One Cold Night

their perfect blend.
    “Did Lisa come home?” Audrey McInnis asked in her gentle Jamaican lilt.
    “Not yet.” Susan’s voice was an unintentional whisper; it was the most she could manage.
    “Teenagers wander off sometimes,” Audrey said, “don’t they.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. Yes, teenagers did wander off, and they came back. Lisa will come back.
    Susan thought of the college students, a young couple whose recent disappearance had sparked a nationwide manhunt... until they turned up alive and well and hardly contrite for the turmoil they had put their grown-ups through. Their families had been unable to come up with a single reason for either of them to bolt, and yet they had.
    Lisa, Susan reminded herself, had a reason. In a way, her disappearance even made sense right at this moment in her life. Lisa was nothing if not dramatic; painting the line, then suddenly throwing the paintbrush could well have been part of some emotional outburst. Maybe Dave was right. Maybe Lisa had decided to paint the line and then, on a swell of anger, changed her mind.
    Susan pictured Lisa alone somewhere; she saw her at the helm of the Staten Island Ferry, her long, bright hair thrashing in the night air, drinking in the urban horizons and thinking and thinking and thinking over the news. Susan forced herself to see Lisa in gentle contemplation, because it was the only way she could stand to picture her right now; the alternatives were too frightening.
    Then her mind veered back to the footprint; that partial footprint made in a hurry and nowhere near Lisa’s shoe size. And her heart, already cantilevered over empty space, began the plunge.
    Looking at Glory’s pretty, tear-streaked face, Susan finally began to cry. Glory flew into her arms and she held her, wishing it were Lisa. After a few minutes, Glory pulled out of Susan’s arms to say, “She would have told me if she was going to run away. No way would she run away without me knowing. No way!”
    “Glory, baby” — Audrey ran a hand down her daughter’s back — “you can’t keep jumping to conclusions—”
    “No, Mom! She just wouldn’t! And you know they wouldn’t be doing all that ” — Glory swung her arm toward the office door, beyond which police swarmed the factory, shop and street — “if there wasn’t something really, really, really wrong.”
    It was one of those awful moments when there was nothing to say; none of them had the answers, and Glory’s melodramatic declaration seemed plainly accurate.
    Neil shifted his sleepy eyes between his wife, his daughter and Susan. “That coffee rig working out there?” He was referring to the industrial Italian coffeemaker behind the counter in the shop. “I worked in a restaurant in college. How about we supply the troops with some caffeine?”
    “Yes,” Susan said, grateful for Neil’s suggestion. “And let’s put out some chocolates. Glory, will you make up a tray? Choose all your favorites, and Lisa’s too. I’ve got to call my parents now.”
    “Come on,” Audrey said, ushering her family to their tasks.
    Alone in the office, Susan pulled the desk phone toward her and looked at it: new lightweight plastic, slate gray. She thought about what she would say to her mother and father. They were the only other people in the world who knew the whole story of Lisa’s birth, and she yearned to consult with them about the confessions. There was so much to discuss, but right now, in the middle of the night — with Lisa gone — was not the time to pour out her heart.
    She dialed their number. It rang and rang and rang; both her parents were poor sleepers and used earplugs at night. Finally, her father’s gruff voice answered, sounding partly annoyed and partly alarmed.
    “Hello? Hello!”
    “Daddy, it’s me, Suzie.”
    There was a pause, then a statement of irrefutable fact: “It’s three forty-four in the morning.”
    “I’m sorry, Daddy.” There was an hour difference between Texas and New York, but at this time of the night it hardly seemed to matter. “Maybe I should talk to Mommy instead.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Have you heard from Lisa tonight?”
    “Lisa?”
    In the quiet of his pause, Susan could picture her parents in their iris-papered bedroom, the dark wood of their carved headboard rising behind them.
    “Did Lisa call tonight?” Bill Bailey’s groggy voice asked Carole, his wife.
    “Lisa?” Susan heard her mother’s voice, sounding tenorless