Local Woman Missing

by Mary Kubica

Josh is our neighbor. He lives next door with his wife, Meredith, and their two kids.

“Where’s Delilah?” Delilah is Josh and Meredith’s daughter. She’s six.

“the sitter told me only Leo was there. She said that Meredith had kept Delilah home for the day because she was running a fever. She said Meredith had called Delilah in sick to school, and had canceled her own classes.”

Shelby Tebow to consider, a young woman who went for a jog

in our neighborhood ten nights ago and never returned.

I glance down at the phone in my hand, expecting it’s my client with some conditioned reply. Thx. Instead: I know what you did. I hope you die.

That’s not to say I didn’t think about you. I thought about you a lot when you were gone, though all I ever knew was the absence of you.

But for as much as people think the internet knows everything, the one thing it doesn’t say is that the girl who came back isn’t the same one who disappeared.

Mom was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound with a note: You’ll never find her. Don’t even try.