As Suzanne Coswell’s summer internship neared completion, she phoned the Adroushans to let Cindy know that she’d be coming home for a couple weeks before returning to Cal Poly. Cindy wasn’t home at the time, so her mother took a message.
When Sue arrived home, she found her bike parked in the shed where she’d usually kept it when she’d been at home. She’d seen the pickup around the side, so she wondered how Cindy was getting around. Sue called the Adroushans to ask if Cindy had acquired her own wheels. They told her that she hadn’t, and that she’d been out on the job since about the same time yesterday. “That’s funny,” Sue said. “She must have gone out with someone. I’ll check into it.”
“Sue—” Siran continued. “Let us know, would you?”
“You know I will” Sue answered. “—as soon as I figure out what’s going on.”
Garegin saw the panic rising in Siran’s eyes. He asked for the phone.
“Is it Cindy? Is she missing?”
“I wouldn’t say that. If I know your daughter—”
“I’m coming out. Wait for me.”
Garegin grabbed his keys and returned to Siran to hold her. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s a thoughtful girl.”
“I know,” Siran answered, “but she worries me sometimes.”
Both Cindy and Armen worried Siran, and for more than one reason. She was worried that they might come to harm, with Armen riding around on narrow country roads and Cindy now riding a motorbike around the Sink at speeds that ought to be restricted to four wheels. She continued to wake from missing child dreams, even with her kids approaching adulthood.
There was the guilt—working mom’s guilt. What if something happened while she was out there selfishly pursuing her career? How could she face herself?
But more than the guilt, Siran feared the thought of a lost child; a child lost in the big world without a protector or a trustworthy guide. For this reason alone she feared her own death. Whether there was life after death or not, Siran couldn’t bear to think of her children having to face the world without their mother.
Where was Cindy now? The image broke into Siran’s mind: Cindy stranded out there somewhere with no one to turn to. Siran shook off the thought and spun around, trying to shake off the associations that were soliciting her eyes. She walked into Cindy’s room and lay on her daughter’s bed, still under Ararat and her Armenian blue sky. It didn’t comfort her. It tormented her, and the tears she held inside, hidden in the back of her head far away from her eyes, suddenly streamed through her and broke through. Siran leapt up and fled the room, and found herself seeking refuge in the kitchen, but the kitchen was haunted as well—with so many fresh memories of Cindy’s experiments, and she pushed out the back door and broke into the open air, into Cindy’s domain. Siran fled to the front of the house. She opened the side gate, and walked out to the street. Then she just started walking west, hoping to flee that nest of memories. She’d walked just past the senior high school when she realized she needed to be near the phone. She stopped, looked on for a moment, and turned back toward home. “Get a grip” she commanded herself. “She’s just a little late. Get a grip.”
Garegin met Sue at her home. He didn’t need directions. The location of the Coswell residence was no secret around Slough City. He asked her to show him everywhere and anywhere Cindy might have gone on the job.
“I don’t think she’s working” Sue cautioned him.
“I know” he replied. “This is the best I can do right now.”
“I hear you.”
When Armen got the news, he was struck with an overpowering sense of helplessness. He had to do something. It didn’t matter whether it might seem futile, and he couldn’t just wait with his mother by the phone, so he went out on his bike. He’d nearly ridden around town when he saw a guy he knew from school. He asked the boy if he’d seen Cindy around. Before long, he was asking complete strangers. He then realized that he needed a photograph.
When Armen got home, he pulled a photo of Cindy off the refrigerator and set out on his bike. He began showing her photo around. He was passing the library when he got the idea that he could make photocopies of the photo and hand them out, so he went into the library, pulled a sheet of copier paper out of a garbage can by a copier, wrote “If you have seen this girl, please call 343-4587” on it, laid it and the photo down on the copier glass, and ran off as many copies as his pocket change could produce.
Armen copied more posters the next morning. He rode out to Sue’s house to give her some to hand out wherever Cindy’s work might have taken her. Garegin and Siran didn’t want to admit outwardly that the situation was as desperate as it felt, but they had to act. They decided to notify the police.