“Yes. He said it was safe. Safety is what I care about, really.”

“Of course! You’re her dad!” said Bailey, coming around the desk. “We get plenty of dads. They don’t care how many stationary bikes are in the workout room. They want to know their girls are secure.”

“Absolutely right.” Jake nodded. “Don’t want to know what color the carpet is. I want to know, do the doors lock, is there a guard, that kind of thing.”

“Not that we don’t have a very nice workout room. And a very pretty pool.”

Jake, who had seen the pool as he came down the street, begged to differ.

“Also I don’t want anything too close to Washington Street. So many bars.”

“Oh, I know.” The woman rolled her eyes. “A hundred in downtown Athens, did you know that? It’s wild on a Saturday night. Actually, it’s wild most nights. So. Would you like to see a few apartments?”

She had a dire two-bedroom that still bore the stained carpets of its recently departed occupants (very thirsty people, if the bottle collection atop the kitchen cabinets was any indication). She had a one-bedroom that smelled of cinnamon potpourri. She had another one-bedroom that actually had a tenant. Jake was pretty sure Bailey wasn’t supposed to be showing it to anyone.

“You said your daughter wants a one-bedroom?”

“Yes. She’s had an awful roommate this year. From out of state.”

“Ah,” said Bailey. Apparently, no more needed to be said.

“How long has this place been here?” he asked, and she told him nearly twenty years, though he knew this already, from his research. He also knew that Black neighborhoods all over Athens had been bulldozed so that apartment complexes just like this one (most of them much nicer than this one) could be occupied by mainly white students. But he was here for more specific history.

“And what about you? How long have you been working here?”

“Just a couple of years. Before that I was managing one of the other sites. We have four in our company, all in Athens.”

“Nice,” said Jake. “Like I said, my cousin’s daughter lived here. She had a good experience, I think. Her name was Rose Parker. You probably don’t remember her.”

“Rose Parker?” Bailey considered. “No, doesn’t sound familiar. Carole might remember. Carole’s the in-house cleaner. It’s an extra charge,” she clarified.

“Wow. Cleaning for a bunch of college students. That’s got to be a tough job.”

“Carole loves her job,” said Bailey, a bit defensively. “She’s like the den mother.”

“Oh, of course.”

He didn’t know what to say. He let her show him another one-bedroom, and the sad little exercise room, and the pool, where a couple of kids were just getting settled onto cheap loungers. When she invited him to return to the office for a brochure and a copy of the code of conduct he realized he was about to leave Athena Gardens without what he’d come for, which was anything at all. Bailey was trying to set up an appointment for him and his imaginary daughter for tomorrow, but by tomorrow he’d be home in Greenwich Village with not much to show a very worried Anna.

“Listen,” said Jake. “I owe you an apology.”

She was instantly wary. And who could blame her?

“Oh?” They hadn’t reached the office yet. They were on one of the walkways between the pool and the complex’s main building, where the office was located.

“My daughter, she’s already found a place she likes.”

“I see,” said Bailey, who looked as if she’d expected something worse.

“I wanted to look at this place because—that cousin I mentioned? He asked me to.”

Bailey frowned. “Whose daughter lived here.”

“Yes, 2012 to 2013. He hasn’t heard from her in a couple of years. He’s very concerned. He asked me to come. He knows it’s a long shot, but, you know, since I was here in town, anyway. Just on the chance that she kept in touch with someone here …”

“I see,” said Bailey again. “Do they know,” she hesitated, “is she still …”

“She’s active on”—he provided sarcastic air quotes—“social media. They know she’s living somewhere in the Midwest. But she doesn’t respond to any kind of overture. They thought, if I managed to find someone she stayed in touch with, you know, they could get a message through. Personally, I didn’t think it sounded all that promising, but … if it was my daughter …”

“Yes. How sad.”

