The Mystery of Hollow Places(2)

Dear Mr. McCormick,

Please excuse Imogene Scott’s incomplete homework. We were up late filing a missing persons report for Immy’s father, and the time just got away from us.

Sincerely,

Lindy Scott

Fanned out across the kitchen table are pictures of Dad taken in the past few years. Officer Griffin examines the black-and-white headshot from the back cover of his latest novel, No Shirt, No Pulse, No Problem. Dad is sitting in his home office behind a fortress of books and weird paperweights and framed photos, miniature Lindys and Imogenes unidentifiable in their smallness. He chews the stem of a pipe and stares into the distance, as if a story is writing itself while he waits for the click of the camera. If this picture were to wash up on a foreign shore years from now and a stranger plucked it out of the sand, they’d think Dad was some pompous literary great. But he isn’t either of those things. It isn’t even a real pipe in the headshot, just a plastic joke pipe I bought him in honor of his tenth published book. It blows goddamn bubbles.

How could anyone recognize him from this picture?

Officer Griffin sets the headshot down gently and turns to her notebook, where for two hours she’s been taking notes such as: a description of the individual (tall-ish, pale-ish, gray-ish hair, half Asian-ish, fifty-ish, Dad-ish), full name (Joshua Zhi Scott), last known location (his bed, beside Lindy, Wednesday night), known locations frequented by the individual (the local Starbucks, his home office, whichever of our two and a half bathrooms has whatever book he’s currently reading in the rack beside the toilet), means of travel available to the individual (he left his car and credit card behind, but according to the bank, withdrew $1,500 two days ago—so pretty much any means).

As I slip into my seat she turns to me.

“You’re a senior in high school, Imogene?”

“At Sugarbrook High, yeah.”

“Tough year. College applications, SATs, prom dates . . .”

“Immy’s in the honor society,” Lindy jumps in. “And mock trial, aren’t you?”

“That’s great! What colleges have you applied to?”

“Um, Emerson? And Amherst and BU. And Simmons.”

“Local schools, huh?”

“I want to be close to home. My friend’s brother even commutes from home, and he likes it.” Beneath the table I wrap my right fist around my left thumb, just above the knuckle, and pull until it cracks. I do the same with each finger one by one, a nervous habit Dad says will one day require that my ruined joints be replaced by a robot hand.

The officer nods. “Sure. I told my own daughter how nice it’d be for her to stay local, but she can’t wait to get across the country. Bet your parents are real proud of you.”

I shrug.

“Is he in the habit of pulling you from school, your dad?”

“No,” Lindy says at once. “Absolutely not.”

“Uh-huh.” Officer Griffin jots a note. “So why’d he take you out yesterday, do you think?”

“Um. I don’t know. It was a nice day?”

My first half truth. Wednesday was sunny but cold, capped by a brilliant blue sky that never lived up to its promise. That morning I crawled from bed, prepared as always to spend half an hour bullying my straight, dark hair into almost-waves; to make a desperate swipe at eye makeup only to rub it all off self-consciously; to shun whatever outfit had seemed cool the night before and rummage hopelessly through my closet; to sprint out the door with a granola bar between my teeth and homework and car keys trailing behind me; to sputter into Sugarbrook High’s senior parking lot in my unreliable little Civic with three minutes to spare. Except before all of that, Dad headed me off at the pass. When I slumped out into the hall on my way to the bathroom, he was waiting.

“How are you feeling today, Immy?” he asked.

I blinked. While Lindy was usually out the door for work by the time I’d punched the snooze button, it was rare to find Dad awake before I left for school. Stranger still, he was dressed, with his glasses on, furrows from the comb’s teeth still fresh in his smoothed-back hair. His eyes, very dark and shaped like Ma Ma Scott’s, like mine, were bright and alert.

“Hummuh?” I groaned.

“I’m just checking, because you don’t look well.”

“Grur,” I wheezed.

“What I’m saying is, if you weren’t feeling up to school, I’d sympathize. I don’t want you going in sick.”

“Are you . . . saying I don’t have to go to school?”

Dad shrugged and stared out the window, where the sky was flushing pink in the east. “It’s supposed to be a great day. The first nice day in months. I was just thinking it’d be a shame to waste it. Unless you’ve got a test or something?”

I shook my head. Dad had never made an offer like this. He was a big one for education. I knew he’d worked through four years of premed, four years of med school, four years of clinical training and residency, and all this before I was born. I don’t even remember his long days in the lab at Good Shepherd, before he gave it up. Staying home sick was hard enough—even if he was out of practice, he could still sniff out a fake flu in the time it took me to blow my nose. And staying home just because? Unheard of.

I asked, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Always. I just, you know, I thought we could spend some time together. Catch up.”