Local Woman Missing

by Mary Kubica

Her husband is hot-blooded. If he had any idea she was sneaking out to hook up with some guy in his parked car on 4th Avenue, where the street dead-ends a hundred feet from the last house, he’d have beaten her to within an inch of her life by now.

He isn’t the first man she’s cheated on her husband with. He won’t be the last.

She isn’t one for feeling guilty. She’s made herself believe that it’s her husband’s fault she does what she does.

Another noise comes from behind. This time when she looks, car lights surface on the horizon, going way too fast. There’s no time to hide.

sometimes being scared makes you do things you didn’t know you could do.

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. The note went on to say that you were safe, that you were fine.

“Meredith is a wonderful doula. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her clients,”

Dad stopped tucking me in when you disappeared. He was too busy crying himself to sleep to notice me.

You passed on a soft, warm bed to come sleep on the cold, hard basement floor in the dark. Because for eleven years, it’s all you’ve known. In some effed up way, you find comfort in it, being down here in our dark, dingy basement. It doesn’t get much more fucked up than that.

Cassandra knows this. She’s always been tolerant, until now. It’s not like she could know about her husband, Marty, and me. Unless he told her, but he wouldn’t do that. We’d agreed to keep things secret, for Cassandra’s and Josh’s sake.

Sure she took you, she ended her own life. I kinda hate her for it. But he idolizes her.

Mom hadn’t been herself before it happened. Something went down that made her want to kill herself. We don’t know what.

“Someone’s child,” Dad tells the lady cop, “is still missing. Mine is home. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

All the time, I find myself staring out the window at Marty and Cassandra’s house. I think that if Cassandra had the cunningness to buy a burner phone, to follow me around town and send intimidating texts, she’s capable of much worse. Are the texts only empty threats? Or do I have a reason to fear for my family and my safety?

They say most accidents happen within five miles of a person’s home. I never see it coming.

“Go home, Meredith. Go home to your husband and kids. Forget all about what happened tonight.” She starts to walk away from me. I grab her arm. “And if I can’t?” I ask, knowing I’ll never forget this night. “You need to,” she says as she shrugs me off and leaves.

If I’m meant to be caught, I will be. I think somewhere deep inside that’s what I want: to be caught.

Now when I think of her, she’s alone, but at least she’s not cold. It’s the only thing that gets me through the night.

I ask Dad to drag out the home videos and we watch them. For just a little while, it’s like you are you again and Mom is still alive.

“It’s just that, I was, like, digging around on the internet, trying to figure out if cleft chins are one of those things that just goes away, you know? And they’re not.” No matter what kids like Adam Beltner say, I’m no idiot. I know what Piper means by this. What I don’t know is how to feel about it.

The one question remaining now is why you thought Dad was your dad when he’s not.

You honest to God believe him to be your dad. You say to him, “You are. You are my daddy,” and then even I’m crying, too.

I collapse onto the motel floor. The floor catches my body, and I think what a relief it is to lie down. I’m so tired. For the first time in days, I think that I could sleep.

and that’s the moment I know that this girl, living inside Josh and Leo’s house for the past week, is not who she claimed to be. Josh has been duped again. He looks broken.

There’s something about Bea’s response that lies heavy on me.