“Not so much anymore,” I say, but I don’t elaborate.
“So your husband could have gotten up, and you wouldn’t have noticed?”
I shoot him a look, my eyebrow cocked. “He was questioned extensively, obviously. I mean, yeah, I guess he could have, but Ben wouldn’t hurt our son. He had no reason to. We were happy.”
“What about the neighbors?” Waylon asks. “Did they see anything?”
I shake my head, sipping silently.
“And what time did you notice he was gone?”
I’m quiet, replaying that morning again in my mind. How I had woken up early, around six, the way I always did. How I had brewed my coffee, puttered around the kitchen. Wasted two precious hours scrolling through Instagram and reading the newspaper and scrambling eggs before I had ever even thought to check on him. Because that’s the thing about time: It feels endless in the mornings, the day stretched out before you like a long yawn. I remember actually feeling relieved as it continued to drag on, slow and uneventful, no noises erupting from beneath his bedroom door. No screams or whines or cries. I was grateful that he was sleeping in, that I had a few more moments of quiet than normal. Of precious time to myself.
I didn’t realize that the second I poked my head into his bedroom, I would soon be racing against it. Begging it to stop.
“A little after eight.”
“Any clues?” he asks, a burning intensity in his eyes. I look down at his drink, notice the way he’s twirling his glass in rhythmic circles. “Prints? DNA?”
“An open window,” I say. “I’m almost positive I closed it the night before. Sometimes we opened it, to let the fresh air in, but I never would have—”
I stop, exhale, take another drink.
“They found our fingerprints on the windowsill, obviously, but nobody else’s. There was a partial shoeprint in the mud outside his window—it had rained that morning—but not enough to glean any real meaning from it.”
“Estimated shoe size?”
“They think it may have been somewhere between a size nine and a size eleven, but we had workers, too. Lots of people who could have left it. The exterminator came the day before and sprayed in that exact spot, so we don’t even know if he’s the one—”
“You keep sayinghe,” Waylon interrupts. “Do you know the person who took him is a he?”
“Well, no,” I admit. “But the vast majority of stranger kidnappings are committed by men.”
“Well, the alternative to a stranger kidnapping is the kidnapper being someone in the family,” he says. “Someone close.”
“Yes,” I say, biting my cheek. “And the vast majority of parental kidnappings are committed by women. The mother. So why don’t we get that out of the way right now?”
I look at Waylon, my eyes unflinching.
“I didn’t hurt my son. I didn’t do anything to him. I’m trying to find the person whodid.”
“That’s… not what I was implying,” Waylon responds, his hands raised in surrender. He looks genuinely uncomfortable, once again surprised at my sudden outburst, like that time on the plane, so I simply nod and turn back toward the bar, my cheeks burning as I scan all the different bottles of amber liquid glistening in the dim light.
“Is there anything else you think is worth mentioning?” he asks, trying to gently nudge us along again. “Clues, I mean?”
“Yes,” I say, a squeeze in my chest. “They found his stuffed animalwhen they were searching the neighborhood. A dinosaur he used to sleep with.”
“Where in the neighborhood?”
I’m quiet, sticking my finger in the glass and swiping at a speck of sediment stuck to the rim.
“On the banks of the marsh,” I say finally. “In the mud.”
“I’m assuming they searched the marsh, though, right? For any other clues? Or…”
“Helicopters, divers,” I say, answering his question preemptively so he doesn’t have to say what I know he’s thinking: a body.Him. “They didn’t find anything else—though, of course, with the falling tide, any of his other belongings could have been pulled into the ocean, so we may never know.”
“Do you have any theories?” he asks at last. “What doyouthink happened?”