“Every time I smile, every time I laugh, I think I’m doing something wrong. Because I didn’t—I have a daughter. I have a daughter and I lost her and I don’t know where she went. I don’t know what happened to her. I am a parent, and I lost my child, and who am I to smile? Who am I to laugh? I failed her, Phillip. I failed her, and I sometimes, I can’t even breathe at the thought of it.”
“You didn’t,” Phillip said roughly, voice thick with tears. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t—”
“She’s gone,” he croaked out. “Phillip, our baby girl is gone. I can’t—I’m not—where did she go? Why did she leave? Why did she have to—” He was gasping now, losing the thread he was desperately trying to follow, and Phillip was squeezing his hand tightly, so much so that he thought his fingers might break. But Phillip’s ring was digging into his palm, and it hurt, but it was a good hurt, and he was here. He was really, really here. Like, for real, for real, and she was laughing in his head, she was laughing, because this is for real, for real, silly Daddy. Silly Papa. This is for real, for real.
He cried then.
He was a sap.
This much was known.
But since March 22, 2012, the day Alice Marie Greengrass vanished, her father, David Greengrass, had cried exactly twice.
The first time he’d cried had been two weeks after she’d disappeared, the days before a storm of police, frantic searches, interviews, and sleepless nights. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he found himself in the laundry room, thinking that he might as well get something done before the sun came up and he could head out again. Phillip was sleeping upstairs, having taken an Ambien.
He was standing in front of the washer and dryer, sorting the pile of clothes in front of him. His hands were shaking. He was exhausted, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, and he just couldn’t. He knew Phillip was worried about him, knew that it wouldn’t be long before he intervened, but for now, he was drugged and asleep in their bed, and David was downstairs, unaware of what was about to hit.
He lifted a pair of jeans up from the pile of clothes and just… stopped.
Because they weren’t his jeans, no. They weren’t Phillip’s.
For one, they were too small.
Too skinny.
Too feminine.
He tried to breathe.
He found that he couldn’t.
He tried to set them down.
To turn around and leave.
To forget that he’d ever seen them.
But he couldn’t move.
And it was so stupid, that it would come to this. That he’d been so stoic to the police and to the news media, Phillip tucked at his side, crying into his shoulder. Yeah, there’d been that clip that had been played over and over online where his voice broke when he’d said, “If you have her, please. Please. I beg of you. Please let her come home. Please let our d-d-daughter come home.” He’d almost made it through, but then he’d gotten stuck on that word—daughter—and it was shown again and again and again. How sad, everyone said. That’s just so sad. At least it didn’t happen to me.
Phillip had cried. Phillip had cried almost every day.
David had not.
Until these jeans. These stupid jeans that he always gave Alice shit for, because he’d been there when she’d gotten them. He’d bought them for her, and she’d said, “Daddy, how do these look?” when she’d come out of the dressing room. And he had frowned and said, “Those don’t leave much to the imagination, do they?” She had glared at him and said that she wasn’t going to wear no goddamn mom jeans, no sir, and that she liked the way she felt when she wore them.
“Sure, sweetheart,” he’d said. “And I bet all the punk-ass boys like the way they feel when you wear them too.”
She’d grinned at him, so much like Phillip that David would have argued to anyone that she was theirs, theirs, theirs.
They’d been expensive. He’d almost choked when the girl behind the counter had read the total, and Alice had turned her big eyes toward her father, and she’d said, “Daddy. Listen. I’m about to graduate high school. I’m going to college. I’ve never gotten high. I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve earned this.”
“Yes,” he’d said dryly. “Because going to college and not doing drugs or murdering someone justifies two-hundred-dollar jeans.”
“Glad we agree. Daddy, she needs your credit card. Don’t be rude.”
So of course he did.