Devoiry bit her lip hard. She hated, hated the way her words had sounded. As if she wasn’t worried about Zeesy. As if she didn’t care. But she spent her days tightly holding on to the put-together façade; cooking and baking and shopping instead of dissolving with every new crisis. And there was comfort in her routine.

But it wouldn’t take a lot to break her into tiny pieces, and then no one would be able to put her back together again. And who exactly was that going to help?

She heard Menachem murmuring to the Dog in the hallway.

Devoiry was petrified of dogs. As she had every right to be. What girl born and bred in chassidish Stamford Hill knew about dogs? The only ones they knew were strays or fierce guard dogs. There was the nasty-looking little dog from one of the barges on the River Lea who chased them, barking, so that they couldn’t go down there on Sundays. And the terrifying Alsatian that belonged to Pakistanis on Woodberry Down. It was the talk of the school for weeks when the principal called the police to get the owner to stop the massive beast from snapping at the school gates at four o’clock.

But Zeesy’s therapist had said that she needed a dog. As a pet. Needed. Menachem sorrowfully but determinedly told Devoiry that they had to at least try. Her best friend Chavi gently told her to pretend that Zeesy was blind, and would she resist getting a blind girl a guide dog? Her married daughter Hindy sat in silence and listened to her rant and rave in floods of tears, but couldn’t actually offer her solutions.

How could anyone get over the fact that she, Devoiry Kaplan, accomplished balabuste, wife, mother, shvigger, and bubby was going to have to let a dog live in her house?

A real dog. Which would hopefully tame the demons of anxiety and depression and who-knows-what else that lived in Zeesy’s mind. No one asked Devoiry if she minded becoming the anxious, depressed one instead, so she had to let it happen. Because Chavi was annoyingly right — no mother would deny her own disabled child a crutch.

It wasn’t fair. Devoiry wasn’t embarrassed to say that she was a simple woman with simple needs. A nice house with tasty food on a good set of china. Good children and grandchildren giving her and her husband nachas as they followed in their footsteps. She wasn’t one for polished vocabulary, fancy degrees and philosophical discussions on the meaning of life. Life was duty, and duty was good.

And then their mezhinke Zeesy, sweet as her name and shy as a baby deer, went… somewhere else. Somewhere frighteningly foreign, complete with a language that Devoiry didn’t understand.

The dough was a sticky mess. Devoiry pulled her hand up, looked at the globs oozing off her fingers and wondered if there was any point in trying to save it.

Menachem was back in the kitchen, fidgeting. He rubbed a finger back and forth across his forehead.

“I’m calling the police.”

“You’re what?”

Menachem held up his phone. “Look, she hasn’t even seen any of my messages all day. They’re unread. It’s been dark for hours and we both know there’s nowhere she would be without Snowball. Or without telling one of us that she’s going somewhere.”

One of us. Menachem was too polite to say “me.” Devoiry had never known about bullying and social ostracizing; she had never known what red flags were and how parents should never miss them. Devoiry could only try and pamper Zeesy with food.

At least Menachem knew how to reach her.

“You can’t call the police! Please don’t.” Devoiry imagined the flashing lights and all the curtains up and down Holmleigh Road twitching, and neighbors knocking “just to see if you’re okay?”

Menachem looked at her strangely. “Why can’t I call the police?”

“Because, because,” her mind frantically searched for a good excuse. “Not enough hours have passed. And they’ll be annoyed that we wasted their time.” A sudden brainstorm. “Call Yanky Spitzer. He’ll know what to do.”

Yanky was a family friend, had connections through his volunteer work for Shomrim, and, Devoiry thought, had been through so much with his Meilech that he would know what this felt like.

Menachem’s fingers flew over the screen. Devoiry turned to the sink and slowly scraped the dough off her hands.

“He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

She’d take out a babka. Men worked better with something in their stomachs. And maybe some sponge cake? She wished her husband would do his pacing out of the kitchen; it was making her nervous.

Yanky came in, neatly sidestepped the Dog that was still fretting at the front door, and listened to Menachem. Then he explained that they had a choice. Either he could organize a Shomrim search, which meant they’d be the talk of town by the time the sun rose. Or they could bring in the police, who typically took so long to get moving it might defeat the purpose of finding Zeesy safe and sound, im yirtzeh Hashem.

Devoiry couldn’t focus. She couldn’t bear the thought of everyone she knew — their mechutanim and Menachem’s clients and all the people she met shopping and at shul discussing the Kaplans with the kind of horrified fascination she knew so well.

So she did what she always did when a Zeesy crisis cropped up — told Menachem he should do whatever he felt was best, and went back into her kitchen to do what she did best.

The kitchen had kept her sane until now — whenever the psychiatrists and psychologists and all the people trying to help her daughter started talking about dosages and side effects and low swings, Devoiry would think of recipes and Shabbos food and cakes for neighbors who had just had babies.