For a moment she said nothing, and Jake thought either his story or his acting must have fallen short of the mark, but then Bailey spoke. “Like I said, I was at one of our other properties till last year myself. And as for our tenants, they’re about eighty percent enrolled UGA students, mostly undergrad, so if they’d been here when your cousin’s daughter was here, they’re already long gone. A couple of grad students stay longer, but I don’t think we have any now that were here in 2013.”

“That woman you mentioned before, the cleaner?”

“Yeah.” Bailey nodded. She took out her phone and sent a text. “She’s here today. I haven’t seen her, but she started at one. I’m asking her to meet us out front.”

He thanked her, perhaps a bit too warmly, and they walked together to the reception area outside her office. When they reached it, a solid woman in a faded red Bulldawg sweatshirt was already there.

“Carole, hi,” said Bailey. “This is Mr.…”

“Jacob,” said Jake.

“Carole Feeney,” said Carole, obviously worried.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Bailey said. “This man is just trying to find a girl who lived here awhile back.”

“My cousin’s daughter,” Jake confirmed. “They haven’t been able to reach her. They’re worried.”

“Oh my yes,” said Carole, every inch the den mother she’d been billed as.

“Before my time,” said Bailey. “But I was saying, you might remember?”

“Could we …” Jake looked around. It hadn’t escaped him that Bailey wasn’t offering her own office for this interview. Now that Jake wasn’t a prospect she clearly didn’t want to give over the space, or perhaps she no longer cared to be in an enclosed room with him. But there were a couple of chairs in a dreary little lounge next door. On their tour, Bailey had called it the common room. He pointed in that direction now. “Do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure, sure,” said Carole. She was pale with a forest of dark moles along both collarbones. Jake was finding it hard not to look at them.

“Well, good luck,” Bailey said. “Keep us in mind if your daughter’s place doesn’t work out.”

“Thank you so much,” Jake said. “I will.”

He wouldn’t. Even she knew that.

In the lounge, he took one of the old armchairs, which was as uncomfortable as it looked, and Carole Feeney took another one. She seemed already to be in mourning for this unnamed girl from “awhile back” whose family couldn’t reach her, and afraid to find out who it was.

“So, like I said, my cousin’s daughter lived here, her freshman year. That was 2012 to 2013.”

“Freshman year? Usually they’re in the dorms up on campus.”

“So I understand. She got some kind of a waiver.”

Her eyes widened. “Wait, is it Rose? Are you talking about Rose?”

Jake seemed to lose his breath. He hadn’t expected it to be so fast. Now he wasn’t sure what to say.

“Yeah. Rose Parker.”

“In 2012, you said? That sounds about right. She’s missing? Poor Rose!”

Poor Rose. Jake managed to nod.

“Oh my word. That’s so sad. Her mother died, you know.”

Jake nodded. He was still not sure. “Yes. It was very tragic. Is there anything you remember about Rose that might help her dad find her?”

Carole folded her hands in her lap. They were big hands, and unsurprisingly rough.

“Well, she was mature, of course. Didn’t have a lot in common with most of the other students. Didn’t go out to the bars. Didn’t go to the games, I don’t think. Didn’t Rush. I wasn’t cleaning for her, so I wasn’t in her place except now and then. I think she came from up north.”

“Vermont,” Jake confirmed.

“That so.”

He waited for her to continue.

“Most of these girls, they got their beds covered with stuffed animals, like they’re six years old. Every inch of the wall has posters. Throw pillows all over the place. A mini fridge in every room so they don’t have to walk more than a few steps to get a can of pop. Some of these apartments, you can barely turn around in for all the things they bring. Rose kept hers pretty plain, and she was a tidy person. Like I said, mature.”

“Did she ever speak about anyone else in her family?”

Carole shook her head. “Don’t remember that, no. She never mentioned a father. Your cousin?”

“They weren’t together, the parents. Not for most of Rose’s life,” Jake said, thinking quickly. “That’s probably why.”

The woman nodded. She had two thin braids of highly distressed orange hair. “I only ever heard her talk about her mother. But of course, that horrible thing with her mom had just happened, right before she got here. Probably that was the only thing on her mind.” She shook her head. “So horrible.”