And the child was gone.
The thought popped into my head, just like the memory of playing in the snow. I never thought it so clearly and with such finality. She’s gone. Caitlin is gone. And I knew, as time passed, the memories would fade, and the haunting, stabbing moments would come back to me with less frequency until, someday, they might be gone forever, and with them all tangible sense of my daughter.
I pulled the coat tight to me, pressed my face deep into its fabrics and folds. I inhaled. It smelled musty like the closet, but I didn’t care. I breathed deeply again and again, letting the musty smell fill me.
I took the coat and placed it back on its hanger, then started working it back in among the other clothes on the rod. I stepped back, my hand on the closet door, when I saw the flash of red. I thought it was a hat or glove. The weather had been cold in the days leading up to Caitlin’s disappearance, but on the day she disappeared, we’d experienced a brief late-winter warm-up, so Caitlin had left the house that day in a lighter jacket instead. I noticed that the red object looked fragile, almost papery, and parts of it fell to the ground.
I reached for it, and it crumpled more. It was a flower, a red carnation. It felt brittle in my hand, a handful of dust. A single stem, with no note or adornment. No ribbon or lace. I didn’t know where it came from, except that Caitlin must have gotten it in the days before her disappearance. Where she’d come across that red carnation, I couldn’t guess.
Chapter Nineteen
I saw them together in the parking lot. I’d gone to the grocery store looking for better food. My bachelor diet was making me feel sluggish and drained, a corpulent lump on the living room couch. I forced myself out into the world, out to where living people ate things that were green or yellow or red and not in a box or a can.
I was leaving the store when I saw Abby and Pastor Chris getting out of a car together. He waited for her, even went so far as to place his hand on the small of her back as she walked by. I stopped where I was and watched them. I held my plastic bag in one hand, the car keys in the other. It took them a moment to see me. They walked close together, leaning in toward each other as though sharing secrets.
Chris saw me first. Something crossed his face—momentary guilt?—but just as quickly his happy mask snapped into place. His smile grew wider than normal and he called out to me like we were old friends.
“Tom!”
His hands fell to his sides, stiff and straight as tent stakes.
I didn’t say anything. I watched Abby. She looked away, first at the ground, then at the sky; then, when left with no choice, she looked at me.
“Hello, Tom,” she said.
“Hello.”
They stopped, and for a long moment the three of us stood there, Mexican standoff style, while shoppers pushed their carts past us and minivans full of kids and groceries navigated the lanes.
I tried to keep my voice level.
“You two look awfully domestic together, don’t you?”
Chris kept smiling. “Just buying groceries,” he said. “We have a youth group meeting tonight at the—”
“Shut up.”
He blinked his eyes a few times, a hurt puppy.
“Come on, Chris,” Abby said.
“Yeah, go on,” I said. “Go on with another man’s wife. Isn’t there a commandment about that? Or does your church not do the commandments anymore? Is that why people like it so much?”
“Now, Tom,” Chris said, bringing the smile back. “I don’t think there’s any need to say these things to me.”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”
Abby took Chris’s arm and pulled him toward the store.
“Go home, Tom,” she said. “Think about what I said about getting help.”
I managed to switch my keys from my right hand to the left, leaving me free to reach into my pocket. I pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, the kind with a zipped top. It held the remains of the flower I’d found in Caitlin’s closet.
“Do you know what this is, Abby?” She stopped and squinted at the bag, confused. “I found this in Caitlin’s closet. It was in her coat pocket.”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything.
“It’s not over, Abby. I know you want it to be over. I know you want to move on. Apparently, you have moved on. But it’s not time yet.”
Abby stared at me for a moment. I thought she was going to say something—anything—but she just turned and started for the store, leaving Chris behind her.
“She had a miscarriage,” I said to him. “Our baby, about a year after Caitlin disappeared. And she didn’t tell me.”
Chris pursed his lips. “It was a difficult decision for Abby,” he said. “I counseled her about it. We prayed about it. She decided it was the best thing to do, to keep it from you.”
“You knew?”
But he was already gone. Having given me a little wave good-bye, he hustled to catch up with Abby, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the parking lot.