Chapter One #2
Now the news turned to a Detroit Ballet fundraiser that a famous ballerina had come to town for. A reporter interviewed the dancer and tried to stand on her tippy-toes to emulate ballerinas during her live report. She lost her balance and tumbled to the side as she and the anchors laughed.
“Don’t quit your day job, Ashley!” Tom guffawed. “All right, up next, weather with Matthew, who’s in for Faith tonight.… Will you need to crank up the AC this weekend? Stay tuned.…”
The show went to commercial break.
Matthew? Carol frowned. Matthew was the weekend weather guy. He was OK, but he was not Faith. Where was her favorite weather gal tonight? Faith had been on the six PM show and not said anything about leaving for the evening, as she sometimes did when she was going to be off.
Carol glanced at Jim, fully asleep and lightly snoring. She looked at her phone, resting between the cranberry juice and a lamp. She thought of Olivia. Maybe Olivia would know where Faith was. After all, she was working the night shift at Channel 9 and would be there now.
Carol picked up her phone and texted.
Hi Liv, where’s Faith tonight? I see Matthew is coming on. Did Faith skip out? Maybe she has a hot date!
Carol knew that Faith was unmarried and had no children.
Could it be a date? It titillated Carol to have inside access to the station like this, and she stared eagerly as the typing bubbles were going.
The bubbles seemed to be taking a long time.
The commercial ended and the anchors were chatting with Matthew in that fake-banter way.
“So Matthew, I have friends coming in from out of town and I need some good weather for them. Can you deliver for us?” asked Veronica, with the huge, toothy smile that Carol always considered way too over-the-top.
“And I’m going to the Tigers game tomorrow,” added Tom. “So we need that sunshine to stick around—but not too hot, please.”
Tom was handsome, with silver hair, but it was extremely hairsprayed and he always looked overtanned, in Carol’s opinion. In fact, Carol believed that Faith was the only one of the four anchors who was fully authentic and genuine. The sports guy, Roger, tried too hard and his puns fell flat.
“I would definitely bring some sunscreen with you to the game, Tom,” replied Matthew, and started his forecast. He looked a little disheveled, his hair sticking up on one side and his tie not fully straight.
Carol took a bite of popcorn followed by a sip of juice, feeling the tang of the cranberries collide with the saltiness of the popcorn. It was the perfect combination.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Olivia, and Carol picked it up.
I don’t know where Faith is but something weird is going on.
Matthew got called in at the last minute.
Faith never returned from her dinner break.
A few managers were running around whispering and went behind closed doors.
Matthew seemed really mad. I heard him say he was having dinner with his fiancée when they made him come in to do the show.
Carol had to read the text twice. Never returned from dinner break? What the…? That wasn’t the Faith she knew and loved.
Looking back at the TV, she felt she could now see an anger in Matthew’s eyes, his jaw firmly set, as he stood in front of the map talking about humidity levels.
Carol frowned and glanced back down at her phone.
What was going on? Curiosity mixed with just a touch of unease as she texted Olivia back:
Never returned from dinner break?
The response came quickly.
That’s what everyone is saying. I guess people tried to call and text her and she never responded. When it got to be late they had to call Matthew to fill in.
Managers behind closed doors? Faith not responding to phone calls? A prickle started in Carol’s tailbone and began to traverse at a rapid pace up her spine.
The typing bubbles were going again. Carol waited impatiently, thoughts of the popcorn and cranberry juice suddenly gone.
Olivia texted again:
You know what’s even weirder? I might have been the last one to see her. I was going to my car to get something I forgot and she was out there. She handed me a folded-up note and asked if I would do her a favor and give it to Tom.
Carol thought immediately of an episode of 20/20 she had seen recently where a note handed to a neighbor had broken open the case.
Too bad they didn’t know what Faith had said in her note to Tom.
Maybe if they did, Carol and Olivia could figure out what was going on.
But before Carol could reply, Olivia texted one more time.
I have to run. Laura, the executive producer, is waving me over. I think she needs something. Talk soon.
OK, Liv. I’m so sorry you had this strange thing happen in your first week.
Olivia hearted it, and Carol knew the conversation was over for now.
