“No.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“The morning she disappeared.”
“How did she seem?”
“Good. She was good. She was….”
“It’s okay. Take your time, Mr. Greengrass.”
“She was happy. She had a paper due that next Friday that she’d worked hard on. She said—she said it’d kicked her ass and she was happy to finally be done with it. She said that. She said she was happy. She was taking the day off to just… be. She was going to get coffee and read in a park somewhere. She did that, sometimes. It was….”
“What was the last thing she said to you?”
And, oh, was that something he’d never forget. The phone call had come the night before, that she’d be late because of the fire farther down the line, but she’d gotten home eventually and had finished that paper, and she’d come down the stairs, crowing loudly how good she was, stopping in front of David and Phillip, who were curled on the couch. She’d finished and it felt good. Then she’d lifted her bare foot and pushed it between them, wiggling her leg back and forth until they moved, something she’d done since she was a little girl. They’d laughed as they always had and separated, and she’d sat down between them, feet in Phillip’s lap, head on David’s shoulder, and that was that.
“I’m going to take tomorrow off,” she’d said after a little while. She sounded soft and sleepy. “Only have one class. Nothing due. I think I earned it.”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” David had said. “You’ve earned it.”
“Take a day,” Phillip had agreed.
Phillip was already at the bookstore and David in his office by the time she’d rolled out of bed. He’d heard her clanking around the kitchen, and then she’d come in, rubbing her eyes and yawning, saying “G’morning, Daddy,” and he’d said, “Morning, sweetheart,” and she’d taken his coffee mug and refilled it for him. He’d thanked her distractedly, never taking his eyes from the laptop.
A little while later, she’d popped her head back in, dressed, hair pulled back and covered in a teal bandana, earrings dangling from her ears, and she’d said, “I’m off! I’ll be back later. I’ve got my phone if you need me, okay?”
And every day for the last six years, David regretted what he’d said next. If he’d known what was to come, if he’d known and there’d been no way to stop it, he’d have gotten up from behind his desk and gone to her. He’d have hugged her tightly, whispering in her ear that she had made him the happiest he’d ever been, that he’d been scared when she’d come to live with them because she’d been so tiny, but that she’d made him a better man, that for the rest of his life, he would always think of himself as a father because she gave that to him. He’d have said that he loved her more than anything in the world.
Instead, he had barely looked up and said, “Have a good day. I’ll see you later.”
Have a good day.
I’ll see you later.
She had smiled at him.
Then she was gone.
Have a good day.
I’ll see you later.
“That was the last thing she said to me,” David had told the police. “And that was the last thing I said to her.”
The detective had smiled sympathetically at him.
And then asked if Alice had ever run off before. Maybe she’d gotten herself into something she couldn’t get out of. “She have a pimp?” the detective had asked.
David had been barely able to stop himself from reaching across the desk and grabbing the detective by the back of his neck and slamming his face against the table. “Would you be asking me these same questions if she was white?” he’d spat.
“Of course, sir,” the detective had said, sounding coolly amused. “Of course we would.”
He hadn’t believed that in the slightest.
He should have taken that as a sign. He and Phillip would learn very quickly that many people were, at best, indifferent to a missing black woman. The worst of them were dismissive. They were on the news in DC and in Virginia and Maryland, but it faded. Within a week. They watched in horror as she went from the second or third story to not even being mentioned at all. They’d been outraged, as had Alice’s friends, and GWU had held a vigil for her, a candlelight vigil, and later, much, much later, David would find the photos from that night of him standing on the stage with his arm around Phillip’s shoulders. Phillip, whose face was pressed against David’s neck while David himself spoke to the large crowd that had stood before him.
And when night came, when they would both be wide-awake and staring at the ceiling, unable to even contemplate sleep even though they were both so, so tired, he would think to himself, You keep going, sweetheart. Wherever you are, you keep going, because your papa and I are coming for you. I will not stop. I will never stop.