The Night She Disappeared

It’s Wednesday, the day Tallulah and Zach reserve for sex, but when Tallulah runs into Keziah, a friend who invites her out, Tallulah blows off their usual mid-week sex date, asserting her independence. She is excited by the prospect of going out. When she arrives home, Zach angrily asks her where she’s been—he’s called her “like, a hundred times” (239). Zach rages, shouting accusations at her: “I sometimes feel if something better comes, you’d just walk away from Noah and me” (239).

After his tirade, Tallulah tells Zach to move out. She waits for his fury, but it doesn’t come. Instead, “she feels his presence soften and shrink, sees his shoulders slope” (241). He leans over her son’s body in the crib, whispering something. It gives her a chill. Then, hard and resolved, he tells her he is not going anywhere, and then repeats himself with profanity: “I am not going fucking anywhere” (241).

Sophie sits at her desk, not writing, but thinking about the strange tool the detectives found at the latest digging site. Sophie is troubled by something: Lexie told her mom that she saw the sign to dig from the balcony of their dwelling. But somehow Sophie knows Lexie was lying.