They go around to the little lot at the side of the inn and get into the rental car. She starts the car and turns off the static rattle of the radio before they crunch over the gravel and roll out onto the deserted street. No one is out at this hour; the town is asleep under a blanket of thick stars. She rolls down the window and quietly calls her mother’s name as they creep down the street. They pass a darkened ice cream parlor and a variety of shops selling clothing and souvenirs and antiques. She stops in front of the ferry ramp and peers out across the black bay. The thought that her mother might wander toward the water unsettles her, but she puts aside that possibility.
Past the ferry dock, the tourist shops begin to peter out, interspersed with bed-and-breakfasts, a diner with its chairs turned upside down on the tables, a real estate office, a Coast to Coast, and a gas station, its self-serve pumps showcased under a stark fluorescent glare. As the street begins to climb up a slope, there are homes set back from the road, shingled cottages adorned with hedges and neat gardens, others more modern and perfunctory. She scans the darkened yards, the halos thrown by porch lights, looking for movement. Beside her, Dmitri is pressed forward against the shoulder restraint, his eyes trained out the passenger window at the houses on the right.
Then they are past town, and their headlights are brushing under thick trees, picking out only the occasional road sign or gravel turnout.
“I don’t think she would come out this far,” Helen says.
“I suppose not,” he says, and slumps back into his seat.
“It’s okay, Papa. She’s probably just somewhere right around the inn. She may even be back in bed by now.” She means to comfort her father, but she herself isn’t convinced. Given what she’s seen in the past two days, it seems like a bad bet that her mother has it in her to remember her room number, much less find her way back to an inn in a strange town. She flashes on news stories about confused seniors wandering away from their homes and even disappearing for good.
She turns around at a wide spot in the road, and they circle back into town. At each corner, she catches her breath until she can see far enough ahead to know that her mother isn’t on this block either. She turns the car onto a cross street and they roll slowly toward the other edge of town.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this? About Mama?” Helen tries not to sound reproachful.
Dmitri stares out the front window, blinking and working his lips. They pass a bookstore, a small brick post office, a market. She scans the empty sidewalks and then glances back at her father. A tear is dribbling down his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I’m not criticizing.”
“We’ve always cared for each other.” His voice is thick.
“What does Dr. Rich say? Have you at least talked with her about it?”
“They did some tests. But there’s not so much to be done.”
Helen steels herself. “Is it Alzheimer’s?”
Dmitri nods.
He is blinking furiously now and biting down hard on his lower lip.
Helen pulls the car over to the side of the street and turns off the engine. Silence fills the interior of the car. She takes her father’s freckled hand in her own and squeezes it gently. The air seems to go out of him; tears gather in the folds beneath his eyes and spill down his cheeks.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admits. “She’s getting worse. She can’t wash herself anymore. She only stands under the water and forgets to soap herself. I’m afraid to leave her alone, even for a few minutes. Last week, she put some plums in the dryer when I wasn’t looking. Our underwear came out with pink splotches, and I found pits in the bottom of the barrel.”
“Have you told Andrei any of this?”
Dmitri shakes his head. “I promised her I wouldn’t put her in a home. You know how he is-he is so sure.”
“I know, but he just wants to do what’s best. Look, we’ll worry about that later. But I’m going to give him a call,” she says, and roots through her purse for her cell phone. “I think we may need some help here.” She finds the phone but can’t locate the piece of paper with her brother’s numbers on it. She empties the contents of her purse into her lap and picks through receipts and wadded Kleenex and tubes of lipstick.
“Do you know his cell phone number?”
“Two four six,” Dmitri intones. “Six three seven”-he pauses-“twenty-four seven. Twenty-four. Twenty-four something.”
While she’s dialing information, she starts the car up again and they proceed down the street. The operator informs her that cell phone numbers aren’t listed, and at the customer’s request the home number isn’t listed either. She tries to explain that this is an emergency, but the woman is unmoved and suggests calling 911 if this is truly an emergency.
The night sky is fading imperceptibly to gray at the horizon. Helen clicks the phone off and thinks a long moment before she redials information and asks for the local police.
The voice that answers the phone is gravelly with sleep.
“Is this the police?” she asks.
“ Island County sheriff, ma’am. Deputy Kremer.”
Helen hears his muffled voice telling someone to go back to sleep. She apologizes for disturbing him and then explains that her mother is missing.
“How long has your mother been gone?” he asks.
Helen checks the clock. It is almost four. “A couple of hours, at least. My father woke up and she was gone.”
“Are you sure she’s missing? Could she have just stepped out for some reason?”
“She’s eighty-two and she has nowhere to go in the middle of the night.” Helen tamps down the impatience in her voice. “We’re visiting here. There was a wedding. My brother, Andrei Buriakov, has a place here.”
“Buriakov?” If the name registers with the deputy, he doesn’t let on.
“We’ve been driving all over, and I’m a little concerned something might have happened. She has memory problems. Alzheimer’s.”
There is a pause, and when he speaks again, his voice has taken on a new tone, even and official. “Where are you calling from, ma’am?”
“I’m in the car.” They are past town again, on a road that seems to be heading out in the general direction of Andrei’s, though she doesn’t recall what looks like a farm up ahead. “Maybe a mile outside of town,” she guesses. “I don’t know the road.”
“And where was your mother last seen?”
He asks a few more questions, taking down all the information: her name, where they are staying, her brother’s name, and then a careful description of her mother. He pauses before he asks, “Any chance she could have gotten on the ten o’clock ferry?”
They stayed at Andrei’s last evening just long enough to see the bride and groom off on their honeymoon. Katie had stood on the float of the seaplane and thrown her bouquet back at the cluster of young women crowding the dock. Then the pilot helped the couple climb in and they puttered out into the bay and thundered noisily up into the summer sky. After that, the reception shifted into a party, and Helen and her parents made their excuses. At the hotel, her parents had turned in immediately, exhausted by the day’s festivities, but Helen was still up reading at ten. She remembers marveling that it was just starting to get dark.
“I think I would have heard her,” Helen says. “Besides, I think she’s still in a nightgown. Wouldn’t someone stop her?”
“Hard to say. How about we’ll meet you in front of the Arbutus. Might take us a few minutes to get over there.”
When she clicks off the phone, she tells Dmitri that the deputy is meeting them, and then they turn back and take one last pass through town, past the hardware store, past the Bumblebee Diner with its sign reading “Closed, Come Again!” and past the Kingfisher B amp;B. A few cars have queued up alongside the road for the ferry. The glassy water of the harbor mirrors a dim gray sky, heavy with fog. A seagull cuts low over the water and drops onto a buoy, unsettling another gull in a flurry of shrieking. She watches the birds, dully aware now of her exhaustion and a clammy coldness.