I was still barefoot. I slipped on the dewy grass, almost went down. Then I ran into the street, the small bits of dirt and road grime pricking my soles.
Except for where the streetlights glowed, everything was inky black. I ran down the center of the street, heading toward the park. My neighbors’ houses were dark, the world closed up and in bed.
Why was the girl out there?
I finally stopped halfway up the street. She was gone. Disappeared.
And I was out of breath and feeling foolish.
But she’d been at the house. She’d wanted something from us.
From me? From Caitlin?
Huffing and puffing, I turned and went home.
Lights were on upstairs and downstairs. Abby and Caitlin were awake.
I limped up the front steps, my feet aching and bruised, and was greeted by Abby, who held the door open for me.
“What the hell’s going on?” she asked.
I came in and sat down in the living room. I was sweating. My T-shirt clung to my body. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
“The girl,” I said.
“Caitlin?”
I shook my head. “The girl I saw in the cemetery. She was outside tonight, in the street. She was looking at our house.”
Abby didn’t say anything. She just stared.
I knew what she was thinking:
Poor man. Poor, poor man, driven crazy by stress.
I looked past Abby. Caitlin stood at the top of the stairs. She wore the Fields University nightgown Abby had bought her, and she looked down at us, her feet on different steps like she’d been frozen in midstride.
“You know that girl, don’t you?” I asked.
“Tom—”
“You know who she is and what she wants.”
Caitlin turned to go, back up the stairs and to the bedroom.
“That girl knows that man, doesn’t she?” I asked. “She looks just like you, Caitlin, like when you were a little girl. I’m going to get ahold of her.”
She was gone. Abby placed her hand on my shoulder.
“Easy, Tom. Take it easy.”
I didn’t realize I’d been shouting. I tried to calm down, but it took a long time for me to catch my breath.
We returned to Dr. Rosenbaum’s office a few days later. He asked to see Abby and me first, leaving Caitlin again under the watchful eye of Mary the receptionist. Rosenbaum sat without notes or pen, just the coffee mug in his right hand and the same casually expectant look on his face.
“Anything different at home?” Rosenbaum asked.
Abby and I looked at each other. Before she could say anything about my adventure from a few nights earlier, I said, “Nothing unusual.”
“Things are better then?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say better,” Abby said. “Do you think it’s a good idea for Detective Ryan to press Caitlin about what happened already?”
“How do you mean?”
“He came over the other day, and he really pushed her hard about what happened to her. He was almost aggressive. I didn’t think it was best for her to hear that already.”
Rosenbaum pursed his lips. He set the coffee mug down. “Right. Detective Ryan mentioned to me that he had talked to Caitlin at your house. Sometimes the police press like that because they think the case is time sensitive. Say, for instance, the man who did this is thinking of leaving the area, or even committing another, similar crime. Detective Ryan would like to get to him before that happens.”
“So you think it’s okay for her to hear these things so soon?” Abby asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Rosenbaum said. “I’ve worked with the police a lot, and we don’t always agree on how to approach these things. We have different priorities sometimes. But Detective Ryan is a good man. Give him a chance.”
Abby didn’t seem placated. Neither was I, but we didn’t say anything.
Rosenbaum apparently decided to move forward. “I wanted to try to get a picture of what your home was like before Caitlin disappeared,” he said. “Just some background information for me.”
“I guess we were normal,” Abby said.
“Whatever that means,” I said.
Rosenbaum smiled a little. “But you two are separated now, so something must have been going on.”
“I think those issues arose in the wake of Caitlin’s disappearance,” I said. “I don’t think either one of us dealt with it all that well.”
“Abby?” Rosenbaum said.
“I guess I feel as though the problems were beginning back then,” she said. “I felt that over the years Tom and I grew apart. Our lives were kind of going in different directions. It’s not that we didn’t love each other. It’s just that we were becoming different people. He was pursuing his academic life and work, and I was developing in other ways. I wanted to work on my spiritual life. Caitlin may have been aware of all that. She was a smart kid.”
“Is,” I said. “She is a smart kid.”
“Tom, do you share Abby’s assessment that problems might have been brewing that far back?”