Disappearing Act: A Mary Alazara Novel

Chapter 1

Mary, your sister—she’s gone.

Chapter 2

Gone? Mary repeated. Gone how? How do you lose an entire person? She wasn’t reacting well to the news at all. She held up her hand in a gesture that said ‘wait’ and restarted. Sorry. You took me by surprise. Does mom know?

She sat in the small office of her stepdad Eric’s restaurant. It was Monday morning, her only day not opening the coffee shop. She was 22, juggling full time work with a full time boyfriend. She hadn’t been around that much to keep her 18-year-old sister Sally out of trouble.

Here, he said and handed her a note on a pink post it, the kind they kept in the kitchen for shopping lists.

I’ll finish the year sleeping on Natalie’s couch. Don’t you dare come looking for me mom!!!

Why does she address it to mom and not you? she asked. Eric had the decency to look uncomfortable, but Mary recognized the meaning behind it. The look meant some argument happened between Carolina and Sally that he didn’t bother to prevent. He was Sally and Mary’s stepdad, not their real dad and he shied away from making any moves that could upset their mother. All these years later they dismissed him as window dressing.

Your mom and Sally had a fight on Saturday. It was a bad one.

Mary steeled herself for the details.

What happened?

Your mother got a call from Sally’s guidance counselor, Diana somebody. Real bitch. Told your mom that Sally was on academic probation and that there was an inquiry into some test she took recently. This coming on the heels of Sally winning that scholarship. It didn’t sit well with your mom.

Mary was baffled by this. Sally was a good student, driven and focused on her academic career. She had a head for numbers—wanted to be a doctor. This seemed extreme.

Inquiry into what?

Cheating. He sounded grim.

Sally doesn’t cheat, Mary said. It was a fact, stated flatly. Sally made notes. She organized study groups. She did extra credit work. She didn’t need to cheat. She had enough academic merits to sustain two people.

Diana thinks she did and there was some kind of academic probation meeting that was going to happen with the principal. Sally was supposed to have that meeting today. She took off Saturday night.

After the fight?

Yeah. After the fight. He shook his head. For the first time in a while he looked his age of 38 years old. He could usually pass for early 30s with the amount of smiling and flirting he did at the restaurant, but today he looked ancient.

Why didn’t you guys look for her yesterday? Mary asked.

Because we figured we were giving her the chance to cool off and come home on her own.

Mary couldn’t find fault in that logic, but it seemed foolhardy to let a day go by without following up with their daughter.

Your mom and Sally said some things they didn’t mean, Eric said.

What did mom do?

She got in Sally’s face, starting yelling at her. I told her to let Sally come through the door, at least get her jacket off, but she was bitching at the top of her lungs on Saturday afternoon.

What did Sally do?

She pushed your mom back, not hard, but to give herself some space. Your mom took it the wrong way and clocked her cold. Sat her on her ass.

Mom punched Sally? Mary asked, voice half an octave higher than before, to clarify.

No wonder they gave her Sunday to come home on her own.

Yeah, right in the face.

Mary pinched the bridge of her nose. Her mom was volatile, always ready to slap or punch when a simple warning would have sufficed. Like all parents, her mother expected perfection from her kids. Mary was the bookworm, looking to get lost in someone else’s story. Sally was the number cruncher, keeping the world out with cold columns of calculations. They were quiet and they were smart and they never did much to step out of line. The problem came from Carolina’s end because, when you don’t really want to be a parent with two small kids and a dead husband, your temper started fraying. Before she met Eric, Carolina found an outlet for all her life’s disappointments by taking it out on her daughters.

What happened then? Mary asked.

Sally lost her shit. I’ve never seen her react this way. I had to physically carry her to her room. She grabbed your mother’s arms and shook her as hard as she could. I think your mom was surprised—you know how little Sally is—but Sally was ready for murder.

Mary felt tears prickle her eyes, not because she was sad, but because she was mad. She moved out of the house a year ago, the last year of college, into a tiny studio nearby. She’d promised Sally that she could stay with her as much as she wanted, but Sally hadn’t wanted to. She texted. She sent emojis. She never admitted that Mary leaving hurt, but she punished Mary by being distant, like they’d met at a bus station and were being coolly polite.

You know it’s illegal to hit your kids, Mary said, not knowing if this was true, but wanting it to be.

You don’t think I know that? Eric snapped. The truth was that he never got in the way when Carolina was on a rampage. If she thought her daughters were fucking up, he never protected them. He only distracted her, pretending that they weren’t getting raged at so he didn’t have to deal with the fact that he married a monster. Well, to the world she was an artist. She created things with her hands that her friends bought for lots of money and told their friends about. To them she was mom, the aggressor.

Does Sally even have a friend named Natalie? Mary asked. She knew Jahan, best friend since 9th grade, and devoted crush. Jahan was a skinny Egyptian kid with clear green eyes who’d finally had a growth spurt. He stood just over 6’ tall. He loved Sally in the way all crushes did—completely and without pause. Sally had never seen him that way and they existed by mutual ignorance of his feelings. Other than him, Mary had no idea who Sally regularly talked to or saw.

