We Run the Tides(56)

Once Shelley Stine’s left, Maria Fabiola stands to close the office door. She’s no longer crying.

“Well, you were of no help!” she says to me.

“I forgot which story we were going with,” I say. “And I just got so confused when she said Gentle was missing.”

“That can only help us,” Maria Fabiola says. “Three disappearances are better than two, get it?”

“But aren’t you worried?” I say.

“About Gentle?” she says. “No. She’s a hippie. She’s always missing. She lives to disappear. I’m worried about you. I need to know I can count on you. At this rate, I don’t think we’re going to make it above the fold. You need to be more supportive when we talk to the detectives. You don’t have to tell the story since obviously you’re terrible at that, but you can just agree with whatever I say, right? Back me up?”

Mr. Makepeace comes into the office.

“How was it?”

“It was so painful!” Maria Fabiola says, and instantly is crying again. “Reliving all those memories was ghastly!”

“Here are your tissues,” I say, and slide the packet toward her.





30


Ms. Patel escorts us back to our classes and talks the entire way, which is a relief. I need a break from the machinations of Maria Fabiola’s mind. I have French class and Maria Fabiola goes to Spanish. In French class Mademoiselle tells us that in Toulouse a restaurant would never serve a salad that required its leaves to be cut with a knife. “Those kinds of salads are for horses,” she says. Mademoiselle is young and chic and wears scarves around her neck for the purpose, we suspect, of disguising the many hickeys her boyfriend has given her.

Before class ends, Ms. Patel’s face appears at the door. I’m being summoned to the office. The detectives have arrived.

When I get to the office, Maria Fabiola’s already there. She stands when she sees me and hugs me as though it’s been years. “This time, follow my lead,” she says as she pulls me close.

Detective Anderson comes out of the room where she’s been speaking with Mr. Makepeace. She’s followed by the two male detectives.

“Hello again, Eulabee,” Detective Anderson says. “Can you follow me into the office, please?”

Maria Fabiola stands.

“Oh no,” Detective Anderson says. “We’re going to do one interview at a time. We’ll take good care of Eulabee,” Detective Anderson assures her.

I follow the detectives to the larger conference room, the same one we were in the first time they interviewed me.

“We’re so happy about your safe return home,” Detective Anderson says, and holds my eyes for a minute before I turn to look out at the playground. The lower school is having afternoon recess and all the young girls are playing tetherball, four square. The same games we used to play, games with rules.

“We would like to know what happened,” Detective Anderson says. “Can you tell us where you’ve been the last few days?”

I watch a tiny girl send the tetherball round and round until, high on the pole, it runs out of rope and stops.

I know I’m making a choice to not go along with Maria Fabiola’s story and I know the consequences—I’ve experienced them before.

“I wasn’t kidnapped,” I say. “I was in a shed behind the Olenska School of Ballet on Clement. And then I ran into a cousin and went to his house in West Portal.”

“Was Maria Fabiola with you?” Detective Anderson asks.

“Only for a few hours yesterday. She came to the shed to find me because that’s where she was when she disappeared.”

“Wait. She was in the shed? She wasn’t kidnapped?”

“She was hiding in the shed,” I say, and I hate myself and know Maria Fabiola will never forgive me. I imagine the years of emo tional violence she’ll unleash on me and I decide to fight back preemptively.

“Did you coordinate your disappearances beforehand?”

“No,” I say. “Hers was based on a book she read.”

“On a book she read?”

“Well, a book she skimmed,” I say.

The detectives look at each other but don’t seem as relieved as I expected. “Thank you Eulabee,” Detective Anderson says. “You’ve saved us a lot of time, and we don’t have much. Gentle Gordon is actually missing.”

I follow Detective Anderson out to the office’s reception area. Maria Fabiola stands and smooths her skirt when she sees us.

“I’m ready,” she says to Detective Anderson.

Detective Anderson puts her hand up like she’s stopping traffic. “Not now,” she says, and she and the other detectives walk out the office door.

That afternoon my mother picks me up from school. She’s the first in line so I don’t have to wait for the parade of Volvos to make their way up the horseshoe drive. Maria Fabiola sees me get into my mom’s car. Her look is baffled.

At home I tell my parents everything. Svea inexplicably prepares a footbath with Epsom salts and places it at the foot of my chair. My mother makes meatballs. My father shows me the letter he received from Christie’s, where he brought the Vanessa Bell painting to be appraised. It turns out the painting was a copy. “They think it was someone imitating Bell to teach themselves how to paint,” he says.