Before She Disappeared

“In this neighborhood, I’m the minority. Then again, same with the past year, and the year before that, and the year before that. I’m used to the looks, though that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to take.”

As a white woman, Frankie finds herself as a racial minority in the majority Black and brown communities she tries to help. Her character echoes the White Savior trope, in which a white person believes it is their duty to save people of color.

“‘Why are you doing this?’ Paul demanded. ‘Why can’t I be enough for you?’

Me, standing there, unable to answer.

‘You’re an addict.’ He answered his own question bitterly. ‘That’s why. There will always be something you need more, some high you have to chase.’”

Frankie has already described her compulsion to find the lost as a substitute for alcohol. Her vocation to find the missing is just as destructive to her life and relationships as alcohol. Her self-isolation has deeper roots than mere addiction.

“Most of my work has been in remote areas where there’s been a lack of resources or small-minded police departments stocked with good old boys who don’t want to waste their time…Boston is definitely not that.”

This passage contrasts prejudice in policing with an ideal of what policing should be. The officers in the story genuinely care about Angelique and don’t dismiss her as unimportant. Part of the difference is in community-centered policing and the availability of adequate personnel and resources.

“[Officer O’Shaughnessy] has never felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He doesn’t understand that it can happen again.”

Emmanuel is speaking both literally and metaphorically. Emmanuel and Angelique’s lives were overturned by the earthquake that destroyed their home. As immigrants, they are in a precarious situation, and their lives could be destroyed again at the whim of people with power over their lives.

“I sit back, trying to understand what Emmanuel clearly believes. That six-year-old Angelique not only saved him and their mother during the earthquake, but—deliberately?—left their abusive gather behind.”

Emmanuel has described Angelique as a planner, not a dreamer. She isn’t distracted by impulse or emotion. This passage paints Angelique as courageous and determined, a savior of the innocent, but she is also ruthless enough to exact justice.

“Demographically speaking, I am white, female, heterosexual, agnostic, progressive, Californian, but first and foremost, I’m an addict.”

Marginalization and racism begin with the identification of individuals within demographic groups. By describing herself as foremost an alcoholic, Frankie asserts that other factors define who she is as a person. By rejecting her demographics as the sole limits of her identity, Frankie asserts her individuality. At the same time, she reduces herself to her addiction. As a character, she needs to grow beyond identifying herself as an addict.

“Which makes me wonder where Angelique is right now. Terrified or determined? Longing for her brother, or resigned to her fate?

And the mysterious us? Another girl? Several girls? Dozens of girls? All waiting for someone to rescue them from the dark?

The implications of that, the responsibility for all those lives, when I’ve never even rescued one living soul…

I can’t think about it.”

Frankie’s greatest fear is that she is inadequate to the task. In the past, Frankie has always been “too late” to bring her cases home alive and has never achieved redemption. This time, the stakes are so high, that failure would be unbearable.

“Addicts are particularly good at this game. Everyone else’s life is easier, better, happier. If we could be those people, then we wouldn’t need to drink again.

It’s everyone else’s fault. The universe’s. Never our own.”

Frankie is noting one of the supporting pillars of addiction, the avoidance of responsibility for one’s own choices. After Paul’s death, Frankie appears to be holding herself responsible, but she is taking responsibility for something that wasn’t her mistake. Ironically, taking a false responsibility gives her an excuse to distance herself from other people, never letting herself settle down and form intimate friendships.

“I can’t even imagine how hard his job must be…Wanting to make a difference, knowing there are limits. And then when one of the kids who by all accounts should make it simply vanishes one fall afternoon.”

For Frankie, this is the cynicism of the frustrated idealist. She too wants to make a difference against overwhelming odds. There are too many lost and at-risk children in the world and too few that Frankie can help.

“‘The executive director, Frederic, reported that he caught [Livia] watching Angelique on several occasions. You should talk to him.’

‘I have talked to Frederic,’ Lotham practically growls.

‘Then you should have asked him more questions relevant to teenage girls,’ I retort.”

This passage illustrates Frankie’s strength as an investigator. Detective Lotham wouldn’t have any idea what questions might pertain to teenage girls. Frankie asks different questions, and people respond to her differently. The very fact that she isn’t in law enforcement sometimes enables people to trust her.

“You already know what you need to know. I’m a woman who can’t stay in one place for very long. I don’t have close, lasting relationships. I have no sense of material possessions or financial stability. And I fight every fucking day not to take a drink. You know what I can do? This. Locate missing persons. Work cold cases…this is what I’ve got, pretty much the only thing I’ve got, so I’m sticking with it.”

Frankie’s identity is wrapped up in her vocation and her addiction. Lacking relationships and stability, locating the lost is the thing that gives her a sense of purpose—not only the hope for personal redemption but the sense that she is doing something useful and important. Frankie misses the point that her vocation prevents her from finding any other source of meaning.

