“Do it,” Sasha says, pulling on her coat and waving to get the waitress’s attention.
“You really think we’re in danger?” she asks him, looking right into his eyes—feeling maternal and protective and also so confused and in the dark as he is somehow leading the way and knows more than anyone else, it turns out.
“Yes,” Drew responds. “And I don’t think we have much time.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Andi
I didn’t tell him. I almost let it all come pouring out—all of the lying and hiding. I almost blurted out what I had just done, dropping the body of a poor, innocent person into a river. I wanted to tell him that I’m a fucking monster and should be locked up and he should take me to the station immediately to confess and get it all over with, but I didn’t. Something stopped me. Something deep inside would not let me do it even though the words were forming in my mouth and were so close to spilling over and putting all of this to an end.
Instead, I told him how I felt so responsible, so guilty, that I had that big argument with Tia the night she disappeared, and how she would have maybe never gone out to run off steam if that hadn’t happened. I told him that I was being petty and should have let it go, but I pushed it and now she’s missing, hurt or dead, and I couldn’t take it—I couldn’t handle what itwas doing to Ray and the kids, too. So I went out looking for her. That’s where I said I’d been. I freaked out—the weight of it was all too much—and so I just went out to the woods and tried to find her in a blind panic for hours.
I told Carson that was why I was wet and muddy with mascara running down my face. He bought it—pitied me, even. He ran me a hot bath and put on a kettle for tea and had Roxie take my car up to Zato’s to pick up Thai food for dinner and got the kids to bed, and I’m a horrible absolute wretch of a person.
I lay awake until close to 2 a.m. second-guessing myself—coming close a few times to waking up Carson and telling him the truth, but by two thirty I took a Xanax to sleep and shut out all the noise and chaos, and now it’s almost nine thirty in the morning. Carson let me sleep and took the kids to school. I don’t deserve him.
He went into the office and the house is silent and lonely and I almost can’t take the deafening quiet right now. I pull on a fleece bathrobe and turn up the thermostat a bit before I make my way downstairs to put on the coffee. I almost gasp when I see my reflection in a glass-framed wall hanging. The dark circles and ghostly complexion look shocking. My eyes are swollen from crying and sleep deprivation. I can’t be seen like this. Before I can push Start on the coffeemaker, there’s a knock on the front door. No. Fuck. Who could be here? Maybe the company that’s hauling away the freezer? Or the police? I think I have a fifty-fifty chance of getting rid of evidence or being hauled off to prison in the next five seconds, but when I open the door, it’s Ray.
His face is red, and he chokes on a sob as he stands trembling in the doorway.
“Oh, God, Andi.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t know where else to go. I don’t know what to do. God!” He falls into me and wraps his arms around me, crying into my neck, and I freeze for just a moment but then I return the embrace and pat the back of his head, saying “It’s okay,” over and over again because that’s what you do in this situation even when you don’t know what the hell is going on. Finally, I place my hands on his shoulders and back away from him slightly so I can look at his face.
“What, Ray? What is going on? Talk to me.”
“She... They found her body in the river. She’s dead!”
“What? What!” I snap. How could that have happened so fast? How was I so fucking stupid?
“Turn on the news,” he says, walking over to the sofa and picking up the remote. “I had to go down there this morning. It was still dark and there were lights and police tape. God. I can’t...” He chokes on his words as he says this. “Some dog walker saw her in the rocks. I was warned the news would exploit it the first chance they got.” He turns on the TV and flips through channels until he finds the news. I sit at the edge of the coffee table, my heart in my throat. There’s a commercial on, so Ray sits on the sofa and cradles his head in his hands while he waits for the coverage to resume.
“Why! Who could do this?” he cries.
“I don’t know—are you sure that...”
Then he shushes me as the news comes back on and there it is. Tia’s face on the screen in a photo Ray gave them to use in the search. She’s wearing a T-shirt and hiking boots on one of their trips to the bougie cabin in the mountains they stay in each spring. The reporter gives the overview.
“We’re continuing our coverage on a story we have been following for days now. The body of a missing woman, twenty-eight-year-old Tia Hainsley, was found early this morning washed up on the bank of the Connecticut River about twenty miles south of her home in Cloverhill Lakes.”
I stand numbly and go and sit next to Ray. We both stare, wide-eyed and still as the reporter continues.
“There are still a lot of questions to be answered about the circumstances, but all we can say now is there was certainly foul play involved. Hainsley suffered multiple wounds to the back of the head, police say likely bludgeoned with a blunt object. Although she was found in the water, drowning was not the cause of death, and there are no suspects in custodyas of yet. More on this as it develops.”
“What?” I say under my breath, picking out the wordbludgeoned. She was shot. How are they not saying she was shot? Before either of us can speak, Ray’s phone rings. I see Detective Morrison’s name pop up on the screen and he answers immediately. He walks into the kitchen to take the call. I only hear a series of “Okay, uh-huh. I don’t know. Okay.” Then he hangs up.
“I gotta go,” he says, wiping his tears on his sleeve.
“Ray, wait. What did they tell you? She was... They said she was beaten?”
“Yes.” He hangs his head. “I had to identify her.” He hugs me again, as if to steady himself from falling or fainting. I hold his weight.
“It’s okay,” I mumble. “I’m so sorry. They’re sure?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, pulling away and looking at me.
