Inn Danger

by Dixie Davis

  Lori watched him, waiting for more of an explanation, but that was apparently all he’d offer. “What, in your car?”

  Mitch finally met her eyes, and his carried sarcasm. “Yeah, right up to the bus station, where I bought her a ticket, waved goodbye, and said, ‘Have a nice life, honey!’”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “I didn’t listen. She told me so many times and so many ways that she needed something to change, and I don’t know if I didn’t believe her or I just didn’t want to change, but I let it go on too long — and then she was gone.”

  The pieces of this ever-shifting puzzle slid around in Lori’s brain. So Mitch did know that Debbie wanted out, wanted their life to be different, and he blamed himself for not delivering that. And that was why she disappeared.

  Obviously he’d read her diary and figured out what he’d done wrong. Did he draw the same conclusions that Kim had? “What did you think happened to her?” Lori asked.

  Mitch looked away again, transforming back into that distant person he’d been ever since that night. Not the person she’d fallen in love with. Someone withdrawn and small and even frightened.

  Someone damaged. So badly burned he had to protect himself at all costs.

  Lori tried to tamp down on the instinct to help him. Helping him wouldn’t get her closer to the truth, and that was something she and Mitch both needed, especially if there was to be any hope of this relationship moving forward.

  Of course, unless she wanted the county jail as a wedding venue, they might not be able to do that no matter what they felt.

  Yet another reason she needed the truth — and she needed it to be on Mitch’s side.

  But his silence suggested — screamed — that it wasn’t.

  “Whatever you’re holding back,” Lori said, “out with it. I’m not here as your girlfriend. I’m here as a citizen investigating. You keeping things from me — again,” she couldn’t help but add, emphasizing that word most of all, “is not going to help your case.”

  “I didn’t ask for help.” Mitch raised his gaze to a point over her shoulder.

  “Well, to be honest, I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for Ray and Katie. Don’t they deserve to know what really happened to their daughter?”

  Mitch’s focus shifted to her, but the hollow look in his eyes spoke for him before he could. “No,” he said when his voice finally caught up. “They can’t — I can’t — they’d never forgive me.”

  Chills crawled down Lori’s neck. But she knew Mitch hadn’t killed Debbie — not ten years ago, definitely.

  “Or her,” Mitch added. “It would break them. Probably kill Katie. You can’t.”

  Lori glanced at the guard, to see if he’d heard the word “kill,” but he stood in faithful silence, betraying nothing. Then she focused her best, hardest stare on Mitch. The I-mean-business stare. The I’m-not-leaving-until-you-tell-me-young-man stare.

  Mitch rubbed his hair, then dropped his hands to the table again. “I knew.”

  “Knew. What.” She made her voice as hard as her eyes.

  “I knew she was alive.”

  Lori waited for the realization to sink in, but it didn’t. Hadn’t Ray basically said that?

  Unless . . . unless Mitch knew. Not in the metaphysical way that a parent might “know” their child couldn’t be dead.

  In the very physical way that someone who had evidence would know that a person actually was not dead.

  “How? What, did she contact you? Drain your bank accounts? Blackmail you?”

  Mitch rolled his eyes with a frustrated sigh. “Everything was too perfect at home. Too tidy. All her things packed away. Like she’d planned on not coming back. It didn’t feel . . . right.”

  “So she was still alive because she cleaned the house?” Lori didn’t bother hiding her incredulity. “That’s evidence?” She scoffed. “That’s the type of investigation I’d expect from Chip, not you.”

  “She left her ring.”

  Lori tripped over that one for a minute. “Wasn’t she going to get her nails done?”

  He scrubbed his face with one massive, rough hand. “I saw her, okay? Two years after. I was in Atlanta for a botany conference, and I had to go to an ATM. I walked into the bank and . . . there she was.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “At first,” Mitch continued, like Lori hadn’t spoken, “I tried to dismiss it. I had to be crazy. Debbie was gone. She was dead, I thought. And then I found myself standing behind her as she was filling out her deposit slip. She turned around and saw me and knew who I was.”

