“Thank you. I wish the circumstances were better.”
“Next time,” she said, giving Gilly’s hand a little shake before releasing it. “Once we get Zoe back. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee on your break.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” Gilly said.
Jake pulled his keys from his pocket. “I’ll walk out with you.” He held the door open for Gilly. “Ma, if you don’t feel like going out to the school later, don’t,” he called over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she called back.
“I worry about her, going through this,” he said, shutting the door.
“She’s a lovely person,” Gilly said.
“Yeah. She’s pretty tough, too. I’m lucky to have her.”
They paused in the shade at the foot of the porch steps. His truck was in the driveway; her car was at the curb.
The small silence seemed prescient, and they broke it together. Gilly said, “I need to explain something—” And Jake’s words were nearly identical, “Before you go, there’s something—”
“You first,” he said.
“You’ll hear it sooner or later, if you haven’t already. I’m on probation for kidnapping.” Gilly said it quickly, thinking it was best that way, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Jake’s eyes widened, but he made no comment, giving her time and the space she needed.
“Eight months ago I took a baby from the hospital in Houston where Sophie was born and where she later died. I brought the baby to my house, and for a little while I believed with every cell in my body that she was mine. When I came back to myself and realized what I had done, my mom and the cops had already found me.”
“You told me before that you blacked out. Was this one of those times? Were you on something?”
“Does it matter? There is no defense for what I did. But I want you to know from me”—Gilly locked Jake’s gaze—“that I didn’t take Zoe.”
He started to speak.
Gilly put her hand on his arm. “I’m going to try. To see Zoe, I mean. Dream her, if it’s possible. I will do everything in my power to see where she is and who has her.”
Jake bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, and when he’d regained his composure, he thanked her. “Thank you—”
“I’m not making any promises. I’ve never done this—asked for it—a dream or a vision.” Gilly took back her hand. “I’m not doing it so you’ll trust me. You have every right not to.” She wasn’t sure why she said this. Maybe to keep him from having illusions about her ability.
Jake’s expression, the dismissal in his eyes, suggested trusting her was the furthest thing from his mind. His desperateness had driven him far beyond such concerns. He said, “Clint told me the detective down in Houston who’s working your husband’s murder case called him. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Carl called Captain Mackie?” Gilly felt a stab of annoyance.
“From what Clint said it sounds as if he’s concerned the shooter is still walking around somewhere. Clint said you saw him the night your husband was killed?”
“I did, but it was only a brief glimpse. Anyway it’s been three years. If he hasn’t come after me by now—He’s probably dead or in prison.”
“Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want him caught?” Jake sounded incredulous. He punched his open palm with the fist of his other hand. “When I get Zoe back—I swear to God whoever has her—I could kill them myself. I’m scared about it—what I might do.”
Gilly shifted her glance. How could she explain it? That no amount of revenge, no amount of justice dished out to the man who’d taken their lives would ever bring Brian or Sophie back to her. She could beat him bloody with her bare hands. She could cut out his heart and hold it up before his dying eyes, but for what? There would still be a hole inside her, a place that would never be filled, an ache that would go on forever.
She met Jake’s glance. “You’ll think it’s crazy, but I don’t think about that night and what happened. I did at first. I drove myself insane. I was obsessed, playing it over and over in my mind, all the what ifs—if I hadn’t had a craving for an ice cream sandwich, if Brian and I hadn’t stopped at that particular store, or if the guy had chosen some other location to rob, if we’d gone there five minutes earlier or later—you know. I started to drink more and more. I took drugs. The detectives—Carl wants me to remember, and all I want to do is forget.” Gilly heard herself, the emotion that threaded her voice and clamped her jaw, hugging herself to still her trembling.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, but you’re right, I don’t get it—the guy gunned down your husband. How can you not want him brought to justice? What if he’s still doing it? Robbing stores, killing people? Don’t you think you have an obligation—?” Jake stopped. “God, I’m sorry.”
Gilly felt the tears blinding her eyes. He must have seen them. She swiped roughly at them.
