Free The Unseen World by Liz Moore Page B

Ada.
    â€œHe didn’t give you any hints? He hasn’t been talking about going anyplace in particular?”
    â€œNo,” said Ada, wishing she could answer differently.
    â€œAnd has he disappeared like this before?”
    Ada hesitated. She did not want to tell Liston the truth, which was, of course, that he had. A few hours here, there. She settled on an answer that sounded all right in her head: “Just a couple of times,” she said. “Never for long.”
    Liston shook her head. “Oh, David,” she said, and in her voice Ada heard some piece of knowledge that she was not sharing.
    It was true that Liston and David were close, and had been since he had hired her almost fifteen years before, but there was no one, Ada felt, who understood him as Ada herself did. She didn’t like to hear Liston speak of him dismissively; she didn’t want her to feel that they were conspiring, or that they shared any common criticisms of David.
    Ada thought back to the telephone conversation she had overheard Liston having with David and wondered if there was any possible way to explain how she had come to overhear it. She decided, at last, that there was not. She wanted badly to know what Liston had been speaking of; not knowing made her feel less close to David. She had always imagined herself as his confidante, his right hand, and didn’t like to think of anyone knowing something about him that she herself wasn’t privy to.
    â€œHow long has he been gone now?” Liston asked, and Ada checked her watch. It was just after 3:00 in the afternoon.
    â€œEight hours,” she said. “At least. I woke up at 7:00 and he was already gone.”
    â€œWe’ll give it a while longer,” said Liston. “I called my friend Bobby in the police department, and he told me they wouldn’t start searching until tomorrow anyway. Even if we called in.” And she must have seen the nervous look on Ada’s face, for she assured her that he would most likely be back before then.
    â€œI bet you he’ll be back by dinnertime,” said Liston, but she, too, looked worried.
    He had not been into Tran’s, said Tran. “Is he okay?” he asked, and the two lines between his eyebrows deepened. He loved David.
    Ada assured him that David was fine—digging down deep into her reserves of strength to do so—and then returned to Liston’s car. They continued along for a time. Ada slumped against the seat, her head against the headrest, scanning the sidewalks on either side of the road for David. She searched the roadsides for his shining head, for a tall man in a T-shirt and shorts, or in trousers and a threadbare oxford, jangling his limbs about in a way that seemed incompatible with speed, and yet propelled him forcefully ahead.
    Liston tried to make small talk with her, telling her one or another little anecdote about the grad students or about Martha, the division secretary—“All she wants, poor thing, is a date with a normal man”—but Ada could only muster the briefest of replies.
    David was nowhere they looked.
    Their drive became a silent one, strange and uncomfortable. For the first time, Ada allowed herself to truly wonder if her father was gone completely—disappeared altogether. Kidnapped. Dead on some lonesome road in the mountains of New Hampshire or New York. Or injured badly, unable to call for help. Or—worst of all—gone of his own volition. Was it possible, she wondered, that he had abandoned her? It was such a contrast to anything she understood about her father that she could not process the idea.
    At last, they pulled back onto Shawmut Way, and Liston stopped in David’s driveway, where his car was still parked. For several seconds neither of them moved. It was quiet: Ada could hear children playing a block away. Small clicks and pings emanated from beneath the hood of Liston’s station wagon as the engine