  Lori tried to picture what that would be like, but it beggared the imagination.

  “She begged me not to tell her parents. I asked her if she was happy — I meant it. I’d read her journals, and I knew, I knew that I hadn’t done enough for her, that I hadn’t made her happy in the end. I just wanted her to be happy again.” Mitch pressed both thumbs to the bridge of his nose and bowed his head, emotion choking off his words.

  “Was she?” Lori asked after a moment.

  “She didn’t answer. She just walked away.”

  Atlanta was, what, six hours away? And she’d let Mitch dangle here, accused of murder, her parents writhing in the wind, for an entire decade?

  Then the other pieces of the puzzle slid home. “You’re telling me that you knew your wife was alive the whole time we were dating?”

  Mitch sucked in a breath, then pressed his lips together. Caught.

  “You were a married man pursuing a relationship with me?” Lori tried to keep her voice down, but it rose of its own accord.

  “I tried not to. I tried to end it a year ago.”

  Lori gaped at him. “And then you took that back.”

  “I talked to a lawyer out in Wilmington. He said we had grounds for divorce. I just didn’t know how to get in contact with her, how to do it all to keep Ray and Katie in the dark —”

  “They had a right to know she was alive!”

  The guard in the corner shifted, taking two steps toward the table. Lori pre-empted him, standing. “You knew she was alive all this time.”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. Again. Just like the night they’d found her.

  The night he was going to propose.

  The night he wasn’t nearly as surprised as he should have been to see his wife who’d been dead for ten years.

  Lori didn’t have anything else to say to him. She turned and strode from the visitation room.

  Lori gave herself one hour. Sixty minutes to rotate the laundry, check in with her guests — all doing fine — and bawl her eyes out.

  She’d fallen for a cheater. Someone who let his wife fake her own death, helped her hide from her parents who had only ever loved her — like they loved him, and he’d lied to their faces for the last eight years.

  This was unbelievable.

  When her mental timer was up — maybe a little closer to seventy minutes, but she’d allow it — Lori washed her face. She brushed her hair, changed into something more comfortable, washed her face again, and steeled herself for what she was about to do.

  She was about to rip a family apart.

  But didn’t Ray and Katie deserve to know? Wasn’t that the whole reason she was even investigating Debbie’s death? Certainly not to stand up for that knowing, not-even-a-little-accidental philanderer.

  Lori only made it to the door of her own quarters before she stopped. She needed something to soften the blow. Anything.

  There was only the one answer she had for everything: food. She warmed up the four leftover cherry tarragon sausage patties and some not-exactly-homemade croissants, stuffing them in a basket with a little less care than she usually used. She was across the street before her courage could fail her again, and she let herself in their back door again.

  “Ray?” she called in a low voice.

  “That you, Lori?” his reply carried from upst
airs.

  “Yes, it’s me again.”

  “Just a minute.”

  Lori set her basket on the kitchen table and fetched plates from the cabinets.

  She’d call this stalling if Ray were in the room yet. So instead, it was simply preparing.

  As if anything could prepare either of them for this.

  And Katie . . .

  She couldn’t just drop this on Katie, Lori knew. She’d have to tell Ray first. He’d know what to do. Or they’d figure it out together.

  Ray finally appeared on the stairs, slowly lumbering down. His eyes were bloodshot and more rheumy than usual. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “I should be asking you that.”

  Ray gave her a grim frown. “We’ve had ten years to get used to losing Debbie. It’s finding her again that’s the hard part.”

  Guilt pierced Lori’s heart. She couldn’t tell him Mitch knew. Could she?

  Was this simply the grown-up version of tattling? Was she doing this to get back at Mitch?

  One look at the man in front of her reminded Lori that she owed it to Ray.

