“There was nothing in there?” he said, nodding back toward the small building. He held out his hand for the light. “Let me take a look.”
I handed him the light, and stood there shivering while he banged around inside. He was clumsy; I heard him trip twice, knock against something once. I could feel that envelope burning against my chest in the pocket of my coat. I could hear Beck crying, How can you be so cold? I saw my father’s hands gripping a shovel, digging and digging and digging. I saw Elizabeth looking at me, angry and disappointed, as I sometimes saw her in my dreams. Detective Ferrigno was right; we did argue that night. I was trying to comfort her, I think, and she lashed out at me. The memory was foggy and strange, if it was a memory at all. There was a perpetual merry-go-round of misery in my mind. I never have been able to figure out how to get off.
Finally, Langdon returned. “I didn’t see anything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m going to tell him that I don’t want to play. We’ll go back to chess. Or maybe Scrabble. I’m better at that.”
“That’s best,” he said. He stepped down from the porch and offered me his hand, gave me a little pull up. “The last thing we want to do is feed a damaged psyche. He’s getting something out of this. And you don’t know what it is. Chances are it’s not healthy.”
I didn’t say that we were both getting something out of it. I wasn’t certain it was healthy for either one of us.
“I suggest you resign your position, find something else.” His slight smile told me he knew I wouldn’t listen. He knew I had a problem with male authority. But maybe he also understood that I was so deeply hooked in to Luke and Rachel already, I couldn’t have walked away if I wanted to. Which I didn’t, not really.
We started walking and came to where he’d parked his car beside the bike. He opened the hatch and lifted it inside.
“This is not your bike,” he said, looking at it and then back at me.
I told him that it was Beck’s and why I didn’t have mine.
“So what’s going on with that?”
“No one’s heard from her,” I said. There was a hard place of anger against Beck in my heart. “Her parents are here. The police have been talking to me and Ainsley, probably others, too.”
“I thought there was a development tonight,” he said. He shut the hatch and the sound of it echoed loud in the quiet night. “I heard she posted on Facebook?”
I shook my head. Beck didn’t have a Facebook page, of course. As far as I knew. Maybe she had one now and hadn’t told me. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“You don’t seem worried,” he said. Again, that stare, the scientist examining a sample.
“She’s done this before,” I said. I was trying for a nonchalance that I didn’t feel. I was worried about Beck, really worried. But if I showed it, she won.
“Still,” he said. “The police are taking this very seriously. A campus search is starting at first light tomorrow.”
“Oh,” I said. Why hadn’t the detective told me about that? I always hated the little games they played.
I climbed into the passenger seat. And the car dipped as he got in beside me. “Don’t hold all this in, okay? Don’t cloak yourself in denial,” he said.
He started the car and it came to life with lights and soft chimes, but otherwise it was nearly silent the way new cars are, almost as though there’s no engine under the hood. “Make sure you’re talking about everything with your therapist.”
“I am,” I said. “I saw her today.”
“Okay,” he said. “Good. This must be hard for you.”
Langdon knew more about me than almost anyone. I had told him part of my secret during a mini-breakdown I’d had in my sophomore year. He almost never brought it up, knowing how painful it was for me to think about, let alone discuss.
“Elizabeth two years ago,” he said, musing. “Your difficult history. You can talk to me, too, you know. We’re friends, right?”
As we pulled away, I saw what I knew I couldn’t have seen. My mind was playing tricks on me-not a new thing. I thought I saw a small, slim form slip into the trees to avoid the roving beam of the headlights as Langdon shifted the car into drive. I stared at the night for a long moment, but there was nothing.
“I know,” I said. I tried for a smile. “Of course, I know that.”
He gave me a quick, awkward pat on the shoulder, very boyish, buddy-buddy. Totally chaste, no sexual charge at all. I’ve always been grateful for him. I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals. Some of us have more sensitive receptors.
That night my sleep was hard won and restless. I dreamed of Beck’s kiss and felt her hands on me, woke up thinking she was beside me. I drifted off to sleep again, only to be awakened once more. Why are you doing this to me? I heard a voice screaming. And it was my voice, and my mother’s and Beck’s-a chorus of misery and desperation. When I slept again, I went back to the night my mother died.
When’s the last time you saw your mother? The cop had been a woman, and I remember thinking how mannish and rough she seemed. She had a pockmarked face and orange-red hair, cut as short and square as any of her male colleagues. She was large, not overweight, but broad, with big shoulders and a deep voice.
In the morning before I left for school, I said, just as my father had instructed me to say. The lie felt like cotton in my mouth, surely she could see the bulge. I wanted her to see. Please, I thought. Please know that I’m lying. Please help me.
My father sat in a chair by the gray wall, watching, always watching me. Don’t say any more than necessary. Answer their questions and offer nothing more.
And was everything all right? Did she seem strange to you, upset about anything?
No, I said. She was the same as she had always been. What I didn’t say was that my mother suffered from chronic depression, although she had some manic episodes. That morning, her mania was in full throttle and she was cheerfully clutter-clearing and scrubbing the whole house.
Leave my room alone, okay? I asked her. Just don’t touch my stuff.
But she just kept singing and scrubbing and scrubbing the kitchen floor, which was spotless to begin with, and nothing was ever even remotely dirty or out of place.
Mom, I said. Okay?
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, she sang gaily, her blond hair a sweaty mess, her face flushed. I remember really hating her in that moment.
The cop had her eyes on me, and there was no softness, no humor or kindness there. They were just two black lasers, boring in, seeing everything. Was she afraid of anyone? Had she mentioned anyone wanting to hurt her, or anyone following her?
No, I said. Nothing like that.
She softened a little then, as if she remembered what she was dealing with here. I’m sorry, she said. We have to ask questions, to do everything we can to find your mom. We’ll find her, okay?
Okay, I said. They wouldn’t find her. I knew that.
My father was watching me so intently, I felt like he was trying to communicate with me telepathically. I put my head in my hand and started to sob.