They Disappeared

After all this time, Jeff realized that he’d failed to accept how Sarah dealt with her own grief and guilt. She blamed herself for being three hundred and forty miles away when their baby died. Jeff blamed himself for being in the next room asleep. He had been so numbed and blinded by his anger, his guilt, that he let it give way to paranoia, thinking wrongly that Sarah had turned to another man for comfort.

He’d let it all reach the point where it was tearing them apart.

What have I done?

Standing in line, waiting to buy batteries, it dawned on him. Maybe it had started when he felt Sarah’s arm around him, tight. But when the truth hit, it hit him like a freight train. Sarah was not cheating on him. She did not hate him. What he was doing was wrong. The last thing he wanted was to separate. He agreed with Sarah, when their baby girl died they went out of their minds with grief. They’d both been consumed with guilt and anger over losing her.

He replayed Sarah’s plea.

We have to fight to hold this family together. We have to hang on and work this out.

She was right.

They’d been through enough.

Suddenly Jeff felt like a man waking up.

How could I have been so stupid?

It was his turn at the counter and the clerk at the register, a girl in her twenties with a diamond stud in her left nostril, fuchsia streaks in her dyed white hair and tattoos on her arms, smiled as she chewed gum and bobbed her head to an old David Bowie song.

“I need some batteries.”

“What size?”

“Double A, I think. Wait, let me check, sorry.”

Horn blasts from the street competed with the music inside as Jeff opened the battery compartment. It took him three attempts. The clerk snapped her gum and eyed the other customers while she waited.

Patience in New York came at a premium.

“Yes, double A,” he said. “Better give me three of those four packs.”

She slapped them on the counter.

“Here you go.”

Jeff paid.

He returned to the street ready to tell Sarah that he’d come to his senses. This trip would change everything.

For the better.

He went to the vendor’s cart but they weren’t there.

He looked up and down the street.

No sign of Sarah and Cole.

What’s going on?

They must’ve gone into a store, he thought, and entered the nearest one, a crowded retail sportswear outlet. Inside he searched the packed aisles, scanning the shoppers for Sarah and Cole. He glimpsed a flash of green—the back of a boy’s New York Jets T-shirt as it disappeared behind a display of jackets.

There’s Cole.

Jeff hurried after him, ready to scold Sarah for vanishing, but he stopped cold. The boy was not Cole.

Jeff took immediate stock of the surroundings.

No sign of Sarah and Cole.

He hurried out and rushed into the next business, a crowded deli where he again took swift inventory. Again, he found no trace of his wife and son. He moved on, searching in vain. He stood on the sidewalk and scoured the storefronts across the street—but it was futile.

Jeff could not find Sarah and Cole.

Then, above all the crowds, the traffic, the noise and confusion, he heard the first high-pitched ring in the back of his mind. It shot to his gut where disbelief battled his fear that maybe something was wrong.

5

New York City

Jeff scanned the crowds, threading his way a few yards in one direction, then a few yards in another.

“Sarah!”

He looked up and down the street.

They disappeared.

He reached for his cell phone and called Sarah’s number. This is nuts. Where’d they go? It rang several times before going to her voice mail.

“Hey, you disappeared on me,” Jeff said. “Where are you? I’m standing by the souvenir cart.”

He studied the nearest storefronts again: a sports store, an electronics store, a ticket seller, a place fronted with plywood that was under renovation. Had they gone into one? Which one would they enter? He wasn’t sure. He’d told them not to move.

Did Sarah even hear her phone ring?

He called her number again. Again, he got her voice mail.

He scrutinized the street. Faces blurred as streams of people dissolved into chaotic rivers amid the smells of perfume, sweat and grilled spicy meat. Human features became indistinguishable as people brushed against him, bumped him.

“Are you looking for your wife and son?”

Jeff turned around to the man in the wheelchair—the man to whom he’d given ten bucks.

“Yes, did you see them?”

“I think they got picked up.”