“And I begged you to stay.” Please, Hunter, she’d begged. Just give it a little more time. The same way she’d begged when he told her he was ending their marriage.
“The investigation was going nowhere. The police had pretty much made up their minds that we were behind Samantha’s disappearance. There was nothing more to be accomplished by staying…”
“You left me,” Caroline said, no longer sure if she was referring to the time he left Mexico or the time he left for good.
“I hired a private detective…”
“Whom you fired after three months.”
“Because he was getting nowhere.”
“Because he was costing you a pretty penny.”
“Goddamn you, Caroline,” Hunter muttered.
“Goddamn you,” she said in return.
Michelle fell back against her leather seat, the movement creating an audible whoosh. “I need a drink,” she said.
“Tell me you’re not seriously considering going home,” Caroline demanded of her husband.
“It’s something we have to consider,” Hunter said. “It’s been almost a week.”
“It’s been five days.”
“And the police are no further ahead than they were the night Samantha disappeared.”
“That’s not true. They have leads…”
“They have nothing.” Hunter plopped down on the sofa in the living room of their suite, running his hand through his thick brown hair in frustration.
Caroline walked to the window, stared down at the restaurant below, spotting her mother and Michelle having lunch under one of the multiple red umbrellas. Her mother had insisted on coming to Rosarito as soon as Steve had called her with the awful news. She’d burst into their suite and immediately wrapped Caroline in a tight, almost suffocating embrace. Caroline had instantly reciprocated, gratefully clinging to her mother, her entire body going limp. “Mommy,” she heard herself sob into the silk shoulder of her dress.
“How could you let this happen?” her mother said.
“We have to look at this realistically,” Hunter was saying now.
Caroline wanted to walk over to where he was sitting, slap him hard across the side of his head, and shout, “How’s this for realism?” Instead, she stopped pacing and waited for him to continue.
“It’s been five days,” he reiterated. “The police have searched the hotel and grounds at least a dozen times and found nothing. The guests have all been investigated and cleared…”
“There’s that man who had a collection of pornography on his computer…”
“The pictures were all of grown men. And his alibi checked out: he and his friends were at a nightclub down the beach when Samantha disappeared. They have a roomful of witnesses.”
“Samantha didn’t just disappear,” Caroline said, tired of the euphemism that implied her daughter had somehow magically vanished into thin air. “She was abducted. Someone took her.” She burst into a flood of angry tears. How many tears could one body hold? How many could she spill before she drowned in them?
Hunter was immediately at her side, his arms moving helplessly around her, as if seeking a safe place to land.
“Don’t,” Caroline said before he could touch her.
He backed off and returned to the couch, although he remained standing.
“Go on,” she said, trying, and failing, to keep the edge out of her voice. “We were being realistic.” She knew she was hurting him, pushing him further away every day. But he deserved to be pushed, to be hurt. This was his fault. Samantha was gone because of him.
And now he was talking about going as well. Leave the scene of the crime, return to San Diego, resume their normal life. Except they’d come here with two children, and they’d be leaving with one. Their lives would never be normal again.
“There’s nothing more we can do here,” he argued. “We’ve searched everywhere. We’ve told the police everything we know. We’ve gone over everything that happened that night a thousand times. We’ve answered all their questions. It’s obvious they don’t believe us. It’s obvious they’re starting to think we had something to do with it.”
“What is it they think we did? Do they think we kidnapped our own child?”
The look in Hunter’s eyes told Caroline it was worse than that.
“They can’t seriously believe we murdered our daughter.”
“I think that’s exactly what they believe. Which is one of the reasons I want to get the hell out of Mexico.”
“But if they believe that, what makes you think they’ll let us leave?”