A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

as their guide. Bea and I will stay and canvass the neighborhood,
because we live here. Because we know the neighbors, and we
know our way around.
Before anyone splits, Bea takes cell phone numbers. She starts a
group chat, so we can update each other with news. Josh sends a
picture of Meredith over the group chat so we have it to show
around. He gets choked up when he scrolls through and finds the
image on his own phone. It’s a picture of Meredith with Delilah and
Leo, taken recently. Meredith is a beautiful woman. In the picture,
her hair is gathered into a loose bun on the top of her head. Her skin
is fair, covered in freckles, and her eyes are a stunning mineral
green. She’s clearly of Irish descent, dressed in some kind of
embroidered shift dress that’s as red as the hair on her head.
I feel a pang of sadness at seeing the image of Meredith, with little
Leo and Delilah wrapped beneath each of her slight arms. I pray
nothing bad has happened to her or Delilah, who sits beside
Meredith in the photograph, tiny and nearly toothless, staring lovingly
at her mom and smiling so sweetly it makes my heart hurt.
I may never have kids. Bea and I talked about the possibility of
using donor sperm to get one of us pregnant. We got so far as to
discuss which of us would be better equipped to carry a baby—Bea,
who’s larger in stature but also more maternal than me—and
whether we’d want a sperm donor we knew or if we’d prefer to keep
it anonymous. I wanted to keep it anonymous, but that was too
impersonal for Bea. Too cold. She wanted to use the sperm of
someone we knew, which felt weird to me. Bea and some man we
knew having a child together. That’s where the conversation ended.
My eyes move to Bea’s now. She stares over my shoulder at the
picture. Her eyes are misty like mine.
“They’ll turn up,” she says, her hand on my arm, and though she
sounds so certain, she’s thinking the same thing as me: What if they
never come back? We’ve grown close to Josh and Meredith over the
years; we’ve grown close to their kids. “They’re fine. They have to be
fine,” Bea says, voice trembling, fighting tears, and I wonder if it’s
only wishful thinking.
Are they fine? My gut tells me they’re not.