son. If you need more money, that’s not a problem.”
Marin’s voice starts to shake, and she’s back to being a mother again, not a boss lady, not a client. She hates that she can hear herself trembling, that she sounds like she’s losing control, that she’s begging. Which she is.
“But if you really feel that you’ve taken it as far as you can, I’ll have no choice but to find someone else and start over. Please don’t make me do that, Vanessa. Please.”
If Castro says no, that there are no more stones to turn, Marin doesn’t know if she’ll survive it. When the police said last year that they’d done everything they could, it was nearly as devastating as losing Sebastian in the first place.
She knows what the statistics say about missing children. She knows most of them are dead within hours of their disappearance. She knows. If Castro stops looking, Sebastian might as well be dead.
And if he’s dead, then Marin is, too.
“I’ll keep looking as long as you want me to, Marin.” It’s the first time Castro’s used her first name, too. Again, it’s like she’s read her mind, and Marin thanks god she found her. Vanessa Castro is the absolute right person for this, perhaps the only person. “I promise, okay? I won’t stop until you tell me to, and I promise you it will stay a priority. Don’t you worry about that. We will always be looking for him. I got you. I’m with you.”
“Thank you.” Marin’s body sags with relief. Her eyes sting with tears again. Still, they don’t fall.
She stands up on wobbly legs, and it takes her two tries to put her coat on. She knows she’ll cry when she gets to the car, and that’s fine, so long as she doesn’t cry here. She mentally says goodbye to the fish, which swishes its vibrant tail one last time before ducking behind a plastic leaf.
Castro walks her out of the office and back into the small, sparse waiting room. They shake hands. Her grip is firm. Her smile is kind. In any other situation, the two women might have been friends. She’s the exact kind of person Marin might have invited to the Entrepreneurial Women’s Banquet; Marin heads up the committee.
Castro hesitates, and it’s clear there’s one more thing she wants to say. Marin can either leave quickly, or she can allow the other woman to speak. She decides it would be rude to bolt, so she pauses in the doorway.
“I’m sorry about your husband,” the PI says.
Her words, while well meaning, piss Marin off. Why is she apologizing? Why do women do that? Castro didn’t tell her about something awful that she herself had done; she’s reporting back what she learned about her client’s husband and his mistress. She isn’t the one cheating on Marin. Derek is. With a twenty-four-year-old college girl.
And yet, Vanessa Castro is sorry. Maybe they’re just words and maybe they’re meant to be comforting, but goddamn it, Marin is so sick of other women being sorry for things that aren’t their fault. She’s sick of being sorry for things that aren’t her fault.
She doesn’t say any of this to Vanessa Castro. She can get up on that soapbox another day. Marin thanks the PI and leaves, and by the time she makes it down the stairs, she’s shaking. By the time she gets to her car, she is internally screaming.
She is enraged. She feels it washing over her like hot wax, coating her outsides, hardening like an armored shell over all the soft, squishy, vulnerable, unprotected places.
She welcomes it. It’s been a long time since she felt anger like this, and she’ll take anger over sadness, any day. For the past four hundred eighty-six days, sadness has knocked her sideways, debilitated her, confused her, made her weak, talked her into settling for things she doesn’t want, and never did.
Rage, on the other hand, will get shit done.
Chapter 6
A strange thing happens when you’re going through something terrible. It’s as if your body and mind separate, and you cease to become a whole person. Your body goes through the motions of what you need to do to survive—eat, sleep, excrete, repeat—while your brain further divides into compartments of Things You Need to Do Now, and Things You Should Process Later When You’re in Your Right Mind.
Marin’s been numb for so long that this spark of anger surprises her. It’s like a limb waking up after falling asleep. The pins-and-needles