Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

      Weight: 100 pounds

      Hair Color: Dark brown

      Eye Color: Dark brown

      Complexion: Pale

      Glasses/contacts description: Clear contacts/ wire-rimmed glasses

      Identifying characteristics: Short, “frizzy”-curly dark hair, prominent dark eyebrows, non-raised faded strawberry birthmark on left forearm, faded (childhood) scar on right knee

      Medical history: Migraine headache, bronchitis, (childhood) chicken pox, measles, mumps, scarlet fever.

      Jewelry: None known. Ears not pierced.

      Attire at time of Disappearance: Black jeans, black T-shirt, black/white striped cotton sweater, sandals.

      Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown pending police investigation. Cressida was last seen by witnesses at midnight July 9 in the parking lot of the Roebuck Inn & Marina, Wolf’s Head Lake, New York, but is believed to have been later in the Nautauga State Forest Preserve.

      Investigative Agency: Beechum County Sheriff’s Department, City of Carthage Police Department

      Investigative Case # 04-29374

      NCIC #: K-84420081

      THROUGH JULY, THAT NIGHTMARE month, and into August 2005.

      Waiting for the phone to ring.

      “The news will come by phone. No other way—phone.”

      HE’D ORDERED six thousand flyers. A first printing.

      This was a replica of the national endangered missing adults Web site for Cressida Catherine Mayfield.

      He’d arranged for a massive mailing to households in Beechum, Herkimer, and Hamilton counties.

      Volunteers affixed flyers to telephone poles, trees, public walls and the sides of buildings in Carthage and in the villages of Wolf’s Head Lake, Echo Lake, and Black River. In post offices in these places and as far away as Watertown, Fort Drum, Sackets Harbor, and Ogdensburg.

      And everywhere in the Nautauga State Forest Preserve—restrooms, the ranger stations, every one hundred feet along popular trails.

      Walking in the Preserve, along the Sandhill Road where—(he persisted in thinking)—he might yet discover some inexplicably overlooked article of clothing or item belonging to his daughter he stared at the ENDANGERED MISSING ADULT CRESSIDA MAYFIELD flyers stapled to trees making his way from one to the next—to the next—and the next—like a man with a single leg, stumbling on a crutch.

      Where a flyer appeared to be missing, or was torn, or rain-ravaged, he stapled another. In a backpack he carried an infinite supply.

      “SOMEONE WILL RECOGNIZE HER. Someone will have information. We have faith.”

      Through July, that nightmare month, and into August, and early September—the expectation prevailed in the Mayfield household.

      Waking in a place she had no idea she’d been—(slumped on a sag-bellied sofa in the basement TV room, sunshine glaring through narrow horizontal not-very-clean windows)—or when—to a sudden piercing pain at the back of her skull. A phone ringing upstairs!

      Stumbling upstairs to grab at the receiver.

      For always there was the expectation that the next call would be Cressida.

      Or news of Cressida.

      Mrs. Mayfield? Arlette? We have good news . . .

      Are you Mrs. Mayfield? The mother of Cressida? At last we have good news for you and your husband . . .

      “Yes. I mean no—we don’t give up waiting. We will never give up waiting. We are convinced that our daughter is alive and will contact us . . .”

      Or: “It’s a matter of faith. We know that Cressida is—somewhere. And sometime, we will see her again.”

      They were being interviewed: TV cameras.

      They were being photographed: flashbulbs.

      They were the Mayfields, Arlette and Zeno. And sometimes, Juliet.

      Family of the missing girl.

      “No. We are not bitter. We understand that the detectives are ‘investigating’—‘collecting evidence.’ They can’t arrest him—anyone—until they have ‘built a case.’ ”

      And: “We know that he knows. Everyone in Carthage knows that Brett Kincaid knows what has happened to Cressida—but he’s protected by the law, for the time being. Until the detectives have ‘built their case.’ ”

      Stalwart Zeno seemed oblivious, that faith in his daughter being alive after more than forty days did not compute with faith that Brett Kincaid would soon be arrested for a crime involving his daughter.

      Arlette understood the illogic. Arlette sensed the pity of others in the face of the Mayfields’ obdurate faith.

      And there was Juliet, with her stunned smile. Beautiful Juliet Mayfield, elementary school teacher at the Convent Street School, prom queen of Carthage High Class of 2000 and ex-fiancée of Corporal Brett Kincaid believed to be the “last person” to have seen Cressida Mayfield in the early morning hours of July 10.

      “I know that my sister Cressida is alive and well—somewhere. I know that Brett did not harm her but I think that Brett might know who did harm her and where she is. All my prayers are with her and with Brett also . . . I do believe in the power of prayer, yes. No, we don’t see each other now—Brett Kincaid and me. Not right now. But I pray for him, too—I pray for his troubled soul.”

      SHE WAS FIFTY-ONE years old! A few months ago, she’d been a girl.

      Something skeletal had taken root inside her, not soon to be shaken.

      What she’d come to dread: opening her eyes in the morning.

      For once her eyes were opened, she could not close them again until nighttime.

      Once the thoughts of her lost daughter were unleashed, like a landslide, like a flash flood, they could not be curtailed. They could not be contained.

      Oh God. Cressida! Tell us where you are, honey.

      If we can come to you—tell us . . .

      Nor could Arlette avoid acknowledging her husband lying exhausted in sleep beside her like a winded, wounded beast that groaned and muttered in its sleep; or, worse, lay awake; having been awake for hours, thoughts churning in his head like laundry in a washer.

      It had long been their custom to kiss in the morning—casually aimed kisses like greetings. But now, Arlette lay very still not wanting to move in the hope that Zeno wouldn’t know she’d wakened.

      Yet, Zeno always knew. His brooding monologue, that had rumbled through the night inaudibly, now surfaced:

      “God damn I’m going out to see McManus this morning. Bastard never returned my call yesterday and I think—I’ve been thinking—there is something they know, they’re hiding from us. Some reason they haven’t arrested Kincaid yet.”

      Or: “I’m going over to the Meyers’ this morning. I think—I’ve been thinking—there is something more Marcy knows, she hasn’t told anyone. But maybe I can prevail upon her to tell me.”

      Wordless Arlette moved to kiss her husband on his mouth, that had so little to do with her, only with the continual monologue, the argument.

      A kiss is a way of not-speaking. A way of cowardice.

      Arlette was thinking of Cressida’s pen-and-ink drawing—Metamorphoses.

      White humanoid figures that evolved by degrees into abstract shapes and became “black”—then evolved back to their original shapes, and their original “whiteness”—but profoundly altered.