“Tell him I’ll be back very soon.”
When we’re done, I’m surprised to find myself slightly disconcerted. I’ve given a couple of brief updates to Bas since I’ve been here, but I realize I’ve left out so much: the bite marks on the other victims and what they could imply about Mel’s case; the reignited concerns about Jack; my unease regarding Handler and the weirdness about him living on Birch Street, which would, of course, mean telling him about the haiku, something I’ve never brought up. I still seem afraid of swamping our relationship with details from the heartbreaking past.
But is that the only reason I’ve kept him so much in the dark about Mel’s murder and its full impact on me? Maybe ... maybe deep down I’m also reluctant to reveal certain parts of myself—like the mother clinging to a haiku because she’s desperate to know her daughter loved her and the woman so distraught about the murder that she let her life unspool for years. Because what would that suggest about who I really am and how I’d handle what fate might throw our way one day?
But a shrink might argue it’s unfair, even duplicitous, of me not to share. And unfair not to expect more of Bas.
I meet Logan as planned in the lobby. His hair is slightly damp, suggesting he’s showered only a short while ago.
“So, guess who I spotted on campus today?” I say as soon as we drive off, winding our way through the streets of Cartersville. “Jack.”
“Yeah, he texted me this morning to say he came up a day early. He’s meeting with a friend and a couple of his old professors.”
“And he felt the need to let you know?”
“That’s because he also wants to have a drink with me, which I agreed to.” Logan raises a hand from the steering wheel in a “Hold on” gesture as if expecting me to object. “Look, I certainly don’t relish a one-on-one with the guy, but I want to see him up close with his guard down.”
“Okay, that makes sense. And maybe he’ll explain why he’s coming to the reception.”
“What do you mean?”
“It just seems weird to me. I could see him coming back for some kind of remembrance service, but why a reception about a couple of scholarships? It’s like he’s got a hidden agenda.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Logan says, lightly nodding his head.
We’re on the highway now, driving through a sprawl of stores, fast-food restaurants, and town-house communities. I leave Logan to his thoughts, and I stay with mine.
It’s been strange being in a car with him again after all this time. During our marriage, we kept a car in the city, partly for traveling to Cape Cod with Mel during the summers, but the two of us also took a fair amount of road trips on weekends before she was born and during the time she was at Carter. We drove all over New England together—Logan so at home behind the wheel—and sometimes places farther afield, like Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
Conversation came easily to us on those trips, but sometimes we said nothing at all, at ease in the silence. Once, after pulling into the parking lot of our hotel in Savannah and checking the time, I realized we hadn’t spoken to each other for hours. Yet we’d felt in sync the wholetime, and when we made love later in a room infused with the scent of jasmine, all that silence beforehand had seemed like its own kind of foreplay, making sex even more erotic.
I shake my head a little, chasing the image away.
“What?” he asks, obviously noticing the movement.
“Nothing. Just nervous tension.”
Finally, the state police building appears ahead. Logan finds a spot for the car, and then we stride together across the parking lot. It’s even breezier now than it was earlier, and a plastic bag scurries just ahead of us as if trying to beat us to the door. Logan smiles grimly at me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I guess so,” I lie. I hate not knowing what’s coming. “You?”
“Hanging in there, too, but eager to get this the hell over with.”
Only moments after we check in, a gray-uniformed trooper appears and leads us to an interview room across the hall from the one we were in on Monday. Halligan is seated at the far side of the table with two women, one to his left and the other next to her at the end of the table.
Nothing about either of them suggests they are higher-ups here, as Logan said we might expect. The woman seated at the head is mid-fiftyish with dark-brown hair in a slightly dated flip, and though she’s dressed like someone in a professional role, her outfit doesn’t shout “law enforcement.” The other woman is much younger, probably not even thirty yet. She’s heavyset with long dark-blond hair and a pretty face, and she’s wearing a mint-colored blouse with rows of pin tucks. Her eyes, gray or blue, are wide with something close to panic.
My first thought: we’ve mistakenly been escorted into a meeting Halligan is holding prior to the one he has scheduled with us.
That can’t be the case, however, because the trooper is now closing the door behind us, and Halligan is rising and nodding hello. And then he’s making introductions, giving the older woman’s name as Hilary Brown, and the younger’s as Riley Reynolds. I’m now hopelessly confused.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Halligan says, gesturing for us to take seats across from him and Riley. “Ms. Reynolds requested this meeting because she has something important she wants to share with you. Ms. Brown is her attorney.”
“Wait,” Logan says, pressing a hand to his forehead, “I thought we were getting some kind of update.”
“Thisisan update of sorts. Let me turn it over to Ms. Reynolds.”
