w a t e r s o n g

missing

Miranda sat in her car and cried.

She felt like, in the past few days since her daughter died, she learned more about Regina than she'd ever known in life. She was practically living a second existence, one in which her best friends betrayed her while she looked for solace on the internet instead of her own family. 

Not only that, but she was selling drugs, for Christ's sake. If she had gotten involved with the wrong people, maybe owed someone money, maybe that could explain someone wanting to hurt her. Because otherwise she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to harm her sweet, beautiful, talented daughter.

At the height of Miranda's sobbing, her phone started to ring. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and picked it up. It was Eliza. She had stayed home with Serena while Miranda went out, assuring her that the girl would be in good hands. Miranda worried about Serena's mental state.

"Hey, I'm sorry I'm running late. Is Serena okay?"

It was hard to understand Eliza's response, she was speaking so quickly. "Miranda... so sorry... shouldn't have fallen asleep... she's gone."

With mounting fear, Miranda whispered, "Who's gone?"

Though she already knew the answer.

Two daughters. Both of them gone.

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for it not to be true. 

Don't say it.

Don't. Say. It.

"I don't know what happened, Mir. We were all so tired that we went to our rooms to take naps, and when I woke up, Serena's room was empty. Raph's out now, looking for her."

Pull it together, Miranda, she told herself. Maybe she just went to a friend's house. Or for a walk. She does that sometimes, to clear her head. She claims the fresh air wakes her up.

"I'll be right there," she said and hung up the phone.

She didn't dare consider the darker possibilities of what might have happened. If she did, she'd be sucked into a vortex of grief, never to return. She drove home on automatic pilot. When she got there, she couldn't remember anything from the drive. It was like she blinked and found herself in her own driveway.

Eliza was standing there, waiting for her. Her hair was mussed, and her face was white.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she kept repeating, but Miranda didn't respond. Her mind was on what was hidden in the bottom of her closet--Serena's phone. She wouldn't be able to contact her daughter with it, but maybe she could talk to the only person Miranda thought would know where her daughter was.

K.

She was done running away, hiding from him. She was ready to fight.

Eliza followed Miranda as she took the steps two at a time. She ran into her bedroom, threw open the closet door, and knelt before the pile of electronics she'd stashed in the back. At the time, she wondered if she was being too paranoid, but now she knew she was not. Whoever took Serena had been watching them for some time, knew about--if not perpetrated--Regina's death, and was now poised to finish the job of destroying her family.

Her hands shook as she turned on Serena's phone. She navigated to the Facebook app and clicked on her messages. She thanked God Serena hadn't deleted the creepy message. She hit 'reply' and started typing.

Her first attempt was full of expletives and threats. "You'd better return my daughter or I'll hunt you down and kill you." She backspaced and deleted it all. What power did she really have in this situation? None. Absolutely none. She didn't even have the police on her side because they hadn't turned over Regina's laptop. What proof did she actually have that this K person was behind it all? It was conjecture. A misinterpretation of coincidences--at least that's what the police would say. Besides, if she came in swinging, she would annoy the perpetrator, and that could be bad for Serena. Very bad. She made herself calm down enough to write a polite greeting, a starting point.

"Hello?"

She left it at that and hoped beyond hope that the person hadn't deleted the account. She clicked on the profile picture--a closeup of a small black shih tzu puppy with Christmas lights in the background. It didn't seem like the kind of photograph a kidnapper would choose, but she supposed that was the point.

The message said "sent."

Seconds went by.

Minutes.

There was no reply.

Just when Miranda was about to go mad with frustration, the message blinked and said, "Read."

"Eliza! Eliza, look!" The two bent over the phone, waiting.

They sat there for twenty minutes, and there was no response.

Miranda tried a couple more messages--"Who is this?" and "Please, answer me."

Each message was read, but no reply came.

Eliza suggested, "Let's pull this up on the computer so we can have a better look."

They sat in front of Serena's PC--Miranda on a bright pink stool and Eliza on the bed--and pulled up Facebook. There were a few more pictures of the dog with a Christmas tree in the background. A snapshot of a young woman who looked like she might have been dressed for prom, in a strapless, blue sequin dress. The bio said the account owner was in Los Angeles, but Miranda knew better than to trust that information.

The one clue they were able to find was in the person's friends list.

Serena and whoever this K person was had one friend in common.

Wade Simmons.