Cara hasn’t considered the idea that he might have been outside, might have really disappeared. She needs to get out there and start looking in all the spots Adam is most likely to have gone. 'He must have heard something - a lawnmower maybe. Or some music. Did you check the maintenance room? Sometimes they leave their radio on.'
'We checked. He’s not there.'
Cara gathers her things. 'How about the music room? Is band practicing?'
'We looked. They’re not.'
'Let me go find him, Margot. I’m sorry this has caused such a disruption, but I’ll find him. He can’t have gone far.' In the old days, when Adam was younger and more driven by his compulsions to investigate machines, heating vents, water faucets not completely turned off, Cara lost him more often than she liked to admit. She knew the panic, the speed with which he could disappear, but she also knew intuitively, how to find him.
'They may ask for that in a minute or two, but for right now, you need to stay here.'
'They? Who is they?'
'The police.'
The police? 'How long has he been gone?'
'A little over an hour. There’s another girl missing, too. The police say they think that’s a good sign, that it diminishes the possibility of stranger abduction. It’s virtually unheard of for someone to try and take two children at once.'
Cara tries to swallow, but finds it hard, her mouth filling up with something she can’t bear the taste of. She nods, but doesn’t sit down. 'What happened Margot? Why wasn’t anyone watching him?'
'There was actually more supervision than usual. Six adults were outside when it happened. There was no stranger on the playground, no unknown cars in the parking lot, no unusual interactions that anyone saw. We’re talking to the three classrooms of kids who were outside at the time, trying to find out if any kids talked to them, dared them to hide maybe, as a practical joke, or to walk over to the woods.'
The woods, she thinks. Beyond the soccer fields on the far side of the playground, there is a lovely wood glade of pine trees that gives the school its name, Woodside Elementary. 'Let me go outside, Margot.'
'Not yet. They’re doing a systematic search and for now, they ask that you stay here.'
Cara looks out the window. 'What do they think happened?
'They think it was a prank. Someone picked two vulnerable kids and told them to do something stupid.' Margot shakes her head in disgust. 'That’s why I called the police so fast. I want whoever’s responsible for this to understand they’re in big trouble.'
In the past Cara hasn’t worried excessively about bullying. Riding the bus with Adam the first week of school as she does every year, she got a glimpse of how little Adam registers with other children. They walk past him, look through him, hardly see him, beyond the obvious oddity of a third grader riding the school bus with his mother. It is sad, of course, and also a relief. If bullies have an intuitive sense for who will burst into tears most easily, most spectacularly, it isn’t Adam. He might hum when a child speaks to him, or walk away, but in all likelihood, he will hear very little another child says to him. 'If another child told him to do something, I don’t think he would. That’s not like Adam.'
'You never know, Cara. He’s changing. Adam’s changed a lot this year.'
In any other context, she would take this as a cause for celebration. He’s changing! Even the principal noticed! Now it only seems worrisome. 'Who is the girl?'
'Amelia Best?' She says as a question, as if hoping this name might ring a bell, which it doesn’t. 'She’s new this year. Fourth grade. She’s been at this school what? Six weeks. Unusually pretty little girl. Very…' She tries to find the right word. 'Blonde.'
Adam has disappeared with a notably pretty little girl? 'Are you sure they’re together?'
'We don’t know. We know Adam better than we know her. We noticed Adam was missing first because it’s so unlike him. He’s so compliant these days that when he didn’t line up at the first whistle, Sue knew something was wrong and called the office right away. I’m afraid I have to ask - where is Adam’s father?'
Cara looks up. She hasn’t expected this. 'He’s not…in the picture.' This is her standard answer.
'Right, I know that, but where is he? I’m only asking because the police have asked several times. Apparently, an absent father is the first place they look.'
Cara feels her mouth go dry. 'I don’t know who his father is…exactly.'
Margot raises her eyes in surprise. 'Oh. So he’s never been in the picture?'
'No. He wouldn’t know.'
'At all? Anything about Adam? There’s no chance he’s involved in this?'
Cara shakes her head. 'None.'
Margot holds up her hand. 'That’s all I need to know.' She looks out the window of her office, as if she’s contemplating going out there right now, telling someone this. Then she turns back, with a new thought: 'Do you think if he was out on the playground, he could have heard a radio, maybe, playing in the woods?'
Cara’s stomach begins to pound, like a second heart. Let him not be in the woods, she prays.
Suddenly there is a flurry out in the hallway; two secretaries stand up at once. When the door handle turns and the woman leans in, Cara doesn’t look up. 'They’ve found them, Cara. Adam is all right. They’re bringing him out now.'
Cara exhales, her relief so huge she cannot speak.