. He enlarged the picture with two fingers. Then he made it small enough that he could see the number he'd called.