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“Seventeen calls, Turner. He fell off the wagon and made seventeen phone calls to Sylvia on Saturday night. There is an old friend.”

“All right, all right.” He peeled the parchment paper from the nub of his muffin and popped the rest into his mouth. “So let’s find him.”

Twenty-Two

Carter West lived in East Denton, only a mile or so from Sylvia’s home. A black pickup truck and small silver sedan sat side by side in the driveway. The front yard was littered with evidence of Carter’s two little girls. A purple bike with training wheels, two small scooters, hula-hoops, a purple play gardening set and a pink play lawnmower. Colorful chalk drawings covered the concrete walk. Rainbows, unicorns, and flowers as well as some scribbles. It was jarring to see so much evidence of lighthearted child’s fun knowing they were about to enter a home mired in grief. She and Noah were working a rare shift together. They’d spent the early morning canvassing Louis Fisher’s neighbors. No one had seen him the morning of Sylvia’s murder.

She swallowed over a lump in her throat as she rapped on the front door. Josie would have preferred to speak with a hundred more of Fisher’s neighbors than face little Piper and Molly West after the loss of their beloved grandmother. Moments later, it swung open. Erin West regarded them with wide blue eyes. Her long brown hair was down today and fell to her hips. Up close, Josie saw a smattering of freckles across her nose. As her gaze flicked from their faces to the Denton PD embroidered on their polo shirts, she smoothed the hem of her T-shirt. World’s Most Awesomest Mom, it read in blocky black lettering over gray fabric.

“You’re here about Sylvia,” she said, brushing at some unidentifiable stain on the thigh of her yoga pants. “Carter said you’d be by. I’m Erin. Come in.”

Josie and Noah made introductions as she led them through the house. It had a cozy, lived-in feel to it. In the foyer were piles of children’s shoes from sandals to sneakers to muddy rain boots. The living room walls reminded Josie of the color of the orange creamsicle pops Harris loved so much. The furniture was off-white. Josie counted six dark orange throw pillows. Everywhere they looked were discarded toys and soft blankets that featured characters from various children’s shows and movies. On the couch was a laundry basket filled with clothes. Beside it was a stack of folded shirts and shorts that clearly belonged to their kids. The kitchen was in disarray. Clean dishes were stacked high in the drain board while dirty ones accumulated in the sink. On the countertop was an uncapped saline nasal spray as well as bottles of liquid Tylenol and Benadryl. One of the dosing cups lay on its side, thick drops of sticky fluid clinging to its inside. Next to those were half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches on small plates featuring cartoon zoo animals and two crumpled pouches of fruit smoothies for toddlers.

“Don’t mind the mess,” Erin said.

“The house is never really clean when you have kids,” said Noah, giving her one of his easy smiles that instantly made her shoulders relax.

On the kitchen table were four large white posterboards. Two of them were completely covered in photos of Sylvia West from various times in her life. There were only a couple of her as a baby. There was another in which she stood next to a woman Josie guessed had been her mother, based on the close resemblance. They were in front of a small yellow house with green shutters. Sylvia wore a pair of white shorts and a purple T-shirt. With her frizzy hair, toothy grin, and gangly limbs, she looked like a preteen.

“They’re for the funeral,” Erin said softly, picking up a stack of photos from a nearby chair. “I was going in chronological order. These are from when she was in high school.”

Josie peered at the three photos Erin had pointed out. There was another one with her mother in front of the small house again. In the other two, Sylvia posed by herself, first at a zoo with a lion enclosure behind her and then in front of Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The difference from the earlier picture was striking. Gone was the awkwardness of her middle school years. Her hair was thick but smoother and styled in a neat bob. She wore makeup, and even beneath the modest dresses she wore, it was obvious that she had filled out.

“She could have been in beauty pageants,” Erin mused.

