“The university?”
“The wooded area near the Essex Bridge is outside campus proper, but it’s university property,” Erik said. “It’s my understanding that it was a Campus Safety officer who called in the body. As you can imagine, the university will be motivated to keep this quiet. Assuming any of this information is even accurate. There’s always the chance that we’ll find out the whole thing is a false alarm.”
The door creaked as Justin came out into the hallway, squinting his hazel eyes at me. His shaggy brown hair was sticking up in all directions like a little boy’s. Who’s that? he mouthed, pointing to the phone with a furrowed brow as he crossed his arms over the Ridgedale University T-shirt hugging his triathlete’s wiry frame. I held up a finger for him to wait.
“Okay, I’ll be careful.” Now I sounded so effortlessly confident that I was almost convincing myself. “I’ll text you an update once I’ve gotten down to the scene. I assume you’ll want something abbreviated for online, full-length for print tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” Erik said, still hesitant. He was doing his best to buy into my confidence, but he wasn’t all the way there. “Okay, then. Good luck. Call if you need anything.”
“Erik?” Justin asked sleepily after I’d hung up. He scrubbed a hand over his beard, which, despite early resistance, I now felt weirdly attached to. It covered up much of Justin’s angular features, yet it managed to make him look even more handsome. “What did he want in the middle of the night?”
I looked down at my phone. It was a little past six a.m. “It’s not the middle of the night anymore,” I said, as though that were the relevant point. My voice sounded spacey and odd.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Justin pushed off the doorframe and put a concerned hand on my arm. Because I wasn’t allowed to be spacey, not even for a second. Not anymore. That’s what happens when you dove off the deep end: people got alarmed when you dared poke a toe back in the murky waters.
“Nothing’s wrong. Erik just wants me to go out to the Essex Bridge for a story,” I said. “They found a— Someone reported a body.”
“Jesus, a body, really? That’s terrible. Do they know what happened?”
“That’s what I’m supposed to find out. Apparently, I’m the temporary substitute features reporter for the Ridgedale Reader.”
“You? Really?” I watched Justin realize he’d stuck his foot in his mouth. “I mean, great, I guess. That seems weird to say if someone’s dead.”
The bedroom door opened wider behind us, and Ella padded out in her red-and-white-striped pajamas, brown curls twisting out in every direction like a bouquet of springs. She was squinting exactly the way Justin had, with her matching hazel eyes. Apart from her hair—which was a chocolate-hued replica of my own reddish curls—Ella was a miniature version of Justin. From her oversize eyes and full ruddy lips to the way she smiled with her whole face, Ella was living proof of the power of genetics.
“Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to wake you.” I reached down and hoisted a heavier-than-ever Ella up on my hip. “Let me put you back to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed.” Ella pouted into my neck. “I want to be ready.”
“Ready?” I laughed, rubbing a hand over her back as I carried her down the hall toward her room. “Ready for what, Peanut?”
“For the show, Mommy.”
Shit, the show. A kindergarten reenactment of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in which Ella was to be that crucial “one green leaf.” The show was at eleven a.m. There was no telling if I’d make it.
“You’ll be too tired for the show if you stay up, Peanut. It’s way too early,” I said, pushing her door open with my foot. “You’ll need more sleep or you’ll forget all your lines.”
Ella’s eyes were already half closed by the time I was tucking her back under her pink-and-white-checked duvet and her massive, colorful menagerie of stuffed animals. Reading to Ella in that bed had always made me feel like the little girl I’d never been. And on a good day, it could almost convince me that I was the mother I’d always hoped I’d be.
“Mommy?” Ella said as she snuggled up against her huge red frog.
“What, sweetheart?” I smiled hard, trying not to think about how crushed she’d be when she realized that I wouldn’t make her show.
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, Peanut.”
Now that I was finally back—not perfect, not by a long shot, but much, much better—I did everything I could to avoid disappointing her. I was about to say something else, to apologize for missing her show, to make promises or offer bribes. But it was already too late to plead for forgiveness: Ella was fast asleep.
Justin was back in bed by the time I returned to our bedroom. I could tell he was not yet asleep despite his best efforts.
“Ella’s show is at eleven today. It won’t take long, fifteen minutes, maybe. Tape it for me, okay?” I headed for my bureau. Nice but practical, that was what I needed to wear. Or maybe professional but unafraid to tramp through the woods was closer to the mark. Yes, that was it: intrepid. “I didn’t get a chance to warn her I was going to miss it. You don’t think I should wake her up to tell her, do you? I hate to think of her being surprised that way.”
I could feel Justin watching me move around the room getting dressed. I pulled on my nicest sweater—the pale blue cashmere that Justin’s mother had bought me, that set off my eyes—then tugged on a pair of my best non-mom jeans.