A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

recalls anything amiss that night or the following day. What day did
Mrs. Hanaka say this happened?” she asks.
“She didn’t,” I say. “She wasn’t sure. She could only guess about a
week or two ago.”
Bea goes next. She tells the detective about the Tebows’
malpractice suit against Dr. Feingold, because there’s another
possible suspect to consider besides Jason Tebow. The detective
already knows about the malpractice suit. What she doesn’t know is
that Meredith was Shelby’s doula. Bea tells her.
I’m ashamed to admit to our own run-in with Dr. Feingold. I let Bea
tell the detective, feeling embarrassed as she does. The detective
tells us in the future to leave the police work to the police.
The detective says that she’ll be in touch. We end the call.
Bea and I turn on the TV. I drink my wine and try to wind down as
another thunderstorm tears through town. But I can’t relax. Because
I can’t stop thinking about Meredith and Delilah out there in this rain,
cold and scared and wet. The lightning is rapid-fire. The thunder is
so intense it feels like the entire house will give.
And then, suddenly, it’s black in the house. The storm has stolen
our power from us.
The blackness is so unexpected that my heart nearly stops.
Without meaning to, I scream. The low drone of the refrigerator goes
suddenly quiet. The dryer, a ceiling fan and the TV turn off. The
house is silent, abnormally so. I never noticed the whir of the ceiling
fan, but the absence of it I do. The absence of it is deafening.
Wyatt begins to moan at my feet, and I rub his ears, saying, “It’s
okay, it’s okay,” but I don’t know that it is. I push myself from the
seat, leaving in search of candles and flashlights, coming back with
as many as I can find.
Until now we’d been one of the lucky ones with power. Our luck
has run out, it seems.
I sit beside Bea. I light the candles, setting them on the coffee
table. I hand Bea a flashlight, and then use mine to scan the darkest
corners of the room. The furniture startles me as I try and make
sense of the shadows to understand that they’re not human but
synthetic. No one is here but Bea and me.