In Cheyenne, with a thunderstorm hanging overhead like a pulpy meringue, we paused, Tim and Leah, hoping our stubborn daughter would seek shelter wherever she was and wake up to what was right and call home using a silly voice to diffuse our alarm. In the rest area where the altitude plugged our ears, we found a picture of another girl, thirteen, disappeared, last seen wearing a sequined tank top and jeans, smiling: Jessica Marie Powell. We put our picture next to hers: Rachael Simpson French. Rach, wearing the glasses she hated, the dolphin earrings, and the cool pout of someone older than sixteen, wiser and determined not to enjoy the world. Rachael the mall-hater, the soccer goalie, the beer thief, the girl who loved Plath, the girl who laid down the flute and took up the pipe. You’d think a poet would be able to understand and give comfort, to voice how the universe might turn on this confounding mystery of the missing, the lost. The first thing you think about is finding words that will become a map to follow, a ladder to climb, but all I could come up with was molest, strangle, cocaine, anger, addict, cum, and puny words like help, love, safe, forgiveness. I kept searching for comforting metaphors in the rock, the sky and scrub of Wyoming.

            In Rawlins, everyone looked like they had her, perhaps tied to a chrome-legged chair in a doublewide or to a sagging bed in a leaky motel room stinking of sweat and sex. In the McDonald’s, a cowboy was shaving in the restroom, leaning into the foggy mirror, his boots long and narrow—her captor, her lover, her savior, her killer, her body in the sagebrush, in a dry wash cleansed by the wind. The antelope grazing, the hawk carving the sky, the beer cans, the Pampers, the impossible fences, the crosswinds, the bleached bones, the dog in the ditch, the way bones scatter, the solitary steer, the horse left behind.

            There was an ATM trail: Des Moines, North Platte, $50 and $204. Three days apart. Then nothing. Back home in Illinois, the police had confronted Leah: “Was your daughter sexually active?” “What drugs did she favor?” “Did she have a steady boyfriend?” “Did you ever have a physical argument with her?” “How was she doing in school?” Leah sobbed out Kevin Gomez’s name, but he was in Georgia with his mother.

            We stopped at truck stops, showing Rachael’s picture around. Yes, a clerk remembered her, with a man, an older man with a ponytail and a scar on his cheek, or no, it was a limp. Flannel, the girl was wearing a flannel shirt, she had a bad cough, chapped lips, cherry and rough. Maybe earrings, maybe not. Leah vomited in the diesel-fumed bathroom and said it was unfair for your only child not to leave a clue. The image we were chasing faded then, blurred by sleepless nights in places like the Happy Trails Motel, blurred by dread, hope, and blame. I-80 stretched like a gray ribbon ahead of us, Rachael just a phantom on blue paper, resting on her mother’s lap. Parents in a white Honda, picture and description, tape and staple gun at the ready, daughter on the loose. Please call 9-1-1 if you see her. Hope is the jagged horizon.

            At night, we check into a hotel with a splendid salad bar. We eat without speaking and return to our room to watch quiz shows and a heavy dose of The Weather Channel. There is something about the sweep of cold fronts, the curl of jet steams­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­, that offers just enough comfort for relief.

            Sunrise is at 5:31 a.m.

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