help them locate Sullivan. Earlier today, Eyewitness News 8 spoke to Rita Diaz, Sullivan’s wife, at her home in Ridgeway, Maine. Diaz says she’s trying to remain hopeful, even as days continue to pass with no new leads.”
When the shot changes, Rita is sitting on a couch, a painting of a ballerina hanging a little off-kilter on the wall behind her. Her dark hair is pushed back into a ponytail, but flyaways frizz around her face. Her eyes look puffy and sleepless.
“If it’s true,” she says, “what everyone’s speculating—that she was taken by the same man who took her twenty years ago—then she’ll be back. I know she will. He brought her home last time, and aside from the… aftereffects of the trauma, she was fine.”
Rita squints with conviction at someone off camera. “So I have to… I have to believe she’ll be fine this time, too. It’s the only thing keeping me together. But Astrid—” She pivots to look straight into the camera. Her dark eyes soften. “If you’re seeing this somehow… I love you, okay? I’m waiting for you, baby.”
A lump grows in my throat. I sip my water to try to swallow it down.
“What a fucking travesty.”
I tear my eyes from the TV and look at the woman still standing next to my table. She’s glaring at the screen, shaking her head, arms crossed tight. “I mean, Jesus, Astrid,” she mutters. “What are the chances?”
The news moves on, and the barista turns the volume back down. Conversations resume, though something somber hangs in the air, heavy as the humidity outside. A few moments pass, but the woman beside me doesn’t move. She’s still staring at the TV as if the reporter will interrupt herself to break the news that Astrid has been found.
“Excuse me,” I say, and I’m not surprised to hear my Social Worker Voice come out. Usually, it’s the only way I can speak to strangers. Social Worker Voice is a little lower than my regular voice. Gentler, too, as if I can’t think of a single reason to be anxious. It’s something I’ve been crafting since my internship days, and it’s how I let students and parents know that I’m on their side, that we’re going to work together until everything’s okay.
“Do you know her?” I ask the woman. “Astrid Sullivan?”
She glances at me, then locks her eyes back onto the screen. “She was my neighbor.”
My breath hitches. I set down my phone on the table. “Oh wow,” I say, careful to stay steady, as Social Worker Voice demands. I struggle for something to add. Come up with only: “Were you close?”
She shrugs. “Not really. She was a couple years older than me. But we carpooled to St. Cecilia’s for CCD.”
“CCD?” I say the letters slowly. They mean nothing to me.
When she looks at me this time, she meets my gaze with narrowed eyes. “Catechism classes? Don’t you remember the CCD stuff in her book?”
“I haven’t read past the prologue,” I admit.
Her brows pinch together. “I’m sorry—who are you?”
Social Worker Smile—easy, soft, a glimpse of gritless teeth. “I’m Fern. I don’t live here or anything, I’m… passing through.”
She nods slowly. “Uh-huh.”
The café door opens and a rooster crows. I do my best not to flinch. Instead, I press: “You said you were neighbors. What street was that exactly?”
Now she rolls her eyes, instantly exasperated. “Oh god, you’re one of the rubberneckers, aren’t you?”
“Um… I don’t think so? I’m—”
“Because it was bad enough the first time. All those people showing up, standing vigil on her parents’ front lawn. But now, I cut through Bleeker yesterday to take my daughter to ballet, and there’s a line of cars, right in front of the house, everyone gaping.” She puts her palms on the table and leans toward me. I press my back against the chair. “She doesn’t live there anymore—her parents are dead! She wasn’t even taken from Foster this time!”
She straightens up and crosses her arms again. Shakes her head as she looks out the window.
“I’m not a rubbernecker,” I assure her.
* * *
I use GPS to navigate to Bleeker, and once I turn onto the street, it isn’t hard to find Astrid’s old house. Just like the woman said, there’s a line of cars—three, I count, plus one news van—parked along the side of the road. The properties are spaced out enough that it’s easy to tell which is the one the rubberneckers are here for. The house is quintessential suburbia—big and white, gray shuttered