money had merely been a proxy for the many other problems that lay beneath the foundation of their crumbling marriage. Because of that, he had worked extra shifts, which had only deepened their rift, compounding their feelings of loneliness and despair.
That last year, during a particularly heated argument, she blurted out that she didn’t love him. She stated what they had both known for a long time. Although he knew it to be true, her words still jarred him. Something in the way she said this, so defiantly and without remorse, made him suspect that she was seeing someone else. Was he imagining such an affair? But then the more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that she was being unfaithful to him. While he patrolled the streets, keeping citizens safe, he kept thinking that she was out screwing around on him.
He took a week off from work and rented a car. Then he proceeded to stalk his own wife. This foreshadowed their demise as a married couple, but he didn’t care at that point. It didn’t take long before he learned the truth. She was cheating on him, and in his own home—in his own goddamned bed! How stupid he’d been.
A loud commercial on the TV jolted him from his reverie. He noticed that the sun had started to rise. He loved this time of morning. So filled with optimism and hope. When he was fueled with hot coffee, his insulated life seemed far better than how it looked to others.
He felt that something might break today as he left the house and headed toward his cruiser. He didn’t want to admit it, but he felt certain he would find Katie alive. If he was honest with himself, looking back on his relationship with Sofia, he’d even venture to say that the breakdown of his marriage had been mostly his fault. He was a loner by nature who had trouble expressing his feelings. His wife must have suspected that his heart lay elsewhere. She must have known that the man whom she married, and who had moved her three thousand miles away to Maine, was in love with someone else.
That obviously had to be the reason why she’d slept with Ray “Swisher” Eaves.
ISLA
ON THE SECOND DAY OF SEARCHING, ISLA WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN that additional citizens had volunteered to help look for the girls. The parking lot today was jammed with news vans adorned with satellite dishes and lettered with the logos of their news stations. Most hailed from Portland, but a few came from the cable news networks. Reporters stood everywhere, gripping microphones and speaking to cameras. Some interviewed volunteers, rotating them in and out of the queue. She saw the old police chief answering questions. Chip Hicks stood in front of another mic.
Such a circus, she thought. She tried to control her growing frustration at this nonsense. All of this made it more difficult to get started searching for the girls. She wanted to scream at these disgusting media people, who were intent on exploiting her daughter’s disappearance.
A helicopter buzzed overhead. Dogs barked off in the distance. She glanced over and saw the McCallisters standing next to their neighbors from Harper’s Point, all of whom had volunteered to search for Katie and Willow. For whatever reason, she couldn’t find Julian in the crowd today. Had he already tired of searching?
As grateful as she was for everyone’s assistance, she still couldn’t get over the fact that the town’s citizens had segregated themselves by wealth in the parking lot. If anything, this crisis should have brought people together, not pushed them apart. But that didn’t concern her right now. Only finding Katie did. It occupied her every waking thought.
Why hadn’t Chip Hicks given everyone their marching orders yet? She saw Gil Briggs speaking to a reporter. Felicia stood silently next to him, her thin arm looped through his. Tears flowed from Gil’s eyes as he kept repeating over and over how badly he wanted his little girl back. Overcome by emotion, he waved off the camera and broke down into violent sobs. Maybe her stoic New England upbringing was to blame, but she found his behavior off putting. Then it made her wonder if she’d been grieving enough. Who knew in these situations how anyone would react? It sounded odd to think that way, but she understood that she needed to keep her head clear in order to do what she had come here to do.