He caught her hand, thumbing her cheeks, holding her gaze, his eyes intent. She felt his remorse, his compassion and kindness, the rougher scrim of his panic. She took the smallest step toward him. He touched her hair, lifting the strands that had fallen across her face, drawing them behind her ear. The moment held them. Gilly didn’t know the amount of time that passed. A handful of seconds? An eternity? But it was wrong on so many levels, and as if they both agreed to it, they stepped back from one another.
Jake shifted his feet, rubbed a hand over his head.
Gilly hoisted her purse higher on her shoulder. “I should get going. Bailey—”
Jake said, “Yeah. I’ve got to get to Nickel Bend.”
“The film—the woman and little girl—is there a chance the woman is your ex-wife? Yesterday when we talked you were thinking she might have Zoe—”
“No, it can’t be.” He rubbed a line beside his nose, looked off. He seemed ill at ease, agitated in some way.
“I’ll just go now,” Gilly said. “I’ll call—”
“She’s in jail—Zoe’s mom. She was arrested sometime last night in Dallas.”
“Oh, no. What happened?” As soon as she asked, Gilly put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s okay. It’ll be all over the news soon enough anyway. She and her boyfriend got into it with a dealer. Steph pulled a knife on the guy. Her boyfriend took off. I thought he might have Zoe, but that’s looking less likely.”
“I’m sorry.” Gilly couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Thanks. As much as I want it to be her, I’m pretty sure what I’m looking at is a lot worse. That’s why I’m pressuring you, do you know what I’m saying?”
“I said I’d try.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything new?”
“Yeah. You do the same, okay? If you—” He didn’t finish.
Gilly nodded. There were words to say, things like, Good luck or It’ll all work out or My prayers are with you, but she and Jake were past the stage where platitudes would suffice. She closed her hand over his forearm, gripping it briefly, then she left him, got into her car without a glance back, and drove away.
19
Kenna texted him as he was leaving the sheriff’s office in Greeley: I’m at my office at school. Can u meet me?
Heart leaping, he tapped out his response: I’m headed that way. Word about Zoe?
No. I’m sorry. Just need to see u.
K. B there in thirty.
His pulse settled. Doubt sat in his mind, a dog scooting on its haunches ever closer to the raw vein of his hope. If something had happened to Zoe, if she was hurt, or worse, he would know it, wouldn’t he? He would feel it, and he did not. He. Did. Not.
On the highway back to Wyatt and the school, random memories sifted through his mind of other times he’d met with Kenna—when the subject was Zoe and her progress, or at some social occasion, where they’d flirted with the prospect of making something
more of their acquaintanceship. A sense of unreality swamped him. It was as if he were entertaining flashbacks of some other man’s past. He thought how quickly a mind could veer off normal into insanity, like putting his truck into a ditch. One good jerk of the wheel. That’s all it would take.
The police had looped the school building in yellow crime-scene tape and ordered the press to stay behind it. Still they went after Jake, wanting a word, a statement, his heart on a stick. They were like vultures after roadkill, a necessary evil. He needed them. At the front door, he turned and said, “I don’t have anything new to say. I want my little girl back. I love her more than my life, and I want whoever has her to know I will do anything, give anything. Just bring her back safe to me. Please. That’s all.”
He turned from the flurry of questions. They pelted his back and rattled his ears until the door closed behind him, muffling the clangor of voices.
Kenna stepped into the hall from her office, and Jake sensed that what kept her there was an act of will. She was white-faced except for her eyes, which were rimmed in red. They darted over him. He wondered what she was looking for. Forgiveness? Reassurance? Maybe she thought he would sue her. Maybe she was scared what this ordeal would cost her. She had a degree in early childhood education. He’d been impressed by her credentials, even more by her commitment. He thought how little any of that mattered to him now, how little feeling he had to spare for her troubles.
She said, “I was hoping we could have a word alone,” and without waiting for him to respond, she went into her office.
He followed her, but seeing Marley seated in one of the two club chairs that faced Kenna’s desk, he paused in the doorway.
