details, no matter how small, could help me.”
“I’ll get you copies of the files if you think you have time to look them over.”
“Like I said, anything I can do.”
When they are gone, I allow myself a moment to stare at the images. How fucking stupid can you be? Those cameras are everywhere; I should know that better than anyone.
I am aware of Tess before I look up and see her sitting where Patrick was a few minutes earlier. The girl I see today is not as you remember her, Lara. She’s not a girl with braces, with a funny, awkward kind of beauty. She is tall, willowy, so much like her mother, Sandy, with straw-blond hair. She often wears black—a dress with high boots, sometimes jeans and a charcoal top. Tess.
“Do you think they know something?” she asks.
She looks worried. Remember how she always worried about everything. She hated roller coasters, and never wanted to watch all the scary old movies we were dying to watch when my parents weren’t home—The Exorcist, Jaws, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I was Eeyore (sometimes Pooh) and you were Tigger. But she was Piglet—fretful, nervous, but so sweet. She still worries.
“I don’t know,” I say.
When they came the other day, I assumed it was just to ask for my opinions, my insights into their case. Something was a bit off this second time.
The sun has gone down and the room has grown dusky. When I look over to Tess again, she’s gone.
FOURTEEN
Lily fussed all the way home, overstimulated and out of routine. By the time they were pulling into their driveway, Rain was exhausted. It was dark, but she was still surprised to see Greg’s car in the garage, the door standing open. It was more than an hour before he usually came home.
She saw him silhouetted in the doorway a moment, and then he stepped out and came to help her with Lily and her plethora of baby gear. How could one little person need so much stuff?
“You’re home early,” she said, handing him the diaper bag.
“Where were you?”
She didn’t love his tone. Taut, a little cool. He worried, she knew that about her husband. He had his reasons—legitimate ones. She’d made mistakes, big ones. She hadn’t always been honest with him. Even now, there were things she hadn’t told him that she should have. Those sins of omission.
Still, she bristled a little when she felt like she had to account for her whereabouts; she had an independent streak, like her father, didn’t like answering to anyone.
But that wasn’t fair, was it? Now that she was the mother of Greg’s child, his wife. That was part of the territory.
“I just went to see my father,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. What started as a whimper when Rain took Lily from the car seat was blossoming into a full-blown cry.
“Everything all right?” he asked over the din.
He slung the diaper bag over his shoulder while Rain shifted Lily, patted her back. There was that frazzled feeling so familiar now—too much on her mind, the baby crying, her breasts engorged.
“Yeah,” she said, her frustration rising. “Is it okay with you if I visit my dad? Should I have asked for your permission?”
Lily’s cry escalated, now an angry wail that was growing in pitch.
Greg rolled his eyes, an action he knew she hated.
“It would have just been nice to know you wouldn’t be home,” he said. “I left early tonight so that we could eat together, give you some time to go to the gym—or whatever.”
Now guilt, which made her angrier. “There’s this brilliant device? It’s called a phone.”
“I’ve been calling for an hour.”
Lily took it up another notch. Rain bounced the baby on her hip, which honestly only seemed to annoy Lily more. Rain started swaying side to side.
“But we don’t talk and drive, right?” she said. Her tone was sharper than she intended. She wasn’t angry with him. “Especially not with the baby in the car. I have that Do Not Disturb while driving thing on.”
She’d disabled the Find My Friends app, too. So, if he’d tried to find her that way, he would have received a “location unavailable” message. It wasn’t personal. She wasn’t trying to hide her whereabouts from her husband. Today.
She simply didn’t like the idea that her phone knew her location every second. When had they all given up their freedom of movement? Henry had a whole rant about the location services on your phone,