She told herself that she could do it now: scrub and rinse the bowl fifteen times, wipe it completely dry with the pareve towel, place it carefully second-to-last in the stack of bowls. Wipe, wipe, wipe the counters and sinks. Sweep the floor, make a shopping list for Morrisons.

More people were in her front room now. She could hear the beeps and crackling of a walkie talkie. Was the tablecloth on? She didn’t want any scratches on the lacquer. Maybe she should take out the Viennese biscuits she had made for Sruli’s bar mitzvah. She could always make more. And the peanut chews.

“Devoiry?” Menachem called.

She closed the freezer quickly.

“Do you want to phone any of the children? Hindy? Gitty?”

“Why should I phone them? Hindy struggling with her colicky baby and Gitty stuck all the way down Tottenham with no car?”

“Someone has to be here with you. I’m going out with Yanky — we only called in some of the chevreh and we’ll drive around to places they know. But if chas v’shalom we don’t find her…” His voice trailed off and Devoiry was scared to look him in the eye. Zeesy was missing and she was busy with cake. She looked at the clock. Midnight?!

“I’ll phone Chavi,” she said.

“Good idea.”

She was relieved to hear his voice back in business mode.

“Because we might have to get more help. And only the police can ping Zeesy’s phone.”

Devoiry wished he wouldn’t talk about the police. Her head ached. And if Menachem went, she would be alone with the Dog again. All she wanted was a bubble bath and bed. Maybe when she woke up, this nightmare would be over, and Zeesy would be curled under her covers, hibernating away from the world.

She walked past the Dog, giving it a wide berth. It mewled sadly at her. Maybe mewl was the wrong word, because she was sure that’s what cats did and this was a dog, but Devoiry had no dog vocabulary available to describe that sound. At least it hadn’t chewed at the entryway table legs.

She cautiously pushed open the door to Zeesy’s room. Maybe Zeesy had come home when Devoiry had the mixer on or something? But the bed was still neatly made, curtains open. On the bedside table sat the dog’s leash, a book, and Zeesy’s phone in its charger.

And suddenly the panic she had been pushing away leaped into Devoiry’s throat, her stomach. She ran downstairs, almost tripping over that horrible dog, but Menachem had gone. She pressed the keys on her phone with fingers trembling so hard, it took three tries.

“M-Menachem, Zeesy never took her phone!” She couldn’t breathe. “You won’t be able to find her!” She listened for a second as Menachem talked at her, but couldn’t attach meaning to his words.

She thought that she might faint, and bent over the pet gate — that stupid thing she had cried about because it ruined her varnished paintwork.

Gasping for breath, she hardly registered the clicking of someone punching the code into the number lock, didn’t turn around to see who was walking into her house in the middle of the night.

“Devoi, sit down. Sit! Let me make you a tea.” Chavi, who lived just up the road, pushed her gently onto a kitchen chair and took out a mug.

She was shaking now, jaw clenched tight so her teeth wouldn’t chatter, the lemon tea cradled in freezing hands.

“D-d-did Menachem say anything?” Devoiry could hardly get the words out. Her baby! In the cold, lost!

“They’re looking, he said. More volunteers have joined, so im yirtzeh Hashem someone will find her. Drink, Devoi.”

“I can’t do this, Chavi. I can’t.”

But Chavi had gone back into the hall. “Just a second.” Her voice came floating at Devoiry. “You just stay there with your tea.” The Dog was mewling again, and was Chavi talking to it? While she’d always been just as terrified of dogs as Devoiry, Chavi claimed that this one wasn’t all that bad. Easy for her to say, she didn’t have to live with it.

Devoiry’s shaking intensified, and she couldn’t sit still any more. She needed a shawl or something from the coat cupboard behind the front door. Chavi was on her knees there; what was she doing?

Trying to clean a puddle on the Axminster carpet Devoiry had dreamed of for twenty years, that’s what.

It was too much.

Her legs giving way, Devoiry sank down on the stairs and hugged her arms tightly around herself, rocking back and forth. How had all this happened to her?

She was going to go to bed. She was going to put her head under the pillow and tomorrow all of this would have disappeared.

“I need you to listen to me, Devoiry. Please. Zeesy’s dog needs to eat or drink or whatever Zeesy does with it all day. I know you can’t bear it, but none of us are going to be in a good place if it dies here, either. Do you know where the dog food is?”

She had resisted everything to do with that Dog, refused to call it by its name or touch any of its belongings. But now she found herself showing Chavi the Tupperware container in her fridge, with the chicken bits that Zeesy had painstakingly prepared. And the bowl. The dog refused to come to the corner of the extension where it usually ate, so Chavi brought the food to the front door. Everything was ruined anyway.

