The Summer We Lost Her by Tish Cohen

Author:Tish Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

– CHAPTER 16 –

In a sea of uniforms, police badges, buzzing radios, and mounting panic, Matt held his forehead in his hands. There was no good reason for the camp bus driver, Ken, to be in their house instead of their child, and it took everything Matt had not to shake him until answers the man didn’t have came out and Gracie appeared. He watched Elise pace in the hall, pushing her hair back over and over. It had been well over eight hours since their daughter got into some other vehicle.

He and Elise had already run around searching—up the road and across the neighbors’ properties and into sheds and garages. They’d run into the woods calling Gracie’s name. They’d scoured the waterfront, boathouses, gazebos, and docks nearby—barely daring to breathe when looking beneath them.

They’d found nothing. Not a trace.

Ken’s lower jaw trembled and his eyes were pink and glassy with tears. He was speaking to a police officer. “I didn’t think anything of it when she wasn’t there. I thought it was Monday she was starting.”

They had called the camp. The voice on the other end of the phone had sounded twelve years old. After some shuffling of the phone, whispering, the horror was confirmed: “No, her leader says she never arrived. Her name wasn’t on any of the lists yet because she wasn’t signed up the usual way.”

“Matt, come.” Elise pushed out through the front door.

He followed. Two local police cars had joined the state police; their lights flashed with sickening authority. Matt felt weightless. Couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. These cops climbed out of their vehicles to join the state troopers. An Amber Alert had been issued, but what good would it do so many hours later? The bright points of their metal badges caught Matt’s eye. Police badges were in the shape of shields, he noticed for the first time in his life. For protection. But whose?

Still, the whole show was convincing. You had to believe these people knew what to do.

In a stupor, he watched Elise tell them what she knew—which was nothing. As they were calling 911, he’d remembered how Elise could fix things in an emergency. Like with the woman who fell off her Segway. Like the night in the hotel room. He’d remembered and clung to her. Surely she could summon up her superhero self for her own daughter. Yes?

But she stared at him with those eyes. There was no superpower behind them at all. They were just as useless as his.

Jesus . . . he’d been busy having an orgasm to the sight of his old girlfriend while Gracie was out there with no one even starting to look for her. All the things he could have done differently. He could have stayed until the bus arrived, not gone to sharpen the ax. Made a bigger deal about Gracie going to camp for her first time ever. It was his bus shelter. Why hadn’t he thought to sit beside

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