Carthage

Arlette gripped in her right fist a wadded tissue. Her tongue had gone numb. Her eyes were fixed to the rapacious eyes of the heavily made-up Evvie Estes. Her terror was, her nose would begin to run, her eyes would leak tears, unsparingly illuminated in the bright TV lights.

Our daughter. Our Cressida. If anyone has any information leading to . . .

Then, there came the surprise of the ten-thousand-dollar reward.

Not one of the law enforcement officers who’d been interviewing the Mayfields had known this was coming. Judging by her confusion on camera, Arlette had not known this was coming. Zeno spoke in an impassioned voice of a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the recovery of—the return of—our daughter Cressida.

SURPRISING NEWS—A REWARD.

Not a great idea.

Many more calls will come in.

Many more calls will come in.

FOR INSTANCE, from “witnesses” who’d sighted the missing girl, they were sure: in and near and not-so-near the Nautauga Preserve.

As far north as Massena, New York. As far south as Binghamton.

In a 7-Eleven. Hitchhiking. In the passenger seat of a van headed south on I-80.

Wearing a baseball cap pulled low on her forehead.

Wearing sunglasses.

Coming out of the Onondaga CineMax on Route 33, with a bearded man—the movie was The War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise.

As far north as Massena, New York. As far south as Binghamton.

Dozens of calls. In time, hundreds.

Most valuable were calls from “witnesses” claiming to have been at the Roebuck Inn on the night of Saturday, July 9.

Guys who knew Corporal Kincaid by sight. Women who’d seen a girl they suspected to be, or believed to be, or knew to be Cressida Mayfield, at the inn: in the crowded taproom, on the deck overlooking the lake, in the women’s room “sick to her stomach”—“splashing water on her face.”

One of the bartenders, who knew Kincaid and his friends Halifax, Weisbeck, Stumpf—“The girl came in from somewhere. Like she was alone, and kind of scared-looking. In jeans, a black T-shirt, and some kind of top, or sweater. Not the kind of girl who turns up at the Roebuck on Saturday night. Maybe she was with Kincaid, or just ran into him. I think they left together. Or—all of them left together. It was a pretty loud scene, with the band on the deck. But definitely, it wasn’t any bikers she was with—this girl ‘Cressida.’ Hey—if other people call about Kincaid, and it turns out it’s him, like if the girl is hurt—do we split the ten thousand dollars? What’s the deal?”

And there was an ex-girlfriend of Rod Halifax, named Natalie Cantor, claiming to have been a “friend” of Juliet Mayfield’s in high school, who called Zeno Mayfield’s office phone to tell him in an incensed, just perceptibly slurred voice that whatever happened to his daughter, Rod and his buddies would know—“Once, the bastard got me drunk, slipped some drug into a drink, he’d been wanting to break up with me and was acting really nasty trying to pimp me to his disgusting buddies—Jimmy Weisbeck, that asshole Stumpf—out in his pickup. Right out in the parking lot, the son of a bitch. They’re all mean drunks. I don’t know Kincaid, but I know Juliet. I know your daughter, she’s an angel. I’m not joking, she’s an angel. Juliet Mayfield is an angel. I don’t know the other one—‘Cress’da.’ I never saw ‘Cress’da.’ Anything you want to know about that poor girl, Rod Halifax will know. I wasn’t the first girl he got tired of, and treated like shit. It was not ‘consensual’—it was God-damn fucking rape. And I was sick afterward, I mean—infected. So, ask him. Arrest him, and ask him. Anything that’s happened to that poor girl, like if they raped her, and strangled her, and dumped her body in the lake—you can be sure Rod Halifax was responsible.”

ZIGZAG TIME ENTERED her head: hours moved slow as sludge while days flew past on drunken-careening wings.

Until she could think A week. This Sunday is a week. And she hasn’t been found and it would have the ring of tentative good news: She hasn’t been found in some terrible place.

He would never forgive himself, she knew.

Though it could not be his fault. Yet.

Arlette had long gotten over being jealous—at any rate, showing her jealousy—of her daughters. Particularly Zeno adored Juliet but he’d also been weak-minded about Cressida, the “difficult” daughter—the one whom it was a challenge to love.

At the very start, the little girls had adored their mother. As babies, their young mother was all to them. Which is only natural of course.

But quickly then, Daddy had stolen their hearts. Big burly bright-faced Daddy who was so funny, and so unpredictable—Daddy who loved to subvert Mommy’s dictums and upset, as he liked to joke, Mommy’s apple cart.

As if an orderly household—eating at mealtimes, and properly at a table, with others—walking and not running/rushing on the stairs—keeping your bedroom reasonably clean, and not messing up a bathroom for others—were a silly-Mommy’s apple cart to be overturned for laughs.

But Mommy knew to laugh, when she was laughed-at.

Mommy knew it was love. A kind of love.

Except it hurt sometimes—the father siding with the daughter, in mockery of her.

(Not Juliet of course: Juliet never mocked anyone.)

(Mockery came too easily to Cressida. As if she feared a softer emotion would make her vulnerable.)

Arlette knew: if something terrible had happened to Cressida, Zeno would blame himself. Though there could be no reason, no logical reason, he would blame himself.

Already he was saying to whoever would listen I wasn’t even there, when she left. God!

In a voice of wonder, self-reproach Maybe she’d have told me—something. Maybe she’d have wanted to talk.

COUNTLESS TIMES they’d gone over Saturday evening: when Cressida had left the house, on her way to the Meyers’ for dinner.

Casually, you might say indifferently calling out to her mother and her sister in the kitchen—Bye! See you later.

Or even, though this was less likely given that Cressida wouldn’t have stayed very late at Marcy’s—Don’t wake up for me.

(Had Cressida said that? Don’t wake up for me?—intentionally or otherwise? Wake up not wait up. That was Cressida’s sort of quirky humor. Suddenly, Arlette wondered if it might mean something.)

(Snatching at straws, this was. Pathetic!)

Certainly it was ridiculous for Zeno to reproach himself with not having been home at that time. As if somehow—(but how?)—he might have foreseen that Cressida wouldn’t be returning when she’d planned, and when they’d expected her?

Ridiculous but how like the father.

Particularly, the father of daughters.

EACH TIME the phone rang!

Several phones in the Mayfield household: the family line, Zeno’s cell, Arlette’s cell, Juliet’s cell.

Always a kick of the heart, fumbling to answer a call.

Deliberately Arlette avoided seeing the caller ID in the hope that the caller would be Cressida.

Or, that the caller would be a stranger, a law enforcement officer, possibly a woman, in Arlette’s fantasizing it was a woman, with the good news Mrs. Mayfield!—we’ve found your daughter and she wants to talk to you.

Beyond this, though Arlette listened eagerly, there was—nothing.