Except that in these photos, Sylvia wasn’t smiling. There was a darkness to her expression. Whether it was typical teenage discontent or something more, it was difficult to tell. The next set of photos came after her sons were born. Josie wasn’t sure of the age difference between the brothers or which one of them was older, but the pictures were similar with each one. Sylvia holding them as infants, pushing them down the street in a stroller, feeding them while they sat in their high chairs, playing with them as toddlers, posing with them on her lap, reading them bedtime stories. Maybe it was her youth, but in each one, even the ones that had clearly been taken not that long after she gave birth, Sylvia looked beautiful and fresh-faced.

Josie felt Noah’s heat at her back as he scanned the posterboards from over her shoulder. She wondered if he noticed the same things she did. There were no photos of Carter and Dean’s father, and at some point, the photos of Sylvia and her sons became fewer and further between. Candid shots of the three of them disappeared altogether. In every photo, they posed formally for the camera, the two boys in front of their mother looking like they’d rather be anywhere else, while she kept them in place with a hand on each of their shoulders. She aged along with them as they got older but still managed to look elegant and well-rested, despite being a single mom.

“She could have been a television journalist,” Noah said softly, reading Josie’s mind.

Sylvia reminded her of Trinity and how she always looked camera-ready no matter what.

“Right?” Erin said. “Never a hair out of place. Unless you caught her at home when she wasn’t expecting you. Anyway, Carter’s out back with the girls.”

A pair of sliding glass doors led from the kitchen out on to a small deck. A glass-topped table complete with an umbrella and four chairs took up most of it but Carter West sat on the steps going down into the yard, his shoulder leaning against the railing. His broad back was hunched. He had on a baseball cap again, the brim turned backward, curly brown hair peeking out from underneath. In the yard, his two daughters were twin whirls of fluorescent pink in their bathing suits as they ran back and forth across a splash pad, giggling as its sprinklers shot water straight into the air. Piper wore purple glittery goggles. Molly’s curls bounced as she followed her sister’s frenetic movements.

“Come on, Mol,” Piper called. “Keep up!”

They were too far away and too engaged in their play to notice Josie and Noah.

“Mr. West,” Josie said.

Carter turned slightly. His eyes were bloodshot. One of his fists was curled around a bottle of beer. “Have a seat.”

“We’ll stand,” Noah told him.

They descended the steps, turning to face Carter but with the girls still in their line of sight. “I don’t think we had a chance to tell you but we’re very sorry for your loss,” Josie said.

Carter nodded and took a sip of his beer, eyes slowly going vacant. The moment stretched out awkwardly until it was broken by a joyful shriek from one of the girls. He lifted his chin in their direction. “We were so worried about how to break the news. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, having to tell them they’ll never see their grandma again. I thought Piper was going to pass out from crying so hard. Now look at them. So resilient.”

Molly was hopping around the edge of the splash mat, pressing her palm flat to where the water came out and then letting it go while her sister lay on her back, waving her arms and legs like she was making a snow angel. For just a second, Piper’s arms slowed as she looked skyward. Her lower lip trembled. Then Molly jumped over her, turned, jumped again and the moment was gone.

Josie’s heart broke a little knowing that no amount of resilience could make up for the fact that these sweet, happy girls had just had their world shattered. She had been six when the man she believed was her father, Eli Matson, died and she remembered well the sense of fear and uncertainty that plagued her from that day forward. Her young mind simply didn’t have the tools to comprehend how the person who loved her most could be there one minute and gone the next. Completely and irrevocably gone. No warning, no explanation, no goodbye. Josie never felt safe again as a child.

Piper and Molly might feel physically safe given the stable, loving home Carter and Erin provided but the emotional component was another story. Molly was probably young enough that she might not remember much about Sylvia or her sudden departure from their lives. Piper, on the other hand, was more likely to recall her closeness with her grandmother and the shock of her death. Would the fear of losing someone close to her without any warning plague her in her quiet moments from this point on, like it had Josie?

Pressure built behind her eyes along with a hot stinging sensation that had absolutely no place in her workday. This is what her trauma and unresolved feelings did. It put her body squarely outside of her control. Left a crack in her emotional armor so that in moments like this, staring at these two beautiful little girls and knowing the pain their grandmother’s death caused had her limbic system springing into action without her permission, making her want to cry.