Page 10 of We All Live Here
“Maybe with pants on. A pants-on member of the family.”
He sighs, and his gaze slides sideways. “If you like.”
She feels suddenly guilty and puts her arms around him, as if in apology. He stiffens slightly, as though any physical contact is something of an assault. She thinks perhaps her mother was the only person Bill ever felt completely relaxed with.
“Maybe a nice photo. We could definitely do with some more pictures of Mum around the place,” she says.
“It’s like she never existed,” he says quietly. “Sometimes I look around and I wonder if she ever existed at all.”
She looks up at him then, at the grief etched on his face, the loss, and it feels like her own pales into insignificance. She has lost her mother, yes, but he has lost his soulmate.
“I have a box of pictures of her at the other house,” he says, taking a breath. “Photographs and things. If you really don’t want it there.”
She notes—with a stab of something she can’t quite identify—that he no longer calls his house “home.” “Tell you what,” she says. “Just leave it there for now. Given the amount of time the girls spend staring at their devices, they probably won’t even notice.”
Chapter Four
The call comes at ten fifteen, exactly eleven minutes after she typed the first paragraph she has managed in months, and nine minutes after she allowed herself the thought that maybe she can do this writing thing again after all. She picks up her phone, still staring absently at the screen, so that she doesn’t see who the call is from.
“Is that Mrs. Brewer?”
“It’s Kennedy. And—and it’s Ms. now.” Mzzz. She hates the word. How much nicer to be Mademoiselle or Lady Kennedy, something elegant and fancy. It’s not like she doesn’t feel abbreviated enough already.
“Uh…oh, yes. Sorry, we did amend our records. It’s the school office. We just wondered if Celie had an appointment this morning we hadn’t heard about.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Celie. She was missing from first register. We wondered if maybe she had a dental appointment.”
Her mind blanks briefly. Has she forgotten an appointment? She checks the calendar on her phone. Nothing. “I’m sorry—what do you mean, missing?”
“She’s not at school.”
“But I dropped her off this morning. Well, not dropped her off, but I watched her get on the bus.”
There is a brief silence. The kind of well-worn silence that tells you as a parent that the person at the other end of the line knows you haven’t a clue.
“Well, according to her classmates, she hasn’t arrived. She’s had so many dental appointments lately we wondered if she was having further treatment that we hadn’t been told about.”
“Dental appointments?”
Another silence.
“She’s brought in notes excusing her from afternoon lessons…uh…three times this month.”
“She—she hasn’t had any dental treatment. I’ll call her. I’ll call. I’ll—get back to you.” There is a panicky feeling in Lila’s chest. Her brain is suddenly flooded with headlinesMissing Girl Found Dead in Canal. Parents Say We Had No Idea.
She calls Dan, her fingers jabbing at the buttons. “Lila, I’m in a meet—”
“Do you know where Celie is?”
“What?”
“She’s not at school. They just called.”
“But she was with you.”
“I know, Dan. I just wondered if she’d said anything to you. Whether you had any kind of arrangement I didn’t know about.”
