The Widow's Watcher

by Eliza Maxwell

“I know you see the similarities. You can’t hide from me, remember,” Cassie said.

  Jenna didn’t respond, but Cass was right. The Thacker case had been tugging at her consciousness, begging for acknowledgment for days.

  But to speak would constitute involvement.

  “Lars,” Jenna finally said.

  “Hmm?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Just ask!” Cassie exclaimed.

  She silently shushed her, but gave in.

  “Lars, has anyone ever tried helping Audrey retrace her steps?”

  Jenna received only silence in reply. After a moment, she saw he wasn’t intentionally ignoring her; he simply wasn’t listening.

  “Lars?” she asked again.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I asked if anyone has ever tried to help Audrey retrace her steps from those missing days?”

  “Retrace her steps?” he repeated, as if he didn’t understand her language.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You know, like, walk her through the day she left, beginning with what they know.”

  “Well, no.” He frowned. “Not exactly. I don’t know how to describe the state Audrey was in, Jenna.” He raised his shoulders, then let them drop. “She was as close to catatonic as a person can be and still be moving around.”

  He glanced at her, tried to explain. “She wasn’t mute, but she was completely incoherent. When questions were put to her—and there were plenty—it was like she didn’t even hear them.”

  The memories were obviously hard for him to relive, but she couldn’t squash the idea that had begun to take root.

  “Audrey wasn’t on this plane of existence anymore,” he went on. “We tried everything. Believe me, if retracing her steps had been possible, we would have done it. She’s never given any indication she remembers what happened during those three days.” He shook his head again. “Eventually, we stopped asking.”

  Jenna let that sink in.

  Let it go, her inner voice told her. Not Cassie’s voice, her own. Let it be.

  “I used to have this . . . I don’t know if you’d call it a fantasy, or what. This hope, I guess. That Audrey and the kids had been kidnapped. That someone, somewhere, had held her against her will. Stupid, right?”

  He glanced at her with the tortured face of a prisoner of war.

  “I wanted so badly for someone else to be responsible. I always knew, deep down, that was bullshit.”

  His voice was bleak, his eyes locked onto the road in front of them.

  “To believe that, you’d have to ignore Audrey’s history, her instability. She always was a runner. Even when she was young. Beverly can tell you about the times she’d disappear as a teenager. Days on end, then she’d reappear, dirty and bruised, needing to be deloused.”

  Jenna’s face tightened. She tried to push away the image, but it wouldn’t go.

  “She always struggled. With marriage. With the kids. Hell, with life.”

  He spoke with an exhausted resignation, and she was drawn in by his pain. His regret.

  “Whatever happened during those days, it was a culmination of Audrey’s illness and my lack of understanding of it. No one else was responsible. Just she and I. Only a fool would believe otherwise.”

  He pulled the truck into the church parking lot and let it idle.

  “So to answer your question, no, we never managed to retrace her steps. The police tried but never had any success. Neither did the investigators I hired. It was like she and the kids just up and vanished.”

  His fingers beat an anxious rhythm on the steering wheel as he stared at the brick building where they’d soon work to bring some semblance of hope to a group of people who had little left to hope for.

  “And then she reappeared. From nowhere. But Francie and Will . . .” He turned the key to shut off the ignition. “They never did.”

  38

  Lars was particularly quiet while they prepared and served lunch, giving a distracted smile now and then to one of the small crowd. Jenna couldn’t shut out the nagging sense there was more that could be done.

  When Owen appeared at the back door of the church as they were cleaning up, Jenna was relieved.

  “Thought I’d grab a bite over at the diner.” He picked up a wooden spoon Jenna had just washed, then set it down again. “Anyone want to join me?”

  Jenna looked over at Lars, but he was somber, stacking dishes.

  “I’ll pass, son, if you don’t mind. Not much of an appetite. You two go ahead.”

  A kernel of hesitation lingered at leaving Lars when he was in such a low mood. He’s come through worse than this, Jenna reminded herself.

  “I’ll join you,” she told Owen. “If you don’t need me anymore, Lars.”

  A few days prior, the old man would have made a dry remark about having gotten along perfectly well without her help for sixty-odd years, but he just sent them a dismissive wave.

  Jenna gathered her things and joined Owen, hoping the privacy would give Lars some space to sort through his thoughts.

  The crowd in the diner could have been the same people there on her previous visit. Many of them probably were, but they barely cast a glance in her direction as she entered ahead of Owen.

  The lull in conversation was less noticeable, at least.

  “Can I ask you something, Jenna?” Owen said once their orders had been placed.

  “Sure,” she replied, though she couldn’t hide her reservations. His mood had been affected by the events of the early morning as well. Father and son were strikingly similar.

  “Why are you helping us?” he asked, getting straight to the point.

  She thought for a moment about how to answer.

  “I wouldn’t say I am helping you. I told your dad I don’t think I can add anything to the investigation that’s already been done. I’ve read through the notes. It was all very thorough.”

  The answer was disingenuous and she knew it. Her urge to leave, to get out before she’d gotten too deep, was still there. It had never gone away. But she had a suspicion, one she wasn’t ready to recognize, that it was too late for that.

