“Shhh, honey. Take a breath.”
He was on the verge of hyperventilating.
Mike sat on the other side of the bed and put his hand on Ethan’s back.
Thankfully, Mike didn’t ask any other questions. Maybe he’d figured out what’d happened.
Over the next half hour, Ethan cried himself to sleep, hiccupping with sobs long after he was asleep.
Tracy carefully extricated herself, hoping he’d sleep for a while. She put the bowl of cookies on his bedside table, picked up the tray and tiptoed out of the room, aware of Mike following her downstairs to the kitchen.
As she put dishes in the dishwasher and wiped the counter, she felt him hovering in the background.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Luna is dead.”
He gasped. “Oh God. Oh my God.”
Tracy turned to him as he sat at the kitchen table, hands over his face as his shoulders shook with sobs.
Excluding the men who’d been involved in her father’s shooting and eventual murder, Tracy had never been angrier at anyone than she was at him. She could see no possible way forward for their marriage after this.
After a long silence, Mike raised his head and looked at her, as if seeking answers or insight into how they might cope with this horrible tragedy.
She had nothing for him. Her entire focus was on Ethan—and Abby, who’d also want an explanation for what’d occurred. She’d barely thought of her younger daughter in hours as she’d cared for Ethan and tried not to fall apart. Knowing Abby was with her mother and had been able to go to the party she’d looked forward to made Tracy feel better.
“Will Ethan and Tomas be implicated in her murder?”
“They had nothing to do with her kidnapping or murder.”
“I can’t believe she was murdered.”
“Really? You can’t?”
“Yes, I really can’t! What kind of monster murders a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“The same one who kidnapped our eleven-year-old son because he was running around the city unsupervised. I mean, what could possibly go wrong there?”
He sat back, giving her a hard look. “So this is all my fault, right?”
“Well, it’s not my fault! I said he was too young for that kind of freedom, but you told me to lighten up and let him be independent. Look where that got us.”
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“No, he was exactly where people like this go to find kids to prey on, which is what I said could happen if he was given this kind of freedom.”
“So you were right. Is that what you want to hear?”
“No, Mike, that’s not what I want to hear. I couldn’t care less about being right! I care about how I’m going to get my son through this trauma without him blaming himself for an innocent girl being murdered. I’m focused on making sure he’s treated as a victim of this crime and not a perpetrator. That’s all I care about.”
“Your son. Not our son.”
“I think you should move out.” The fact that she felt nothing at all as she said those words should’ve terrified her.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m dead serious.”
