Five Days in Summer

now would their income allow them to move, or at least soon it would; in two days he would know for sure. He saw himself signing the contract for the new job in neat precedence to the contract for the new house. His saw his new kitchen: a six-burner Viking cooktop, a double oven built into the wall, a built-in fridge, granite countertops, and custom-made cabinetry of a light wood, maybe birch. They would raise their children to adulthood in that house. When they were old, he and Emily would retire together to the Cape.
    He grabbed a handful of string beans from the strainer, jostled them into a line on the cutting board and sliced the tips off one end, then the other. In a clear glass bowl he’d collected a rainbow of sliced carrots, red peppers and broccoli florets. He peeked under the lid at the pot of water he was heating for pasta; a boil was undulating but hadn’t bubbled to the surface. He replaced the top and stirred the onions, then sat down to look at the morning newspaper while he waited to put the pasta in. The front section was full of the same old stories, politics at home and trouble abroad, and after a quick leaf through the second section he had read enough.
    He put down the paper and reached over to press down the corner of Sam’s monster drawing where the tape was coming loose from the wall. Better yet, he’d replace the tape; he’d been meaning to do it for months, but in the rush of life that consumed minutes like candy, it never got done. He got out the masking tape and went to work, repairing all the crooked and loose art: creatures and aliens by Sam; Escher-like transformations of fish into ninjas, and the like, by David; Maxi’s scribbles; and Will’s own cartoony sketches of the kids, hung at eye level to amuse them while they ate. He was just getting to the last drawing when the phone started ringing. It was late for someone to call.
    He picked up the black receiver from its cradle on the counter. The caller ID screen told him the call was coming from Sarah’s house. Emily phoning to say good night.
    “You’d be so proud of me,” he greeted her.
    “Will?” It wasn’t Emily. “Will, it’s Sarah. I’ve been trying you for hours.”
    “I just got home a little while ago, I haven’t checkedthe machine. Why are you still up?” She usually went to bed at nine thirty.
    “I should have your work number. Don’t you have a cell phone too? I should have all your phone numbers. I should have a list with every phone number for both of you.”
    Will had not heard Sarah so distraught since just after Jonah’s death, when she had focused on details to avoid noticing the glacial shift beneath her feet.
    “Emily has all my numbers.”
    Silence.
    “Sarah?”
    “I don’t know where she is.”
    The lid of the pasta pot began to shake above a rolling boil. Hot oil snapped out of the frying pan where the onions were starting to burn.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know where she is.”
    “What time did she get back from shopping?”
    He heard the whisper of Sarah’s breath. “She didn’t.”
    “But I talked to her. I called her on her cell phone, she was in the parking lot. She said she was on her way home.”
    “You spoke with her? Do you remember what time it was? The police—”
    “You called the police?”
    “Will dear, don’t you think I should have?”
    Of course she should have. It was just that the idea of Emily not arriving home made no sense. Emily was always home, and if she wasn’t, he knew exactly where she was. She didn’t keep secrets and she didn’t like mystery.
    If she wasn’t home, she had to be somewhere.
    “I’ll call her cell phone,” he said.
    “I’ve been calling it all night, Will. She doesn’t answer. That message comes on.”
    “What did you tell the police?”
    “I told them she went to the Stop and Shop. That she usually gets home in about two hours. That she calls if she’s going to be delayed. I told them all I know.”
    Will’s body walked to the fridge and pulled the blue marker off the dry-erase board; his mind froze in place. Freeze-dancing, Sammie called the game they played in school. A contradiction in terms. An impossibility.
    “Who did you talk to at the police?”
    “Detective Al Snow. I have his number.”
    Will wrote the name and number on the crowded board, under his outsized WEDNESDAY 3:00 MADISON SQUARE, over Emily’s plan Val’s baby shower early Nov. , next to the partially rubbed-off caricature of the