Soon, Barbara would have to call the station. She didn’t like to do that. The chief of police’s wife having to track him down? It didn’t reflect well on either one of them. But what choice did she have? Before she could dial the number, there was a buzz from the opposite side of the room. Hannah’s iPhone vibrating on the side table. Hannah wasn’t one of those teenagers who was attached to her phone, but it was odd that she’d left it downstairs. When Barbara picked it up, the text came through a second time: I’m sorry. I should have said that before. For everything.
The text was from Sandy, the girl Hannah had tutored. What was Sandy sorry for? Missing her tutoring? Barbara felt a queasy tug in her gut. For everything. No, missing the tutoring wasn’t it.
Barbara typed in Hannah’s password—her knowing it was a condition of Hannah having a phone—then opened the text messages between her and Sandy, scrolling up to those that had preceded the new one. Barbara recognized many of the back-and-forths between the girls; from the beginning, she’d monitored them regularly. She had her concerns, of course, about Hannah socializing with the kind of teenagers served by Outreach Tutoring, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. But the girls’ exchanges had been so routinely uninteresting, about scheduling their tutoring or where to meet or the assignments. It had been obvious they weren’t real friends. Not like Hannah’s other friends, who—let’s be honest—came with their own Corona-swilling problems.
Are you okay? Hannah had written to Sandy about a week earlier.
Yeah. Was Sandy’s whole response.
Are you sure? Hannah had pressed. You should go to a doctor. That was really bad.
A doctor?
To check you out. Make sure you’re okay.
I AM okay.
Barbara’s heart had started to pound. What was really bad? More exchanges followed, all essentially the same. Hannah asking if Sandy was okay. Sandy assuring her that she was. Hannah asking again. Over and over and over. Hannah was obviously worried about Sandy. But why? Barbara checked the dates of these very different texts. They had started nearly two weeks earlier. Right about the time the baby had probably been . . .
Barbara bent over as the room began to spin. She was going to be sick. Her head was ringing.
That Sandy girl had been in their house. Could she have had her baby there? Oh my God: Cole. Had Hannah been lying all this time to protect Sandy? Had she chosen some worthless white-trash stranger over her own brother?
All Barbara felt was rage as she charged for the steps, Hannah’s phone gripped in her hand. Then there was a sound, the front door finally opening. Steve. Barbara didn’t care anymore why he was late or where he had been. She was just so very glad he was there now. She sprinted toward him, diving into his arms and pressing her face against his chest. She didn’t realize she was crying until she tried to speak.
“What is it?” Steve asked. But she couldn’t get any words out. He pushed her back. Shook her once, hard. As if trying to wake her. “What’s wrong, Barbara? Talk to me. Is it Cole?”
“The baby,” she said, waving the phone at him. “It belongs to that girl Hannah has been tutoring. I think Cole saw something. I think whatever happened to the baby, Steve, I think it happened here.”
“Barbara, what are you talking about?” His voice was raised—angry, alarmed, disbelieving.
Barbara didn’t want to believe it, either. Didn’t want to believe their daughter could be so unfeeling and cruel. Hannah had been acting upset about Cole, and this whole time she knew exactly what was wrong with him; worse yet, she was the one responsible.
Steve took the phone, his finger moving up and down the screen. His face hard and still. Finally, he took a deep breath and exhaled, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Where is Hannah now?”
“Upstairs,” Barbara said.
The look on his face was sharper now, the tired tinge gone from his eyes. He was in charge, a police officer on the case. Barbara felt such an enormous sense of relief. Steve was there and he was going to handle this. Her anger at him felt like such a silly, distant memory. Because they were in this together. They were in everything together. They always had been and they always would be.
“Wait here.” Steve took a breath. “I’ll be right back.”
Barbara was glad he hadn’t insisted she go along. Things with Hannah were always so much better without her.
Steve turned back at the steps. “This—Cole, Hannah, all of it—it’s my priority to get us through and make sure the kids are okay,” he said, staring at Barbara in such an unsettling way. “But once we get this all figured out, you and I will need to talk.”
He didn’t mean a casual chat.
“Talk? About what?”
“I think you know, Barbara.”
Barbara stayed there, rigid on the couch, holding her breath. Trying not to think about what Steve had meant. All of that—if that’s what he was even talking about—hardly mattered anyway, certainly not now. She listened hard for Steve’s raised voice, for the sound of Hannah crying, although she couldn’t imagine Steve ever yelling at their daughter, even now.
She braced herself for Hannah to come flying down the stairs, to run for the front door. To race off into the night. Barbara thought for a second about running out into the darkness herself. Disappearing. Because she was overwhelmed now by the most terrible dread. As though something, an actual thing—heavy and dark and hot—had crawled up her back and attached itself to her neck.
A minute later, there were heavy, fast footsteps on the stairs. And then there was Steve, his face tense and wide-awake as he moved swiftly across the room for his keys. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“What? Who?”
“Hannah, Barbara!” he shouted. “When was the last time you actually saw her?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was too busy trying to keep Cole together.” She scrambled to recall. It had been before dinner, at least. But she wasn’t going to tell Steve it had been that long. He would never understand how overwhelmed she’d been by Cole. “Maybe she went out for a walk. She does that sometimes, you know.”
“Without her phone?” He pointed to the counter where Hannah’s keys sat. “Or her keys? Her jacket’s over there, too.”
Steve seemed so angry, and at Barbara. Absolutely furious as he grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair.