Free Without a Word by Carol Lea Benjamin Page B

sure what you wanted.”
    â€œA diary would be nice,” I said, thinking I’d get a smile.
    â€œThere was one,” Leon said. “But when the police came, I couldn’t find it.”
    â€œYou don’t think she took it with her?”
    â€œShe didn’t even take a purse. Just a light jacket, her keys, some pickup bags.”
    â€œAnd Roy.”
    Leon nodded.
    â€œDid it ever turn up?”
    â€œExcuse me?” I had the feeling that even with something this important, Leon only half listened.
    â€œThe diary?” I sat on the top step, putting the bag on my lap and unzipping it, hoping to see the diary lying on top.
    â€œNever did.”
    I looked inside the bag. There were some notebooks, the kind you use in school, the yearbook Leon had showed me with Sally’s graduation picture in it, a manila envelope with two rubber bands around it. “What happened to her books,” I asked, “her clothes, her stuff, you know, hairbrush, bracelets, ice skates, bowling ball, family pictures, cartoons she cut out of the New Yorker and hung on the refrigerator, anything that might tell me something about her, something that might give me a hint where she might have gone?”
    â€œMadison has her clothes and some of her things.”
    â€œShe didn’t tear those up?”
    Leon shook his head. “The books are upstairs. Do you want to see them?”
    â€œYeah, I do.”
    Leon got up. I reached for his arm. “You can show me which ones were hers when I come in the morning.”
    â€œAll of them,” he said. “Well, most of them. Not the photography books. Not the history.”
    â€œI’ll see you in the morning,” I told him, not wanting to tell him I was heading out on what no doubt would be a fool’s errand, not wanting to tell him any more than I had to lest I get his hopes up only to dash them a moment later. I was going to wait until he went inside, but Leon stayed put, waiting for me to go. So I headed back the way I’d come, and when I got to Bank Street, I turned back to see if he was still standing there. The stoop was empty. I walked back that way, passing the entrance to Leon’s building and heading for the corner of Bethune Street. When I glanced up, I saw the light go off in Leon’s living room. I wondered what that meant. Surely, he wasn’t going to go to sleep at eight-twenty. Did he watch TV in the dark, I wondered, or listen to music with his eyes closed?
    Canned pears and Mop & Glo were on special at the D’Agostino’s on the opposite corner. I turned west and started watching the addresses, looking for the building where the C. Abele I’d found in the phone book lived, someone who might or might not be the person I hoped to find.
    The address in the phone book turned out to be a medium-sized brick apartment building. Like many buildings in the city, you could enter the vestibule without a key but not the lobby. I did so and checked the names on the bells. Again, it said C. Abele. There was one more place to check. The mailboxes were on the opposite wall. I looked for the one for 3F, then looked to see the name in the little slot. It said Charles Abele.
    Dash and I walked along the river before going home. The water was choppy, those small peaks everywhere, and it seemed to flow in stripes, every other one heading for the ocean, the ones in between going back from where they came. There was a good breeze, even better when we walked out onto one of the piers. I sat on a bench at the far end, putting the gym bag next to me, the Statue of Liberty overseeing the harbor to my left, New Jersey across the way. Looking downtown, I could only be aware of what was missing, a hole in the skyline where the Twin Towers used to stand.
    Dashiell lay down on the pier near my feet. We stayed for a while, listening to the water sloshing against the pilings, letting our thoughts drift. Then we headed home to open the