But what could be happening with Faith and what did Faith say in that note?
Carol twisted her hands together as she watched Matthew finish his forecast. His endings were so boring, not “… I’m your fair-weather friend…
” like Faith; he just always said stupid things like “So stay cool tomorrow.…”
“Jim?” Carol prodded at her husband with a finger.
“I’m sleeping,” he muttered. Carol felt bad waking him up, she really did. Jim worked long days at his roofing job, but she needed to talk to someone.
“Jim, something is wrong with Faith.”
“Carol, I’m sleeping,” he mumbled again.
“Well, wake up. Something is really wrong with Faith. I was just texting with Olivia.”
Heaving a deep breath, Jim opened one eye.
“Who and what are you talking about?”
Carol told him everything, and Jim’s other eye popped open. She was grateful that he recognized that this was more intrigue than they had seen on a Friday night in a long time.
“So what in the world do you think could have happened?” Carol asked. “I’m a little nervous.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe a misunderstanding, or she forgot her phone somewhere and got a flat tire. Isn’t Channel 9 out on Metropolitan Road? It’s kind of the middle of nowhere. If you got a flat out there and didn’t have a phone it could take a bit to get to a gas station and call a tow truck.”
“So she’d be walking on some dark road by herself at night?” Carol asked, shuddering at the image.
“I don’t know, hon, but I’m sure she’ll be back Monday.”
Carol chewed at her fingernail. What if Faith was not back Monday? Where could she be?
They turned their attention to the newscast and sat through Roger’s sportscast. Roger was doing a story on a swimming team, and he had all kinds of terrible water puns: “They really dunked their opponent,” “They made a splash,” “They dove right in…” Carol would have normally made fun of him, but she just didn’t have it in her.
Instead, she stared at the screen in numb silence.
The eleven o’clock show always had a final short segment on an uplifting subject; tonight Tom and Veronica read a story about a squirrel who would actually stand on little water skis and zip around a pool at a county fair.
Carol tried to remember the TV term Olivia had taught them for this kind of silly story to end the newscast—a sticker?
A flicker? No, it was a kicker, that’s right.
Now she recalled because it had seemed like such an odd word to her and Jim.
“A kicker? A kicker is a player in the NFL,” Jim had said as they sat at the table eating dinner one night during Olivia’s spring break. “And the Lions haven’t had a good one in way too long.”
“Yeah, Uncle Jim, but in TV it’s called a ‘kicker’ too. My professor explained it to us like they kick out the show with something. The professor used to be a producer and she said she was always running around asking, ‘What are we going to run as a kicker tonight? Who has a kicker idea?’”
So the water-skiing squirrel was a “kicker.” Carol wanted to feel proud of her newfound TV knowledge and excited by her insider access, but the major emotion engulfing her was still worry.
All four of the on-air personalities laughed as the squirrel zipped around, a tiny red bandana around its neck. Jim even chuckled, but Carol remained silent. As the broadcast ended, Jim reached for the remote.
“Ready for bed, hon?”
She wasn’t tired—she could actually feel the adrenaline in her body from the Faith mystery—but she didn’t want to sit there any longer either.
“I guess so. I’m not really in the mood for any late-night comedy shows tonight.”
“Me neither, let’s hit the hay.”
Carol blew out the Spiced Apple Pie candle as Jim began turning off lights. He walked to the front and side doors to check the locks and stopped at the thermostat to lower the air-conditioning down to sleeping levels.
They did their usual bedtime routine, changing into pajamas next to each other, brushing their teeth at side-by-side sinks while spitting nearly at the same time, washing hands and faces.
Carol brushed her hair, while Jim merely ran his hands through his.
She put on specialized face cream and used a more standard lotion for her hands and forearms.
They climbed into bed, their spots well worn and each smelling like them, Jim’s the Bearglove brand of Old Spice deodorant and aftershave he wore and Carol’s a body wash in a peach scent from Kohl’s.
They each had a favorite pillow, his flat and firm and hers large and fluffy.
She always wrapped herself up in the majority of the floral comforter without any complaint from him; he usually kicked off any bedding during the night anyway.
Jim rolled to his side facing her back and put one hand on her waist in the sort of loose spoon position he favored.
