A Lily in the Light(6)

“Where’s Lily?” Cerise paused, holding Lily’s empty plate. The faded Lion King characters balanced Simba over Pride Rock, Lily’s favorite, but her seat was empty.

“Lily?” Cerise called into the living room.

“No wonder it’s so peaceful,” Madeline mumbled.

“I’ll get her.” Esme pushed back her chair. The living room was empty. Lily wasn’t in her blanket cave. Esme tried her bedroom next, but the beds were as they’d left them. Where the Wild Things Are and Take Me to the Zoo! sat on the floor in a heap. She looked underneath the beds, shifting Madeline’s bins of old shoes and winter sweaters, and in the closet, closing the door behind her. She tried her parents’ bedroom and Nick’s and even pulled back the shower curtain in the bathroom, but Lily wasn’t there. She walked back to the table confused.

“I can’t find her.”

“What do you mean you can’t find her?” Andre asked between mouthfuls of food. “How big is this place?” He retraced her steps, and Esme followed while Cerise checked the hallway closets, digging through the winter coats Lily liked to hide in. Cerise opened the front door and called Lily’s name down the hallway. Everyone was looking now, pushing things aside under beds. Nick even looked in the kitchen cabinets.

“She wouldn’t have gone out alone.” Cerise repeated a rule Lily knew well, but Lily wasn’t home, so she must have broken it. “Go knock on doors,” Cerise told Nick. “See if she went next door.”

“Lily! Enough!” Her father’s voice boomed. Silence. Esme’s heart beat faster. She glared at Madeline waiting in the living room.

“This is your fault,” Esme hissed, but instead of protesting, Madeline furrowed her brow, worry lines creased. Madeline was nervous. Life was better without you, Madeline’s words echoed. Esme’s mouth tasted like she’d licked a lemon. If she’d gotten up and defended Lily instead of leaving her alone in the living room with bitch-face Madeline, she’d probably be at the table now, twirling spaghetti around her fork and calling them worms.

“Come on, Lily,” Esme called. “We’re having worms for dinner.” Silence.

“I’ll look outside,” Esme said. Cerise was already putting her coat and boots on. Esme pulled on her sneakers. Lily’s shoes were missing. She froze, then dug through the closet, tossing aside everyone else’s shoes, coats, and the aluminum baseball bats at the back of the closet until she was certain Lily’s pink sequined sneakers weren’t there.

Lily’s red corduroy coat with the pink buttons was missing too. They should have heard her leave. How could they have missed it?

“Mom?” Esme’s voice came out higher than she’d expected. “Mom? Lily’s coat and shoes are gone.”

Cerise stared back.

“Mom? Lily’s coat and shoes are gone.” The closet door hung open.

“I heard you. Andre? Get your coat.”

“Maybe she put it on the back of a chair instead?” Madeline scurried back toward the dining room to look, but everyone already knew it wasn’t there. Cerise sent them to check the other floors of the building, the playground, Lily’s preschool. Her hand closed around the phone receiver as she shouted directions through the open door and dialed.

“Who are you calling?” Andre asked, his arms and legs jittering at his sides in the same way Esme’s were, like waiting in the wings. The nerves in her body were reacting to everything—the feel of her clothes, a phone ringing next door, the smell of onions frying down the hall—as if they knew she’d need them at any second, coiled and ready to spring. She wiggled her fingers to calm herself, but it didn’t work.

“The police,” Cerise said. Her voice was calm and even, but the lines in her face were drawn tightly. Esme’s stomach rolled. Cerise moved closer to the window and looked down at the street below. Andre stared down the hallway, where Halloween skeletons and scarecrows hung from doors.

“She can’t have gotten far,” he said and started off down the hallway.

Esme couldn’t move, even though it was all she wanted to do.

“Go!” Cerise urged, still staring at the empty street below.

Esme’s legs shivered awake. She meant to walk down the stairs from one floor to the next but found herself running. The hallways were empty. The roof was empty. Birdman’s forgotten pigeon coop looked murky brown in the darkness, but she made herself look inside just in case. It was filled with old mail crates and black plastic garbage bags that shook behind the chicken wire. It gave her the creeps. The roof door slammed shut behind her.

The hallways filled with neighbors in winter coats over pajamas, echoing Lily’s name. Nick knocked on doors, asking if anyone had seen Lily, but no one had. His scalp looked eerily white in the hall light, freshly buzzed that morning in the bathroom, dark eyes lost under thick black eyebrows. If he wasn’t her brother, if their neighbors hadn’t known him since he was born and remembered him catching ants on the stoop with paper cups, would they have opened their doors for him if they saw him through the peephole or pretended no one was home? She pushed the thought away because he was Nick, bug killer extraordinaire, hider of Slim Jims and Rice Krispies Treats, lock picker, collector of scary stories. As Esme left the fluorescent glow of the lobby for dark streets and cold shivered through her clothes, she wished Nick was with her.