Ridiculous first thought: Do they not know their contractions, or is the grammatical error a ploy? Fury follows, though, rising up and wedging tight in my chest. I scan the neighborhood. It’s a peaceful, idyllic area with cute houses that have white shutters and nice paint jobs near some open fields and pine forests.
“Where’s Sam? Is he okay?”
“Yes, yes, he’s at school. He carpooled in with the McMurphys today.”
“When did you see this?”
“Right when I called you. I was cleaning up the kitchen after sending Sam off. I’d made him a lunch, and when I looked out the kitchen window ...”
“Did you see or hear anything last night?”
“No, Allison was here with us for dinner, but she left early, around eight, before Sam’s bath.” It stings slightly to know that Allison and Jess have become closer than Allison and I were. But I don’t have time to think about all the ways I’ve failed Jess and Allison right now and how Jess is turning to other people to fill the hole I’ve left.
“But I heard dogs barking around one a.m.,” Jess says. “They’re always barking at something, getting worked up over a deer or raccoons. Took me a while to get back to sleep, and I slept lightly after that. Around two thirty, a car door slamming shut snapped me up in bed.”
“And?”
“I got up and looked out my bedroom window, then went to the kitchen and saw taillights pulling away.”
“What kind of car?”
She squints. “Medium-size SUV, maybe. It pulled away slowly, not in a hurry or anything, so I figured one of the neighbors had a visitor that left late in the night or maybe someone needed to leave early for the airport.”
“Did you notice the license plate?”
“Not the numbers, but it was a Montana plate, one of the solid blue ones. I didn’t think to take in the numbers. I didn’t think I needed to”—she looks back to her windshield, her voice cracking—“until this morning.”
I put my arm around her. “It’s okay, Jess. I’m going to figure this out.”
“No.” She twists away from me and hugs her sweater back around her waist. “Just stop.” Her voice sounds choked—the words barely getting out, but when they do, they sound like she’s coughed them up from deep inside her. “Would you please quit acting like you have it under control? Youdon’t.”
I set my jaw. I’m exhausted. Not only from this hideous week unraveling before me, but from all the past months since Jess’s rape. She’s still living a nightmare, but I’m sick of tiptoeing around broken glass. I want to scream,Jesus, Jess. I can’t always be taking care of you! I need to take care of myself this time, this one time. Can you let me do that without laying into me?
But no. That would be entirely unfair. She didn’t ask to be involved in this terrible thing any more than I did. And Mark Coleman? She certainly didn’t ask for that.
“Realistically, Cros,” she says, “who do you think is behind this?”
“I don’t know, butrealistically?” I say, circling back to her choice of adverb.
“Yeah, please, Cros. None of thisI’ll handle itfantasy anymore. Tell me what you and law enforcement are doing about this crap right now.” Like she’s firing her words from a nail gun.
It stings to hear her doubting my competence, but I swallow it down. I’m doubting it myself, aren’t I? “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”
“No,” she says, digging in. “Tell me. As if I wasn’t having a hard enough time before this cropped up. You’re making it worse—acting like you’ve got it all handled, and you don’t. Like you didn’t when you went to Mark Coleman’s that night.”
The final blow knocks my breath away. I knew intuitively that she was unhappy with what happened to Coleman, had even mentioned that she felt robbed of achieving some closure because she planned onconfronting him when she was ready.Now I’ll never be able to talk to him,she had said when I told her about the shooting.
But for her to throw it in my face right now, this week, when I’m the target of some sicko, is entirely surprising. My teeth hurt with the pressure of my frustration, my guilt, but I say it as calmly as I can muster: “Look, nothing is certain, Jess. But I’m working on good leads. So are the agents.”
She doesn’t budge. She stares at me for a long moment, scrutinizing me.
“Come on,” I say.
We sit in the living room. Sam’s toys are scattered across the floor—a spaceship made from Legos, and the same small herd of dinosaurs.
On the coffee table is his box of Creature Cards I found for him online. They’re prized possessions for him because they no longer make them. I worked hard to find a used set in good condition. They’re a tad larger than index size and come organized by category in a filing box: Toxic Terrors, Monsters of the Deep, Monsters of the Past, Tiny Terrors ... Sam cherishes them, partly because he loves to read and organize things, and partly because they’re a gift from me.
The Wendigo and the Teke Teke—the scariest ones, the ones he always wants me to read to him when I come over—are displayed on the table. I have no idea how they don’t give him nightmares, especially the Teke Teke, a Japanese myth about the ghost of a young girl who was cut in half by a train and now drags herself around looking to slice others in two with a scythe. Sometimes Sam drags himself across the carpet, pretending to be her, and I act all terrified, running and hiding.
