Zachary nodded. “And her praying?”
“She can stop while you are here. For a while. As soon as you are gone, she’ll start up again.”
“Her boss said that they were working with her therapist. Has he come here too? Does he make suggestions of things that you and she can do to address her issues?”
“He’s never been here. That’s the first I’ve heard of him going to her work. We are private people, Mr. Goldman. We don’t like putting ourselves on display.”
Spencer didn’t, perhaps, but Isabella did. Every week.
“Is there anything that would help Isabella? Her mother hoped that if I found something, it would alleviate her guilt and help her to recover. What do you think?”
“I don’t think this is doing her any good.” Spencer shook his head. “I think she needs quiet. Not to be disturbed by people like you and by the network. Just give her some time by herself to sort it all through.”
“I see.”
“We have a couple of friends who are moving back to town. The Raymonds. I’m hoping that seeing them again, having a girlfriend she can talk to… maybe that will help. They moved to New York seven or eight years ago, and we haven’t really seen them since. Maybe they can bring back memories of what it was like before we had Declan. We—she—was happier then.”
“She doesn’t have many friends that she can talk to?”
“No. It’s not easy for someone like Isabella to make friends. She’s so emotional, and she lets herself get caught up in her compulsions. People want you to be normal.”
“Neurotypical,” Zachary suggested.
“Normal,” Spencer repeated.
“Okay. Is there anything else? Have you thought any more about what happened the day your son disappeared? Anything at all.”
“I’ve told you all I know.”
“Maybe you could outline what a typical day was like around here. For Declan.”
Spencer made an irritated noise in the back of his throat and shook his head.
“He would get up in the morning on his own without being wakened. If Isabella was working, he would come find me, and we would have breakfast together. I would play with him, maybe read with him. Then he would play quietly until lunch. I would make sandwiches for us both. Turn on one of his cartoons, and he would fall asleep. When Isabella got home, she would wake him up and do something with him.”
He stopped and looked at Zachary.
“And after that?”
“That’s when he disappeared,” Spencer said. “His day didn’t go any further than that.”
“But on a regular day, what would happen after Isabella played with him?”
“Our supper hour was pretty early. Then I would take Deck for his bath and get him ready for bed. We would read stories. Maybe watch a TV show. Then he would fall asleep around eight.”
“That all sounds pretty… quiet. He didn’t get rowdy and noisy? Get into things when he was supposed to be entertaining himself? Argue or cry?”
Spencer scowled, scratching the back of his neck. “Of course. Those are all normal child things. You asked what a typical schedule was. That’s what I gave you. But he wasn’t a trained dog; he had a mind of his own.”
“So, he would disobey.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever leave the yard before when he knew he wasn’t supposed to?”
“No, never.”
“I want you to think about it,” Zachary insisted. “He never tried to reach the latch? Never climbed the fence to get a ball that he threw out of the yard?”
Spencer considered these scenarios, actually thinking instead of just answering defensively. “He was a pretty quiet child. Not like some of the little demons you see around here. He usually tried to do what he was told.”
Zachary waited for him to work through his answer.
“There was one day when I couldn’t see him in the yard. When I went out to look and see what he was doing, he was talking to a woman over the gate. Not the back gate, the one to the front.” Spencer made a motion to the side of the house where it could be found, out of sight of his windows.
“Ah. So how did you react to that? What did you tell him?”
“First, I told the woman off for talking to him. Kids may not know better than to talk to strangers, but adults should know better than to approach children who don’t know them.”
“How did she react?”
“She was angry and defensive. She said he talked to her, and she just stopped to answer him because he was so cute.”
“And then you told Declan…?”
“I told him he had to stay in the back where I could see him. Not out of sight of the windows. And that he wasn’t supposed to talk to adults who came up to the house. If someone came up to him, he should come inside and get one of us.”
“How long was that before his disappearance?”
Spencer rubbed the center of his forehead, thinking about it. “It’s hard to say. I don’t remember that clearly. Maybe it was a few weeks or a couple of months.”
“Did you ever see the woman again?”
“No. Not someone I ever saw again.”
“Did you tell Isabella about it?”
“Hm… Yes, I think I did. Just so she would be aware that part of the yard was out of view of the windows, and she should make sure Deck didn’t go over there… if he was out of sight, she should check there and make sure someone wasn’t trying to talk to him.”
“And did she do that the day he disappeared? Did she go outside and check that part of the yard?”
“Yes, of course. So did I. We both checked every inch of the back yard. It was obvious he wasn’t there.”
“The police didn’t find any helpful footprints.”
“No. They didn’t find much of anything,” Spencer agreed.
“Did it surprise you that there wasn’t a clear trail to follow?”
“No. Conditions that day… it was pretty dry. It had been for a while. The ground was hard and dusty. Declan wasn’t heavy enough to leave a trail to follow.”
“And there
