The Girls Are Missing by Caroline Crane Read Free Book Online

a tragic situation, Joyce had felt.
    But later that evening she began to wonder if he really would be any improvement over Barbara. Mary Ellen arrived at the dinner table in a brief pair of shorts and a braless tee shirt that revealed her young breasts.
    Carl’s face turned pale. “What kind of outfit do you call that?”
    “That’s my clothes,” Mary Ellen replied. “What do you want me to wear on a day like this?”
    “It is hot,” Joyce put in. Gail was wearing a similar outfit, but Gail did not have breasts or hips, and her legs were straight and little-girlish.
    “I expect you to cover yourself,” Carl said coldly.
    Mary Ellen looked amazed. “Put on a dress? ”
    It occurred to Joyce that he must have been thinking of the murder. He did not want his daughter to be provocative. She beckoned to Mary Ellen, who followed her meekly up the stairs.
    “What’s the matter with him?” Mary Ellen demanded when they were safely in her room.
    “Fathers are like that,” Joyce explained. “Fathers of daughters. It’s kind of old-fashioned, but they have their reasons. Have you got a slightly thicker shirt and maybe some longer pants?”
    “But it’s hot!”
    “I know, dear, but—Has your mother bought you any bras?”
    Mary Ellen groaned. “Oh, they’re kidding, now they want to put me in a bra.”
    “Well, you ought to start thinking about it. But at least for now…” From the mess on the bed, Joyce picked up a dark blue shirt decorated with a picture of a van and a spattering of CB phrases. In all that clutter, no one would notice Mary Ellen’s figure.
    She persuaded the girl to put it on and they went back to the table. Carl glanced at his daughter and said nothing. Evidently he approved.
    Hours later, as she lay in bed, Joyce thought again of what he had said. It was more than I could take—all her neuroses.
    When they first began dating, she had asked about his divorce. From what little he said, she gathered that it was Barbara who had initiated the breakup, and that he had
    not resisted. Today Barbara had more or less given the same impression.
    Now he claimed that it was he who had ended it, and against her will. Was it self-protection this time, or had he, earlier, been trying to protect Barbara?
    She felt him, warm and breathing beside her. It is my business, she told herself.
    On the other hand, his relationship with Barbara was entirely separate from his relationship with Joyce. She and Barbara were two separate people, one wrong for him, and one apparently right. So maybe it was not her business.
    She fell asleep and into fleeting dreams of the body Sheila had described. She saw it, red, skinned, and mangled, and dreamed of how it had gotten that way. Over and over again she relived the victim’s last agony, and felt she would never be free of it.

7  
    The next day Carl was up and dressed, but not in his usual lawn-mowing clothes, while she lay in bed nursing Adam.
    “Going to buy a paper,” he explained.
    “So early?”
    It was a mile and a half into the village. They rarely bothered with a newspaper on Saturday, certainly not at seven A.M.
    “Be back in a while.” He closed the door softly. Minutes later she heard his car hum to life, then fade away. The garage was on the other side of the house. She hadn’t heard its door slide open, or closed. She wondered if it stood open, like a gaping mouth, with all of them vulnerable in bed. Would she ever get used to this fear? It was worse than in the city, where their basement apartment had had window bars and only one entrance, and that was always locked.
    She smiled, remembering how Carl had hated that apartment of hers, and worried, and begged her to move out. He had even suggested that she move in with him, but his was only a studio apartment, and besides, there was straitlaced Gail, who would never have approved unless they were married first.
    She hadn’t long to wonder about the garage door. He was back soon, as he had promised. He