“Come in, sit down.” Kenna gestured at the chair next to Marley.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Disappointment flashed across Kenna’s face. She and Marley exchanged a glance. “I’m sorry—” They spoke at once.
As if by mutual agreement, Kenna continued, launching into a rambling speech that revolved around steps she would take to prevent “events of this nature” from happening in the future.
She faltered to a stop when Jake held up his hand, indicating he’d heard enough. “This is all well and good, but my daughter is still gone, and I need to keep looking for her, so you’ll have to excuse me.” He didn’t say the measures Kenna would take were too little and too late. It would be so easy to get sidetracked by anger, but Zoe needed every ounce of his focus now.
“I could lose my license, Jake.” Kenna followed him into the corridor. “This school is everything I worked for. You know how much—how hard—”
He wheeled, feeling the slap of incredulity on his face. “Do you think I give a fuck about this school right now? My daughter is gone because of your incompetence, because your teaching assistant let a stranger take her—”
“Marley doesn’t work here anymore. She’s only here today—”
“Without proper identification. Without even checking the procedure when it’s a matter of goddamn record and has been since I enrolled Zoe here, that I’m the one”—Jake punched his chest with his thumb—“the only one authorized to get Zoe from school. Do I look like a woman?”
“It was a mistake—”
“A mistake? How do you make a mistake like that, Kenna? Your assistant can’t even say whether Zoe got into the car. Why was she out there, working dismissal alone, or doing anything by herself when she was too new to know the procedure?”
Eyes locked, the moment hung, Kenna’s in chin-trembling silence, Jake’s in heart-knocking fury. Finally he said, “I don’t have time for this. I have to find my little girl.”
Kenna broke then. Jake heard it happen, the crack of her sobs followed him out the door.
The reporters stood back; they parted like the Red Sea when he walked out. It was the look on his face, he guessed. Mad enough to kill, he thought. And they could see that he was. What would they make of it? What would he hear about himself later? Read in their newspapers? That he’d hired a hit man?
He drove over to the picnic area, jaw tight, mind in a heated knot, and he parked there because he didn’t know where else to go, what else to do with himself. His glance fell on a group of people, gathered around the nearest table. He recognized some of them from town. Augie Bright, Tim Jeffers, Frodo Tate, several others. They’d all gone through the Wyatt school system together, and while they’d been different ages and graduated at different times, Wyatt schools were small. Everyone knew everyone else.
But when he got out of the truck, and the group approached him, he realized there were other faces—a handful of women and other guys who had been classmates, too. People he hadn’t seen in a while. Years in some cases. Cody Blake and Evan Hardy came up to him first. They’d been baseball teammates back in the day. Cody had played shortstop, Evan had been at third base, and Jake had played in center field. They came up to him now, grave-faced, and embraced him, thumped him on the back. No words were spoken, but their kindness and commiseration showed through their eyes and gestures.
“What are you guys doing here?” Jake asked. The last he’d heard Cody lived somewhere up near Dallas, and Evan had moved to San Jose to work for some up-and-coming tech firm.
“We heard about your little girl, man. We had to come,” Evan said.
A woman said, “We want to help.”
Jake met her glance. It was Janet Westerbrook. They’d dated a few times when they were sophomores. Jake thought she lived in Atlanta now.
She embraced him warmly. “I have a little girl, too, not much older than Zoe.”
“You came from Atlanta?”
“Yes,” she said. She backed out of his embrace, keeping her hands on his forearms, holding his gaze. “As soon as Augie called and told me, I got on a plane. I’ll stay until we find her. We all will.” Her gesture encompassed the small crowd gathered behind her.
“What I hear, there’s a lot more of our classmates coming, bro. Word is getting out.” Augie spoke at his elbow.
“You did this?” Jake asked.
“Mandy started it,” Augie said.