  “I had plans,” Jenna said, not meeting his eyes. “I still have plans.”

  “Dad told me about your plans.”

  Jenna held her breath, waiting for his judgment to flow over her.

  When it didn’t come, she asked, “Are you going to try and talk me out of it? Tell me how selfish I’m being?”

  His head tilted to the side. “Would that work?”

  “No.”

  “Then no, I won’t.”

  Jenna studied him, this man she’d paid little attention to before now.

  “I could, I suppose.” He fiddled with a napkin in his large, calloused hands. “Probably I should. But even if I say all the things I’m supposed to, you seem like a smart woman. I’m guessing you’ve thought of those things already.”

  “Many times.”

  He sighed heavily and sat back in the vinyl-covered booth, balling the napkin into a knot and tossing it onto the table in front of them.

  “Then who am I to try and gloss over what you’ve been through? For what? To ease my own discomfort?”

  A powerful sense of relief washed over Jenna.

  “I don’t like it,” he continued. “I don’t know you. Not really. But I don’t like the idea of waking up in a world you’ve chosen to leave.”

  Jenna opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “The world would always be less for that choice. But I guess the world deserves that, after what it’s done to you. Whether I like it or not doesn’t make me qualified to judge.”

  Jenna took a deep breath before she trusted herself to speak.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Owen’s mouth twisted and he shook his head.

  “Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything. A specialty of mine, doing nothing.”

  There was a bitter resignation in him today. His demeanor had
shifted, somehow.

  “Owen,” Jenna said, leaning in. “Are you all right?”

  A silent chuckle that had nothing to do with amusement contorted his features.

  “Do you consider yourself an honest person, Jenna?”

  She sat back.

  “Yes,” she finally answered. The word sounded too much like a question.

  “But you kept secrets of your own, didn’t you?” came her daughter’s faint whisper. An accusation Jenna couldn’t deny.

  “As honest as the next person, I suppose,” she went on, relegating thoughts of her secrets to the farthest corner of her mind.

  “And if the next person isn’t as honest as you’d think?” he asked.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’ve always thought I was an honest person,” he said. “But people have an infinite capacity to lie. To other people. Even—maybe especially—to themselves.”

  The conversation had taken a turn Jenna hadn’t anticipated, and her body went still, waiting for a glimpse of the destination Owen was leading them to.

  “There are so many unanswered questions,” he said. “But only a few that matter, and those consumed my dad. Where did Mom go? What happened to Francie and Will?”

  He shook his head, shackled by memories that wouldn’t let him go.

  “The other, smaller questions got shoved aside. And it was easy to convince myself . . .” He trailed off.

  Jenna stiffened slightly.

  “Everyone gossiping, whispering behind their hands. Why did she take two kids, and leave the other one behind? They were too polite to say it to my face, but I heard them anyway. Felt their stares, all of them wondering what was wrong with me that my own mother didn’t bother to take me with her.”

  She studied his face and caught a glimpse of an old hurt.

  He smiled a dark smile, full of regret.

  “They didn’t know, and I didn’t tell them. I lied to everyone, then managed to convince myself my lie was true.”

  “Owen,” Jenna said. She didn’t know what to ask. He answered her anyway.

  “My mother didn’t want to leave me, Jenna,” he said. “She begged me to come with her. I can still see her face, red with tears. Begging. And I refused to go.”

  Jenna flipped through her mental notes, scrolling backward through the facts Lars had recorded so diligently over the years, then packed away into a file box.

  Owen had been at a friend’s house down the street from their home when his mother had fled with his little brother and sister.

  “I refused to go, and I ran off. I wanted to play with my friend. For one day, I just wanted to be a normal kid, doing normal kid things. I didn’t want to get caught up in the chaos of Mom’s moods. Not again.”

  “Owen.” Jenna reached across the table to place her hand on his. “You were a child. No one will blame you. You know that, right?”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “‘Why wouldn’t he come?’ That’s what she’s asking, Jenna,” Owen said. “She’s starting to remember, after all this time. And her memories are more clear than my own, even after three decades in a psych ward.”

  He shook his head, carrying the weight of his private burden.

  “So which of us is the crazy one?”

  39

  It was Cassie’s relentless nagging that prodded Jenna on.

  “Every scene needs to move the plot forward, remember.”

  Jenna tried to ignore her.

  “Otherwise, what’s the point?” She refused to be shunted aside.

  Her subconscious daughter wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Lars, I think you should consider hypnosis.”

  Jenna spoke the words in a rush, knowing they came out of left field. But the idea had been spinning in her head, slowly at first, then with increased speed.

  She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable dismissal most people had when a word like hypnosis was thrown into regular conversation.

  When it didn’t come, only a silent, assessing glance in her direction, she plunged on.

  “Some people call it a scam or pseudoscience—and I’ll admit, there’s not a lot of verifiable medical evidence—but if you can get past the preconceived ideas, what’s left is basically a deep, guided meditation.”

  “You sound like you have experience with this?” He narrowed his eyes in her direction.

