Page 81 of Just Another Missing Person

And that’s all it takes. Gasoline a river between us, I strike the match, and connect the call.

39

Julia

It’s Genevieve’s birthday today, but Julia is driving home to an empty house. She had said goodbye to Art and Genevieve earlier—they had called into the station on their way to Bristol for the last part of the evening, to play Ghetto Golf. Art had waited in the car, while Julia took Genevieve to get fish and chips. It was the best she could do; a poor token offered up for her daughter’s birthday.

Outside the station, the evening sky had begun to darken. “Chips is a good birthday present,” Genevieve said, Julia thought sincerely.

“I didn’t only get you chips,” Julia exclaimed, thinking of the piñata cake she’d had delivered that morning, of the Ray-Ban sunglasses and the Beauty Pie delivery. All things bought in haste, online, but still purchased with love in mind.

The moon was up and casting a gilded finish on a patch of road. The sky was a Sistine Chapel, an Italian Renaissance painting, peach, pink, neon. Genevieve had scuffed her shoes uncharacteristically as they walked. She didn’t look much like herself at all, actually, Julia thought, studying her. Unwashed hair. Unusually plain clothes. Julia hadn’t noticed until then.

It was stormy, all-over-the-place spring weather. Violent winds, fierce sun in the day, freezing temperatures at night. Genevieve looked cold, slim shoulders hunched. She stared at Julia from within a black hood she had pulled up. “Is everything all right?” Genevieve had asked directly.

“Yes,” Julia lied.

“I have been thinking about—you know... Zac,” she said simply. “Since we talked about my dreams.”

“I see,” Julia said, looking curiously at her daughter.

The street unfolded in front of them, undulating and clear. It went this way and that, a direct contrast to the mess they found themselves in. The sun had dipped beyond the horizon. The air was darkening quickly like music on slow fade. “I just wonder if I should have just confessed,” Genevieve said, seemingly out of nowhere. They turned up an unlit side street. “I wonder if that’s why—why I dream about it. Because it’s never about what he did to me. It’s always about what I did to him.”

“Nobody asks to be mugged, Gen,” Julia said. They walked in silence for several minutes as the universe turned the lights out. Eventually, Genevieve looked at Julia. Her face was a blue, underwater blur in the complete black. “You did what—what you had to do.”

“No, but—”

“But what?”

“But if we hadn’t covered it up, we’d have something else now.”

Julia didn’t answer for several minutes. “What?” she said eventually, thinking that she didn’t want to be having this discussion, not now, not now she was so far down a line.

“Freedom,” Genevieve said.

“No, Genevieve,” Julia had said. “You wouldn’t. We wouldn’t.”

Genevieve shrugged. “I’m just—I’m scared, that’s all.”

“I know,” Julia said. “But I promise—it’ll be fine.”

“In all of your cases... you know, not once have someone’s actions been understandable. So I kind of think, why do I think mine were?”

Julia nodded, thinking. The obsession with the cases, the police. A slow, anxious sifting: are any of these criminals like me? No. More searching. Here, now, this behavior makes perfect sense to her.

“What are you scared of?” she asked her daughter.

“That we made it worse,” Genevieve said immediately.

“We didn’t,” Julia said through a sigh, but her shoulders felt heavy. “I promise, we didn’t.”

“Well. Who knows? Look—sure you can’t get away?” Genevieve said, her eyes darting to Julia: one final ask. Julia winced with it. The maternal guilt was a well-flexed muscle, but that didn’t make it any less painful. In fact, perhaps more so.

“I’m sorry,” she said, the words sounding lame.

When they had arrived back, chips in hand, Art was standing in the dark foyer. The lights were on timers, and in the absence of anybody being checked in, they had switched off. Genevieve wandered down a back corridor, keen to explore, or to get away from the emotional vulnerability she’d just shown Julia, perhaps.

Art had on a pale denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

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