  She pulled the chair out at the table and helped him into his seat. “Brought you some cherry tarragon sausage — homemade — and some croissants.”

  “Trying to fatten me up, are you?” Ray’s voice was without humor.

  She tried to laugh and fetched the margarine from the fridge.

  “Make that butter me up.” He popped open the tub and did just that with his croissant.

  He needed to know. But how could she tell him? Finding out she’d been alive all this time was hard enough. Her stomach tied itself in knots in the near silence.

  “Ray,” Lori said slowly. He lowered his knife and croissant and looked up at her.

  And she immediately lost her nerve. “Should I take a plate up to Miss Katie?”

  “She’d like that.” Ray turned back to his food. Was it Lori’s imagination, or was he relieved?

  Lori fixed the second plate and hiked the stairs to Miss Katie’s room. She hoped she could buy herself some time, maybe test the waters, but Katie was asleep.

  Lori headed back down to Ray.

  Putting this off would only make it harder, Lori lectured herself. She needed to rip off the Band-Aid. “Ray,” she said once she reached the kitchen. And again, her courage faltered. “Did you have any idea she was still alive?”

  Ray whirled around so fast it practically gave Lori whiplash. “Katie? Is she okay?”

  “Yes — oh, sorry. She was just asleep. I meant Debbie.”

  He settled back in his seat, chewing two bites of food before answering. “No parent wants their child to die first,” he said at last. “I would have given anything to take her place. But at the same time . . . it just didn’t feel right to me.”

  How could losing a child ever feel right?

  Ray hunched over the table. “I just knew — just knew — she couldn’t be dead. A parent always knows. We’re supposed to, anyway.”

  Lori didn’t have much firsthand experience with this, but it seemed to her that she’d seen a lot of tearful parents on the news over the years insisting that their child couldn’t be dead and they felt it in their bones, swear on a stack of Bibles — and it always seemed to turn out that the child was dead.

  At the same time, she believed in mother’s intuition. She had to. She’d seen it work in her own life too many times to pretend it wasn’t real. She wasn’t a good enough parent or a smart enough person to have figured out all the times her boys needed her with the frequency that she had.

  “Or,” Ray said at length, “maybe you just can’t kill off the hope, too. Losing your child is enough. Can’t lose hope, too. So you keep hoping. Keep convincing yourself it has to be true.”

  Lori settled at the table with him. “Well, obviously it was true, up until yesterday.”

  Ray focused on his plate. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t think finding her would change anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Somewhere inside, I’d accepted it, that we probably wouldn’t get to see her again. But still, that hope . . .” He turned back to his plate, cutting his sausage patty into pieces.

  She’d come by before, but only Katie had been willing to talk about what had happened. Ray was only the deflated shell of the person she normally knew, but maybe that meant he was ready to really talk about what had happened. “Ray, yesterday, it kind of sounded like you did something rash when Debbie first went missing?”

  He set his silverware down. “Yes. I thought Mitch had more answers. It took about two minutes to see that he was just as scared and worried as we were. We didn’t understand what had happened.” Ray chuckled bitterly. “You know, I even went to Chip — multiple times — just in case they were going to run off together. For a long time I thought he knew more than he was letting on, but nothing ever seemed to come of it.

  Everyone, it seemed, was blindsided by Debbie’s actions. Katie had suspected that Debbie was unhappy, Lori remembered from yesterday, but she didn’t know if Ray had any idea about his daughter’s mental state. “Did Debbie tell you she was unhappy?”

  Ray nodded slowly. “We told her to find a new hobby. Forget herself and do service. Read a book.”

  “Did she do those things?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. “She left because she was unhappy.” The words were almost a question, but as if he was trying to convince himself of that fact.

  “Apparently her diary said she felt trapped. One person who’d read it said she sounded depressed.”