“Oh yeah?” Jake wasn’t surprised. He loved Mandy. She was possibly the sweetest person in town, would do anything in the world for anyone, but the woman hadn’t an ounce of discretion. Telephone, telegram, teleMandy. That was the joke. Mandy told it on herself. I know, y’all, she’d say. I’m such a blabbermouth. I just can’t help it.
“She only made a couple of calls,” Augie said now. “But it grew.”
Jake felt tears score his eyelids. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Mandy and Janet showed him the fliers that had been printed. Above a centered column listing Zoe’s physical description, there were two photos, her class picture and the one Jake’s mom had taken of Zoe holding up a fistful of weeds.
Janet said, “We’ll put these up everywhere we can. Wyatt, Nickel Bend, Greeley, along I-35 toward the metroplex, too. Carly Jo Whitcomb—you remember her?”
Jake nodded.
“She’s living in Georgetown now. She’s taking a pile over there and then going into Austin. We’re going to plaster the state of Texas with them, and we’ll keep on until we find Zoe. People—little kids—don’t just vanish. Somebody has got to have seen her.”
Jake wiped his face. “I don’t believe you guys. Thank you—”
“We’ve scheduled a candlelight vigil tonight at the pavilion in the courthouse square.”
Jake searched and found the woman who had addressed him. She stepped around Janet.
“Karen Clayton?” A heartbeat’s width of space passed before he made the connection and said her name. The sense of his surprise broke over him, fizzing along his veins like the first cold sip of champagne.
“You remember.” She seemed gratified.
“It’s been—”
“A long time.” She finished his thought.
Twenty-two years. Jake did the math in his head.
“It’s Karen Ames now, though.
I’m married.”
“Married.” He repeated the word, thinking, Wow.
“No children. You?”
“Divorced,” he said.
“I’m sorry—divorce is hard, but it’s Zoe, it’s your little girl—what’s happened is so awful. When I heard, I had to come. We all did.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Their shared silence was small and misshapen, clouded with awkward memories of the intimacies they’d once shared.
Karen broke it, angling her gaze to Jake’s. “Is it too late to tell you how sorry I am I didn’t answer the door that night?”
He huffed a sound, not quite a laugh, rubbing his hand across his head. He was stuck somewhere between irony at the timing of her apology and give-a-shit indifference. Forget the years that had passed. How could she imagine he could care under the current circumstances?
“I forgot you stood him up for prom.” Janet was grinning, but Jake sensed she was remembering the rest, too—the weeks that followed prom night, when it got really crazy.
He’d had a feeling that night it might go wrong, but he’d made the date; he’d felt obligated. He’d felt he was doing the right thing when he’d knocked on Karen’s door, dressed to kill in a rented tux, corsage box in hand. A close friend of his dad’s had lent him the Thunderbird—a 1957 flame-red convertible—idling in her driveway, waiting to take her to their senior prom. He’d made a mixtape of their favorite songs. He remembered his heart knocking against his ribs. He remembered the rosebush twining a nearby porch post had been smothered in blooms. Even today, smelling a rose could overcome him with bittersweet feelings of regret and heated desire, the paler shades of old anger and shock.
“It was a difficult time for me,” Karen said. She looked from Jake to Janet. “You all haven’t changed.”
“You either,” Janet said.
It wasn’t exactly true. They had all aged. Karen was much thinner, almost gaunt, and her hair was shorter and darker than it had been in the past. In high school she’d worn it shoulder length, and it had been a color she’d called honey blonde. The first head of hair Jake had ever run his fingers through. He’d numbered the constellation of freckles that bridged her upturned nose. He’d measured the weight of her breasts in the palms of his hands, tasted her nipples, and nearly every other part of her, with his tongue. Entering her the first time had been ecstasy. After that, he had not been able—they had not been able to get enough of each other. They’d had sex in his truck in the high school parking lot, in her bedroom or his, when their folks weren’t home. They’d stopped an elevator after quitting time in the old bank building on the square, and done it in the alley behind the row of shops that flanked Cricket’s. They’d had sex half-submerged in the water at Monarch Lake, her legs locked around him, while he gripped a ladder at the end of a deserted boat dock.
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 20