Happiness Falls

Mia reflects on the heuristics concept of selective perception. For instance, that day, she assumes, and then insists to herself, that her dad came home. Only after Mia’s mother Hannah and Mia’s twin brother John arrive home worried does Mia finally realize that the footsteps she heard were those of a delivery person leaving a package. John wants to call the police, but Mia disagrees, so they decide to search for him on their own first. While Hannah and John search the park, Mia stays home with Eugene. Hannah calls to say they can’t find Adam and that they need to call the police. Mia notices a dark spot on Eugene’s shirt, and “crescent of dark red under his right thumbnail” (24). As she sees police lights outside, she starts the laundry and ushers Eugene into the shower.

The police are there about a car accident that may have been caused by Eugene. Mia assumes they’ve come to inform her that her father was killed in the accident, but they don’t have any knowledge about him. John and Hannah arrive home and tell the police about Adam having gone missing. Worried that the police are there for “child welfare and protective purposes” (28), Hannah calmly and assertively describes Eugene’s condition. Eugene, who is nonverbal, has a dual diagnosis of autism and Angelman syndrome (AS), a genetic disorder that causes cognitive disability. The police agree to delay investigating the accident until Adam is found.

While Hannah helps Eugene dress, Mia notices that his fingernails are cleaner than expected, implying that Hannah also helped him clean the blood from under them. 

Detective Morgan Janus—whom Mia recognizes from a lecture about suicide at her high school, and who recognizes Mia for having objected to use of the phrase “committed suicide” instead of the neutral “died by suicide”—questions the family on any divergences from their typical routine the day Adam went missing. When Janus reads part of the accident report saying that the driver stopped at the intersection, Mia notices Eugene shake his head and squeeze his eyes shut. After Detective Janus leaves, Mia thinks about their breakfast’s “micro-anomalies” (42), and then the family begins to investigate Adam’s disappearance: Hannah calls friends and acquaintances, John attempts to talk with Eugene using communication cards, and Mia takes responsibility for digital items. She finds sheets of paper with what she assumes to be code: a series of questions paired with block letters and numbers. On an external hard drive, she notices a PDF life insurance policy not in a folder, and password-protected folders labeled “HQ.”

Mia wakes up, briefly not remembering what has happened, and then hears Eugene emit what she calls his “original requiem scream” (49). She’s heard it on only two other occasions: when Eugene witnessed their grandmother’s death from a stroke while they lived in Korea, and when he woke up the next morning. They all run into Eugene’s room to find Hannah comforting him. Mia and John argue about the scream, with John saying he doesn’t think it’s significant. John eventually suggests that Mia may be responsible if something has happened to Adam given her actions the previous day.

The phone rings: Detectives have interviewed several witnesses who saw Adam and Eugene the day before. Upset when a timer goes off for a family tooth brushing ritual of her dad’s invention, Mia hesitates to pick up her toothbrush, and instead texts her father. She is elated when the message is read, and typing dots appear, but the reply she receives is “who is this?”.

Unconcerned, given that she and John playfully often change each other’s contact names in their parents’ phones, Mia replies to the message with an inside joke, then receives another message, saying “Mia?”. She runs to show her family the messages. While Hannah and John are overjoyed, everyone is surprised to see Eugene seemingly reading the messages, clearly becoming distressed by them despite his smile. Detective Janus calls, but cell reception is bad, so Mia is unable to understand the call. They notice that the location dot of Adam’s cell phone has moved, and race to the park. Mia asks John if he recently played their phone contact name prank, but he has not. They discuss the possibility that Adam has Alzheimer’s or amnesia.

John and Mia arrive at the park, but find no sign of their father. John meets Susan, an acquaintance of the family, who says she saw police cars leaving 20 minutes earlier. She sympathizes with John and Mia, mentioning the “horrible news last week” (68), then backtracks when the twins clearly don’t know what she’s talking about. On the way home, John and Mia call Detective Janus, who tells them that she sent the “who is this?” and “Mia?” messages. The police have found Adam’s phone.

Detective Janus tells the family that the initial search did not find Adam or his body. The police did find his backpack in the river; Mia and Hannah obliquely ask what that means for the likely outcome, and the detective’s reply is vague. She does offer that an investigation of the contents of the backpack has revealed a folder with a manila envelope and a spiral-bound notebook labeled HQ: “the H probably stands for Happiness” (76) and Mia immediately feels certain that the “Q” is short for “Quotient.”