Prologue

Friday evening, 8 P.M.
He sat down to eat his microwave dinner, thinking of Sarah, always thinking of her. Right now she would be waiting. He knew what it was like to wait for so long. Drafting, building, and testing for this moment. His time spent working with robotics at Disney was worth it just now. He had given up so much of his early years creating magic for other people; it was time to get some for himself.
He followed her, watching, gleaning information where he could. Sitting in a darkened theater one night, seated in the last-minute seats far away from her and her husband, his attention turned from his obsession to the action on the stage. It was the play, Cyrano de Bergerac, and by the end of it--there was the idea and the impetus he needed to formulate a plan.
He did what he had to do this day. It wasn’t pretty, but surely his very own Roxane, who everyone else knew as Sarah, would see his love without having to know the details.
Soon she would be coming to him.

CHAPTER ONE​
Yes, now I dare. Listen. I am in love.
But with one who knows not.
Not yet.
But who, if he knows not, soon shall learn.
A poor youth who all this time has loved
Timidly, from afar, and dares not speak. . .

​

​

Sarah stood by the front window again, parting the lace curtains, dabbing worry-tears from her eyes.
She knew she’d seen headlights. 
South Florida was heavy with humidity that night as she considered leaving her air-conditioned sanctuary. Her emotions matched the unstable weather pattern.
Where is he?
His favorite meal was still laid out, taunting her every time her pacing trail took her by the dining room table. She didn’t even like ribs, and now the meat was as hard as the bone.
Sarah hadn’t stopped thinking all day about the touch of his hands that morning; she could almost feel his warmth.
Had he gone out with his buddies and not told her?
Opening the front door, she stood in the screened entryway. Ash brown curls stuck to her neck as she watched young palms sway in a warm breeze that was all too brief. Matthew had planted the palms when they moved in after a spring wedding almost a year before.
Other than street lights, the only light burning was in someone’s bathroom down the block, and it soon went out. It seemed like a sign to her to go back inside, the walls of their dream home closing in as each minute passed.
She cleared ice-cold dinner from the table, scraping food into the trash can and rinsing plates. Standing in the dim light, she stared at candles on the dining room table that were now burned down to the base. One had a small flame left, and she pursed her lips to blow it out.
She couldn’t stand it anymore.
Marching to the kitchen, she picked up the phone, then glanced at the clock for the fiftieth time that night. The time made her hesitate, but this couldn’t wait.
Her heart beating faster, she dialed, not really expecting to get an answer at his office in the bank, but hoping by some miracle that he had forgotten to tell her that he had to work late. Very late.
The call went straight to voice mail.
Sarah hung up and dialed another number. At least she was acting instead of sitting around wringing her hands. She could hear Matthew telling her again that she “worries too much”, but this time she had a feeling.
“Cape Coral Police Department,” the woman said in a “bored senseless” tone. The sedate bedroom community hardly ever had enough action to keep a dispatcher awake.
“Can you tell me if there’s been an accident tonight? My husband is very late--”
“No, Ma'am; everything’s pretty quiet around here.”
“Have you been there long tonight? I mean, is there someone else, or some way to tell if there was an accident earlier? He was supposed to be home around five-thirty.”
“I’m on the four-to-two shift, Ma'am. Like I said, no accidents.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Why don’t you call the hospital, Ma'am? Maybe he got sick or something.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
Fingers shaking, she flipped through the pages of the phone book to find the number for the Cape Coral Hospital. A small piece of paper fell out as she was turning pages. She tossed it aside, dialing the hospital’s number.
“Do you have anybody there named Matthew Fielding? He would‘ve come in today, maybe recently?” 
“Let me check with the ER.”
Sarah literally held her breath, waiting for the woman to come back on the line.
“No, we don’t,” the woman finally said.
She breathed out, telling herself that it wouldn’t do her any good to pass out now. “Would you know if you had anyone with no--identification?”
“No John Doe, Ma'am. Sorry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Husband missing?” she asked, her voice mocking.
Sarah pictured the woman sneering on the other end of the line as she spoke. She wanted to tell the lady to save her sarcasm because her husband wouldn‘t do that to her, but she only managed to say, “Just a little late.” 
Sarah made phone calls to the Fort Myers Hospital and police station and to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department, her spirit sinking lower with each dead end.
Hanging up from her last hope, she looked at the clock and began to pace. It was too late to call his parents; they went to bed early and let the answering machine take the calls. She couldn’t leave a message that would scare them.
Turning on the computer, she looked through her address files until she came to Steven Graham. He might know something. She dialed his number and counted the rings.
He picked up after four rings, sleep in his voice.
“Steven, I hate to bother you, but Matthew isn’t home yet, and I’m worried.”
“Sarah, hey, what did you say?”
“I’m so sorry to wake you, but I can’t let it go until morning. Do you remember what time he left work?”
“Left work?”
Wake up, Steven, for God’s sake, wake up.
“Yes, Steven, what time did he leave?” Knowing she was beginning to sound as desperate as she felt, she tried in vain to pull herself together.
“He--wasn’t at work today.” His voice had a startling lilt of surprise.
“What do you mean, he wasn’t at work? I know you’re half asleep, but wake up, Steven, please. I need you to really think about this.”
“I’m wide awake now, okay? He didn’t come to work today. He called in sick. I didn’t take the call, but I can find out...”
“Oh, my God. Something’s wrong, Steven.”
“Did you call the police to see--”
“Yes!”
“The hospital?”
“Yes, he’s not there!”
“Call the police again--the Fort Myers Police. Remember Sergeant Massey? Call him! When’s the last time you saw Matthew?”
“This morning, when we had breakfast.” And a little more--in fact, he was running late because of it.
“How was he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, did he seem anxious, or worried?”
She struggled to clear her head, to get a grip on her memory in the midst of all this stress. “No, not at all.” He was playful, loving...very loving. 
“Like I said, get off here and call the police.”

