One Cold Night

a while, Susan had been his crown jewel; his attention had elevated her. She could still feel the special aura she carried with her that year at school. What she could never explain to anyone was how, outside the limelight, Peter deflated.
    Her words, describing Peter to Dave just before, had failed to explain the boy she had loved. He was vibrant, mercurial, brilliant, sensual; and at the same time he could be detached and platitudinous, a discrepancy of persona he allowed when they were alone. To say her teenage boyfriend had slapped her face when she had told him about the abortion — or lied to him, rather, though he hadn’t known it — didn’t capture the moment. She could still feel the sting on her left cheek. She could see Peter holding out his hand, stiff as a board, actually looking proud of himself.
    “I love you, Peter,” she had said to him after the slap, out of an instinct for survival that thinly served the moment. After all these years, she still felt ashamed of that slap and of her reaction to it. At the time, she had felt ashamed of what she had done to deserve it. Then, over the years, she realized she had never deserved it and had grown ashamed of loving someone who thought she did.
    “If you loved me, Suzie, you would not have killed our baby. You know you’ll burn in hell for this.”
    She had learned that when he wanted real clout, he reached into his Christian faith for imagery. But all the kids did that back then — conjuring a religious patina to cover all sorts of bad behavior — and when he’d said those words, burn in hell, she really couldn’t see it. Though as the years rolled on, the image had gained some weight as confusion and guilt accumulated into a kind of millstone she wore inside her skin.
    When Bill and Carole Bailey had decided they would raise Susan’s baby, an urgent plan had been put into place. The family house in Vernon was sold and, just as Susan’s body threatened to look more pregnant than fat, they moved a dozen counties away, from Wilbarger to Panola, to the town of Carthage. Bill made the move alone, relocating his independent insurance office, while Susan and Carole spent the summer in Corning, Iowa, at Carole’s sister May’s farmhouse. When Lisa was born in early September, Carole stayed on and Susan returned alone to a new life in a new house in a new town. She had started at her new school just a week after Lisa’s birth. She remembered the bittersweet disorientation of those weeks, going to school with her breasts taped beneath her shirt to stop the milk. After that, she saw Peter Adkins only once more, four years later: She noticed him through the broad window of a 7-Eleven, clerking the late shift, as she made a rare visit back to Vernon to visit a friend.
    Susan knew by now that Lisa wasn’t getting any of her e-mails. She took out her BlackBerry anyway.
    How do you explain love? I wouldn’t know where to begin. Love was seeing you right after you were born. Love is now, this burning pain in my chest.
    A scraping noise from the factory, just outsideSusan’s office door, jolted her. She sent the e-mail and stood up. Audrey McInnis was sliding a tray of chocolate truffles out of the rack and carrying it into the store.
    Taking a deep breath, Susan walked through the factory and the shop until she found herself outside on the dark, chilly street. More police had arrived. In a kind voice, Officer Zeb Johnson informed her of what was happening, as if it were her right to know everything. It was a simple courtesy, of course, she being Lisa’s custodial adult — or mother, depending on what the police now knew. Had Dave come out here and announced Susan’s confession to everyone? Stood on the curb and shouted it out? No, Susan thought, that wasn’t Dave’s style; he would churn the information carefully. But surely Detectives Ramos and Bruno would have to know, and she resigned herself to the slow broadcast of her life’s dearest secret. She had a daughter, whom she had sheltered from the truth but nevertheless loved. Susan Bailey-Strauss was the mother of a teenage girl who was now missing.
    Workers for the early shift began to appear, and one by one Susan turned them away. The cordoned-off piece of Water Street was beginning to look like a film set, as if a Law & Order production crew had landed there for the day, a circumstance to which most New Yorkers were well accustomed. Some of the workers hung around as if they might be hired as