Page 32 of Just Another Missing Person

“No, nothing,” Julia says, holding her hands up. “It was just a phrase.”

“Yeah.” Genevieve rubs at her forehead. “Not been sleeping well,” she says. “Sorry.”

Their eyes meet, and something is communicated between them, only Julia isn’t sure exactly what. “All right?” she adds softly to Genevieve, who nods quickly.

“I was just channeling Tennessee himself. I’m sure he took everything personally,” Genevieve says.

Art, oblivious, starts to smile, seemingly despite himself. The left side first, and then the right, temporarily lopsided.

Julia thinks of this as his middle-of-the-night face. Just a handful of months ago—eight, nine—they had been in bed together. It was the end of summer, the sky still pale in the window above them. He had leaned over and picked up his notebook, like he did every night. But something about that night had touched her. The sugared-almond sky above them. And the way he had reached for it, without even thinking about it, ready to take notes.

“All right, number one: this missing woman,” she had said. Sadie. She had shown him a photograph of Sadie she kept on her phone, despite police protocols not to. “I just... I don’t know, I feel bonkers about it. Keep self-flagellating, sure I’vemissed something.” She had rolled to face him, looking at his features rather than the sky. He was tanned, the way somebody is who has spent all of the summer outside. His skin smelled of sap.

“And,” she had continued, “I’m worried about Genevieve’s grades. She is so confident, but what if she’s wrong, and she gets disappointed? She thinks she’ll get As. And I think the seabass we had was out of date. Pan-frying doesn’t kill everything...”

“Okay,” Art had said, “I have made the following notes... Bonkers: yes, you are, but you did your best. Genevieve: she is fine, and she probably will get As; besides, it’s next year, not this.” He had glanced across at her. “My final note is pan-fried. And it does. Kill germs. Okay? These worries are now mine. I will watch them.” And then: that smile. That half-smile. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it grows into a full-beam grin.

“Thank you,” Julia had said, into the blue-light air.

“You’re not to revisit them,” Art had said, the notebook clutched to his chest. “They now belong to me.”

Only, afterward, Julia hadn’t shared her biggest ever worry with him, and perhaps that is what does it now, as that small smile plays out across his lips. Because just like that, Julia’s head is gone. She can’t stop staring at his mouth. Just one, just one, just one, she thinks. Just one of those very specific, wide, sometimes goofy smiles. They’re so rare for Art, and she never sees them these days. She doesn’t make him happy enough.

“Bedtime for you,” Julia says to Genevieve, her eyes moving to the clock in the dimness of the kitchen behind them, her voice damp cotton wool. “School tomorrow.”

“Have you found the missing girl yet?” Genevieve asks, her pale blue eyes on Julia’s.

“No.”

“Missing in the dead-end alley,” Genevieve says. “It’s like a podcast.”

“A crap one,” Julia says, “because I doubt there will be an answer to that, even if we find her.” She lets the subtext speak for itself.

Genevieve scoffs. “Wow, how optimistic,” she says caustically. “Shimmyshaker,” she adds, waving a hand as she leaves the hallway. Julia watches her go, thinking of her reference to insomnia, hoping it was just a one-off. Art remains, coat on, hands in his pockets. He looks down at Julia, and their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds. She wonders if he’s about to leave. Or if he’s just going to resume their depressing new routine, brushing their teeth alone and settling down to sleep on either side of a thin wall. Where, previously, they’d lie under the skylight talking, now, he goes to the spare room. A stopgap become permanent.

“Genevieve’s incredibly interested in it,” he says now. “Your misper.”

“I know,” Julia says. She can’t explain to him the reasons why. Art hangs his coat up, glances up the stairs, his back to her. He’s going to bed. She’s relieved and disappointed. This man, here, who she has loved for three decades, who surely—somewhere?—loves her, too. This non-cop, the keeper of her worries. She wonders why she didn’t tell him about Genevieve, if, maybe, if she could go back, she might have. She had been fearful of his judgment of their daughter, but also of her. He would connect the two. It’s irrational, she knows, but Julia wonders if Art would say that her job led Genevieve into trouble. Because Art hates Julia’s job, she’s sure of that. Julia fraternizes with criminals, to him, and now so too does Genevieve.

But was it something more than that?

“It’s not...” Julia starts. “It’s not an easy case.” She doesn’t know why she’s said it. To get him to stay up? If so, how pathetic.

But.

He’s the only person in the world who knows the real, full her; the mother she became, the girl she once was. He has known her since she was fifteen. Even if she falls in love again. Even if she marries again. Nobody loves their children like their mother and father, and Julia, right now, needs people to know how much she loves her child, in order to feel understood herself.

“Yeah?” he says softly, just hesitating, his back still to her.

“I should let you go to bed. I...” she says. “I saw you moved your clothes.”

“Yeah,” he says, eyes downcast. “You all right?” he prompts. Soon, he will go up to his bedroom and she to hers. She will hear him pull off his clothes, open the top drawer, find loungewear. The click of the toothpaste uncapped, electric toothbrush. A sigh as he gets into bed. The dry turn of the page of a novel. And then later, much later than when they used to share a bed, the click of his light going off. That’s all they have now. Their routines, once together, now divided into solo sounds.

“It’s... it’s just a tough case,” she says, instead of all this.

“Okay.”

“She’s—well. It’s complicated. I’d tell you, but it would become your worry, too.”

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