The Missing Place (41 page)

This
, Shay had thought, setting the plate down carefully on the counter,
this
is precious. This is what I have.

Now she waited for her daughter to call back so she could tell her about Taylor's body. Another difficult task, and Shay would get through it, but she would not feel sorry. Not about Paul, not about Colleen. Let Colleen sit in that echoing mansion, with no one for company but her husk of a husband and a son who had finally found a way to leave her.

COLLEEN WAS ALREADY
looking up flights before it occurred to her to tell Andy. His response: “Have you told Paul yet?”

He said he'd finish with the airlines and line up a car for her. A hotel would have been a challenge, but in the last months, more housing had been completed and more
man camps erected—and besides, over his last few visits to investigate Hunter-Cole, Andy had forged a relationship with the manager of the Hyatt with generous amounts of cash.

Colleen went up the stairs slowly, her hand on the polished railing. The television was off. Music was playing. She cleared her throat, self-conscious. The “media room” was an oversize landing at the top of the stairs, big enough for a sectional sofa, a few tables, an entertainment wall with a television in the middle of it. When they bought the house, Colleen envisioned Paul and his friends as teenagers, drinking sodas and joking around, playing foosball and video games. Needless to say, that had never happened.

Paul was hunched over his laptop. Elizabeth was stretched out on the chaise, one hand resting on her stomach, her feet in the fuzzy slipper socks that Colleen had given her. Seeing that she was wearing the socks buoyed Colleen a little, despite everything.

“Paul.”

They both startled, Paul twisting around and Elizabeth scrambling to sit up, as though they'd been caught doing something wrong. Paul's expression quickly turned to annoyance, which he did his best to cover up. “Sorry. Didn't hear you.”

“Listen, honey.” She took a breath. “They've found Taylor's body. Shay will be able to take him home now.”

For a second, his face was completely bereft of expression. He blinked, then put his hand on the edge of the coffee table, as if for support. “When? How?”

“I don't know any details. I'm assuming it's the thaw, like they predicted . . . he probably just washed up somewhere.”

“You haven't talked to her?” His voice sharper now.

“No, honey, I . . . she just texted me. Dad's trying to get me a flight now.”

“I'm going.” He went back to his laptop and began typing furiously.

“Paul, that's not a good idea.” The tightening of the chest, the girding for an argument. When he'd been younger, she had learned to physically steel herself—for the tantrum of a five-year-old, the stomping of a nine-year-old, the slamming doors of a thirteen-year-old. Now he just typed faster.

“You've been doing so well,” Colleen tried. “You've got As in your classes. There's a test Friday, right? You can't risk jeopardizing those grades, or you might not get your core classes in the fall.”

“I'm fine,” he said tightly. “It's under control.”

It was true that Paul seemed to have gotten through the worst of it. His torso had healed, a shiny knotted scar the only evidence of the infection that kept him in the hospital for three days, and he'd been
to the half dozen therapy sessions Andy and Colleen had asked him to attend. Their own counselor had suggested they take his lead and not bring up anything from the past unless he initiated the conversation. Give him time to process and heal, while dealing with the new realities of his life, was the idea.

Who knew what this could bring up for him, how far back it would set him?

Colleen was trying to find another objection, when she glanced at Elizabeth. The girl's expression stopped her. She was staring at Paul with her eyes narrowed and a calculating frown on her face. “Honey,” she said softly, putting her hand on his arm. “Please. Don't go. I need you here.”

His fingers went still on the keys. He took a breath and let it out slowly. Then he stopped typing and took Elizabeth's hand between his.

He wouldn't be going. That much was clear.

But Colleen had lost anyway. Paul no longer belonged to her.

IT WAS FOUR
o'clock in the morning when they pulled out of the driveway, Andy at the wheel. Neither of them spoke on the way to the airport.

Colleen had seen Vicki exactly once since returning home, in the cleaning products aisle at Target, and Vicki had turned on her heel and walked away, pretending not to see her. Colleen wasn't sure if she and Andy were still doing whatever they had been doing. She wasn't sure what they had been doing, for that matter. Her name no longer came up in conversation, and Andy had been waging his war on Hunter-Cole alone.

When he leaned across the seat in the departure lane at the airport, his kiss barely brushed her cheek. “Text when you land,” he said. She got out of the car without answering.

The plane touched down in Lawton at one thirty in the afternoon. Unlike last time, Colleen had fallen asleep and had missed the descent with its bird's-eye view of the rolling hills, the rigs.

Andy had navigated the terse conversations with Lisa Weyant, and Colleen was grateful for that. She'd rather spend the night on the bench in the gas station parking lot than in their guest room, but Andy said all the right things.
It was so good of the Weyants to offer, but perhaps it would be best if Colleen were to stay at the hotel where she could be near Shay.
There were no more objections after that, no exhortations to come for a home-cooked meal.

They were a long way from a cozy relationship with their future daughter-in-law's family, but now wasn't the time to work on that. Especially given the nature of the trip. In the calculus of blame, it was their daughter who had knocked over the first domino.

