Now
“Hello. Is this Mrs. Meyer?” I ask.
“This is Claire Meyer. Who’s speaking?” she asks.
I know the voice. It has a new layer, somewhat as if it’s been dipped in lemon juice, but it’s the same voice. I don’t think I’ll ever forget talking to her in the days immediately after Julia disappeared.
“This is Emma Griffin. I’m not sure if you remember me,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, biting off anything else I might say. “I remember you. You were Julia’s friend in college.”
“Yes,” I say. “We spoke right after she went missing.”
“Julia did not go missing. I told you that then and I’m telling you that again now. She chose to run away,” Claire says.
“I don’t think that’s true,” I say. “Just as I didn’t then. I’m investigating her case again.”
“There is no case,” Claire says. “How dare you bring up all that unpleasantness again? Do you have any idea how difficult it is on my husband and me to know our only daughter chose to cut us out of her life completely? That she just abandoned her life?”
“Again, I don’t think she did,” I try to explain. “But I can imagine it would be almost as difficult as her knowing her parents would be willing to cut her out of their lives if she didn’t make the choices that they were trying to force her into.”
“I can’t deal with this again,” Mrs. Meyers says.
I expect the call to cut off. Instead, there’s a muffled scraping sound and another voice comes over the line.
“Hello?”
“Mister Meyer?” I ask.
“Bill,” he says. “Who’s this?”
“Emma Griffin, sir,” I say.
“Julia’s friend,” he says quietly.
“Yes,” I say.
There’s a gentler note in his voice than there was in his wife’s, and I think I might be able to get further with him.
“What can I help you with, Emma?” he asks.
“Have you heard anything from Julia over the years? Or even anything about her? People talking about her? Even new mail? Anything that might point to what happened to her?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Nothing since the day she packed her things and left campus. Her car was never found, and the belongings that she had with her are still gone. As we told you thirteen years ago, she decided her own path in life and was going to follow it no matter what. It’s not something my wife and I like to think about.”
“I understand that,” I say. “But there is a lot about this that isn’t as it seems. Too many things don’t add up, and I have reason to believe something serious happened to her. I’m investigating her disappearance again, and I could really use any help you or your wife might be able to offer me.”
“Please don’t do this,” he says. “This has been so painful for both of us. Knowing our daughter left us and that we aren’t even a part of her life anymore is too much for any parents to bear. We don’t need a reminder of it.”
“Julia deserves for people to know what happened. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I don’t say that very often, but this time I really mean it. I hope I am completely off base and have no idea what I’m talking about. I hope she’s out there somewhere living a glorious life with an amazing husband and wonderful career cooking in the restaurant of her dreams. I hope she has children and pets and everything she ever dreamed of. But if she doesn’t, if something stopped her from having any of that, we need to find out,” I say.
“Please, Emma. My wife is sick. She can’t take this kind of stress,” he says.
“The last time we spoke, you mentioned that a few things were left in her apartment. They weren’t in her room. Everything in there was taken out. But there were a few things in the living room. Do you have them? Can I see them?” I asked.
“We left them there,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“We left them at the University,” he says. “I believed she would come back, and we didn’t want to have taken them. Now we assume they’ve probably been thrown away. This is very painful for us. I tried for a long time to tell myself everything was going to be fine. That she would come home, and everything would go back to normal. But over the years I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that she made her choice. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Now I just need to focus on taking care of my wife.”
Chapter Forty-Three
I walk into the administration office and immediately see the desk plaque with the name Nancy Fulbright. As I’m walking up to it, I smile at the woman sitting by the computer. For a second, she stays focused on the screen, but her eyes flicker over to me. They go back to the screen for only a split second before her head whips over to look at me, as if it had taken that long for her to process what she saw.
“Emma Griffin,” she says.
I smile and nod. “Yes. And you are Nancy Fulbright. I believe we spoke on the phone.”
“Yes,” she says. She giggles almost breathlessly. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you. I mean, in person. I already talked to you. On the phone. But you just said that. Oh my gosh, I sound like a blithering idiot.”
“You’re fine,” I smile. “It can be a little strange to put a face to a name sometimes.”
“Oh, but I already had your face with your name. All of us around here know who you are,” she says. She leans toward me and lowers her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Something a lot of people don’t know about me is I am somewhat of a true crime buff.”
“Really?” I ask, lowering my voice along with hers.
This
