BOB AND I SHOUTED “SUZE!” at the same moment. But even after having been kicked in the nuts, he was down on his knees more quickly than I. He whipped off his sports jacket, folded it over, and slipped it under Susanne’s head.
“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “Suze?”
It was as though she’d simply crumpled. Her leg or hip or something had momentarily given out and she’d dropped to the pavement like a marionette suddenly without strings. She’d managed to put a hand out to keep her head from striking the ground with any force.
Bob looked at his son and barked, “Call an ambulance!”
Evan didn’t seem to know which way to turn first, whether to grab a cell from one of us or run back to the office. Before he could get his feet to move, Susanne breathed, “No, no, it’s okay.”
“Don’t move,” Bob said. He was bent over, cradling her head with his arm. “What’s happened? One of the fractures give way or what?”
“Honestly,” she said. “It’s okay. I just kind of slipped. I don’t think I’ve broken anything again.”
I stood, transfixed, looking not at Susanne, but at Bob. He was focused entirely on my ex-wife. Propping his back against a car, he had lifted Susanne enough to take her entirely into his arms.
“You sure?” he asked, his voice shaking. “That was a nasty fall.”
“Really,” she whispered.
And then I thought I saw Bob’s chin quiver as he struggled to contain his emotions.
“Why don’t I get some water?” I said.
“I can do that,” Evan said, and ran.
“I’m just an idiot,” Susanne said. “I should have been using the cane.”
I found it on the ground, grabbed it, and handed it to Bob.
Bob, still cradling her, said, “It’s okay. There was so much going on.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not just to Susanne, but to both of them. “I kind of stirred things up.”
Susanne bristled. “You did not get me all stirred up. My leg gave out. Simple as that. Maybe the two of you can stop acting like squabbling children for a minute and help me up.”
We did. We had her on her feet just as Evan returned with a bottled water he’d just cracked the cap on. He handed it to Susanne and she took a sip.
“Thanks,” she said, getting hold of the cane and testing her weight on it. “I’m okay.”
We all took a moment. Then Susanne said, “We’re not done here.” She had Evan in her sights again. “Talk to me.”
The implications of Evan’s last remark, that Syd was worried about “being late,” had finally sunk in. I wanted to hear what he had to say.
Evan kept his head low, like he was a puppy about to be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. “It was just the one time,” he said.
“That’ll do it,” Bob said.
“But like, a couple of days before she disappeared, she got one of those get-pregnant-at-home kits,” Evan said.
“Home pregnancy test,” Susanne said, her voice weighed down with dread.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”
“What did it show?” Susanne asked.
“I think it was positive,” Evan said.
“Oh God,” Susanne said.
“Or negative,” Evan said. “Which is the one if you’re not pregnant?”
“Negative,” Susanne said.
“Are you sure?” he asked. Susanne glared at him. “I was thinking, it’d be positive to find out you’re not pregnant.”
“Was she pregnant or not?” my ex-wife asked.
“I’m not really sure,” he said. “I wasn’t with her when she did the test. You have to go into the bathroom and pee on-”
“I know how it works,” Susanne said.
“So she went and did it and she told me everything was okay, I didn’t have to worry about a thing. So I said, so, you’re not having a baby? And she said don’t worry about it, everything was fine.”
“Did she actually say she wasn’t pregnant?” Susanne asked.
Evan’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped. “I think that’s what she meant. I kind of didn’t push it, you know? In case she told me something I didn’t want to hear.”
Susanne and I exchanged looks. This wasn’t the sort of thing you made assumptions about.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Just before she came to stay with you for the summer,” he said to me.
“Where did this happen?” Susanne wanted to know.
Evan kept looking down. “At Dad’s. You guys were both here on the lot that night.”
“You’re really something else,” Bob said. “We welcome Susanne and her daughter into our home and this is what you do?”
“Hold on,” I said. “Let’s not get sidetracked. We can all have a chat later about what Sydney and Evan did, but what matters now is finding Syd. When we get her home, when we know she’s safe, there’ll be plenty of time for lectures on all this.”
I took a couple of deep breaths. “Let’s get back to the job thing,” I said to Evan. “Why wasn’t she happy?”
“Like I said, she didn’t really go into it. She just said the job made her sad. She said the people there, lots of them wouldn’t talk to her. It’s like they were scared all the time. It was creepy.”
“Scared?” said Susanne. “Creepy?”
Evan shrugged again. “I don’t know. That’s what she said. She didn’t like to talk about work that much when we were hanging out. It’s not like we were hanging out all the time. We’ve all got lots of stuff to do.”
“What have you been doing?” Susanne asked. “When you’re in that room of yours all by yourself?”
Bob said, “Suze. Come on.”
