The Missing by Sarah Langan Read Free Book Online Page B

took some feminine pride in the fact that he still didn’t know.
    To this day, the threat of those short-lived tauntings remained. She took great pains to iron the creases in her trousers into crisp lines, to dry her hair into a straight, blunt edge that framed her small, angular face. She’d learned to value the cleanness of unbroken lines, the order of a bleached-white smile, the silhouette of her own slender waist in a fitted pleated skirt. She re- gretted that she had bequeathed this perfectionism onto Maddie, who at breakfast sucked on grapefruit slices, one sliver at a time.
    Meg squinted. The sun was shining higher in the sky now, and the town was beginning to wake. Her house on River Street overlooked downtown Corpus Christi, and in the distance she could see its squat hospital and abutting four-tiered parking lot. Farther down was the Episcopalian church adorned with a plain copper cross that had turned green. Along River Street were two- level shops that lined up in a row. On the road, a slow procession of cars carrying doctors, nurses, anesthesi- ologists, and administrators headed for the hospital.
    All the lawns in this town were neat and green. Her gardening team came once a week and like magic seeded the earth and clipped the hedges. A legion of domestics rode the bus to Corpus Christi from parts west. They worked off the books, cleaning houses, mopping store floors, and sweating bare-chested in the hot sun. She never spoke to her gardener, or her Wednesday after- noon cleaning lady. Instead she left envelopes full of money for them, across which she scripted their first names. It was the way things were done here in Corpus Christi, which didn’t necessarily mean she approved of it.
    Meg’s empty stomach growled, and she thought about coffee, eggs. The paper in her hand was a clump of heavy mush. But still, she watched. Something about this morning, this town in front of her, this house on which she was perched, made her sad. She missed it, even though it was not yet gone. She loved it the way you love something you are about to lose.
    Since the whole Graham Nero disaster, the word was on her mind all the time. It kept her up at night, surfacing as ominously as the unidentifiably bloated Bedford floaters that had risen from the Messalonski River all summer long. She thought about it when fighting with Maddie, while paying bills, while watch- ing late-night television, while kissing her husband good-night. No matter how hard she tried to bury it, the word would not sink. Divorce, she thought at least once during every waking hour of her day. Divorce. Divorce. Divorce.
    The birds flew from their nest and pecked their way along the walk. Their heads were black, and their chests white. Their song was a giddy warble, and their name finally came to her: chickadees. Meg took off her slip- pers and stood. Why not? What was stopping her? With
    Maddie leaving next year, and a son already gone, what did she have to lose?
    The wet grass drove nails of cold through the soles of her feet. Her goose bumps transformed into eggs, and the paper in her hand was so heavy she dropped it. She was forty-five years old and she’d never been skinny- dipping, never sneaked into a movie, smoked a joint, broken a dish on purpose. She wanted her feet to sink. She wanted to roll across the lawn like a kid. She wanted to take the week off from work and play with her hus- band, actually play, so that when they went to bed at night their stomachs hurt from laughter.
    She wanted to call up to his window like a liberated Juliet, and tell him they were better than this. Fenstad, David, Maddie—every one of them. They were blow- ing this Popsicle stand. She turned, and seriously con- sidered doing just that, but something stopped her. Something about the birds. She couldn’t place it. They were pecking at the ground. Little chickadees. Pretty things. One of them swallowed a berry. Her berry. And then she remembered.
    Meg Wintrob’s heart