The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein Page A

the frame.
    Shelly answered right away, nodding as if expecting them. Inside wasn’t as bad. Fresh white walls, industrial carpet, neat stacks of magazines. On the top of a bookshelf they saw a tableau, three pictures in matching frames: a toddler Shelly, a teenage Shelly, and, between them, a boy whose snarly grin, even at fifteen, told you he was planning to cuckold a father-to-be.
    Hank and Grace sat side by side on the love seat in a room that smelled faintly of pot and less faintly of citrus deodorizer. Shelly flopped into a tartan plaid recliner, put up her feet. You could see her nipples through her shirt. Grace saw the nipples, saw Hank see them, saw Hank try to figure out where to keep his eyes. Shelly appeared to see this too. She wore a leather band on each wrist. Her hair, a dark blunt bob, met her jawbone with razor edges.
    â€œI don’t know where she is,” she said coldly. Then, friendlier: “You guys must be worried and all.”
    â€œShould we be worried?” Hank sat on the edge of his seat. “Do you know something? Did she say anything? You can be frank. Anything?”
    Something in his rush of words disturbed Grace, embarrassed her, almost. Shelly seemed to be holding back a smile. Calmly Grace said, “Did she give you any idea where she was going?”
    The girl shrugged. “Oh you know Judy. California, Alaska. Someplace far. It was just talk, I thought. It busts me up. I loaned her fifty bucks a few days ago. Fifty. Five-oh. That’s a big chunk of change.”
    â€œWhat about boys?” Hank, winded, grabbed at his knees. “Was she dating anyone? Could she have gone off to meet someone?”
    â€œA handful. Judy was—oh, how do you say it politely? Experienced, I guess that’s how.”
    Grace would not be moved. She was here to gather information. She said, “Who does she like the most?”
    Shelly thought for a moment. “I don’t know his real name. I had a nickname for him that’s not something I’m comfortable saying in the presence of adults. Everyone else called him ‘Q-Ball.’”
    â€œThis boy, he goes to Copper Junction?”
    â€œHe’s not from around here—and he’s not a boy . He’s a man, sort of. Or not a man but definitely not a boy. Something in between. I don’t know much about him. He likes to rhyme. He wrote her rhymes.”
    Grace saw a kid in a jean jacket gripping a pool cue, shaved head, a seam of stitches on his temple like a baseball.
    â€œListen, I’m Judy’s friend,” Shelly said. “I care about her all right. But that dough—it’s a lot of dough is all. She told me she’d pay me back.”
    â€œWe need your help now,” Hank said. “Tell us everything you can about this guy, okay?”
    â€œYou’ll give me the money?” She looked off for a moment, rubbed her fingers together like she was feeling cloth.
    He only had twenty on him but promised he’d come back with the rest.
    â€œEveryone just calls him Q-Ball ’cause he’s got this ugly little beard that comes down at an angle. It curves to the right, like a Q ’s tail. The letter Q ?” She drew a slanting line on her own chin. “Who knows why he grows it like that. Probably to show the world how unusual he is. He just appeared one day outside the pharmacy. I don’t remember seeing his car. I didn’t get the license plate number, if that’s what you want. I’m no private eye. I think he’s a creep and I told her so.”
    â€œQ-Ball,” said Hank.
    Shelly nodded.
    It embarrassed Grace to hear this name. It made their daughter a stranger. Of course she was already a stranger, had always been a stranger, even before she left. But this name, like a badge one must defer to, made it absolute.
    He cleared his throat, said, “Anything else? Anything at all?”
    Shelly straightened up. She said, “Judy got