The Girl in Times Square. Paullina Simons

not yet.”

      “You should call her. She would like to hear from you. I think it will be good for her to hear from you. She’s always just this side of hysteria. She calls me four times a day. And I’ve got no leads besides you.”

      “I’m not a lead,” said Lily, taken aback, but then saw he was half-joking. “Detective,” she said, almost pleadingly. “I’ll call her, and I’m going to tell her what I’ve told you. I think she’s worried for nothing. I think Amy just left for a while and will soon turn up safely and everything will be all right. My hunch is that Amy went with whoever she was seeing on vacation.”

      “Oh, so a minute ago you didn’t think she was seeing anyone at all, and now you think she’s eloped?”

      Lily squeezed her hands together. She could not do this anymore, she had to go back to work, she had other customers!

      During her silence, Spencer said, “And do you think Amy would leave on vacation for four weeks without telling anyone and miss her graduation, to which she invited her whole family? Is she that unthinking, that inconsiderate? Wouldn’t she realize her parents would be worried sick about her?”

      “Not unthinking, not inconsiderate, just in love, detective. You know? We forgive people who are in love for their short-term inconsideration. It’s such bad form to deny them.”

      “So a minute ago, no boyfriend whatsoever and now so wildly in love, you’re defending her on grounds of temporary insanity? Please, pick a side of the fence, Miss Quinn, and keep to it.” He tipped his proverbial hat as he left.

      Judi came over and whispered, “Ooooooh,” from behind.

      “Just stop it,” said Lily.

      Why wasn’t she able to call Amy’s mother? Why couldn’t she make that call? On the surface it seemed so easy, as easy as talking to the detective. Easier—she knew her, she liked her. Hi, Mrs. McFadden, how are you, and the other children … ugh, right there. The other children? Yes, Mrs. McFadden, I know it’s terrible about Amy. She’s gone and no one knows where she is, but the other children that you still have, how are they? Are they safe? That was the whole problem. Imagining the conversation filled Lily with such itching discomfort that she just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone.

      She called her grandmother instead.

      “Have you been reading the papers?” said Claudia. “An Amtrak train struck a log truck at a crossing this morning, derailing all ten cars and injuring ten people. Two people were seriously hurt.”

      “Grandma …”

      “A microphone stand impaled a pregnant mother, who fell in her own house while getting her two boys ready for school. She fell from the second floor to the first and was impaled through the chest on her microphone stand. She was a musician.”

      “Grandma, please!”

      “Think about those boys. It’s terrible seeing your own mother get hurt in such a freak accident.”

      “Yes. Yes, it must be. Well, thanks for talking. I gotta run.”

      Andrew hadn’t called Lily since she got back. She had called him at home last week, but Miera said he was in Washington. “Lily, his schedule is posted online. Clearly says, Washington. Call him there.”

      She called him there, but he was still in session. And he didn’t return her call. Typical of him. He would get so busy, sometimes she didn’t hear from him for weeks. She called Andrew’s apartment to speak to her father, but there was no answer. She walked around her bare room, looked at her watercolors, her photographs, her words, pictures of herself as a child, held by her sister Amanda, hugged by her brother—their youngest, Lilianne, good girl, dark girl, smart girl, walking early, smiling early, clever, funny, holding up a picture of a perfect lotus flower she drew when she was three, laughing at her mother, who took the photo. Suddenly Lily stopped walking, her gaze darkened, her eyes blinked, blinked again, closed.

      Spencer who saw everything. Could he have looked at her walls and missed the lottery ticket? It was small and tucked in, part of a collage, covered by a photo on one side, and old American Ballet Company tickets on the other, but could he have seen? She came closer to the ticket. Oh, so what if he did? He didn’t know by heart the drawing from that day, April 18, 1999.

      When the phone rang, she absent-mindedly picked it up.

      “Lil?” It was her mother! That caught Lily unawares. Had she been caught awares, she never would have picked up the phone. The modern conveniences of caller ID—call screening. Maybe if she cashed in her lottery ticket, she could afford the six extra bucks for caller ID-while-call-waiting; that would be most useful. Ha! This she was thinking while trying to decipher the tone of her mother’s voice which seemed rather chipper for a woman who had found herself recently and unexpectedly without a husband.

      Suddenly her father picked up the other extension. “Lil?”

      “Papi?”

      “Yes, why so shocked? I do live here, you know.” And he laughed.

      Her mother said, “I barely spoke five seconds to my own child. Could I have her first, and then you’ll have her when I’m done?”

      “Mom, let me speak to Papi quick now.”

      As soon as Allison slammed down the phone, George said, “Yes, honey?” in his most casual, most unconcerned, most I’m-in-Hawaii-and-I’m-so-happy voice.

      “I don’t understand. I thought you were staying with Andrew?”

      “Oh, I was in D.C. on a little business. That’s all. Not a big deal.”

      “So you’re … back?”

      “Everything is fine, great even. I was getting the jitters, you know, having worked non stop for forty-five years. Well, you wouldn’t know. But someday you’ll work.”

      “I work now. Fifty hours a week. Papi, what’s going on? Talk to me.”

      “Nothing to talk about. Do you know your mother has been coming to the beach with me every single morning? She loves it. She wasn’t feeling well when you were here. She is much better now. And she is cutting down on her smoking. She is looking beautiful, by the way, your mother.”

      Allison came back on the line, and both she and George were on the phone now, clucking, joking, chuckling. “Lily, this is like a second honeymoon with your father,” her mother whispered. “I can’t tell you how happy we are.”

      Could Lily hang up fast enough? She didn’t think so.

      Now she had the strength to call Amy’s mother!

      The voice on the other line was groggy and slightly slurred.

      “Oh, Lily,” said Mrs. McFadden. “Where is she? Where is Amy? Why haven’t we heard from her?”

      Lily wanted to say a few hollow words, and did, petering off, trailing off, she wanted to say more, about how she wasn’t worried—which was less and less true—and about how Amy liked to be independent and she hated accounting to anyone for her actions. (“That’s so true,” said Amy’s mother.) She said that she would call as soon as Amy came back, but she said it feebly, and it didn’t matter anyway, it wasn’t heard over Mrs. McFadden’s crying. There was no getting through to the mother, just as Lily had suspected, and she didn’t have anything in her arsenal with which to get through. Maybe Amanda would know how. After all, she had four children. Maybe if one of them went missing she would know what to say to Mrs. McFadden, who had had Amy with her first husband and was now remarried with two brand new children. She must have thought she was so close to not having to worry about Amy anymore.

      Jan continued to cry, and Lily continued to sit on the phone and not know what to say except an intermittent and impotent, “I’m really sorry.”

      Paul and Rachel, who were Amy’s friends and whose nucleus was Amy, wanted