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said she didn’t know how to react to Joan’s accusatory tone. Almost immediately, Jessica felt, Joan was condemning her. Poking a finger in her chest. She was only calling to threaten. Make the implication that Jessica had something to do with Alan and Terra’s disappearance. ( “It got ugly real quick,” Jessica recalled.)
    “You’ve harmed them,” Jessica said Joan snapped at her. Joan was, obviously, upset. Uptight. On edge. Distraught. Crying. Saying things she would not remember later on. “They’re missing. Where are they?”
    “Please let me know, Joan, what’s going on when you find out. I would need to tell the kids something.” The kids were expecting Alan and Terra to pick them up. They had anticipated their arrival. But Alan and Terra never came, Jessica said. As she spoke, apparently trying to explain this to Joan, she could hear Philip in the background. He was giving someone her address and phone number. Jessica could hear him clearly, as if she were in the same room. She asked Joan, “ Why is he giving out my address? What’s going on? Why is he giving out my mom’s address? Tell me, Joan!”
    Joan wouldn’t answer.
    “Please, Joan. Please let me know, when you do, what’s going on.”
    They hung up.
    According to Jessica, the phone call upset her. She was bewildered and didn’t know what to make of it. She went to Jeff.
    “What should we do?”
    “Well,” Jeff said in his stoic Southern drawl, “let’s just go about our business here. There’s nothing that we can do. Sitting here, being upset, that isn’t going to solve anything.”
    Jessica was unable to do chores around the house, she said. She was totally preoccupied with the situation. Pacing, waiting for Joan, Philip or anyone to call with some information. A bit of news. Some sort of word as to what in the heck was happening.
    “Look,” Jeff said, watching his wife fuss about, “it’s not going to make them call any faster.”
    Jessica needed to know. She’d have to tell the kids something sooner or later.
    After a time, Jessica recalled, she and Jeff went back to cleaning up the house so her stepfather could come in later on that morning, as planned, to put in a new kitchen floor. In fact, according to Jessica, there was all sorts of work going on inside the house. Wall plastering. Carpeting. Wallpapering. Furniture and toys being tossed out. Cleaning. Trips to the dump. Also part of the anxious nature in fixing up the house and getting things thrown away was the fact that the state was coming to look things over as part of the child custody matter Jessica and Alan were involved in. Jessica admitted she was no Suzie Homemaker, but she didn’t want to give the state the wrong impression.
    “Alan and Terra are much better housekeepers than I am,” Jessica said later. “I mean, it certainly would have been an issue [for the state], had it been in the condition it was at that time.”

8
    Back at the Bates household in Marietta, the morning was a series of frantic, angst-filled uncertainties, disorder and questions. Philip called Robert early that morning to brief him about what was happening.
    “I called the rental car company, Robert . . . spoke with GBI . . .”
    Robert got the feeling something terrible had happened—he just didn’t know what.
    “Drop whatever you’re doing and get up here,” Philip said.
    Robert called Kevin, explained what was going on.
    “I’m on my way,” Kevin said.
    Robert, his wife and their kids were in Newnan at his mother-in-law’s house. They had driven down the night before. Robert and Kevin planned to head over to their parents’ house that afternoon—on Saturday—to meet up with Terra, Alan and the kids. They hadn’t seen each other since Christmas. Alan had turned thirty on January 22. They planned a belated birthday party for him. They were going to spend the day and night together as a family. Laughing. Joking around. Telling stories. Catching up.
    Just like old