Tess had painted a small wooden sign above the door.
THE SOUND LAB, it said in crooked silver letters.
Gloria used to wave to us when Tess visited.
She once brought over a pan of cinnamon rolls because she had heard that Tess was sick.
Before Molly disappeared, Gloria had been the kind of neighbor who saved newspapers for a school project and offered cuttings from her garden without being asked.
I knew her granddaughter mostly by sight.
Molly had dark curly hair, wore enormous headphones, and traveled everywhere on a battered blue bicycle.
Sometimes she stopped to help Gloria carry groceries.
Sometimes they argued loudly over Gloria’s habit of checking her phone.
Last February, Molly stopped coming down the street.
Gloria said the girl had run away after a disagreement with her father.
Derek said she had been manipulated by online strangers.
The police listed her as missing for a time, and her school organized a search that left paper flyers hanging in wet windows for weeks.
Then the public searches stopped without any explanation.
People filled the silence with theories.
I had never added one of my own.
Not because I lacked curiosity, but because the family had made it clear that questions were unwelcome.
Derek Vance was thirty-nine, a small-time contractor with an expensive truck and an unpredictable temper.
He was not a cartoon villain when I first met him.
He had once helped me carry a broken washing machine to the curb, and he spoke patiently to Tess about changing a bicycle tire.
But his friendliness always seemed to depend on whether he needed something.
He borrowed tools and forgot to return them.
He insisted on keeping the keys to Gloria’s house because he said she was becoming forgetful.
When Gloria objected to a family decision, Derek had a way of lowering his voice and speaking more slowly until she felt childish for disagreeing.
I noticed those things without understanding what they meant.
Looking back, I remembered a December morning when Gloria had invited me inside to repair a loose doorbell wire.
On the kitchen counter lay a printed photograph of Molly, a college brochure, and an envelope marked EDUCATION ACCOUNT.
Derek had come in while I was tightening the screw beneath the chime.
He slipped the envelope beneath a stack of supermarket coupons before his mother returned.
I said nothing because I had no reason to assume a crime.
That memory returned when Naomi asked whether I had ever seen Derek handling his mother’s documents.