  He hadn’t shut her down. Not yet anyway.

  “Some,” she said. “I did some research on hypnotherapy for an article. It’s still controversial, what with the allegations of abuse by unlicensed therapists, but there are a lot more people out there that have been helped than hurt.”

  She didn’t mention it was mostly people who needed help to quit smoking, or overcome a fear of flying. No need to give him a reason to be dismissive.

  She also didn’t mention the Thacker case.

  Lars was quiet, his eyes on the road.

  “It’s something to consider,” she continued. “If Audrey is beginning to remember, then hypnosis—or guided meditation, if you’re more comfortable calling it that—could be a tool to help her put everything back in place.”

  He pulled the truck into the driveway of the cabin, but said nothing.

  “Just something to think about,” Jenna added in a mumble as she opened the passenger door. She grabbed the bag of groceries sitting on the seat between them.

  She’d volunteered to take care of dinner, insisting she could cook even without his hovering instructions.

  He was still sitting, showing no signs of movement, when she shut the truck door carefully behind her and made her way inside.

  Jenna was seasoning steaks for dinner when she caught sight of Lars through the window. He was standing at the top of the steps that led down to the lake.

  She had no idea if she’d made things better or worse. It would be up to Lars to decide if he wanted to pursue the idea, but at least Cassie would leave her alone about it.

  “You should have told him,” Cassie said, proving her wrong almost immediately.

  Jenna sighed.

  Crystal Thacker, a single mother of two, was thirty-two years old when she was murdered in her bed, a shotgun blast to the head. Crystal’s younger daughter had been traumatized by the horror she’d witnessed that night and couldn’t speak about it. The hypnotherapist Jenna interviewed for the magazine article considered the recovery of her memories of the event one of his professional successes. With his help, the little girl, only eight years old, had recalled watching numbly as her older sister and her sister’s boyfriend had attempted to cover up the crime.

  Upon questioning, the pair had confessed to the murder.

  But a criminal investigation resolved with the aid of hypnosis was a rare bird indeed.

  “I can’t, Cass,” Jenna murmured. “It probably won’t work, and I can’t bring myself to give him that much hope.”

  Hope was a frightening thing to rekindle. As impossible to control as a wildfire on a dry plain.

  Dinner was quiet, each of them lost in their thoughts.

  Lars sat back and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “Turns out you’re not a bad cook either.”

  She gave him a small smile. “High praise.”

  “I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I’ll call around tomorrow. It can’t hurt to try.”

  No, Jenna thought. It never hurts to try . . . It’s not until you fail that it hurts.

  But she couldn’t say that. It had been her suggestion.

  Wheels were beginning to turn in places other than the Jorgensen cabin as well. Like the electric current Dr. Frankenstein put to his monstrous creation, Audrey’s escape had breathed life and renewed interest into an investigation that had long been pronounced dead.

  Before Lars had a chance to make those calls, he received one of his own. A new detective had been assigned to the case. Though the file had never been officially closed, it had been years since any r
esources had been put into an active investigation of Francie and Will Jorgensen’s whereabouts.

  Jenna tried to curb her curiosity, but she couldn’t help but overhear parts of the conversation.

  The words “Could call it guided meditation, if you’re more comfortable with that” caught her attention.

  “No, I haven’t spoken with the hospital administration or Audrey’s doctors yet. Not sure whose permission would need to be gotten first in a situation like this . . . Maybe so, maybe so. But if a judge is willing to sign off on it, I don’t see why . . .”

  Jenna waited with as much patience as she could muster for news.

  Days passed. More calls. There was a visit from Sergeant Allred, the detective in charge of the cold case, who interviewed Lars and Owen again. He took Lars’s file box of notes with him when he left.

  Jenna didn’t push for answers. She helped Lars shovel snow when it was needed, assisted on the days it was his turn to serve lunch at the church kitchen, and cooked dinner every other night.

  Lars was visiting his wife on the day Diane came to clean again.

  The housekeeper chatted while she tidied the kitchen and dusted Lars’s shelves. Jenna found herself glad for the company.

  Owen stopped by just as Diane was finishing up.

  “Well, now, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” the older woman cried as the big man smiled and landed a kiss on her cheek.

  “I managed to get out of there for a while and thought I’d bring lunch to my favorite lady.”

  “Oh, go on with you.” Diane swatted at his shoulder, but her cheeks flushed with pleasure.

  “Join us, Jenna?” Owen asked, holding up takeout bags from the Raven Café. “I have plenty.”

  Diane brought out a side of Owen that Jenna hadn’t seen before.

  He was playful, teasing. The older woman preened under his attention.

  Jenna sat back and smiled at the two of them.

  “Mmm,” Owen said suddenly, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Johnson’s Yorkie just had a litter of puppies.”

  “Really?” Diane’s head tilted with interest.

  “Took all I had not to bring you one, but if Hannah had seen it, I’d have been stuck with it.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for a new dog, not so soon after Fitz passed on—Fitz was my little sidekick for a lot of years,” she added to Jenna. “Do you care for dogs?”