Colleen had no idea if Shay blamed the Weyants. Shay had ignored her calls and letters. Not that there had been many. For every time Colleen actually wrote an email, put pen to paper, dialed Shay's number, there were a dozen times that she couldn't face the challenge, that she didn't feel strong enough.

She filed off the plane along with the men in their work boots and faded T-shirts. Waited in line for her suitcase. Walked to the rental car counter with only her dread for company.

THE CONNECTING FLIGHT
was delayed, and Shay spent the time in the air trying to distract herself. Robert and Brittany, at a joyless dinner to celebrate her birthday three weeks earlier, had given her the newest iPad, smaller and lighter and faster than the one they'd given her two years ago. Robert downloaded a few games and showed her how to play them, and Shay popped bubbles on a spinning disk by tapping with her finger and wordlessly willed the women sitting on either side of her to keep their eyes on their
Redbook
s and leave her alone.

When they landed, she had half a dozen texts. One was from Brittany:
I love you mom call me when you get there

The rest were from Colleen:

1:52 I arrived. Will check in and meet yr flight

3:11 Saw yr flight delayed will check on app

4:44 Coroners office says they will stay open late for you

5:01 Says you're on the ground I am here. Have car

Shay shoved the phone back into her handbag, harder than necessary. She had told Andy everything she knew, that Chief Weyant would have someone meet her at the morgue, that there were papers she would need to sign before Taylor could be released. That since Taylor's death had been ruled an accident, and the coroner had stated the cause of death was drowning, she was free to take him home for burial.

She hadn't been prepared when Andy told her that Colleen was planning to come out. Andy's voice on the phone was reassuring, smooth, probably good for the lawyer business. When he explained that he had already contacted a mortuary firm and arranged transport to one in California, she knew that he meant that all the expenses had been covered, and she couldn't find the words to tell him not to let Colleen come.

While she was talking to Andy, she felt that there was a certain dignity to the proceedings. But the minute Colleen got involved, it stirred up the bitter resentment she'd been nursing since that night at the hospital. Shay knew it was irrational. Or maybe
displaced
was the right word. But still, why did Colleen have to barge into everything like she was in charge? Even if she was trying to be helpful, even if she and Andy were the ones paying for it—that wasn't
her
child lying on some cold steel table.

Shay spotted her suitcase on the luggage truck. She pushed her way through the crowd of passengers and yanked it off herself. No one stopped her. She had to watch herself, had to keep her temper under control. She knew the source of her simmering rage, but knowing didn't make it go away.

She stared at the cinder-block airport terminal. Inside that building was Colleen. Shay wasn't ready. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the plane, and called Brittany, but she didn't pick up.

Slowly, Shay put the phone away and walked toward the terminal, dragging the old suitcase behind her. The terminal was busy; another flight would soon be leaving, and the men were lined up, impatient to get home. They carried paper cups and duffel bags and stared at their phones and iPads. They paid her no attention as she walked past.

It took a moment for Shay to recognize Colleen. The last time
she'd seen her, in the halls of the police station, she'd had her hair pulled back in an indifferent half ponytail. Her clothes had been slept in. Her lips were colorless and chapped, her eyes sunken, her jowls trembling.

The intervening months had brought Colleen back to life. Her hair was colored a rich chestnut with lighter highlights and cut shorter. She had on makeup: eyeliner and lipstick and foundation that evened out her skin tone. She was wearing a coral pink short-sleeved sweater with a scooped neckline that showed off her long, elegant neck, ivory capri pants, and the same unlaced canvas sneakers that Brittany wore, the ones with the little rectangular patch that Shay had teased her daughter about:
fifty dollars for a label?
Her bag looked a lot like the one she'd lugged around during the week they'd spent together, except a lighter shade of brown. She looked, Shay thought unkindly, like a magazine ad for a feminine product: competent, happy, even a trifle smug.

Well, to be fair, Colleen didn't look all that happy right now. Her brow was creased, and she searched the arriving passengers anxiously, twisting her hands on her purse strap. When Colleen saw her, a wealth of emotions passed over her expression before she smoothed it into a bland greeting: dread, guilt . . . and longing.

She rushed toward Shay with her arms outstretched. Shay wasn't sure if Colleen was going to grab her hand or hug her or what. In all of that terrible week that they had spent together, they had never hugged. They had touched only when it was made necessary by their close proximity. Even the terrible night, when Shay was being led to the police car, Colleen had stood apart, consumed by her relief at having Paul, and maybe that was forgivable, but Shay had ridden in that car alone. Shay had been alone when the policeman asked her if she was having thoughts of
hurting herself or others.

Colleen settled for an in-between gesture: she reached for both of Shay's hands, then stood there clutching them. Her hands were cold. “Shay, I don't even know how to begin to tell you . . .” she said, and then stopped. Shyly, almost, she stepped forward, closing the distance between them, but at the last minute Shay pulled her hands away and twisted out of Colleen's grip. She seized the handle of her suitcase and dragged it between them. A barrier—an emergency one.

“You didn't have to come,” she mumbled. She knew how she sounded and she knew she couldn't stop. Not yet. “Tell Andy thanks for the flights, the hotel—everything. We'd better go, right?”