Iris’s eyes shot between the two of them, running through questions in her mind.
To Bell, she said, “That your boy?”
“Don’t know ’bout a ‘boy,’ big as he is, but yes, ma’am, this is my son.”
For some reason, this made Iris cry, the tears springing up so fast they caught all of them by surprise. Iris brushed them away before they even had a chance to fall, to truly announce themselves. Then she wiped her hands on her apron and asked if they wanted coffee. Not waiting for an answer, she stood as if to go to the cabinet but then sank again onto the banquette, unable this time to keep tears from flowing freely.
“I’ll make some,” Bell said, nodding to let Iris know there was no need to hold back on their account; she was free to fall apart in her own home. She started opening and closing cabinet doors, hunting for a tin of Folgers. This prompted Iris to stand, finally. She opened the cabinet just to the right of Bell and pulled out not coffee grounds but a fifth of brandy. She uncapped it and took a quick look into the living room to make sure that Benny was still engrossed in his cartoons, then took a long swallow, nearly a three-count. She then held out the bottle to Bell, who froze.
Darren recognized the panic she felt; the same stab of longing had grabbed him at the base of the throat. Bell’s eyes pinched into two question marks, turning to seek out her son’s gaze for help. Couldn’t they? Just a lil’ taste? It was the weakest he’d seen his mother since her professed sobriety.
“No, thank you,” Darren said, even though he could taste the sweetness of the brandy, the warmth. He did it for his mother, who had more days than him, who had more to lose. “Don’t mean any disrespect, Mrs. Fuller, but we won’t be drinking.”
Talk of coffee forgotten, Iris walked the bottle of brandy back to the kitchen table.
“I haven’t seen her in a few weeks. It’s not like her not to call, but I know she’s busy with school, and I want to give her that little piece of freedom. She’s had a few health setbacks recently, but that’s to be expected with her condition, and we’ve been trying to let her manage her own health, grow up some. I would just feel better if I laid eyes on her or knew that she was taking care of herself.”
Darren tried to gauge when or if to bring up the bloody shirt.
It could be days before he would know for certain if it was Sera’s blood.
He didn’t want to scare her unnecessarily, but he did want to sound an alarm.
Because he could sense Iris trying hard to chalk up her obvious anxiety to being a nervous mom who was just missing her kid, trying so hard not to entertain the terror that something had gone wrong, had kept Sera from calling. “There’ve been text messages. I believe my husband already told you that.” She looked down when she said it, worrying the stitches on her apron pocket, one corner that wasn’t batted down well. She fiddled with a growing hole in the pocket, as Darren leaned across the table. Up close, he could see that its wood grain was fake, a heavy-duty plastic.
He spoke gently. “And these are messages you’ve seen, Iris?”
She took a deep breath, let it out in a huff, a show of impatience.
She resented Darren for pressing, for making her prove something.
“Benny, bring me my cell phone, hear?”
While they waited, Darren asked her, “Are you and your daughter close?”
“What kind of question is that?” She had found solace in her righteous anger, and she was holding on to it for dear life. “She’s my daughter, of course we’re close.”
Bell, who knew a thing or two about the gap between the relationship you wanted to have with your kid and the one you ended up with, piped up, “And she woulda told you if something was wrong at school, if she got into some trouble?”
“Sera’s a good girl, and she’s doing well in school, better than we expected. College, that was something we hadn’t dared dream Sera would get in this lifetime.”
“I meant if some trouble found her,” Bell said. “She talk about those Rho Beta girls, the way they treat her? What’d y’all talk about that last day you saw her?”
Darren shot his mother a look: Slow down.
Iris looked weary, confused as to what Bell was talking about, even confused as to how these two people had gotten inside her kitchen, the heart of her house.
“She ever mention them being mean to her, pulling some tricks on her —”
Darren asked if that was why Sera had moved out of the sorority house.
Iris looked up at him in a way that made his heart sink for her. It was obvious she hadn’t heard this before — that her daughter had reportedly moved out of the sorority house. Her body gave an involuntary jolt, a tiny earthquake that charged the air in the room. Then, indignant, she nodded to imply that of course she knew. The more Darren asked questions that suggested Iris didn’t know what was going on in her daughter’s life, the more it made her double down on the idea that nothing was amiss. In Joseph’s absence, she clung to the very assurances she’d seemed to doubt before.
As Benny approached with his mother’s cell phone, she said, “She came home to do some laundry, and she hung out with Rey a little that day,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the next-door neighbors’ house. “We watched some TV while we folded clothes, and she said she had to get back to campus. There was a party she had to go to.” Darren and Bell shot each other a look. Was Iris saying she hadn’t spoken to her daughter since the weekend of the Pi Xi party? She looked up and seemed to sense the question. “She’s sent the texts, of course,” Iris said as she looked down at her cell phone, scrolling through its multicolored apps. This phone was identical to the one Bell had found in the trash. The one that was dead. As he thought about how he was going to break that news to her, he asked, “The company gives those out, right?”
“It’s part of the employment package, yes.”
A cell service plan, a computer and free Wi-Fi. These were just some of the benefits that came with living and working at Thornhill, along with K–12 schools, medical care, and a grocery and dry goods store all inside these gates. It was all included. Joseph, she said, worked at the plant. Iris worked at a childcare facility they had inside the community center. Benny, having deposited his mother’s phone, made his way back to his spot in front of the wide-screen television — also included; Bell had made sure to inquire.
“Like I was saying, there have been text messages, to her father for sure, I know. I think Benny got one too. If you give me a second, I can find the last text message she sent me —”
“On a Thornhill phone,” Darren said.
“Her phone, yes.”
“An account you don’t pay for, that’s maintained by your employer.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m merely repeating back what you’ve told me,” Darren said, treading lightly, as he’d had to do with victims’ families in the past, revealing the obvious as gently as he could. “You’re telling me that your last contact with your daughter is on a cell phone that is owned and maintained by your employer, the same employer who insists that your daughter is not missing — proof of which only exists in these texts to your family on, again, a company-issued cell phone.” Darren noticed a few beads of sweat had sprung up along Iris’s hairline. The worry lines on her forehead rose and fell.
“Are you suggesting that Thornhill is lying to our family?”
The word lying came out of her mouth, not his.
That was important, he knew.
She was getting closer to accepting that something was off here.
