Five Days in Summer

Volvo. “So this is it.”
    Will nodded. “The groceries are still there.”
    Geary stepped closer and stuck his head into the back of the car. He made a face and pulled out. “I’ve smelled worse, unfortunately. I saw you checking the ground.” He swung himself down to peer under the car. “Too bad it rained last night.”
    “I was driving in it. I could hardly see.” Will pictured Emily drowning, submerged by the force of the heavy rain. He saw her eyes close, her mouth open, a spray of bubbles carrying away her breath. He shook his head and the image scattered like unwanted dust.
    “The rain won’t help forensics,” Geary said. “Anyway he probably didn’t touch the car. He probably waited until she finished loading up her stuff and locked the trunk.”
    “He?”
    Geary’s old walnut face considered Will. “Ninetynine times out of a hundred, it’s a he. Been inside the store?”
    Will liked Geary well enough — the old man seemed harmless — but he didn’t like his certainty, the he . Geary’s assumptions were already conjuring pictures Will’s mind couldn’t hold. “I’m going in now,” Will said, and turned to walk away.
    “Hold it a minute.” Geary nearly dove into the putrid-smelling back end of the Volvo. He poked through the bags until he found the long, white receipt. He scanned the top and then the bottom. His rheumy blue eyes lifted to Will. “Cashier number eight.”
    It was a smart move and Will was thankful, but when Geary tried to hand him the receipt, he shook his head. He had the information he hadn’t known he needed; he didn’t want the piece of paper. He wasn’t sure why but he didn’t want to touch it.
    Geary nodded but didn’t smile; his eyes just sat on Will and waited. Finally, he spoke. “I could help you, you know.”
    Had a stranger offered help to Emily yesterday? Help getting the groceries into the car? I could help you, you know. Had it started as simply as that?
    “I don’t know,” Will said. Let me hold you, Mrs. Simon had whispered into his four-year-old ear. “I’ll think about it.”
    Will turned and walked across the parking lot. He didn’t look but he could feel Geary watching his back. His sweaty shirt stuck to his skin. He was grateful forthe blast of dry, cool air when the store’s automatic doors slid open. It was a strange time of morning in the store, a junction of sleepless exhaustion and early-bird energy. A small group hovered at the tiny coffee bar, sharing a daily transition. Will felt a covetous pang for the simple normality of ritual. Breakfast in the morning with the family, helping get the boys off to school, playing with Maxi while Emily showered, then back to the restaurant for another long day and late night.
    He walked past dozens of nested shopping carts and stopped when he saw what appeared to be an endless row of cashiers. The closest one was numbered twenty-one. He walked along the exit ends of the checkout counters until he reached number eight. The light on the signpost was off; the checkout was closed. It was a dead end. But at a dead end, you didn’t turn off your motor, you turned around and looked for the next road out.
    Fifteen feet back, toward the main entrance, Will spotted a counter built into the wall with a window and a sign above it reading INFORMATION. It seemed the obvious place to start.
    He went to the window and rang the little bell on the silver-and-pink-speckled Formica counter. No one came at first, so he rang again. He glanced around at the cashiers near him and none seemed to notice that he was standing there. He rang the bell again, four times, hard.
    This time, a young man emerged from a back room. He wore a starched white short-sleeved shirt with a blue-and-red-striped tie that stopped short of his last button. A name tag pinned above his shirt pocket announced him as TODD, MANAGER . He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old.
    Todd smiled to reveal two tracks of braces. He leaned into the counter. “What can I do for you, sir?”
    “My wife shopped here yesterday,” Will said.
    Todd nodded and smiled.
    “And she never came home.”
    Todd’s smile began to melt.
    “She was last seen here.”
    “Are you sure she shopped here — at this Super Stop and Shop? We have other outlets all around the Cape. And there’s a Shaw’s over at the Commons.”
    “This is where she always shops,” Will said. “The receipt says she was at checkout number eight. Can I find out who