Other than that, all I can do is wait.
Chapter Forty-One
Thirteen years ago…
Emma knocked on the office door and took a breath to settle the nervous feeling lodged in her chest. The feeling hadn’t gone away in the two days since she’d realized Julia was missing. She’d waited at the house for hours, calling her and leaving voicemails until the inbox said it was full and wouldn’t accept anymore.
She’d left text messages and started social media accounts just so she could check Julia’s posts to see if there was any movement. She couldn’t find anything. She never heard from her and couldn’t find any indication of where she was or what she was doing.
The next day, Emma went to her apartment and talked to her roommate. Lynn couldn’t give her very much information. The two of them didn’t get along terribly well, but at least she could tell Emma that she’d had a conversation with her just a few days before. But after that, Lynn went to spend a couple of days with her boyfriend before he left campus for the holidays. She didn’t know what happened to Julia after that.
Emma was desperate. She was afraid something was wrong and needed to find out what had happened. That brought her back to campus and to the offices of each of the professors she had heard Julia talking about.
“Come on in,” a voice said from the other side of the office door.
Emma opened it and looked inside. “Professor Harris?”
“Yes?” he said, looking at her with confusion in his eyes. “Can I help you with something?”
Emma walked further into the office. “My name is Emma Griffin. I think a friend of mine is in one of your classes. Julia Meyer?”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, then the flash of recognition went through his eyes.
“Oh, yes, Julia. I’m sorry. It’s the end of the semester, which means everything is in total chaos. I’m trying to grade several hundred blue books. After a while they all kind of meld together along with everything else that used to be in my brain. So, Julia. Yes, I believe she was in one of my seminars last semester. Maybe two semesters ago,” he said.
“She wasn’t in any of your classes this semester?” Emma asked.
“No,” he said. “Is there some sort of problem?”
“Julia is missing,” Emma said.
His eyes widened. “Missing?”
“At least, I think she is. We were supposed to get together to study for finals, but she never showed up to the library or to my house. I called her over and over, left her messages, texted her. I can’t find her, and nobody I spoke to knows where she is. It’s been a couple of days and I still haven’t heard from her,” Emma said.
“Did you go to her dorm?”
“She doesn’t live in the dorms. She lives in one of the student apartment buildings. I went and spoke with her roommate, but she doesn’t know where Julia is, either. She wasn’t in the apartment for a couple of days, so she doesn’t know the last time that Julia was there,” Emma said.
“Were her belongings there?” he asked.
“A few things,” Emma said. “She had already moved most of her things out before Thanksgiving. She and her roommate didn’t get along very well, so I think she was hoping to move to a different apartment at the beginning of next semester. But there were a few things her roommate said were left in the living room. Then some laundry that was in a basket in the hallway. But everything in her room was gone.”
The professor got a slight, almost condescending smile on his face and folded his fingers together on his desk.
“She doesn’t get along with her roommate. Her belongings are gone. It’s the end of a semester. Did you consider that maybe she just went home?” he asked.
“She had another final,” Emma said. “It was one she really needed to study for and was concerned about. She just applied for the graduate program and wanted to make sure her grades stayed really high. That was the whole reason we were getting together the other day. I was going to help her study as much as possible right up until the test.”
“Maybe she got it rescheduled,” he said. “Or she decided that the pressure was too much and just walked away. That happens. Try not to worry about her too much. She’ll probably show back up in the next few days with some sort of elaborate excuse, begging her professor for another chance at her final. Just concentrate on getting your own finals finished and then go enjoy the holidays.”
Feeling discouraged, Emma nodded and left the office.
There were only two more names on the list of professors she had heard Julia talking about. She wished she could have gotten more information from any of the ones she had already spoken with. Even the ones who were teaching her this semester didn’t seem to have a lot of insight into Julia. For the most part, they said she kept to herself and wasn’t one of those students who got immensely involved.
The only exception was Professor Altonen. She still wasn’t especially close to Julia but had worked with her more on an individual basis than the others. Her marketing class had devised an Opportunity Fair for the students, and all of them had worked shifts at the booths they’d set up to encourage more involvement around campus, jobs, internships, and so on.
The fair gave the professor the chance to spend time with Julia outside of regular class hours, but even still she couldn’t say much about her. Mostly that she always seemed busy and rushed. That she put a lot of pressure on herself and had extremely high expectations for her own success. But she was also cooperative and kind. Smart and driven; all things Emma already knew. She was getting
