“I’ll be there in the morning. I’m so sorry, Ray. I...”
“Yeah,” is all he manages and then the call ends. I have to hold my phone with two hands so I don’t drop it, my hands are shaking so violently.
Then I see Roxie still lingering in the door frame. I want to scream and beat the walls with my fists, but I just stand there like a statue and blink at her so I don’t snap or start bawling uncontrollably.
“You should head to bed,” I say in a measured tone.
“That was about Tia?” She comes in and sits on a stool at the breakfast counter. I nod. I’m still clenching every muscle and trying to stay calm even though my mind is reeling.
“It’s so weird,” she says. “Like, she might really be missing. Are we gonna help look tomorrow?” I nod again and offer a tight smile because it’s all I can muster.
“They’re doing a shoreline search tonight,” she says, and I feel a new rush of adrenaline course through me.
“What does that mean?” I ask, going to the fridge to rummage for a bottle of water so I can keep my back to her.
“Dad called a little bit ago. He and some other guys are going out on boats around the shoreline ’cause he thinks the only explanation is that Tia somehow slipped and fell like ona trail by the lake—some of the banks are kind of high and rocky in different places. He says it’s the only thing that makes sense. I guess maybe this is actually real,” she says, and I can see the fear in her eyes. The usual snark she has when she talks about Tia is absent, and she looks scared.
“Well,” I say, “all we can do is pray and try to help out with the search.”
“Can I go out on the boat search tonight?” she asks.
“No, it’s not safe. Try to get some sleep and we’ll go first thing with everyone else.” I walk over and kiss her on the head, ever so briefly, so she doesn’t notice my trembling. She nods and puts her soda can in the sink before heading up to her room.
A red-hot panic sears through my entire body. The whole town will be poking around our property tomorrow morning and there’s a group going out on the lake tonight. My plan is destroyed and I have no other plan. I’m done. I’m entirely fucked. Think. I have to stay calm and make smart decisions right now. It’s not the time to fall apart.
Maybe I should just turn myself in right now. Maybe I should have not panicked to begin with, but it’s far too late now. If they wouldn’t have believed it was an accident if I’d called 911 immediately, imagine where waiting over twenty-four hours to confess will land me. I have no choice but to try, because if I’m found out, I am a goner either way. I have to try.
I think about the meat freezer in the garage. It’s a crazy idea because it’s right next to our cars—the kids lean their bikes up against it—but since there’s never been meat in it, it just sits there. For a while, Ray kept his handgun locked inside for lack of a better place to secure it, so there’s still anold padlock hanging from the metal clasp where it closes. For a couple years we plugged it in for the kids and there were a couple boxes of freezer-burned Popsicles on the bottom, but it hasn’t run in years. It just sits there, unplugged, dead, hiding in plain sight.
And that’s why it’s an option. An appalling and horrifying option, but nobody will look there. Certainly not the kids or Carson, and it’s not like the police have a warrant to search the house. I just need to get Tia off the land and hidden away somewhere they won’t find her. Nobody in the family will notice if the padlock is locked or not since it’s just been hanging there for practically a decade. It’s a fixture we all look past. It’s the safest thing I can do right now even though I feel like an absolute barbarian thinking of hiding a body close to my kids. What other choice is there?
I sit in the silent living room, waiting for when I’m certain the kids are asleep. It’s after eleven thirty when Roxie’s light finally goes dark. I wait another half hour to be sure and then I pad softly up the stairs and crack her door open to check. I whisper her name, no response. I walk across the hall to Dez’s room. He’s fallen asleep with his bedside lamp on and an episode ofAdventure Timeplaying on his phone. I turn off the video, click off the lamp and cover him up before tiptoeing back down the stairs.
There’s an old parka in the back of the closet I’ve been meaning to send to charity, and I pull it on. Then I take a pair of winter gloves from the drawer in the mudroom and slip my feet into rain boots to navigate the wet ground, and I walk out into the cold night air.
When I reach Tia’s body, I crouch down next to it and pull back the cloth. A sob climbs up my throat as I see her pale skinin the moonlight and the dried blood covering the side of her head.Why?I want to scream at her.Why were you here! If you had just left things alone this would have never happened.
I feel like nothing less than a vile, immoral monster as I pull the blue tarp from the shed—the one Carson used to protect the bed of his truck when he brought the Christmas tree home last year, and I wrap Tia and the paint cloth carefully inside. I take duct tape from the workbench and tape up the edges so she is sealed as thoroughly as I can manage.
It’s too easy to drag her small body through the trees, into the clearing and across the woodsy side yard to the garage. I pause, then walk up onto the back deck and listen for anyone, any movement from the kids, and when there is none, I pull her inside the garage and close the automatic doors. The motor kicks on, and I watch the doors slowly slide down their rollers and cables until they meet the concrete and I am safe inside. I exhale.
Tia’s wrapped body sits in front of the freezer, and I have to hug her to my own body and heft her up with all my strength. I heave and use my knees and back to lift until I can force the weight of her over the lip of the freezer and then push the rest of her body up with all my might until I hear a hideous crack against the ice chest interior and she falls inside. I lean my hands on my knees and fight back tears. I feel like I’ll hyperventilate, so I try to breathe.Just stop and breathe. You didn’t do this on purpose.This is just a terribleaccidentand you have no choice, I say to myself silently. I look down at her body in the cooler, and then I hear something—the creak of a door opening.
“Mom?”
I slam the cooler closed and whip around to see Dez standing in the door frame that leads from the garage to the mudroom. He’s in hisAvatarpajamas and hugging his arms around himself against the cold.
“What are you doing out here?” I snap, and I see his face fall. I try to control my tone—control my fear and terror—and start again. “I mean, is anything wrong? Why are you up?” I ask, standing in front of the meat freezer as if my body can conceal it.
“I heard a sound. I thought there was a robber,” he says.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. It was just me. I’m getting some firewood for the fireplace.”
“It’s late. Why are you making a fire?”
“Oh, uh. I can’t sleep. But let’s get you back to bed, hon. Do you need something to drink? Will that help?” He nods and turns to go inside. I quickly hook the padlock on the freezer clasp and click it locked. I have no idea what the code is and will probably end up using wire cutters to get it back off, but I’ll figure that out later. It’s all I can do right now.
After he’s inside, I quickly take off my coat and gloves and drop them onto the extra sheet of painter’s cloth I brought in from the shed. Then I pull my boots off and drop them onto the pile as well. I’ll leave it all there until after I get Dez back to bed.
