“Oh my gosh, thank God. I’m Gwen. Cathy sometimes sits for us, and she’s become like a part of our family, and well, she didn’t come yesterday, and she has not been answering her phone.”
“Oh.” He scrunches up his face.
“I know. Not good.” Gwen glances at his name tag. “And, Lance, is it? I know this might be an overreaction, but I just wanted to make sure she was all right. That she hadn’t, like, fallen or something. Her family is back in California. She really doesn’t know a lot of people here.”
“Right, that’s scary,” Lance says, nodding enthusiastically.
“I thought about calling the police, but I don’t want to embarrass her. Just, for myself, I need to know that she’s okay. And I know she lives up here. She’s mentioned this coffee shop, but I actually don’t have her address.”
“Hmm.” Lance turns his head toward the glass pastry display as if inspiration might be found among the croissants. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that she lives near the construction of the new high school on Autumn Lake Road, because she was complaining today that it was so loud. She said there was a cement truck in the road blocking her way to the coffee shop this morning.”
“Thank you, guys, so much.”
“I hope she’s okay.” Lance smiles. “Don’t forget your coffee.”
Once they are outside, Gwen hands Aimee back the phone.
“I never realized you were such a good liar,” Aimee says, raising an eyebrow.
“I prefer to consider it improvisation.” Gwen takes a sip of the steaming coffee. “So? Let’s go find the new high school on Autumn Lake Road.”
42
NOW
After looking up where the new high school is being built, Aimee drives in that direction. It isn’t hard to find, a monstrosity of cement and glass jutting into the sky from the flat of the surrounding fields. She slows down as she passes a hand-painted sign that reads:
PUMPKINS
HOMEMADE PIES
2 MILES AHEAD
“So, if the cement truck was blocking the road on the way to the coffee shop,” Gwen says, “then Cathy must live on the other side of the school.”
Aimee stares down the country road that dips and rises in the distance. “That’s a lot of territory.”
“Well, let’s go slowly and maybe we’ll see something.”
Just past the school is a dense copse of trees, and then a clearing. Finally they come across a modest one-story house with a beat-up truck on the grass in front, but no Subaru.
“Should we knock on the door?” Gwen asks.
“No,” Aimee says, pulling onto a dirt road to make a U-turn. “She wouldn’t complain about the construction noise from this far away.”
As she heads back toward the high school, Gwen grabs her arm.
“Wait, is that a road?” Gwen points to the right. Aimee hitsthe brakes, and sure enough, there is an unmarked road, its entrance almost hidden by the woods they passed earlier.
“We must have driven right by it.”
Aimee directs the truck onto the bumpy dirt road, and after a while the trees are replaced by more farmland. A house appears, a one-story vinyl-sided rambler with a leaning carport. Aimee edges the truck up to the beginning of the asphalt driveway. “Look, there’s a Subaru, under the carport. I think it’s Cathy’s.”
“Maybe now’s a good time to call the police,” Gwen says.
“And say what? We found a Subaru?” She starts to get out. “No, I have to go in and see if it belongs to Cathy for myself.”
Gwen unbuckles her seatbelt. “Then I’m coming, too.”