CHAPTER 1: HELEN

For more than a week I could not make myself open the door to Mia’s room. When I finally raised the shades, light illuminated the space like a stage set: the rumpled bed, the hot pink lipstick on the dresser, the closet door agape, revealing the outfit I gave her for church. Gray wool slacks dangled awkwardly from a plastic hanger, the silk blouse discarded in a dusty corner along with one dirty sock—all clues, remnants of a life lived on this stage. But was it the beginning of the play or the end?

Mia had just started her senior year in high school. I knew she was intimidated by all the college visits and apprehensive about submitting the applications, but I had convinced myself that she was ready to say goodbye to her old life and start anew. Sure, we’d experienced difficulties and detours, what family doesn’t? But I believed all was resolved; believed, that is, until one random Wednesday in late September when she never came home. No one saw her—not her teachers, the office staff, or her counselor. No one knew where she was.

At first, I thought Mia had gone off with friends and simply forgotten to call. She would have called, wouldn’t she? Maybe she had gone back to her birth mother’s home. But that seemed unlikely. I pulled out my cell phone every few minutes to see if I had missed a text. By 8:00 p.m. I called her mother.

“Maybe she go off with drug dealer boyfriend,” Carmen said in broken English.

What drug dealer boyfriend? I wanted to cry out, but knew it was pointless. I couldn’t understand her rapid-fire Spanish and our adversarial relationship over the years had made meaningful communication impossible. Carmen’s lack of concern for Mia’s welfare had always mystified and infuriated me.

“You no call the police, okay?” Carmen added. It had been my experience that people in the Hispanic community often panicked when they saw a uniform. It wouldn’t do any good to get the police involved and might make it worse.

“Okay, but please call me if you hear anything,” I pleaded.She never called.

I cried on my husband’s shoulder. “How could Mia do this? Something must be very wrong.” Don was upset too, but couldn’t resist giving me that “I-told-you-so” look, patting my hand with a restrained sense of obligation rather than genuine concern, or so I read it at the time. Now I understand how needy and unfair I was. He had always been so loving and supportive no matter how crazy my schemes and passionate my interests, whether he understood them or not.

The saying “opposites attract” could not have been truer in our relationship. He was a man of science. I was a dreamy artistic type. He read Naval Institute Proceedings. I read poetry. He liked spaghetti. I liked sushi. He couldn’t tell a petunia from a daisy. I was a gardener. And yet, life together was better than apart. When our boys came along, he was an involved, loving father who disciplined with love and loved unrestrainedly. But, at that moment, if I could have gotten beyond my own conflicted feelings of hurt and worry, I could have seen by the way his hand shook as he picked up his Maker’s Mark on the rocks and took a couple of quick gulps that he was genuinely concerned about Mia’s absence.

It was too hard. Both of us felt the stab of an old, only partially healed wound, for which Mia had been a temporary anesthetic. Don banged his drink down on the table, half surprised by the noise, and hugged me silently, afraid to say a word, one pain masking another. An image swam to the surface: Sammy’s grin and tousled mop of blond hair. How could we have been so unaware of the troubled waters beneath that sunny smile? The dark, anxious place that became his secret home beyond our reach and knowing. Now, clueless again, we had let another child slip through the cracks and I was left clutching her abandoned lipstick until my palm bled.