It’s exactly like the moment Beck called to tell me Hannah had died. I never thought history would repeat itself so precisely, but it is.
The car is still moving, but I feel like I’m suspended in time. I see every streetlight, notice the way the sign over the bakery flaps in the wind, a single corner blown loose.
“He can’t be dead.” My voice is hard, businesslike. But I’m far from calm. My stomach is about to swallow me whole.
“I hope not, man,” Harrison says, but his voice is full of doubt and pity. And I remember that too…that same sort of pained, exhausted certainty in Beck’s voice when he told me about Hannah. I’d thought the same things then, didn’t I? I told Beck that I’d seen her three days before on an ultrasound. That she’d been sucking her thumb—that she couldn’t just be gone without warning.
I can’t. I can’t go through this. I can’t lose him. I can’t watch Lucie lose him. I can’t.
I can’t believe this is happening all over again.
THE FLASHING blue and red lights of police cars are visible from a block away. A barricade is in place halfway down the street, so I grab my bag and run—into the cul-de-sac and over the crest of the hill—stopping only as the house comes into view.
Lucie’s on the ground, holding something in her arms. I freeze in place. “Oh, God.”
“They just found him,” says the man beside me.
My knees go loose, my stomach swimming.
“That family got lucky,” he adds. “Should have been watching their kid better.”
“He’s okay?”
The guy shrugs. “Far as I know. Found the kid somewhere off in the woods. Got lost on the path or something.”
I sprint down the driveway and don’t stop until I reach them. Lucie is clutching Henry and Jeremy has his arms around them both.
I realize they had children together, but the sight of them like that after all the shit he’s done to her infuriates me. For now, though, I ignore it and drop to the ground. “I’m so sorry. I got here as fast as I could,” I tell her. I brush a hand through Henry’s hair. “Hey, bud. You okay?”
Henry nods. He’s the only one of the three of them who will even look at me.
“So what happened?” I ask Lucie.
She buries her face into Henry’s hair. “The sitter wasn’t watching, and he walked out the back door. It took three hours to find him.”
“Three hours? Where did he go?”
“Where do you think, asshole?” sneers Jeremy. “He was looking for you.”
I glance at Lucie to confirm this, and she can’t meet my eye.
“You were looking for me?” I ask Henry, swallowing down the bile in my throat.
He blinks. “I wanted to show you the arm. You always come around the path after a trip.”
He walked around the lake because I fucking promised him something, and he just couldn’t believe I wouldn’t deliver.
It makes me want, simultaneously, to promise him everything—that it will never happen again, that we will build a fucking airplane in my front yard to make up for it—and at the same time I want to get in my car and drive away. This feeling—this sick, fucked-up feeling—is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I have a job that requires everything, and I had nothing to give on top of that, but I went for it anyway.
“Come on, Henry,” Lucie says, rising and lifting him into her arms. “Let’s get some dinner and go to bed.”
I watch, numb, as she starts walking toward the house with Henry. Jeremy looks me in the eye and then turns to follow her. Like he belongs, and I do not.
And that’s just it...I don’t. I knew all along that I didn’t belong here.
I never wanted to live through what happened with Hannah again and tonight I nearly did. I shouldn’t have been a part of this in the first place.
35
LUCIE
For all the tears I’ve shed tonight, there are more inside me. Those hours I spent thinking my son was dead have taken a decade off my life. They’ve also put everything in perspective. I have decisions to make, later on, though I sense I’ve already made them. The way Caleb jerked backward when Henry said he’d been looking for him—as if we were too much trouble, more weight than he was willing to carry—told me everything his half-in, half-out stance has not.
If we’re too much baggage for him, fine. I’ve got a little boy to take care of. I will not waste an ounce of energy trying to convince a grown man we’re worth his time.
Jeremy stops to shoo away a reporter, and I’m nearly to the door when a bespectacled guy who’s been hovering for hours stops me. “Lucie?” he begins.
“We’re not giving interviews right now,” I say for the tenth time, my jaw tight. “I need to get my son inside.”
“Oh, right. I’m not...I work with Molly. I drove her from the office because she was so frantic, I didn’t trust her behind the wheel.” He gets a soft smile on his face. “To be honest, I’m not sure I ever trust her behind the wheel, but especially not today. Can you just tell her Michael is here? I’ll drive her home whenever she’s ready to leave.”
I stare at him blankly. This can’t be the same Michael, can it? This sweet, quiet guy with his painfully obvious crush on Molly is nothing like the hot, Christian Grey-style billionaire Molly’s been describing for the past two years.
“Michael her boss?”
He blinks in surprise. “I mean...technically, sure. I own the company, though I don’t think anyone tells Molly what to do. How did you know?”
Henry snuggles sleepily against my chest as he looks up at him. “Molly wants to marry you. She talks about it all the time.”
Michael’s eyes widen and before he can hide it, there’s hope there too.
I manage a smile. “It’s true, actually. She does. I’ll tell her you’re waiting.”
Tears spring to my eyes as I walk inside. My fairy tale is ending, but maybe Molly’s will begin in its place.
Henry’s too sleepy to eat more than a bite or two. I rinse him off, and Jeremy and I tuck the twins in—both of us still too shell-shocked for it to seem weird. He’s quiet and respectful and walks downstairs without being told to leave.
“Lucie,” he says, his voice rough as we reach the door, “they can’t keep living here. This isn’t me trying to control you, but my God, I never want to go through a night like this again. I’ll pay for it. I saw a rental over in Idlewild. Nothing fancy but nicer than this. If you’re interested, go take a look. I’ll pay for the next year, and we’ll figure it out after that.”
I nod, trying to hold myself together. “Yeah, okay. I’ll call tomorrow.”
He opens the door. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry about all of this. Let’s try to clean up our shit for them, yeah?”
Under other circumstances, I’d be inclined to say it’s not our shit that needs to be cleaned up, but that inclination of mine to argue all the time probably isn’t helping either. “Yeah, okay.”
He leaves, and I go upstairs and stare at Henry, unable to shake off the terror of the last few hours. Unable to forget every image that carved itself into my head while we waited for news—his body, face down in the lake; him shivering in the woods overnight, or wandering, calling for me, getting more and more lost with each second that passed.
There’s no version of this story where the ultimate blame isn’t on my shoulders: I left him with Abby, and I allowed him to count on someone who told me at the outset he couldn’t be what we needed. I didn’t listen to Caleb because I didn’t want to hear what he said...but I’m listening now.
The twins are sound asleep, and I’m still sitting next to Henry in bed when Caleb texts to say he’s waiting on the back deck.
What happened tonight wasn’t his fault, but I’m too raw for any conversation we are likely to have—one that will probably involve some weak apology on his part accompanied by the reminder that he told me he didn’t have time for this.
I find him outside pacing. His gaze flickers to Jeremy’s sweatshirt, which I never removed. Jesus, as if that could possibly matter right now.
“Is he okay?” he asks, but the question sounds like a formality. Business Caleb asking the polite thing to get it out of the way.