  Ray looked up at that. “Depressed? Debbie?” His bushy, wild eyebrows knit together. “But she spent time with us. She could still laugh. She said she was unhappy, but . . . I didn’t see it.” He rubbed his forehead. “What kind of father am I? Who couldn’t see his own daughter was suffering?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know what to look for,” Lori offered. “We picture someone who’s struggling like they have to be bawling and under a cloud of darkness all the time, and some of them are. But sometimes, it’s more like you’re just not yourself — you can’t do the things you love anymore, can’t be around the people you love, can’t function in the way you need to. Mental illness is . . . slippery.”

  Ray nodded, dropping his hand. Tears dotted his cheeks. “I should have known. I should have listened better.”

  Maybe that was true, maybe he could have done more for his daughter, but that didn’t change the past. “Blaming yourself doesn’t bring her back.”

  He popped a bite of sausage into his mouth. “You know, even last week, I would have thought you were talking crazy talk. But — no offense, I’m sure you worked very hard on this and it’s probably delicious — I can’t even taste my food I’m so upset these days. The color has gone out of life. If this is how she felt all the time . . . I almost can’t blame her for leaving.”

  Lori offered a sad smile. Mostly because of what Ray was saying, but also because of the knowledge burning inside her brain, knowing that there was someone else who deserved blame.

  Could she tell Ray about this and take someone else he loved away from him?

  Could she keep this secret, living across the street from him, knowing that Mitch had known all along Debbie was alive and hopefully well?

  “Did you have any idea? Any inkling at all?” Lori asked. She had to admit she was stalling to put off the real question.

  “I knew she couldn’t be dead. Even when everyone said she had to be. I knew it.” He sighed, using his fork to push the last two bites of sausage around on his plate.

  “So would it surprise you to hear that someone else knew she was alive?”

  Ray’s head snapped up. “What do you mean? Who knew she was alive?”

  “Well,” Lori drew the word out, hedging. “Obviously she did, and all the people around her, wherever she was living.”

  He rolled his faded blue eyes, his lips tighten
ed into a line. “You wouldn’t have said that if you meant them. You mean someone I know, too. Right?”

  She managed a slow nod.

  “Who? Why wouldn’t they tell me?”

  “Would it be worse for you to not know if she was dead — when you knew she wasn’t — or to know she was alive and wouldn’t come home?”

  Ray slammed a fist on the table. “Tell me who we’re talking about!”

  Lori met his eyes, took in the anger there. He had to already have some idea, didn’t he?

  His shoulders fell. “Not . . . Mitch?”

  She buttoned her lips together, a non-answer that was answer enough.

  Ray froze there for a very long second, just staring into space. “How could he be sure? Did she leave a note?”

  “No.” Lori shoved aside the feeling that she was betraying someone. She was righting a wrong. Wasn’t she? “He saw her. In Atlanta.”

  “But how could he be sure? That he wasn’t just seeing things? Do you know how many times I’ve thought I’ve seen her in the last decade?”

  “He talked to her. She recognized him. Asked him not to tell.”

  Ray nodded as if still numb from the news. “How long?” Ray asked.

  “How long . . . did he see her?”

  “How long did he know she was alive?”

  Lori lowered her voice. “Eight years.”

  The numb nod returned, bobbing his head in a rhythm that was all instinct and conviction. Like he should have known. Like this confirmed something he’d felt deep inside.

  “Are you going to tell Katie?” Lori asked

  “That Debbie didn’t care if she killed her mother?”

  “Wait — what?”

  Ray fastened a steely stare on Lori. “Losing Debbie nearly killed Katie. If I told her it all could have been avoided, it was just Debbie’s choice to hurt us? What would that do to her now? What kind of stress would that put on her heart? It nearly broke the last time. It could only be worse this time.”

  Lori absorbed his words. She’d done something she wasn’t sure about ethically or morally to tell him the truth, because they deserved to know the truth. And then Ray was doing the same the-buck-stops-here move that Mitch had pulled, keeping everyone in the dark?