“I’d like to know,” I said.
“You’ve already admitted that you’ve had sex with my daughter,” Susanne said. “So you might as well tell us about the other stuff.” She paused. “Why don’t we start with the stealing.”
“Susanne, he told you he didn’t do that,” Bob said.
But Susanne wasn’t looking at him. She still had her eyes fixed on Evan.
“The thing is,” Evan said, now looking at his father, “I asked you if you could help me out a bit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you I needed some money.”
“I gave you some money. For working around here.”
“I mean, more money.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “And I said no.”
“Well, I kind of needed some extra cash,” Evan said.
“So you took it from my purse, from the office, and you took my watch,” Susanne said. She was on fire for someone who’d just collapsed.
“But I got it back from the pawnshop,” he said, like he thought he deserved some credit, “when I had a good stretch.”
“A good stretch?” I said. Evan glanced at me, realizing he’d made a slip. “A good stretch of what?” I took a shot. “Luck?”
“I guess.”
“What?” Susanne said to me, sensing I had figured something out.
“Gambling,” I guessed. “Online gambling.”
“It’s just once in a while,” Evan said. “Just for fun.”
“So you’re stealing money to pay off your credit card bills,” I said.
Evan didn’t respond. His father jumped in. “I gave you a card for emergencies, not for playing poker on the Internet.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Just, like, a thousand or so.”
“Or so?” Bob said.
“About four thousand,” Evan muttered.
“Christ on a cracker,” Bob said.
“Evan,” I said, “did you ever steal any money out of my house?”
He shook his head violently. “Never, swear to God, I never took anything from your place.” He paused. “But… I’ve borrowed some from friends.”
“In addition to the four grand on your Visa?” Bob asked.
Evan nodded sheepishly. “Like, about six hundred.”
All of us, except Evan, were doing a variation of the same thing. Looking down, shaking our heads, thinking, is there no end to the kind of shit that kids can get into?
Susanne turned to me and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
We took a few steps back in the direction of the office. I let her put some weight on my arm.
“This thing, the gambling debts?” she said. “That’s Bob’s problem.”
I wasn’t sure. I wondered whether Evan’s debt problems could have drawn Sydney in somehow, but I let Susanne continue.
“Maybe the reason she’s gone… is she’s pregnant. She’s too afraid to tell us and she’s run off to have the baby.”
I wasn’t buying it, although, in some ways, it would be a relief to learn this was the reason for Sydney’s disappearing act. At least it would mean she was okay. That she was alive. I could welcome home a pregnant daughter if there was a pregnant daughter to welcome home.
And yet.
“Why run off now?” I said. “If she is pregnant, it’s just at the beginning. Is she going to be gone for eight months? If she were going to run off to have a baby, wouldn’t she have waited a little longer?”
Susanne nodded. “I know, I know. Maybe she ran off to have it dealt with. To get an abortion.”
“She’s been gone for weeks, Suze. How long would she need to do that? And don’t you think, even if she was scared, and embarrassed, that eventually she’d screw up her courage and come to us for help? Something like this, wouldn’t she have come to you, if not me?”
Susanne was starting to tear up. “Maybe not if she blamed me. Because I’d moved us in with Bob, and then Evan. Because she’d think it was my fault.”
I thought there was something to that, but kept it to myself.
“It doesn’t explain other things,” I said. “What about that van you said has been watching your house? Syd’s abandoned car? Or me being tricked into flying to Seattle? My house getting torn apart?”
Susanne shook her head in frustration. “The van, that’s probably just my imagination. I’m so tense, I’m seeing things that aren’t there. You know?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“And it could have been kids who broke into your house. Just stupid vandalism.”
I didn’t bother to tell her about the phone I’d found, how that discovery tightened the knot that brought all these things together.
“And maybe the Seattle thing,” Susanne continued, “was just some prankster. You know there are some pretty sick people out there. It could have been someone who saw the website, just wanted to mess with you.”
How comforting it would be to believe what Susanne wanted to believe, that our daughter was out there, pregnant but safe, just waiting for the right time to come back home.
“Suppose I talk to Detective Jennings,” I said, “and tell her they should check with Planned Parenthood offices, abortion clinics, that kind of thing. See if anyone there has seen Sydney.”
Susanne sniffed and nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said.
“Okay,” she said again.
“Excuse me.” It was Bob, with a contrite Evan standing at his side. Susanne and I looked at the two of them without saying anything. “Evan has something he’d like to say to the both of you.”
Susanne and I waited. Evan cleared his throat twice and said, “I’m sorry.”
Bob offered up several small nods, smiled. Susanne and I looked at each other, then back at Evan.
“Well,” I said. “Everything’s just peachy now, isn’t it?”