Among the Missing Read Online Free Page A

thinking you’re going to hit some sort of bottom, but I’m here to tell you: There is no bottom.”
    “Yes,” she murmurs to herself. “Yes, that’s true.”
    And maybe it is. Despite everything, she and her daughters arrive in the parking lot across from their apartment building. Despite everything, there is dinner to be made, and homework to be done, and storybooks to be read. Sandi almost hates to let the air out of Safety Man, but she does nevertheless. She deflates and folds him up, so they can all walk with dignity across the street, to their door. Later, after the girls are put to bed, she will reinflate him, so he can sit in the window while they sleep. But now, as she lays him out on the backseat, as his comforting face begins to shrivel and sag, as he gasps and sighs, she can’t help but feel a pang.
    “Poor Jules,” Molly says. “He’s passing away.”
    “Hush,” Sandi says. She presses the flat of her hand against Safety Man’s plastic skin. “Shh,” she says, as if comforting him, and he replies back: “Shhhhhh …” It’s all right. The street lights are beginning to click on above her, and the city sky glows above the silhouette edges of the rooftops. Far away, her mother is leaning over the bed of a comatose child, combing his beautiful hair; far away, a man suddenly shudders as he rounds a dark corner, whispering, “Kelly? …” uncertainly; in the distance, Allen’s spirit pauses for a moment, midflight, and listens.
    “It’s all right,” she says, and she smiles as the last bit of air goes out of Safety Man. Megan and Molly are standing behind her, solemnly, as she begins to fold him neatly into a square. They watch her hopefully.
    “It’s all right,” Sandi says again. As if she means it.

I D EMAND TO K NOW
W HERE Y OU’RE T AKING M E

    C heryl woke in the middle of the night and she could hear the macaw talking to himself—or laughing, rather, as if he had just heard a good joke. “Haw, haw, haw!” he went. “Haw, haw, haw”: a perfect imitation of her brother-in-law Wendell, that forced, ironic guffaw.
    She sat up in bed and the sound stopped. Perhaps she had imagined it? Her husband, Tobe, was still soundly asleep next to her, but this didn’t mean anything. He had always been an abnormally heavy sleeper, a snorer, and lately he had been drinking more before bed—he’d been upset ever since Wendell had gone to prison.
    And she, too, was upset, anxious. She sat there, silent, her heart quickened, listening. Had the children been awakened by it? She waited, in the way she had when they were infants. Back then, her brain would jump awake. Was that a baby crying?
    No, there was nothing. The house was quiet.
    •   •   •
    The bird, the macaw, was named Wild Bill. She had never especially liked animals, had never wanted one in her home, but what could be done? Wild Bill had arrived on the same day that Tobe and his other brothers, Carlin and Randy, had pulled into the driveway with a moving van full of Wendell’s possessions. She’d stood there, watching, as item after item was carried into the house, where it would remain, in temporary but indefinite storage. In the basement, shrouded in tarps, was Wendell’s furniture: couch, kitchen set, bed, piano. There were his boxes of books and miscellaneous items, she didn’t know what. She hadn’t asked. The only thing that she wouldn’t allow were Wendell’s shotguns. These were being kept at Carlin’s place.
    It might not have bothered her so much if it had not been for Wild Bill, who remained a constant reminder of Wendell’s presence in her home. As she suspected, the bird’s day-to-day care had fallen to her. It was she who made sure that Wild Bill had food and water, and it was she who cleaned away the excrement-splashed newspaper at the bottom of his cage.
    But despite the fact that she was his primary caretaker, Wild Bill didn’t seem to like her very much. Mostly, he ignored her—as if she were