Sam
Five. Six.
Seven o’clock comes, and still no message.
The curtains are drawn, so she can’t make out any details inside, but there is a row of tiny potted herbs sitting between the glass of the windowsill and the curtain. She stands there for a while, trying to locate a moving silhouette inside. But no one is there.
She opens her eyes, then makes a different call, not to her mother but to Will.
“What is it?” he says.
Sam tells him that her mother is missing, asks if he can put some feelers out in the city to try to find her.
“Done,” Will says. His calm authority makes her feel a little better.
She thanks him and hangs up. Paces a while longer. Waits in the car for another hour. The time for them to meet comes and goes. Her phone doesn’t ring. Her mother doesn’t show up.
She tries and tries to call for the rest of the night, then the next day. No answer.
It isn’t until the following day that she finally gets a message from Will, telling her to meet him in his office.
It’s about your mother.
They don’t even need a meeting. She already knows from those words, already feels a sickly, sinking darkness in her chest, but she goes anyway, in the hopes that maybe he’ll tell her something that surprises her. That her mother is alive.
He doesn’t.