The Missing

Darby listened to Mrs Cruz’s voice strip away time, taking her back to late-night sleepovers with Melanie, back to weeklong summer vacations in Cape Cod. The woman speaking to her right now was the same woman who made sure Darby always wore enough sunscreen because of her pale skin.

Only that woman was gone. The woman standing in front of her was nothing more than a husk. The kindness had been sucked from her eyes. The look on her face was the same one Darby had seen in countless victims – filled with the pain and confusion about how the people you loved so fiercely could at any moment be ripped away from you through no fault of your own.

‘I brought Mel up to be too trusting. To always look for the good in people. I blame myself for that. You try and do the right thing by your children, and sometimes you just . .. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter. Sometimes God has his own plan for you, and you’ll never understand it, no matter how much you try to, no matter how much you pray for an answer. I keep telling myself it doesn’t matter because nothing can ever take away this kind of hurt.’

Darby had imagined this moment happening hundreds of times, had mentally rehearsed what words she would say and how Helena Cruz would react. Seeing the pain in her face, hearing the pleading desperation in her voice, brought back all those letters Darby had written when she was younger, that guilty part of her secretly believing that if she could take every awful thing she was feeling and put it into the right combination ofwords, she could somehow build a bridge across their mutually shared grief and, at the very least, come to a place of understanding.

She had ripped up each of those letters. The only thing Helena Cruz wanted was her daughter back. And now, after twenty-four years of waiting, she wasn’t any closer to bringing her home.

‘I don’t know where Melanie is,’ Darby said. ‘If I did, I would tell you.’

‘Tell me she didn’t suffer. At least give me that.’

Darby tried to think of an appropriate answer. It didn’t matter. Helena Cruz turned and walked away.

Chapter 75

Coop dropped Darby off and headed home. She entered the kitchen, looking for her mother. The nurse said Sheila was out in the backyard.

Sheila was sitting near her old flower garden. The early evening air was cool and crisp as Darby trotted across the grass with one of the deck chairs. Sheila wore Big Red’s Red Sox baseball cap and his blue down vest over a polar fleece jacket. A heavy wool blanket covered her lap and much of the wheelchair. She looked so incredibly frail.

Darby placed the chair next to her mother, in a patch of dimming sunlight. Spread across Sheila’s lap was a photo album full of baby pictures. Darby saw a picture of herself as a newly born infant swaddled in a pink blanket and matching cap.

Her mother’s eyes were bloodshot. She had been crying.

‘I saw the news. Coop told me the rest.’ Sheila’s voice was quiet as she stared at the bandages on the side of Darby’s face. ‘How bad is it?’

‘It will heal. I’m fine. Honest.’

Sheila grabbed Darby’s wrist, squeezed it. Darby held her mother’s hand and looked out across the backyard, at her mother’s white bedsheets flapping in the early evening breeze. The clothesline was planted a few feet away from the basement door where Evan Ma

Darby thought back to the day she found Evan waiting in the driveway. He was there to see how much she knew about what she had seen in the woods. Was Evan the one who had found the spare key? Or had Boyle cased the house earlier?

‘Where have you been?’ Sheila asked.

‘I went down to the police station with Coop. Banville – he’s the detective ru

Sheila looked out across the yard. The breeze picked up, shaking the branches overhead and blowing the leaves across the yard.

‘Helena Cruz was there,’ Darby said. ‘She wanted to know where Mel is buried.’

‘Do you know?’

‘No. We’ll ever know unless someone comes forward with new information.’

‘But you know what happened to Mel.’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘Boyle kept Mel in the basement of his house and tortured her over a period of days, maybe even weeks.’ Darby shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets. ‘That’s all I know.’

Sheila traced a finger along a picture of Darby sleeping in a crib.

‘I keep thinking about these pictures – about the memories behind them,’ her mother said. ‘I keep wondering if you take these memories with you, or if they just vanish when you die.’

Darby’s chest was fluttering. She knew what she had to ask.

‘Mom, when I was in the basement with Ma

Sheila looked as though she’d been slapped.

‘Do you know something?’ Darby said.

‘No. No, of course not.’

Darby squeezed her hands into fists. She felt light-headed.

She removed the folded piece of paper – the color copy of the picture of the woman from the bulletin board. She placed it on top of the photo album.

‘What’s this?’ Sheila asked.

‘Open it.’

Sheila did. Her face changed, and then Darby knew.

‘Am I supposed to know this person?’ Sheila asked.

‘Remember the picture the nurse found in the clothes you donated? I showed it to you, and you said it was a picture of Cindy Greenleaf’s daughter, Regina.’

‘My memory is very foggy from the morphine. Can you take me back inside? I’m very tired, and I’d like to lie down.’

‘That picture is posted on a bulletin board down at the station. This woman was one of Boyle and Ma

‘Please take me inside,’ Sheila said.

Darby didn’t move. She hated this. She had to do it.

‘After Boyle left Belham, he headed out to Chicago. Nine women disappeared and then Boyle moved on to Atlanta. Eight women vanished there. Twenty-two women disappeared in Houston. Boyle kept moving from state to state while Ma

‘Leave this alone, Darby. Please.’

‘These missing women had families. There are mothers out there just like Helena Cruz who are wondering what happened to their daughters. I know there’s something you’re keeping from me. What is it, Mom?’

Sheila’s gaze was lingering over a picture of Darby, her two front teeth missing, standing in the upstairs bathtub.

‘You need to tell me, Mom. Please.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ her mother started.

Darby waited, heart quickening.

‘I don’t know what, Mom?’

Sheila’s face was pale. Darby could see the tiny blue veins in her mother’s eggwhite skin.

‘When you hold your baby for the first time, when you hold it in your arms and nurse it and watch it grow, you’ll do anything in this world to protect your child. Anything. The kind of love you feel… It’s like what Dia

‘What happened?’

‘He had your clothes,’ Sheila said.

‘Who had my clothes?’

‘The detective, Riggers, he told me he had found clothes belonging to some of the missing women inside Grady’s house. And there were pictures. He had pictures of you and he had taken some of your clothes.’

‘He didn’t take any clothes that night.’

‘Riggers told me Grady must have come inside the house at some point and took some of your clothes. He didn’t say why. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered because Riggers botched the search – it was an illegal search, and all the evidence they found was worthless because these men, these so-called professionals, they blew it, and Grady was going to walk.’