Page 14 of Swerve
There’s a moment of stunned silence. “We’ll come there,” she says and hangs up.
Unable to stand the confines of the car any longer, I get out and walk over to Officer Adams. “Anything?” I ask.
“Just a purse on the passenger seat.”
He hands it to me. “Is this Mia’s?”
“Yes,” I say. I open it, glancing inside to see the pink canister of mace I had pleaded with her to carry when she was out at night.
As if he’s read my thoughts, Officer Adams says, “I know it’s hard not to panic, but usually these things end up with a simple explanation.”
I know he could be right. Could she have left the festival with other friends? Maybe on a first ever night of inevitable rebellion?
But I can’t believe that even for a second becauseI know my sister, and it’s not something she would do. I know this because of everything we’ve been through together. When you’ve shared the kind of loss we’ve shared, put theshattered pieces of your family life back together again so that it at least resembles something of what it once was, you know each other in ways you never would have otherwise. And while I want more than anything in the world to believe him, I don’t.
I don’t.
Emory
“The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
—John Milton
GRACE’S PARENTS ARRIVE, parking behind Mia’s Land Cruiser.
Mrs. Marshall gets out of the car and runs to me, wrapping me in the kind of hug mothers give when comfort is desperately needed. I would like to shrug it off, assure her that I don’t need it, but I would be completely unconvincing, so I accept it with the awareness that it has been a very long time since anyone comforted me.
When Mrs. Marshall steps back, she smooths my hair from my face, and, with notable reluctance, acknowledges Officer Adams now standing next to us. I introduce him to the Marshalls and explain that their daughter was with Mia at the festival.
“And she hasn’t come home either?” he asks.
“No,” Mrs. Marshall says with a crack in her voice, looking at me. “Mia’s phone. Where did you find it?”
I point to the area where the other two police cruisers are parked, lights flashing. “Off the road there. In the weeds.”
The look on Mrs. Marshall’s face tells me she knows, as I do, that this is not good news. “I’ve tried Grace’s phone a hundred times, but her voice mail just picks up. What do we do? Tears run down her face, and Mr. Marshall puts his arm around her, pulling her close.
“Officer Adams,” he says. “Please. What can we do?”
~
THE ANSWER ISN’T a satisfying one.
Officer Adams leads us to the station. The Marshalls and I follow him in our own cars into downtown DC, the traffic nearly nonexistent at this hour of the night.
Once we arrive at the station, Officer Adams leaves us with two representatives of theFamily Services Division. Both young women look barely older than I am. One says she’ll be working with the Marshalls, and the other one leads me into a small room so newly painted that the chemicals burn my nose as she closes the door behind us.
“I’m Ashley Middleton,” she says, offering me a chair. “I’m really sorry to be meeting you this way, but hopefully, this will all be some kind of misunderstanding.”
I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but by now, I’m growing weary of the pacifying. It’s four o’clock in the morning. There can be no good explanation for why Mia hasn’t come home.
Ms. Middleton takes the chair across the table from me, pulls a sheaf of papers from a brown leather notebook and pops the top from a BIC pen. “Can you give me your sister’s full name and her birthday and social security number?”
“Mia Angle Benson. June 15, 2000.” I recite the social, noting her surprise that I know it by heart. “I’m her guardian,” I say, explaining. “Our parents were killed when Mia was eight.”
“Ah,” she says, sympathy lighting her blue eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
