Chapter 3: What Sarah Did While He Was Gone
Maya stayed against the glass for a long time after Sarah's footsteps faded.
*Your father isn't coming home.*
She turned the words over and over, looking for another meaning.
A business trip.
A late night.
Anything ordinary.
But the way Sarah had said it — low, flat, almost satisfied — didn't leave room for ordinary.
Maya pushed herself up from the wet concrete.
Her legs had gone numb below the knee.
She wrapped both arms around herself and moved to the far end of the patio, where a narrow overhang kept the worst of the rain off.
She sat on the edge of a plastic garden chair and opened the small square of foil Lily had pushed under the door.
Two pieces of chicken.
Still warm.
She ate slowly, watching the rain sheet off the overhang in a thin curtain.
The lights inside the house went off one by one.
First the kitchen.
Then the hallway.
Then the living room.
By the time the last light disappeared, Maya had made a decision.
She was not sleeping outside.
She tried the patio door.
Locked.
The side gate — padlocked, which was new.
She stood in the dark for a moment, rain soaking through her hair again, and then she remembered the bathroom window on the ground floor.
The latch had been broken for months.
She had told her father about it twice.
He had never fixed it.
She was grateful for that now.
She eased the window open, pulled herself up onto the sill, and dropped quietly onto the tile floor inside.
The house was dark and still.
She stood in the hallway for a moment, listening.
Nothing but the sound of the rain against the roof and the low hum of the refrigerator.
She moved toward the kitchen to get a glass of water.
That was when she saw it.
On the kitchen counter, next to Sarah's handbag, was her father's phone.
Not a new phone.
His phone.
The one with the cracked corner and the photo of Maya and him at the lake as the lock screen wallpaper.
Maya picked it up.
The screen lit up.
Seventeen missed calls.
All from the same number.
The contact name read: *Tom — Work.*
And below the missed calls, a text message from the same number, sent four hours ago.
*Daniel, where are you?
Nobody here has heard from you since Tuesday.
Your supervisor is asking questions.
Please call me.*
Maya's hand tightened around the phone.
Tuesday.
Today was Friday.
Her father had been missing for three days.
And Sarah had said nothing.
Done nothing.
Had locked Maya outside in the rain and served roasted chicken and let Lily watch television and acted as though the world was exactly as it should be.
Maya opened the message thread.
The last message her father had sent was Tuesday morning, just after seven.
*On my way in.
Talk later.*
She scrolled up.
The messages above it were ordinary — work questions, schedule changes, nothing alarming.
She scrolled back to the bottom and read the unanswered messages from Tom again.
Then she set the phone face-down on the counter and stood very still.
Sarah knew.
She had to know.
The phone had been sitting right there for three days.
Maya picked it up again and was about to call Tom's number when the kitchen light snapped on.
Sarah stood in the doorway in her dressing gown, arms folded, eyes moving from Maya's face to the phone in her hand.
"Put that down," Sarah said.
"Where is my father?"
"Put.
It.
Down."
"His colleague has been calling for three days." Maya held the phone up.
"Three days, Sarah.
And you didn't tell me.
You didn't call anyone.
You locked me outside and served dinner and said nothing."
Sarah's expression didn't shift.
"Your father is an adult.
He comes and goes.
It's not your business."
"He's been missing since Tuesday."
"He's not missing." Something moved behind Sarah's eyes — too fast to read.
"He left."
Maya went very still.
"What do you mean, he left?"
"I mean he left." Sarah walked to the counter, picked up her handbag, and dropped the phone inside it.
"He decided he needed some time away.
He told me before he went.
He asked me not to say anything to you."
"That is a lie."
Sarah looked at her with something close to amusement.
"Is it?"
"He would never — " Maya stopped.
She heard her own voice shaking and forced it steady.
"He would never leave without telling me.
He would never leave Lily."
"Maybe you didn't know him as well as you thought." Sarah zipped the handbag shut.
"Now get out of my kitchen, go to your room, and don't touch anything that belongs to me again.
Or I will call the police and tell them you broke into this house."
Maya looked at the handbag.
Then at Sarah's face.
"I'm going to find him," Maya said quietly.
May you like
Sarah smiled — a small, thin smile that didn't reach her eyes at all.
"Good luck with that," she said.