The police department couldn‘t officially help because he hadn’t been missing long enough and he hadn’t committed a crime. She pondered the ‘What-ifs’, and the ‘Was-its’ late into the night and early morning.
What if he left me? Was it something I did? No, that can’t be right, not after our morning together...that was real, wasn’t it? Or was that goodbye?
Amid alternate stages of fear and anger, she slipped one of Matthew’s T-shirts on to bring what comfort it could. The smell of it reassured her that surely she knew this man and he loved her, but it also made her more desperate--she had to find out what happened to him. Why wouldn’t anyone help her?
Through the fog in her brain, she had one clear thought. Look for him. Running to the bathroom to splash water on her face and brush her teeth, she glanced at her reflection. She stared at a ghost--or the likeness of a witch, with green eyes and long, wavy brown hair, no makeup and an ashen face. 
A picture. She should take a picture with her, just in case she needed to give it to the police or ask someone if they had seen him.
Through streaming tears, she pored through their wedding photo album. There he was in his gray tuxedo, delight showing in his eyes as they danced. She heard his voice--what had he said at the very moment the picture snapped? I can’t wait to get you alone. Her whole body shivered with the memory. She couldn’t give that picture up--she’d have to go on to the next one.
Find some other moment that was not as meaningful. A hell of a hard thing to do, because now everything held significance for her, like it was magnified a hundred times, good or bad.
She simply had to choose.
There was no way she could choose one of the wedding shots, so she put the album down and picked up her scrap-booking project that she’d never had a chance to finish. The last completed photo page covered their trip to Myakka River State Park in Sarasota. A retired couple had taken a picture of Sarah and Matthew on the tour boat, his arm around her as they snuggled and smiled for the camera. She remembered what that felt like.
She chose a picture she had taken of Matthew on the wooden walkway. He was leaning back on the rail, wistfulness in his eyes. What had he been thinking at that moment? Had she known him? Would she ever know?

Sarah drove Matthew’s usual route, looking for his car on the side of the road. Most days Matthew had a half-hour commute in heavy traffic to his job at Florida Trust Bank, but at 4 AM, Sarah crept along nearly deserted streets. There was only one abandoned car on the way, old and black. Back and forth she went, dipping down every other side street until she was about to fall asleep at the wheel.
The light of early morning was starting to peek through as she cruised business-clogged Cleveland Avenue, looking for any sign of a gray Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais. She started in North Fort Myers and went all the way past South Fort Myers, beyond populated areas, before she turned around and headed back to the bank in the downtown area.
Realizing she didn’t know what to look for when someone falls off the face of the earth, she sat in the bank parking lot and pounded her frustrations against the steering wheel.
Where are you, Matthew? What has happened to you?

