and Missy are going to have big lives, how they go to these great colleges, and they’ll have big careers, and, and do things. And I won’t. I can’t.”
“Lila, listen to me.” Bethie looked into Lila’s dark eyes. “No matter where you go to college or what kind of job you have, your mother will still love you. And so will I, and so will Harold, and so will your dad and your sisters.”
Lila shook her head, her expression woeful. “You don’t know. You’re not there, so you don’t hear her. She’ll never be proud of me.”
Bethie kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed, with her back against the padded headboard and her legs out in front of her. She put her arm around Lila’s shoulders, feeling the girl tense, then lean into her. “When your mom and I were your age, there weren’t a lot of options for girls. Like, you know how your mother’s always telling you that you can be anything you want to be when you grow up? That wasn’t what we heard. Men could be doctors or lawyers. We were just supposed to marry them.”
Lila blinked. “My doctor’s a lady,” she said. “So is the principal of my school.”
“Yes,” said Bethie. “Some girls did grow up and became doctors and lawyers and school principals. And then, some of those lawyers couldn’t get jobs once they’d gotten their law degrees. And if you ask your doctor the next time you see her, I’ll bet a lot of times people thought she was a nurse. I bet people still think that your principal is a teacher. A few girls did grow up and do things, and got those jobs, but for the rest of us, we were told that the most important thing was to be married, and be a mother.”
“So my mom didn’t want to get married or be a mother?” asked Lila.
Careful, Bethie thought. “I think your mom loved your dad. I think he loved her. And I know your mother loved being a mom, more than anything. She loved being pregnant, she loved taking care of babies, she loves all three of you girls. If you want to be a wife and a mother, she’ll be proud of you. She just doesn’t want that to be the only choice you have.”
Lila shook her head. Carefully, as if she was approaching a feral cat, Bethie reached out to stroke her hair. “Your mother loves you,” she said. Lila turned her face to the wall and didn’t respond. “I love you, too,” said Bethie. She heard, or thought she heard, Lila saying something, but Lila didn’t speak again, or look at her. After a while, Bethie gave Lila’s shoulders a final squeeze, then got off the bed, padded across the floor, and turned off the lights. In her own bed, she whispered to Harold what had happened, and Harold told her that she’d said all the right things, that she’d done everything she could, that Lila would get through this and come out of it fine.
The next morning, Lila was gone.
* * *
“We have to find her,” Bethie said, pacing the length of the kitchen with the cordless phone in her hand.
“We will. The police are coming,” said Harold. “Can you find a picture? They’ll want that.”
Bethie half walked, half ran to her home office. In the top drawer of her desk were copies of the photos that she’d taken and sent to Jo every week, documenting Lila’s adventures in Atlanta. Our Lady of the Scowls, she’d told Harold as they’d flipped through the images: Lila frowning at the zoo, Lila frowning in the pool, Lila squinting into the sunshine from underneath a Braves cap, Lila glowering at the camera from her black inner tube. Bethie’s stomach lurched. “Where could she be?” She could imagine possibilities from the benign (Lila in the Conaway family’s tree house at the end of the street) to the horrifying (Lila lured into some strange man’s car). Lila had left her suitcase by the bedroom door, but she’d taken her backpack . . . and, Harold reported, a hundred dollars in cash from his wallet. Bethie’s face burned as she remembered sliding her long-ago boss Mr. Breedlove’s wallet out of his pocket, and all the men she’d stolen from, all those years ago. Were such things hereditary? Was that skill buried somewhere deep in Lila’s genetic memory, along with resentfulness and mistrust?
“Should I call Jo?” she asked.
Harold considered.