At a stoplight, Gavin texted Kat and Adam to let them know he’d be stopping by the apartment first.
The second Gavin put the car in park, he jumped out and jogged to the apartment. Before he went inside, he lifted up the flowerpot: the key was there. Maybe she put it back after using it.
“Emma? Are you in here?” he said as he opened the front door. Despite it still being daylight, the storm rolling in made the apartment especially dark. Gavin flipped on a lamp, saying a second time, “Emma? If you’re here, I’m not mad. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
No answer. His heart fell. Even though he knew she wasn’t here, he looked in her room. He looked in the tiny kitchen, where he and Kat had made dinner. He even looked in the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain aside.
He returned to Emma’s room and sat down on her bed. He brushed his palm across her bedspread, the cloth bright pink and covered in purple stars and unicorns. She had a sparkly throw pillow that Gavin had recently bought for her after much begging. He felt his throat close.
He had to get up. He had to find his daughter. Yet it was like his body was frozen. He didn’t even know how he was still breathing.
On Emma’s nightstand was a picture frame. Gavin picked it up, looking at the photo of Teagan and Emma.
Teagan. Shit. He needed to call her. He closed his eyes.
How could he tell Teagan he didn’t know where their daughter was? The news could send her into another breakdown. She was recovering and in a much better place, but she was still fragile.
He brushed his thumb over Emma’s face in the photograph. He had to find her. There was no other choice.
As Gavin returned to his car, he dialed Teagan’s number. He hated that he’d put her into a panic, but after he’d talked to her about Emma hiding in a closet last time, she’d told him in no uncertain terms to call her if it happened again. I want to know what’s going on with my daughter, she’d said, so reasonably that Gavin could hardly say no.
He called Teagan and hoped she wouldn’t pick up. But she did, and he wished he’d thought of what to tell her beforehand.
Before she could even greet him, he said bluntly, “Emma is missing from school.”
He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end. “For how long?” Teagan finally asked.
“I don’t know. An hour? Two? Kat—Miss Williamson—called to tell me. I’m driving over to the school right now.” Gavin told Teagan the little information that he’d gotten from Kat before getting into his car.
“We’re going to find her,” he said, almost trying to convince himself as much as Teagan.
“Oh God, Gavin. Are you sure? Is she at home somehow? Maybe she walked there? Have you checked there?”
“I just checked. There was no sign of her.”
“How did no one see her leave? She’s a little kid! What kind of school loses a student?”
Gavin could feel Teagan’s anger radiating through the phone. He felt the same way: he wanted heads to roll. But he couldn’t give into the anger. Not yet.
“I don’t know. But I’ll find her. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Gavin heard Teagan moving in the background. “I can get a plane ticket to Missouri. If I leave treatment voluntarily I can’t come back, but—“
“No, don’t do that.” He gentled his tone. “You need to stay where you are. By the time you get here, we’ll have found her.”
“What if you don’t? I’m her mother.” Teagan started crying. “I’m her mother, and I’m not even there to look for her.”
Gavin felt the weight of the world on his shoulders right then. As he stopped at a red light, he pressed his forehead to the steering wheel. He wished Teagan were here, that she could fly in right now and help with the search. Although they were no longer married, they were still friends and she was the mother of his child.
“I keep fucking everything up,” he said hoarsely into the phone. “First you, now Emma.”
Teagan was silent for a long moment. “What are you talking about? This is the school’s fault, not yours.”
“Does it matter? You almost died, Teagan. That was on my watch. I should’ve done more to help you, to get you into treatment. I was so convinced that you’d realize you needed help so I didn’t push as hard as I could have. And look at what happened.”
The light turned green right when Teagan replied, “You’re an idiot, Gavin.”
Gavin let out a rough laugh. “Yeah? Because I keep hurting people?”
“No, because you think you’re in control of what other people do.” Teagan sighed. “This isn’t the time, but my mental health wasn’t—and isn’t—your fault. Maybe at the time I could’ve blamed you, but my brain was sick. It needed help, just like if I’d had cancer or a heart attack.
“Nothing you could’ve done would’ve kept me from going down into that dark place.” Teagan’s voice seemed to waver. “You didn’t almost kill me, Gavin: you saved my life. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
Gavin felt like sobbing, but he was too numb. “Maybe, maybe not,” he whispered. “But I can blame myself for our daughter running away. Or worse, getting kidnapped.”
He finally pulled into the school parking lot, where police cars were lined up outside. Already he could see people from the town lined up outside.
“You’ll find her. Because if you don’t, Gavin Danvers, I’ll kill you myself. I’ll fly straight to Missouri and strangle you.”
He let out a dark laugh. “I know you will.”
Gavin was about to get out of his car when Teagan said, “Don’t keep yourself walled
