‘Are you okay?’
‘I am when I’m with you.’
He felt his eyes prickle with emotion. Something was wrong. Something other than the fact that she was missing. He knew that his feelings for her were clouding his police instincts. They had been for some time. If they hadn’t, perhaps he would have done something about their situation. Maybe he would have taken her to her doctor’s appointments, forced her to get help.
At least before he’d forced her to leave Michael.
The scratches had been the last straw though. The thing that had broken the proverbial camel’s back.
‘Where did these come from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must know. Was it him? Did he do this to you?’
He’d been furious, anger rushing through him so quickly he saw literal red.
‘I don’t know, Elijah!’ she’d cried.
‘You must know!’
‘But I don’t. I don’t know anything anymore. Nothing makes sense.’
She’d cried for hours. Until her face was red and her eyes were puffy. And then he’d begged her to leave Michael. To start her new life with him in his house. She could bring the kids. Everything would be fine. He was a man of the law; he could protect her from Michael—from anything life threw at them.
He’d look after her.
He’d promised.
She’d promised.
Everyone had promised.
But everything had gone to shit.
The beep of the cab sounded and Elijah looked up.
‘Officer Schiver, is your car in the shop?’ the cab driver joked. Elijah smiled and stood up, getting into the cab.
*
Back home he showered and dressed in clean clothes. He pulled open the blinds in the lounge and cracked open a window to let in some fresh air. The smell of stale alcohol still clung to the walls and the furniture and hung heavily in the air. He screwed the top back on the whisky, noting he’d drank almost half a bottle last night, and he put it back in the kitchen.
He made himself some scrambled eggs, and poured himself a glass of fresh orange juice, and ate them like a man who was not at peace with the world. He stood at his back door and stared out at the overgrown yard. Delores had been shocked by the state of it, laughing that it looked as if the house was uninhabited. He’d laughed back, finally noting how sparse his home truly was. He’d been living there for five years, ever since the death of his mother, and he’d done little to it except adding the odd piece of furniture he’d picked up at garage sales.
Delores had been excited to decorate it with him. Eager to paint out his dark broodiness with bright colors and patterns. And slowly, she’d begun to fill his home with trinkets that she picked up from her daily trips into town. Ornaments and side tables, cushions for his sofa, new mugs for his mug stand.
She slowly filled up his world with color. Breathing new life into both him and his home.
Elijah choked on a sob, fear clutching at his heart. He turned back to face his kitchen, not wanting to look out at the disaster of his yard anymore, at the promises she’d made to fill his garden with as much love and color as she had his home.
He’d worried for two days that she had changed her mind about leaving Michael, embarrassment and a broken heart making him call in sick while he licked his wounds and turned his world dark with sadness once again.
But after all of that, she hadn’t changed her mind.
Instead, she was justgone.
And gone was so much worse than a broken heart.
