Apples Never Fall

She said this with the cheerful, childish disdain with which siblings often spoke about each other. Roger had a client who was an extremely well-spoken university lecturer, except for when she talked about her older sister, when she morphed into a freckled, pigtailed kid: “My sister gets everything, Roger.”

“Normally Mum is the one organizing family events, or she drops by, or suggests coffee, and so it took us a while to notice she wasn’t in touch,” continued Amy. “Also, it’s not like Mum and Dad are incapacitated. They’re so active. They’re more active than me.” Amy plucked at the fabric of her pants. “Mum isn’t even seventy yet. They keep describing her in the papers as an ‘elderly’ woman. She’s not elderly! They should try returning her first serve when she’s in a bad mood.”

She smiled tremulously at the thought of her mother’s serve.

“My brothers and sister and I worked out that when we got that text from Mum, it had been a whole week since any of us had had any contact from her, which seems wrong. I mean, she is a little bit elderly.”

She used her fingertips to massage her cheeks. “My jaw aches. I’ve been clenching it ever since we filed the missing persons report.” She opened and shut her mouth a few times. “I keep thinking about my rabbit dream.” She looked at him expectantly.

“Your rabbit dream?” said Roger. You sure had to be on your toes with Amy.

“You know. My recurring rabbit dream?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Roger. “Where you forget to feed your rabbit.”

“I forget that I have a rabbit, and in my dream, I suddenly remember—oh my God, I have a rabbit!—and I’m walking out to the rabbit hutch in the backyard and I know the rabbit is going to be dead.” She shuddered as if at a real memory of a terrible mistake.

She lowered her voice and met his eyes. “Sometimes it’s not a rabbit, it’s a puppy, which is worse, although I don’t know why; that’s so unfair to rabbits.”

She put a hand to her collarbone as her chest rose and fell rapidly.

“Your parents don’t require you to feed them, Amy,” said Roger. “They’re not bunnies or puppies or children. They’re grown-ups. It was your mother’s prerogative to go off-grid.”

Assuming she actually sent the text. Roger had read the news stories. He knew her mother’s phone had been found in the house, meaning someone else could have sent the text.

He wondered if his limitations were about to be tested beyond their capabilities, because it seemed possible, if not probable, that Amy’s father had killed her mother. Even someone with the most robust mental health would find that traumatic.

“By the way, you’ll be pleased to hear I broke up with my flatmate,” she said abruptly. “Not that we were ever really going out. It was just sex.” She shot him a look as if she were hoping to shock him.

“Why would you think I’d be pleased about that?” asked Roger.

“He’s far too nice for me,” said Amy. “He’s been so supportive about my missing mother. I felt like I was building up this debt I could never pay off. Like a mortgage. I could never have a mortgage.”

“Well, you know,” said Roger, “a relationship is about—”

Amy said, “I wasn’t worried at first. About Mum. When we didn’t hear from her. I was pleased! I thought, Good for you. Your turn now.”

Roger took a moment. He didn’t get it.

“What do you mean, ‘Your turn now’?”

“It was like what my dad used to do. When I was a kid, I always used to think, Why doesn’t she just walk out?”

Roger wrote down, Father: walking out?

But he didn’t speak. He could sense the words banked up in her.

“I was angry every time Dad left.” She massaged her jaw. “But I was even angrier with Mum for putting up with it.”

Roger waited.

“But I don’t know. What if Dad did do … what people are saying?” She looked at him imploringly. “What if it was an accident? Because my grandfather—what he did to my grandmother—it could be genetic! Because that was a terrible thing that Mum did. Harry was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for my dad. You only get one chance like that! I always knew how much Harry leaving hurt Dad, I knew he never really got over it, I could see it whenever Harry’s name came up, and then we find out that it was actually Mum! All along it was Mum!”

Roger wrote down, Grandfather? Harry? One chance?

He couldn’t grab on to a thread of the conversation so he could make sense of it.

“But if Dad did—I mean, I couldn’t forgive him. What if he asks for my forgiveness? How could I forgive him? But he’s my dad! How can I abandon him? What if he asks me to be a character witness? In court?”