“Now take this, Devoi. It will help you feel better.” Devoiry looked at the small bottle and thought how it might have been funny if her daughter hadn’t gone missing, but how many times she had pushed Rescue Remedy at her family members and never seen it work?

Still, she downed it without a word and told Chavi to go home.

“I’m f-fine now. I’m going to b-bed.” She couldn’t make her words come out properly.

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re just going to walk round here in circles, opening and closing the freezer and the cutlery drawers.”

She hadn’t realized that that’s what she was doing. But she couldn’t sit. Menachem said they were expanding their search and that the Shomrim coordinator would be liaising with the police.

What could she do besides pick up a Tehillim, put it down, stare at the clock, and pace around the kitchen trying to force her mind away from the awful things it kept thinking?

Wait, didn’t Chavi have an early train to Manchester in a few hours?

“Yoy, Chav, your train! You need to go home and get ready!” Chavi, startled from a semi-doze, tried to protest, but Devoiry insisted she leave. And promised that yes, she would phone her with updates, and yes, in an hour or so she would call one of her daughters over.

The clock ticked loudly and Devoiry thought she would go mad. Menachem phoned and said they would be searching the Underground, where there was no reception. She thought of old toothless tramps with tattered clothes and started shaking again. Maybe she would pretend to go to bed.

Warily, she walked past the Dog again, flinching as she thought of the puddle. She cast a quick glance down. It stopped turning dizzy circles to turn its eyes mournfully up at her, and the thought struck her like a thunderbolt.

The Dog had known something was wrong. It had been going crazy at the door for hours — not since noontime, when Zeesy had left the house, but later. She tried to remember when, but it was all a blur.

She tried phoning Menachem but got his voicemail. Of course — he was deep in the bowels of London. Now what? Chavi would be taking a taxi soon to Euston Station. And as for phoning one of her children, she was not going to wake them up just yet. Bad news could wait.

In a trance, Devoiry went upstairs and into Zeesy’s room. She picked up the leash and told herself she could pretend it was a skipping rope. She could deal with skipping ropes. Back downstairs she gulped and swallowed down a sob. The lack of sleep and that Rescue Remedy were making her head float a bit. She crouched down and tried to attach the leash to the Dog’s collar. It finally latched on and she opened the door, but the Dog wouldn’t budge.

What was she meant to say to get it to move? Oh, and Zeesy would be hungry. Devoiry went back inside and grabbed a neat stack of chocolate chip cookies from the freezer. She put it in a bag and threw in a bottle of mineral water. A phone?

“Zeesy? Let’s find Zeesy. Come.”

It took a bit of coaxing, but the Dog hauled itself to its feet and pattered out onto the dark garden path. It stopped at the gate and looked up, but Devoiry was beyond thinking any more. She wasn’t going to back out now, but if that thing started barking, she might just let it go.

Suddenly, the Dog started walking. Slowly at first, but then it picked up speed. Down Holmleigh Road and round the corner. It was dark, and she should have brought a flashlight or something. No, better that no one see her like this.

The Dog kept up a steady pace as they came out onto East Bank. It took no notice of the clattering sounds from Grodzinski’s Bakery, eerily amplified in the pre-dawn hours, and strained forward as it pulled Devoiry across Dunsmure Road.

The Dog led her around some bushes and tried to drag her downward to the train tracks running through Stamford Hill. Here Devoiry stopped. It was dangerous down there. Childhood stories of drug addicts and ganavim and all sorts of dangerous happenings sounded a thousand alarms in her brain. She couldn’t go there. She would call the police. They could look.

But she was Zeesy’s mother.

Maybe she didn’t know about bullies and long-term trauma and what happens when your own child wants to give up on the life you gave her. Perhaps she was a simple woman, happy in the simple life Hashem had blessed her with. But she still had something that no one else could give Zeesy. And that was her unflagging, undying love. A love strong enough to make her override her lifelong terrors, a love that led her scrambling after the Dog down the slick grassy bank, wet branches slapping her face as she stumbled over gravel and shards of glass to the stink of the underpass.

That love didn’t seem quite enough in the gloom. Something dripped near her, echoing loudly in the tunnel. Devoiry couldn’t see a thing. How she loathed that Dog! Heart pounding madly, she dropped the leash and turned back, wondering how she was going to get through all that mud again, when she heard a low sound. Please, Hashem, not a drunk! The Dog let out a short bark and she dropped the bag, preparing to run.

But something made her heart stop. That low sound again, and suddenly she recognized those noises the Dog was making.

Zeesy. She was here.

Slowly, her breath hitching with frightened sobs, Devoiry moved forward. She fumbled for her phone, pressing buttons at random until the screen emitted a dim light, then sank to her knees. And Zeesy, swollen foot sprawled awkwardly to the side, ignored the Dog and reached out to her mother.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 761)