Chương 2
“That phrase has probably never improved a conversation.”
“I’m her brother.”
I nearly laughed.
Claire was an only child.
At least that was the biography I had known for eleven years.
“Try again.”
“I’m not asking you to believe me.”
“Good.”
“I’m asking whether Claire arrived at 214 West Hurd.”
I grabbed a pen from above the washing machine and wrote the address on an old utility envelope.
“No.”
“Then call the police.”
My anger stalled.
“What?”
“She was supposed to meet me there hours ago.”
“Why?”
“I can explain when I know she’s safe.”
“No, you can explain now.”
“Grant, if she left your house and never reached me, then arguing about what I am to her is wasting time.”
There was fear in his voice now.
Not theatrical fear.
The clipped, breathless kind I heard from owners when a dog slipped a leash near traffic.
I hated that I believed it.
I called Claire again.
Voicemail.
When I returned to the kitchen, Tessa had taken Miles from the high chair and was wiping oatmeal from his fingers.
I took the cloth from her.
“You’re off duty.”
“I can help.”
“I know.”
Her face changed.
For the first time since I had arrived, she looked close to crying.
“What if Mom’s mad because I called you?”
I pulled out the chair beside her.
“If she’s mad, she can be mad at me.”
“But I promised.”
“You were scared.”
“She said promises count more when you’re scared.”
That sounded like something Claire would say.
It was even something I might once have admired.
I reached for Tessa’s hand.
“Adults don’t get to use promises to trap kids.”
She stared at our hands.
“Is Mom bad?”
There are questions children ask that adults can ruin by answering too quickly.
“No,” I said finally.
“Your mom did something today that was not okay.”
“That means bad.”
“It means she made a choice she has to answer for.”
Tessa considered that.
“Like when I cut my own bangs?”
“Bigger than the bangs.”
“They were really bad.”
“They were historic.”
She smiled despite herself.
Then the smile disappeared.
“Are you going to divorce her?”
I looked at the second phone.
“I don’t know.”
It was the first completely honest thing I had said since coming home.
I called my neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez, who had known Tessa since kindergarten and had watched both kids before.
She arrived eight minutes later wearing gardening gloves and carrying half a tomato she apparently had been slicing when I called.
“You look terrible,” she told me.
“Thank you.”
“I mean more than usual.”
Tessa laughed, and I could have hugged the woman for it.
I explained only that Claire was missing and I needed to look for her.
Mrs. Alvarez did not ask for gossip.
She washed her hands, took Miles, and told me there was chicken soup in her refrigerator if the kids got hungry.
At the door, Tessa grabbed my wrist.
“Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“Mom took the red folder.”
“What red folder?”
“The one from the closet.”
I had seen it before.
A cheap accordion folder Claire kept behind winter blankets on the upper shelf.
I had assumed it held tax records.
“How do you know?”
“It fell when she was getting it.”
“Did you see what was inside?”
“Pictures.”
“Of what?”
“People.”
I waited.
Tessa swallowed.
“One was Mom.”
“Okay.”
“She looked little.”
“How little?”
“My age, maybe.”
“And someone had written on the back.”
“What did it say?”
Tessa’s fingers tightened around my wrist.
“It said Claire and Ryan, summer 1998.”
The drive to West Hurd took fourteen minutes.
Ryan Mercer was standing in the yard when I arrived.
He was in his early forties, broad-shouldered, with Claire’s gray-green eyes and the same habit of pressing his tongue against the inside of his cheek when anxious.
Seeing that small familiar gesture on a stranger disturbed me more than the messages had.
He walked toward my truck.
“Where is she?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Behind him stood a narrow brick house with plywood over one front window.
A real-estate lockbox hung from the doorknob.
Ryan looked past me as though Claire might somehow be in the truck bed.
“She never came?”
“No.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“What was she coming here for?”
He glanced at the house.
“To meet the woman who raised us.”
“Claire’s mother died when she was nineteen.”
“No.”
He looked back at me.
“The woman Claire told you was her mother died when Claire was nineteen.”
A siren sounded somewhere toward downtown, faint and then fading.
Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“I called the hospitals already.”
“And?”
“Nothing under her name.”
“Police?”
“I reported her missing twenty minutes ago.”
I stared at him.
“You knew she left my nine-year-old with a baby.”
His jaw tightened.
“I told her not to.”
“You texted her to leave them with Tessa.”
“I was angry.”
“That’s your defense?”
“No.”
He looked down.
“It’s the truth.”
I stepped closer before I decided to.
“You knew.”
“I knew she’d done it before.”
The yard seemed to tilt beneath me.
“What did you just say?”
Ryan did not retreat.
“Grant, Claire has been coming here for six weeks.”
“How many times did she leave my children alone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give me a number.”
“I don’t know.”
“You said she’d done it before.”
“Twice that she told me about.”
I grabbed the front of his shirt.
Ryan’s hands came up but he did not strike me.
“Dad?”
Tessa’s voice came from my pocket.
I released him instantly.
My phone had somehow answered an incoming call when I grabbed him.
I pulled it out.
“Tess?”
Mrs. Alvarez spoke instead.
“Grant, honey, you need to come back.”
My stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
“Tessa remembered something.”
In the background, my daughter was crying.
Then she came on the line.
“Dad, Mom didn’t drive away by herself.”
May you like
I looked at Ryan.
“What do you mean?”
