A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

try because maybe it was drunk college kids heading home from a
night in the bars, or maybe it was someone else.
Bea and I drink our coffees quickly. I’m anxious to get back on the
street and continue the search. We say our goodbyes. Cassandra
walks us to the door, stepping outside with us. She watches us
leave.
We move on, following a path of stepping stones through her
sodden lawn, leaving Cassandra on her front porch alone. We stop
at other homes on the block. When we reach the end of it, we turn
the corner and keep going. Along this next block, many of the
houses belong to the college. Some are administrative buildings or
the private homes of professors, while others, the more unkempt of
them—those with sofas on porches and beer bottles in plain sight—
belong to students. Graduation was a few weeks ago; the summer
session hasn’t begun. Most of the houses we come to are vacant; no
one is home. We keep walking.
It’s midafternoon when, a few blocks from our own home, we
come to the house of Shelby Tebow. We know which is hers
because it’s been all over the news. Hers sits outside the historic
district, and is one of the last original homes that remains on a block
of teardowns. It’s midcentury, surrounded by brand-new custom
homes that start in the seven figures. There are yellow ribbons tied
to the trees up and down the street. A street pole bears Shelby’s
face, the word Missing in big, black print, the sign itself encased in a
plastic sheet protector to save it from the rain. I’ve seen this same
sign around town, in store windows and on restaurant doors. There
are flowers laid on the sidewalk just before her home. A kind gesture
and also a grim reminder of what’s happened here.
I tell Bea that I think we should skip the Tebows’ house. Something
about going to the home of a missing woman to inquire about
another missing woman feels in poor taste. But Bea disagrees. “We
should go to their house because of the similarity, not despite it,” she
says, and I know then that she’s right.
I’ve heard Jason Tebow has a temper. I’ve seen it in press
conferences on TV. But Bea isn’t scared. She takes the lead and,
again, I envy her assertiveness. Bea is a born leader. With
hesitation, I follow her down the narrow walkway, up a single stoop