My head feels off. I have that same sort of preternatural calm as before, but something is wrong. Subsurface. It’s not the booze either — despite my worries, the police never checked my blood alcohol level and I’ve certainly burned it all off by now anyway. Maybe I’m still in shock. Certainly I’m overtired.
I do a mental check of what I can recall from the past twenty-four hours. Has it been just that? Not even. It’s only five in the morning now, but Joni didn’t show up with Michael until eleven yesterday. She announced their engagement thirty minutes later. I was more dumbstruck by his resemblance to a long-ago patient than the marriage proposal. Soon after their arrival, I was told that Maggie Lewis died. I returned home, a four-hour drive, to speak to local police and look through my files — not for her, but for Tom Bishop. I found the address for the uncle who took him in and raised him. Arnold Bleeker was hospitable at first, but then chased me out of the house. His daughter and her husband showed up and flipped me off. I went to the Bishop home only to discover Detective Starzyk haunting the place, telling me that Laura Bishop was out. Finally, Frank Mills pulled information that showed Tom Bishop lives on the other side of the country, but the jail where Laura Bishop did time is around the corner from my vacation home in the mountains.
I think that about sums it up.
“So talk to me,” Paul says. “If you can. What’s with this cop? Why was he there? Why’s he telling you about Laura Bishop getting paroled?”
I realize I never mentioned to Paul the prison’s proximity to our home.
“You’re shitting me,” he says. “Okay. So something is definitely going on here. Is that what you think?”
Paul’s line of questioning strikes me as kind of dopey, like he’s some bumbling gumshoe. But that’s probably because I’m tired and my head hurts. “I don’t know what I think.” Closing my eyes, I rest my head on the seatback. “What did you guys do last night?”
“What did we do? The two of them went into town. Picked up some Chinese food, brought it back. After we ate, I went out to work on the boat and they left.”
“When?”
“I dunno. It was getting late. Maybe eleven? I’m sorry I didn’t hear the phone right away. I always meant to put a line in the garage.”
“Anything weird happen?”
“Aside from you hitting a deer after deciding to drive all the way back here in the middle of the night? No.”
I ignore it. Keeping my eye closed, I ask, “What time did they get back?”
“They weren’t back.”
My eyelids fly open. “They weren’t?”
“No, her car wasn’t there . . . Em, do you know something you aren’t telling me?”
“What? No . . .” Fully awake now, I call the house and wait while it rings. When Joni answers, I exhale with relief.
“Mom?” She sounds like the call woke her up. “What’s the matter?”
“Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
“Okay . . .”
I hang up. Paul is watching me carefully. He continues to strike me as goofy, ham-handed. For some reason, I think of hitting him that day in the rain, all those years ago.
“I don’t know,” I say, “what do you think about Laura Bishop getting out of prison?”
He scowls as he drives. “What do I think? I have no idea what to think.”
I stare a moment, then ease back. “It’s just been a tough couple of days. A lot of heavy lifting.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Everything is going to be fine. I just need to rest.”
He’s silent, mulling it over.
I touch his arm. “Hey. We’ll figure it all out. All right? We will.”
*
I sleep until noon. When I wake up, it’s with a start, yanking off my eye mask. I’m hot — sweating in the sun that pours into the room. Having spent the time unconscious dreaming about a deer with its head bashed open, I’m disoriented.
“Joni,” I say, and then I get up too fast and tumble out of the bed.
As I catch my breath on the floor, I hear footfalls hurrying below. Someone pounds up the stairs. It’s Paul. He barges into the room and kneels down beside me, getting his arms under me. “Honey. Honey . . . what?”
“I’m okay.” I let him help me up. We sit on the edge of the bed. “I just slipped.”
He looks me over carefully. Then we have a quick kiss, and I wave him off. “I’m fine.” I walk to the en suite bathroom and flip on the light.
Well, I don’t look fine. I’ve got a big red welt on the side of my cheek where I struck my own face and the cut over my eye. My skin looks waxy and pale, glistening with perspiration. I start the shower.
Paul calls for me, “You’re really all right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I get you something?”
I run the tap for some water — Lake Placid has pristine drinking water — and gulp some down from a cup. “I’m starving,” I tell Paul.
“Say no more.”
But I poke my head out. “Where’s Joni now?”
Paul stops halfway out of the room. “Went into town. To grab some lunch.”
“They just went into town yesterday.”
Worry furrows his brow. Then it clears, and Paul gets a face I’ve come to know well all after these years — he’s about to be as sensible as sensible gets. “Listen, I did some thinking while you were asleep.”
“Uh-oh.”
“And I guess I’m of two minds about this whole thing.”
I get out my toothbrush and squeeze some paste on it. “Okay . . .”
“On the one hand, I’m thinking maybe you should do whatever it takes to satisfy your concerns about Michael. You know, hire someone to do a background check.”
Brushing, I spit, but don’t mention Frank Mills. “And your other mind?”
“My other mind tells me there’s something else going on.”
“Like what?”
Paul gives me a sympathetic smile that’s a little bit condescending. Like I can’t see the obvious thing staring me in the face. “Our daughter is going to marry someone. After all of this time, all of our worry about her, everything we went through. It’s a lot to process. You of all people know this.”
I rinse the toothbrush and put it away.
Paul comes closer. He needn’t remind me of the nights we spent awake, searching for her, worrying.
“She put us to the test,” he says. “And now that this thing is happening . . . I mean, think about it, Em. The way you reacted to her not being here last night. The way you’ve been since Michael showed up. It’s post-traumatic stress. The whole thing.”
I square my shoulders with him. “I’ll admit you might be onto something.”
“I worry about her, too. But she seems really happy.”
“We’ll see what Sean thinks,” I say, turning back toward the shower. I let my robe fall from my shoulders and softly hit the ground. “He’s always been a good judge of Joni’s boyfriends.”
“He hasn’t really liked any of them,” Paul says, right behind me.
“Exactly.”
Paul’s touch is light, the tips of his fingers feathering over the skin of my upper arms.