After another round of tears dried, she drove to the Fort Myers police station down the street from the bank. She’d worked with Sergeant Massey once or twice when she was a teller at the bank in Fort Myers. He took moonlighting jobs--he called them “details”¬¬¬¬--and one of them was guarding the bank. She realized she hadn’t seen him as much in the last few months.
“I’d like to speak to Sergeant Massey,” she told the duty cop.
“He works midnight shift this month, and I think he already left. Let me check.”
“Please find him for me. Even if I have to wait for him to be called, I don’t mind. It’s very important.”
“Okay, Ma'am. I said I’d check.”
She didn’t have enough energy to take his foul tone of voice personally. Resting in a chair in the lobby facing the door, she tried to use the bright sunshine to keep herself awake.
“I hear you’re pretty determined to see me,” she heard a voice say as she rested her eyes. Sergeant Massey was wearing his usual smirk under his short mustache, a beefy man with thin brown hair cut close because of his job. “Less hair helps me run faster,” was a joke he told more than once.
Standing to stretch, she turned around to face him, her eyes brimming with tears as she spoke. “Matthew is missing and no one will help me. I’ve called everywhere and done everything I know to do. Can you help me?”
Sergeant Massey’s face showed no trace of surprise, but she imagined that he was used to keeping a poker face in his present job.
“Come back with me and sit down. You don’t look so good, and we can’t have you falling down. When’s the last time you ate?” He held the door for her and she followed him back to his desk in an open room with half a dozen other desks like his.
“Yesterday some time.”
“Sit down--I’ll be right there.”
She obeyed as he spoke to another officer, then sat down at his desk. Soon the officer appeared with peanut butter crackers and Diet Coke, just what she needed. She told him everything between bites, sometimes relapsing into fits of crying, praying that he would take her seriously when she finally said, “Something terrible has happened to him.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied her face. “You don’t think he left or anything, do you? I mean, were you guys getting along?”
“I loved him so much. Oh, God, I’m already talking like he’s dead or something!” She clapped her hands over her face and tried to control escaping sobs.
He let her compose herself before he fired off the next question. “And he loved you the same? I hate to ask you these questions, but I want you to really think. There are usually signs when these things happen, and women--sometimes they‘re in denial.”
“He didn’t leave me, trust me. I know.” The sound of punishing rain hit her memory; it was the last time she had seen Matthew. She’d been running through an awful storm to her car, the umbrella broken by the wind catching it with such force. She should’ve parked her car in the garage as Matthew always said. Scatterbrained--sometimes he called her that, teasing her.
If she had known, if she had only known it would be her last look at him framed in their doorway, she would have lingered on his face longer, looking into those eyes until she drank to the full. Sarah knew that nothing would ever be enough until she had him back.
Sergeant Massey broke her trance. “Listen, I’ll do what I can tonight when I come back in, but if there is anything you can think of, call and tell them to radio me. I’ll call back as soon as I can.” He stood up over her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You go home and take care of yourself. Get some sleep.”

She drove home, checking the sides of the road again, and remembered that she hadn’t called his parents. She’d better call Marge and Fred. In grade school she’d developed a nail biting habit and in high school she had a phone phobia. Both of these long-gone problems resurfaced now under stress.
Forcing her fingers to dial the numbers, she was relieved when Fred answered the phone right away. Marge was a little high-strung, and she really didn’t feel like dealing with that right now. 
“Hello, Sarah. How’s it going?”
“Well...not so great, Fred,” she started, her voice trembling. “I--need to tell you something. Matthew didn’t come home Friday, and--I didn’t know it, but he didn’t go to work either, and I don’t know where he is.”
“What do you mean? Did you guys have a fight?”
Why did everyone assume it was her fault? Annoyed, she tried not to let it come through in her voice.
“No, sir, we didn’t. I had this silly hope that you would say he was there, and he forgot to call and tell me.” But he wouldn’t forget--he always called, even when he was going to be a little late.
“Did you check--”
“The hospitals, the police stations, the jail. No sign of him.”
“Oh, hell.”
Hearing Marge’s voice in the background, she wondered what he would say to her.
“It’s just George, dear...yeah, he had another fight with Minnie, and he just wants to talk. You go ahead...I’ll catch up...yeah, he’s drunk off his rocker...okay, Sarah, she’s gone, and I’d appreciate not having to tell her until we know more. There‘s got to be some explanation, and it‘s only been a day.”
“I understand.”
“Have you told your parents yet?”
“They’re in Europe for another two weeks. I don’t know how to get in touch with them, and they haven’t called. I don’t even think I’ll tell them when they do call. They’re on their second honeymoon, and with all the problems--I don’t want to worry them--yet.” Shoulders sagging, she felt as deflated as a day-old balloon. “I‘m hoping I won‘t have to tell them, because he‘ll be back. I keep telling myself there could be some reason why he couldn‘t come home last night, and he‘ll be home any time now.”
“I understand, but we both know this isn’t like him, and you know I’m not going to keep still until we find my boy. You keep me informed on your end, okay? Who is handling this with the police?” The man was trying to sound positive, but Sarah read through the cracks in his voice to hear strains of worry. She wished she hadn’t called.
“Well, unofficially, Sergeant Massey of the Fort Myers Police Department. He hasn’t been missing long enough to make it official.”
“That’s just so much bullshit. We know he wouldn’t leave on his own, don’t we?” His voice was strong and loud again, like he was trying to boost his hope with it.
She had to admit the truth, “Yes, sir, we do.”