The heaviness of his hand through the blanket felt comforting.
Normally she would fall asleep fast, but she couldn’t stop her mind from going topsy-turvy about Faith, and she stared at the wall, even as Jim began to snore.
Strange how she could feel so viscerally about someone she had never even seen in person, she thought.
It probably went back to her youth, when she started being interested in celebrities; they always seemed to have these amazing, glamorous lives, so different from her own humdrum existence.
She had plastered her bedroom with posters of cute actors and beautiful actresses and read all about them in teen magazines.
Celebrities just seemed like aspirational people, so gorgeous.
After an hour of lying in bed, Carol thought she might not sleep at all that night and debated moving Jim’s arm and getting up, but somewhere after one AM she finally must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew sunlight was peeking around the edges of the curtains.
Her first thought was that she couldn’t wait to speak with Olivia for more details. Trivial things like how tall Roger was or if Tom and Veronica were nice had gone by the wayside. Carol wanted answers regarding her favorite meteorologist.
But it was only 7:30 AM and Olivia might not be up. Olivia was heading into her senior year of college, and Carol remembered how college students liked to sleep. Forcing herself to wait until 9:30 to be respectful, Carol finally was unable to go a minute longer, and she called.
“I don’t know anything more,” said Olivia, her voice still thick with sleep.
“But I guess it must have leaked out that they couldn’t reach her, and Matthew had to be called in, because someone started a Reddit thread already called ‘Where’s Faith?
’ and people on X are speculating everything from she quit or was fired to she has some incurable disease or even …
I hate to say this, that she was abducted. ”
Carol sucked in her breath. “Abducted?” She could hardly say the word.
“It’s just wild speculation, Aunt C. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
“Of course not but … if she just left on her own, why didn’t she tell the station she wasn’t coming back after dinner?”
“I don’t know,” said Olivia.
“Other than the parking lot last night … did you get to talk to Faith much during your first week?” Carol asked.
“Yeah, a little. She seemed nice,” Olivia replied. “She showed me the weather center and I actually told her about you, that my aunt Carol Henning was a huge fan and that you watch her videos. She thought that was cool. I even asked her to autograph a picture for you.”
“You told her about me? She knows my name? I’m getting her autograph?” Carol felt a warm glow come into her cheeks, and her eyes began to glisten.
“Yeah, I told her we’re super close, you’re like a mom to me, that I tell you everything and that you and Uncle Jim were excited I had the internship.”
“That is amazing, honey, simply amazing that you’re conversing with Faith Richards!”
“It’s neat. She’s so popular. I did overhear one of the producers complaining about her, though.”
“Complaining? What do you mean?” Carol’s tone shifted. How could anyone do that about Faith?
“Yeah, the producer said to an editor ‘Here comes the diva’ when Faith was walking in one night. Then they started talking about how she always goes way longer in her forecasts than she’s supposed to and doesn’t care if it means they have to cut time on Roger’s sports segment or anything else.”
“Well,” said Carol, immediately disliking this producer. “Her forecasts deserve more time. No one cares about sports anyway.”
“Right,” replied Olivia. “Listen, I’m sure she’s fine, Aunt Carol. I’ll let you know if I hear anything more.”
They hung up, and Carol futzed around the rest of the morning, drinking two cups of coffee and sitting in the backyard listening to the birds.
She put on her sun hat and pulled some weeds, but it was getting too humid, so she went back inside to the comfort of the air-conditioning and decided to do a deep clean of the cabinets in the kitchen, pulling out dishes and wiping shelves.
Jim mowed the lawn and worked on fixing a slat in the wooden fence.
Carol began listening to an audiobook to distract herself.
The novel was a complicated mystery that normally would have required her full attention, but she kept losing track of the characters and plot because her mind was flitting about thinking of Faith.
After wiping the final shelf with a sponge, she ran a dry towel over it to soak up any wet spots and decided to turn off the audiobook and give in to the fact that she just couldn’t concentrate.
One thought kept repeating in her mind, and she whispered it aloud as a mantra:
“Faith is fine. Faith is fine.”
She wanted so badly to believe it to be true, but somehow she had a gut feeling it was not.