A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

I think he’s had a bad dream, something about you disappearing.
It would be understandable. I go to your room to see for myself, but
he’s right. You are gone. The blankets and sheets are pulled all the
way up like no one’s ever slept in the bed. My clothes are on the
floor. You didn’t put them on.
I check the window first. It’s closed and locked. Wherever you
went, you didn’t go out that way. I think you ran away, but maybe
your kidnapper came and got you. “The fucking reporters.” That’s
what Dad’s muttering, ’cause anyone watching the news now knows
what town we live in, what our house looks like, and they know that
you’re here. A ten-year-old with internet access and a bike could find
you.
I leave your room. I check the bathroom, and then Dad and I race
downstairs to scout out places you might be. We come up empty.
There’s no sign of you on the first floor. The front door and the back
door are shut and locked.
Dad’s on the phone, calling the lady cop because he has her
number programmed into his phone. It’s the middle of the night, but
that doesn’t stop him. There are cops sitting right outside, but Dad
doesn’t bother with them or with 911.
The lady cop answers immediately. “Carmen. It’s me. Josh,” he
says, breathlessly. His informality makes me want to gag.
I leave. I go from window to window, trying to figure out which way
you went. You have no shoes. So whichever way you went, you went
barefoot. But that’s nothing new to you.
I make the rounds. The windows are shut. They’re all locked. You
didn’t go out any of them. I head back toward the kitchen. I pass by
the basement door on the way there. I don’t know why I look, except
that I’m running out of options. I open the door. It’s black down the
steps. The basement is unfinished because even though Mom
hoped to finish it one day, it didn’t happen before she tried to slash
her wrists. Tried being the operative word, because she failed. The
cuts were shallow, not enough to bleed out. There were a whole
bunch of them, but they only got the surface veins. Mom didn’t get
down to either of the main arteries, the ones that would have killed
her. According to statistics, most people who try to slash their wrists
fail. Because it hurts.