Yeah, I think so. Eric hesitated. There were three girls who regularly came to the house to study. One of them might have been a Natalie. He shook his head. Look kid, I was hoping you knew where your sister was. I was thinking maybe she called you and she’s on your couch.

He looked lost, but she could only shrug. Sally wasn’t on her couch. Sally barely spoke to her. The sisters lost touch months ago.

She hasn’t called me since March, Mary said. That was two months back. It was May, the height of academic season. Sally should have been completing finals and finishing the year with a flourish.

Shit, I was hoping that it was gonna be easier, he said.

Are you going to call the police? she asked.

I got a friend out of the 115 who’s gonna come to the restaurant tonight. You should be there. You might be able to shed some light on what your sister is thinking.

She’s thinking she doesn’t want to duck a punch from her mom.

Have you called around to her friends to see if they know what’s going on? Mary asked.

He shook his head no.

I figured we’d let her stew and see if she came home on her own. She’s 18. No one’s gonna be putting too much emphasis on her coming back. She’s an adult.

Mary shook her head. He was doing the least amount of work possible, as usual. Had he called her, wanting her to spring into action all along?

Well, I can call them. See what’s going on. She might be watching TV at one of their houses right now.

She could feel her brain wanting this to be the case, accepting this tidy solution to this mystery.

I guess, he said, sounding lost.

They sat in silence for a few seconds before she looked up.

You think that this pushed her over the edge? She wouldn’t do something stupid, Mary said.

Like how? Eric asked.

I mean, she wouldn’t run off with a guy, right?

6 weeks before school ends? he asked. Why wait all this time and then pull a runner?

That was a question Mary intended to find the answer to. Eric ran his fingers through his hair and then shook himself. He took notice of his stepdaughter, probably cataloguing the bags under her eyes and the wrinkled t-shirt she’d worn. He’d always criticized her tendencies to live in scoop necked tees from the Gap and boyfriend jeans from Forever 21.

You busy kid? I shouldn’t even be asking you this.

She shook her head no.

I’ve got a week before I have to get ready for graduation. You guys are coming, right? Mom won’t pull some last minute work stuff.

Her mom wasn’t speaking to her at the moment. That had been going on for close to a year. She yelled the Mary wasn’t old enough to be out of the house, she should have stayed until she was much older. Mary had been firm: she would either hire a moving truck and they’d help her pack or she’d take a suitcase with everything she had and would leave in the dead of night, but she was going. Carolina hadn’t forgiven her for that yet.

Of course we’re coming. I’m glad you’re graduating. This is good for you; you always were the most level headed out of all of us, he said.

She was graduating from St. John’s with a degree in library science. She’d always loved being around books and this was the way she was going to do it, even with the changes going on with making everything more tech based. She really wanted to go to a research library or a college and work to tirelessly preserve their first editions of Wuthering Heights and The Scarlet Pimpernel. She figured she’d probably be hired for minimum wage at the Public Library and have to clean up feces left behind by homeless men.

I can look into this for you, Eric. I want to make sure Sally’s safe too, she said.

Jesus, I never thought it would come to this. He ran his fingers through his hair. Look, call around to her friends, make sure one of them little punks ain’t hiding her. Come by again for dinner tonight and you’ll meet my friend.

Sounds like a plan, she said and then left.

Chapter 3

Mary walked out of Eric’s restaurant and checked her key ring. She still had her old house key there, dull from her where her fingers gripped it to fit in the head of the lock. She made the familiar long walk home, dodging school kids and people going to work as they fought for space on the sidewalk. She walked under the train along Roosevelt, wishing she had remembered her head phones. At least she had her sunglasses in the pocket of her jacket and she slipped those on so that sun wasn’t shining directly into her eyes. She was a master at not making eye contact with all of the people shouldering her aside, rushing to the places they needed to be.

It didn’t take long to get to her parent’s old house. They were just off the train. It had been Carolina’s house with Mary’s dad, Mario, but he’d died and she’d moved Eric in quickly afterwards.

She turned north onto 83rd Street and a wave of nostalgia threatened to topple her. She hadn’t been home—was it really home anymore—in six months. She loved her tiny studio apartment, but she missed having a garden and her own bedroom and even a driveway to shovel. She let herself into the gate and clicked it shut behind her. She figured her mom was out at her the jewelry shop in Greenpoint, doing inventory. 

Long time since you’ve been back, a heavily accented voice said. She spun around before she realized it was her parents’ longtime tenant, Montserrat. He was stooped and worked for TSA at LaGuardia. He took the same bus every day and knew the gossip before others knew it was gossip.

Hi Mr. Nieves. How are you? she asked. She had automatic politeness that hadn’t yet been trained out of her.

This cold is too much for me. I need to go back to Puerto Rico, he said. He rolled his r’s to make them long. He always said that about Puerto Rico.

Can I ask you something? she asked, which was technically a question, but she wanted to pique his interest. Sure enough he perked up,