Page 26 of Until the Sea Runs Dry

Despite the expensive furnishings, it was a comfortable place, where large fabric sofas and armchairs were placed strategically around the room to make the most of those sumptuous views.

As beautiful as it all was, Jane found it difficult to take in.

For every item she looked at, she couldn’t resist the urge to see if it would spark up a memory of some kind, which made this Cinderella moment lose some of its appeal.

A giant television fixed to the wall above the fireplace caught her eye. Maybe some television would be good?

She turned it on, but as soon as the sound came out from television, she knew it was too much. She didn’t want to turn it off, however, needing whatever comfort it provided.

She pressed the mute button and immediately felt better.

She crossed to the fireplace, saw several framed photographs on the mantelpiece, but they were of commercial images instead of the personal ones she had hoped to find.

The lush greenness of a tropical rainforest loomed out of one, where an impossibly colored parrot sat amongst the trees. Another depicted a spectacular horizon of a distant mountain range, so tall that clouds hid the top of the mountain from view.

Studying the mountain range, Jane could tell immediately that they were located in China. She was as sure of this as her previous love affair with Grey’s Anatomy.

Possibly she had been to China in her past? It seemed she knew something of geography. Could she be a teacher? Neither thought rang any bells right now, so she filed them away, hoping they would be of use in the near future.

Bored with the sofa now, where Jane was obviously not joining him, Loki bolted to her side as she moved to a sweet-looking office space where a laptop waited. She recognized the logo on the rose-gold colored metal and traced her finger over the apple that was embossed on its case.

Opening it, she pressed the on button and sat down, waiting as it powered to life. Loki pawed at her knee, wanting up on her lap. She obliged, setting him on her lap, wrapping her arms around him. He curled against her happily, that shoe clasped between his paws as he started chewing on it.

When the Google screen appeared, she was struck by an overwhelming need for information. She wanted to visit the websites that were mentioned in those leaflets Summers had left with her, but she had left them somewhere and didn’t want to wait to find them.

Pulling up the search bar, she typed the words “missing people in the USA” and hit return.

Thousands of hits flooded the screen.

Frightening articles appeared with statistics containing the kind of numbers that made her eyes go wide. She clicked on the most promising sounding site: missingpeople.org.

She read over the general introduction for how to use the site and found the tab where she could input details in order to search the database.

She filled in as much information as she could. The physical details were easy: hair and eye color, height, even weight — these were relatively simple, but when she came to the age box, she stumbled.

She had no idea how old she was.

What had they said at the hospital during her initial examinations, which all seemed much of a blur now? Twenty-five to early thirties, the staff had decided.

They hadn’t pulled the number out of thin air, and had come to it by examining her teeth and bones, and calculating it from there.

She checked the corresponding box to say she was ready and hit submit.

A wheel spun on the screen as the results loaded. When the individual hits started loading, Jane figured she’d see a handful of people matching her description. But, as the side scroll bar grew longer and longer, she saw that there were hundreds of women matching her description alone.

Swallowing, trying to contain her horror, she clicked on one.

An attractive blonde with a sunny smile appeared on screen. She sat at a crowded ball game, waving into the camera with no cares in the world.

No idea that her life was about to take such a dark turn.

The woman had gone to work one day only to vanish into thin air. She lived with two other girls in a house share in Chicago. Her roommates had become concerned when she hadn’t returned home at her usual time.

As far as they knew, she wasn’t dating anyone. She wasn’t one for going out on work nights so it was very out of character for her not come home, even more so to not tell her roommates why: both of whom were good friends of hers.

By the next evening, when they still couldn’t reach her, the girls knew something terrible must have happened.

She had been missing now for over three months. Jane’s eyes read over that last sentence again.

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