Burke about that night ten years ago—what she was even doing at Gordon Burke’s in the first place! What Danny said about the deputy pulling him over, that piece of cloth . . . Gordon talking to the deputy, or sheriff now, down in Iowa; what Sheriff Halsey up here had not told the girl and what his secretary had; and finally what Katie Goss had told her three nights ago, Friday night, the girl not saying this last outright, careful not to betray a confidence, but her body and her hands and her eyes saying it anyway—sweet, pretty Katie Goss who smelled like strawberries and was her son’s first love, and maybe his only love . . . and Rachel all the while holding the mug like it was her own heart, hot and pounding in her hands.
She knew the girl was finished when she picked up her own mug and sipped from it and set it down again quietly on the tabletop. Then the girl began turning a large metal bracelet on her other wrist, her good wrist—or not a bracelet but a man’s wristwatch, and that soft clicking was the only sound. Rachel’s own hands, clutching the china mug, looked sinister. Like hands wrapped around a white little neck. If the girl had come Saturday, or Sunday—or had called—Danny might still be here.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I shouldn’t be the one telling you all this. You don’t even know me.”
Finally Rachel let go the mug, and her breath came back to her, and after a moment her voice did too—or something like it.
“And where is this cloth now—this pocket?”
“I think Danny must have it with him,” the girl said. “Or else he left it here.”
Here, in this house, all this time. And the old house before that. Ten years!
Or did he keep it with him, wherever he went, so she would never find it?
She looked at the phone then and saw the blinking red light on the machine, and she got to her feet and crossed to it and played the message, but it was the girl herself, asking if she might speak to Danny, leaving her number. So she did call—but not until this morning.
“. . . really so sorry,” this same voice was saying, behind her. “I shouldn’t be the one telling you any of this, like this—except that I think I can help him. If I could talk to him, I think I could help him.”
“Why did you wait?” Rachel said, as if to herself.
“I’m sorry?”
“All weekend . . .” She pushed two buttons on the phone and raised it to her ear again. After four rings she knew it would be his voicemail but her heart kicked anyway at the sound of his voice, as it always did. This is Danny . . .
“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I guess I was trying to figure out what to do. If it was even any of my business.”
“He’s not picking up,” Rachel said, and the girl said, “He’s driving. He might not even have his phone on.”
“Yes,” said Rachel. Holding the phone in her hands, holding it to her chest. She’d been here before, in this moment. It was too familiar.
Then she remembered: the night she’d heard the water running, and Danny had been washing the dog, and he’d driven up to the cabin, and she’d called and called but he hadn’t answered.
In custody.
The girl said, “He didn’t say anything before he left, about where he was going?”
“No,” Rachel said, “not to me.”
And some few minutes after that she was alone again—the girl having made her good-byes, her apologies once more, and driving off again in the white sedan, and Rachel going immediately upstairs to his room, to stand in the doorway looking in. As she’d stood that night ten years ago, watching him stuff clothes into his duffel. How frightened he looked, in her memory, how terrified. Why hadn’t he talked to her? Why hadn’t he told her? She could have helped him!
Everything in the room was in order: the sheets and pillowcases pulled off and placed in a neat pile on the mattress for her to wash and no other sign in the room that anyone had been there. The sheriff and his deputies had gone through his room once before, at the old house, and she didn’t think he would leave it here, not in this room, and after a moment she stepped across the hall and went into Marky’s