“Don’t be an ass—” A huge noise cut me off. It was the siren rising and falling with the flick of a switch. He was driving. Using his privileges to bypass red lights, probably. I was sick to think of the day in the barn now. I hated everything about him and that little kingdom of his.
“That is not the way to get a public servant on your side,” he said when the siren cut out.
“I thought he was here.”
He waited.
“He’s not,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“I’d rather not say. I might—”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I might need Sweetheart yet. Now that I knew I didn’t have much to fear here, what was to stop me from bringing Joshua back? We could get our own place. I imagined it for a moment, surrounded again by the pines.
“You should get your son back before you start burrowing in,” he said.
“Has he called?”
“No.” He sounded tired.
“Do I have to ask—or can you help me out here?”
“Nothing has changed about your case. We don’t know anything more.”
“Are you trying to know more?”
“This is at least the third time you’ve called my professional abilities into question,” he said. “If you’ll remember, I haven’t found that characteristic charming in the past.”
“It’s just—I thought he was here.”
He sighed. “I understand.”
“I banked everything on him being here.”
“Come back to Parks.”
“There’s nowhere else I can think of—”
“Come back,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can, but you should be here when he gets here. And he will.”
“I don’t understand it. This is where he should be.”
The sheriff hit the siren again, and for a moment all I could hear was the giant white noise overpowering the phone line. When the siren cut out, the silence was keen.
“Hello?” I said, oddly panicked that I’d lost him.
He said, “He should be with you. Wherever you are.”
I was so exhausted. The phone felt heavy in my hand. “I’ll start home tomorrow.”
“Your cell phone doesn’t work up there, huh?”
“Trying to keep better tabs on me?”
“Keep you better updated,” he said. “When you’re back, I’ll send Mullen over to go through everything again. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.”
“Mullen?” The distance in his voice was no longer just physical.
“I’m out of the area a day, two at the most, and then I’ll stop by myself. If that’s—if you want me to.” He cleared his throat. “I’m chasing down a goose on the Ransey case.”
Aidan’s image came to me. By now the thought of him out there on his own hurt me almost as much as missing Joshua. I imagined Aidan’s small body in his mother’s arms on the town square, his head against her shoulder, his thumb in his mouth. I didn’t know why that’s how I saw him, but the image made me worry for him even more.
“How are you so sure it’s just a goose?”
“I’m not, which is why I’m going,” he said. “Got to meet up with a local constable. He won’t know anything. Long drive to confirm nothing is nothing.”
“Where?”
“Well, I’d rather not say. I might want to build a secret fortress there.”
“Did you ever figure out the evidence forms thing?”
“Anna. You’re off duty.”
Off duty sounded suspiciously like out of line. “Only trying to help.”
“Just trying to keep my head clear, and when you’re helping—well. Let’s just say you’re distracting.”
He was distracting, too, but I didn’t want to say it. I couldn’t say it, and there was no point. Only Joshua mattered. I was the one who couldn’t be distracted.
“I’ll try to stay out of it,” I said. “Good night.”
I HADN’T WANTED to stay the night, but Mamie bested me. I needed an early start and didn’t relish finding a room in one of the log motels where the snowmobile kamikazes camped out every winter. I was so tired the prospect of finding another place to sleep seemed as complex as a NASA reentry from space. So when Mamie started fixing up the couch, I gave up arguing.
“What’s he like? What was he like as a baby?” Mamie was stuffing a giant pillow into its case. In the next room, Ray still sat at the kitchen table studying the photo. He hadn’t said a word since I’d gotten off the phone.
I perched on the edge of a chair and rubbed my face. “He was a good baby. Quiet. Not a crier.”
“Like one of those that always gazes around at the world through huge eyes,” Mamie said. “They’re seeing everything, and nothing meets with their full approval. Like old men.”
They saw everything, all right. “That’s my boy.” I glanced over at Ray, but he didn’t seem to be listening. “You two don’t have any children?”
Mamie smoothed out another layer of thin blanket on the couch, her back a little too straight. The dog lay at her feet, her eyes rolling to watch everything Mamie did.
I sighed. “That was really nosey. I’m a little rusty on social graces.”
“It’s OK. We just—we found each other late, and then just never had any luck.” Mamie finished her nesting with a last plump of the pillow and sat in a chair across the room. I could see the two of them there, each night returning to their spots. Mamie in her chair with the craft basket at her feet, and he in—in this recliner I couldn’t quite settle into.
Mamie stared out the sliding glass doors into the dark trees. “No luck at all there, but we’ve had a lot of grace. I’m not ungrateful.”
“Luck,” I said. “In my case, bad luck. At least that’s how I felt at the time.”
“Were you scared?”
“To death.” For a second, I let myself think of the blood that must have pooled on the dock. If he’d known I was pregnant, he might have held my head under the water long enough to follow through.
Mamie turned to look at Ray, brooding over the photo. “It’s hard to imagine now. I’m—I’m just so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” I hadn’t lost track of Ray’s apology, which hadn’t yet come. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
“But you know how it is. Men and their feelings, never the twain shall meet. We stand in for them in times like this.” Mamie looked at me for confirmation. “You know what I mean? Like when Ray’s dad was sick in the hospital. It was chaos, just utter—he was crazed from the drugs they had him on, poor soul. And I held Big Ray’s hand and calmed him down, just like he was my own, because I knew Ray couldn’t. They’re not born that way, but they’re not raised that way, either. It’s just one of the things we do.”
I didn’t think that was true. I’d heard Joe Jeffries’s voice, trying to tell me the truth about Joshua, heard Russ calming the startled animal right out of me with a few words. But I didn’t want to get into it. “I’ve never been anyone’s wife.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean—I just mean we women. Maybe that’s not lady lib enough, but I think we do what we can, and some things are easier for me than for Ray.” She turned her eyes on him again. “Like for instance. Right now he’s stunned and he can’t say what’s in his heart. I don’t think he knows all what’s in there right now.”