“Look, I work with a lot of at-risk kids. For many of them, discovering the right trade represents their ticket out. Meaning once they find the right fit, they go all in. Bond with me, work with their classmates, log extra hours. These kids…you wouldn’t believe the talent. Give them the opportunity and man oh man!”

Livia’s teacher is describing one of the challenges of working with kids with a stressful home life, exposure to crime, lack of opportunity, or lack of intellectual stimulation at home. They are hampered by their environments, but society also defines them by their environments rather than their individual strengths.

“This meeting is about the twelve steps, step nine in particular. Making amends. I’ve never gone through all twelve steps. It’s not the apologizing for the wrongs I’ve done—I get that completely. It’s cataloging all my sins that has me hung up…How do you apologize to the dead?”

Frankie feels that she has to apologize to Paul in order to heal herself. She refuses to realize that she also has to forgive herself for her own perceived sins. She needs to apologize to herself and forgive herself for the mistakes that brought her to the place she is now.

“I will find Angelique and Livia, I promise myself, hands fisting the sheets. I will bring them home. I swear it. Because I need this. Need it.”

Frankie is finally stating concretely that her need has always been not just to locate the dead but to return the living. She believes that by returning the girls to their lives she can finally redeem herself. However, she is mistaken in thinking that any act of hers can heal her. The belief that she can do something is another way to avoid dealing with difficult feelings. The act of fisting her hands and emphasizing “need” echoes the experience of addiction, the need for a fix.

“‘All the girls wanted him. But he chose me. He said he liked my smile.’

I nod sympathetically. I already know where this story’s going, and I feel terrible for Marjolie. For all the vulnerable, self-conscious girls out there who dared to believe the cool guy wanted them, when really...”

Part of Frankie’s success as an investigator is that she is able to make personal connections; she understands women, girls, and children because she has lived through their pain. Girls like Marjolie (and the young Frankie) struggle to see the value in themselves apart from being attractive and desirable to men.

“Angel…she couldn’t see it. Sometimes she was too smart, too capable. She didn’t understand what it meant to be just a regular girl like me. She didn’t understand that sometimes, her being her, just makes me feel bad.”

Marjolie is expressing one of the complications of adolescence. Marjolie is still struggling to solidify an identity, and Angelique offers a role model that Marjolie isn’t equipped to emulate. Instead, Marjolie seeks an identity as a girl who is attractive to popular boys.

“Playing the girls off each other is a tried-and-true strategy used by human traffickers everywhere. In fact, it’s often easier to kidnap two people rather than just one, as it gives the kidnapper more leverage over both of them.”

Frankie goes through life seeing the lives of the vulnerable. She knows more than she wants to know about the bad things that can happen, especially to people in vulnerable and marginalized groups.

“How terrible to lose a child most of the world never knew was missing. Is that why I do what I do? Because I can’t stand the thought of a life not mattering? Of a child being forgotten? Or a person sinking without leaving behind a single ripple in the universe?”

This passage speaks to the importance of each individual person in the world. Frankie sees too many people being forgotten because they have no perceived value to society.

“She deserved growing up, discovering her own unique self. She deserved a life.

I feel, more than ever, the weight of my own failure.

So many missing persons cases. And yet none I’ve brought home alive.”

Livia’s death raises the stakes for Frankie’s internal conflict. Redemption has once again escaped her. She has one chance left, and she is running out of time. Frankie is also paying tribute to a gifted girl from an at-risk community who was destroyed by an environment of violence and crime.

“[Deke] broke my mom’s heart. She needed him to help out. Put food on the table, hold down the fort. I was just a kid at the time, but even I got that.”

JJ is expressing the dilemma of growing up in a marginalized community where education can be difficult and crime may appear to be the only viable means of survival. He understands love of family and has a sense of adult responsibility, yet he sees his options as limited.

“I don’t have a time machine. There’s nothing I can do that will ever change what happened ten years ago. No amount of handwashing that erases the blood, no amount of repenting that eases the guilt. I screwed up. Paul died. It is both that simple and that haunting.

And now? Now my life is about helping others, serving victims.”

Handwashing is a reference to Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, the play by Shakespeare. It represents the inability to assuage guilt. Unlike Lady Macbeth, who was unable to bear her remorse and died by suicide, Frankie has found a way to atone and to punish herself.

“Promise me you won’t blame yourself for this. Promise me you won’t use it as a reason to drink come on, Frankie. Promise me!”

Paul as a person is almost too good. He didn’t blame Frankie, and his last thought was of protecting her. Frankie was able to meet the second half of his dying wish, but not the first. She has always blamed herself for his death and spent the rest of her life trying to atone.

“I found Angelique Badeau. I brought home a missing girl. It’s not that I expected to feel like a superhero, but I did hope to maybe feel like a better person.

Mostly, I feel the same I always did.”

Frankie is finding that she can’t atone for Paul’s death by saving someone else. She has tried for 10 years to redeem herself by restoring some good to the world only to find that nothing she does in the outside world is going to heal the damage within.