Page 11 of Vineyard Winds

“Do they usually?” Steve asked.

“Do they usually what?”

“Do teenage girls like this usually show back up?”

Rina reached her car and placed her forehead on the edge, blinking through the tinted windows to see her sunglasses case, several take-out napkins, and a pair of earrings she’d removed that morning, deciding they weren’t right for the hospital. Everything felt outside of time.

“Rina? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Rina rasped. “Teenage girls? You asked if they usually come home?”

“Yes. Rina, are you all right?”

“They usually come home,” Rina said, rubbing her left eye so hard that she saw bright flashes of light. “They usually want to prove something. But that’s not every case. That’s not every girl.”

Steve was quiet. Rina could picture him at the auto shop, his nose smeared with black from the bottom of somebody’s car. That was how she’d initially met him, she remembered now. Her rental car kept turning off. She’d been in a crazy mood, on the verge of kicking the wheels until her toes were bruised. But Steve had stepped in and fixed it. He’d smiled at the volatility that surged from her—as though he accepted it, even when he didn’t understand it.

“Keep me updated,” Rina offered.

“Rina…” Steve whispered her name and Rina’s heart felt squeezed. “Rina, maybe we should talk.”

But Rina didn’t have the energy for a conversation about “them,” about “expectations,” about the messy “will-they, won’t-they” of the previous year. Her mother had just torn open old wounds and left her to bleed, metaphorically speaking, across the linoleum of the hospital floor.

“I have to go,” Rina said. “Talk soon.”

And she hung up.

ChapterFive

Claire and Russel sat in the waiting room outside the University of Massachusett’s counseling office. Hardly noticing it, Claire shredded a pamphlet she’d picked up on the side table, one about “how to help your college-aged student from home.” Pieces of paper fell to the ground.

Gail’s counselor opened the door and greeted Claire and Russel by name. Claire leaped up and followed him into his office. It was decorated like something out of a university catalog, with a long mahogany desk, oil paintings of the river and trees near campus, and thick wooden bookshelves filled with novels and academic texts. Seth Alton, the counselor, was in his mid-thirties and balding, the last of his reddish hair clinging to his scalp.

Once upon a time, Russel had been balding, too. But he’d had implants. His head was bushy and thick, the sort of thing Claire had once loved to swirl her fingers through.

“Please, sit down.” Seth gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk.

Claire and Russel sat, Claire at the very front of the chair, like a nervous student in class. “Thank you for meeting with us so quickly.”

Seth glanced at the box of tissue on the desk. It looked as though he’d put it there just for Claire and Russel. As though he’d expected this meeting to be messy.

“Clear this up for me,” Seth began. “You haven’t heard from your daughter in how long?”

“She didn’t come back to the dorm two days ago,” Claire said.

“It was less than forty-eight hours ago,” Russel said. “She left that afternoon and never came home that night.”

“Is it possible she’s just crashing with a friend this week?” Seth asked. “The first week back after Christmas break is always a bit foggy for the students. They party a little too hard because they don’t have as many academic responsibilities and forget themselves. Just walking across campus this morning, I saw what looked to be five zombies carrying bottles of vodka.”

“She lives with her twin sister,” Claire blared, interrupting him, hating how angry she sounded. “And Abby hasn’t heard from Gail, either.”

“Did they get into an argument of some kind?” Seth asked.

“Yes,” Russel bucked in. “They weren’t speaking very much over Christmas break.”

Seth gave Russel a half smile as though that cleared things up considerably. “To me, that means Gail is off somewhere with a friend, cooling off. Maybe she wants to apply to change rooms. That happens here all the time. We could even bring someone else into Abby’s room. Someone who isn’t happy with their current circumstances.”

“You don’t understand,” Claire said. “This isn’t normal behavior. My twins were thick as thieves until last week. Something happened.”

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