The Silent Girl

traffic tickets she’d racked up in the past ten years. Three. Because of the Bimbo, Vince Korsak was sitting in this armchair, fat and happy on Angela’s cooking.
    Jane didn’t want to think about all the other ways that Angela made him happy.
    “Chinatown,” Korsak grunted. “Strange place. Good food.”
    He would, of course, mention food. “What do you remember about the Red Phoenix shooting?” she asked. “You must’ve heard the gossip back then.”
    “That one was a wicked shocker. Why would a guy with a cute little girl shoot four people and blow out his own brains? Never made sense to me.” He shook his head. “Such a sweet kid, too. Real daddy’s girl.”
    That surprised her. “You knew the cook’s family?”
    “Not really, but I used to eat there a lot. Those Chinese, they don’t know how to take a day off, so the place was always open, all hours of the night. You could get off a late shift and still have dinner. I was there once at ten on a Sunday night, and that little girl brought out my fortune cookies. It’s like child labor. But she looked like she was happy to be hanging out with Daddy.”
    “You sure it was the cook’s daughter? She would’ve been pretty young.”
    “She looked pretty young. Maybe five? Cute as a button.” He gave a sad sigh. “Can’t believe a father would do that, leave a wife and kid behind. Not to mention all the other families he screwed up. A few weeks later, daughter of one of the victims got kidnapped.”
    “Charlotte Dion.”
    “Was that her name? I just remember it was like a Greek tragedy. Bad luck piled on top of bad luck.”
    “You know the really weird part?” said Jane. “Two years earlier, the daughter of one of the other victims was snatched as well. The waiter’s kid. She disappeared on her way home from school.”
    “No shit? I didn’t know that.” Korsak thought about this for a moment. “That’s freaky. Really makes you wonder if it’s more than just a coincidence.”
    “One of the last things Detective Ingersoll said to me on the phone was something about girls.
What happened to those girls
. Those were his words.”
    “Those two girls? Or other girls?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He shook his head. “All these years later, and here we are still thinking about them. Weird to realize they’re probably nothing but skeletons now.” He paused. “But that’s not what I want to be thinking about tonight. Let’s pour some wine.”
    “I thought you were a beer man.”
    “Your ma’s converted me. Wine’s better for the old ticker anyway, you know.” He heaved himself out of the armchair. “Time to talk about happy things, okay?”
    Not about dead people, thought Jane. Not about mass shootings and kidnapped girls. But when Gabriel came into the house holding Regina by her tiny hand, Jane couldn’t help thinking about Charlotte Dion and Laura Fang. She helped her mother carry platters to the table, a steady succession of ever-more-impressive dishes. Crisp roast potatoes. Green beans drizzled with olive oil. And finally two sumptuous roast chickens, fragrant with rosemary. But even as they sat down to eat, as she tied the bib around Regina and cut her meat into child-sized morsels, Jane was thinking about missing girls and devastated parents. How could a mother go on? She wondered if Iris Fang had ever considered ending her own misery. A leap off a rooftop, a handful of sleeping pills. How much easier than living with grief, day in and day out, pining for loved ones whom you’ll never see again.
    “Something wrong with your meal, Janie?” said Angela.
    Jane looked up at her mother, who had the uncanny knack of knowing exactly what had gone into the mouths of every guest seated at her dining table. “It’s great, Ma. You outdid yourself tonight.”
    “Then why aren’t you eating?”
    “I am.”
    “You took one bite of chicken, then you started moving things around on your plate. I hope you’re not on a diet, because you don’t need to lose any weight, sweetie.”
    “I’m not on a diet.”
    “All these girls, they’re always on diets. Starving on salads, and for what?”
    “Sure ain’t doing it for men,” mumbled Korsak around a mouthfulof potatoes. “Guys like a little meat on a girl.” He winked at Angela. “Take your ma. Built like a woman’s supposed to be built.”
    Jane couldn’t see what was happening under the table, but her mother suddenly bolted straight in her chair, laughing. “Vincent!