Page 14

THIRTEEN

Josie sat at Gretchen’s kitchen table, an untouched cup of chamomile tea in front of her. Trout lay at her feet, his head up, ears pointed, whining softly as he watched her. He’d always been attuned to her moods, keying in on any small shift in her emotional landscape. For the dozenth time, she reached down and scratched between his ears. She wanted to reassure him—in the silly baby-talk voice that she and Noah always used with him—that everything was okay, but he already knew that nothing was right in their world.

Where was Noah?

A glance at the digital clock on the microwave told her it was nearly three thirty in the morning and yet, the house hummed with activity as though it were the middle of the afternoon. In the dining and living rooms, Josie heard the low murmur of voices, the chirps and buzzes of cell phone notifications, and from the foyer, the creak of the front door opening and closing, the soft footfalls of people walking around.

She didn’t even remember coming here. One minute she was in front of her house, sitting in the back seat of Gretchen’s SUV, and the next, she was here, watching as Gretchen’s adult daughter, Paula, made her tea. She kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation, voice calm and even as she explained everything that was happening. She reminded Josie of a dentist she’d had once who chose to narrate everything he did as he worked so there were no surprises. You’re just going to feel a little pinch here and then some numbness. Except Paula told her things like, “You and Trout will stay as long as you need. The guest bedroom is already made up. We’ll keep the cat in Mom’s room while you’re here. You probably won’t be able to go back inside your house again until sometime tomorrow, but we’ll get you anything you need. Mom sent someone to the twenty-four-hour Walmart to get Trout a leash and some food. You can use my phone charger.”

On and on she went. The only indication that she wasn’t feeling as calm as she sounded was the way she repeatedly twirled a lock of her long, brown hair around her index finger. Josie tried to ignore the tic and only focus on Paula’s voice, which was surprisingly soothing.

Trout whimpered and stood up, licking at her fingertips. Absently, she scratched his head again. From the other room there was a shift in the tone of the inaudible conversations. A ripple of some sort, news traveling. Then silence and finally, a slow return to the earlier noise level. Gretchen appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Keep them out there until I say,” she told her daughter. “All of them.”

Paula crossed her arms over her chest and nodded resolutely. Though taller than her mother, the resemblance between the two was striking.

Gretchen pushed a hand through her short, spiked brown and gray hair and pulled out a kitchen chair. She sat down and then inched her way as close to Josie as humanly possible, until their knees touched. Trout cried, jumping up and digging his claws into Gretchen’s thigh. He was trying to tell her that something was horribly wrong, and she needed to fix it. Someone needed to fix it.

“Hey,” Gretchen said, patting his head until he got down. “I called your sister. She’s on her way from New York. In the meantime, she got in touch with your parents and your brother. They’ll be here soon. Who else do I need to call?”

Josie hadn’t let her mind wander that far. The law enforcement officer in her told her that within hours, Noah’s face would be plastered all over social media and the news—not just locally but perhaps even nationally. Calls needed to be made. Not just to gather people for moral support but to make sure their loved ones heard the news about Noah’s abduction from Josie and not from anywhere else.

“I—” Josie began but her thoughts were too jumbled. How many people did she need to call? There was Noah’s older sister and brother. They’d want to know. Should she call his father? They’d been estranged since Noah turned eighteen. Who else needed to know?

“Josie,” said Gretchen, “I’ll make the calls if you give me the names.”

Paula had put her phone on the table next to her untouched tea, plugged into a charger with a cord that reached halfway across the room. Josie brought the screen to life and then tried to log in using her thumbprint but it didn’t work. There were still flakes of primer caked and dried on the screen. Instead, she tapped in her passcode, saying it out loud for Gretchen’s benefit. Noah’s birthday or their anniversary date would have been too obvious, too easy for a hacker or anyone, really, to guess so she’d used the date they’d first had sex. It was silly and a little embarrassing although only she and Noah knew what her passcode referenced. The day was permanently marked in her mind because they’d dated for over six months before becoming physical. Josie had wanted to take things slow, to make sure she was present for Noah and not using his body as a way to blunt feelings she didn’t want to face. When it finally happened, it had been transcendent.

Worth the wait. He’d always been worth the wait.

Josie pushed the phone toward Gretchen, rattling off the names of his siblings. She left out his father. She doubted he would care.

“How about Misty?” Gretchen said.

Misty Derossi was one of their best friends. Noah and Josie were so involved in her eight-year-old son Harris’s life, that he referred to them as his aunt and uncle. Pain seized her abdomen at the thought of little Harris. He adored Noah. In fact, Noah was the closest thing Harris had to a father. He was going to be so confused and upset. Terrified. It would be up to his mother whether to tell him and if so, how much to divulge. These were the kinds of things parents had to do that Josie hadn’t taken into account in their quest to have children. They only ever talked about the fun, positive things. The snuggling, the playing, watching their future baby stand or walk for the first time.

“I’ll call Misty,” Gretchen said, taking the phone. There were a few beats of silence, Gretchen studying her. “You’re really checked out right now, which I get. Believe me, I understand. Better than most people.”

It was true. Gretchen was one of the few people in Josie’s life who could match her trauma for trauma, starting in childhood. Like Josie, she’d endured unspeakable things. Abuse, tragedy, loss so big that it defied reality. Like Josie, she’d survived most of her life by constructing an impenetrable fortress deep inside her psyche that held all of her feelings so her heart wouldn’t have to—even the good ones. Emotions were messy and unpredictable. When you’d lived on the razor’s edge of trauma and tragedy for so long, messy and unpredictable became tantamount to death. Better to stay comfortably anesthetized. They’d grown good at it.

“Josie,” Gretchen said, “I need you to listen to me right now.”

Eight years ago, Josie had become the interim Chief of Police in Denton after she’d exposed a human trafficking ring that left the department with vacancies to fill. She’d hired Gretchen because she had fifteen years of experience as a homicide detective with Philly PD but what she’d brought into Josie’s life was a mirror. She understood Josie in ways no other human being ever could.

“Wherever you are right now,” Gretchen went on, “you need to come back.”

For the first time since returning home from her shift, there was a tiny crack in Josie’s mental armor. Emotion, hot and thick, poured through it, filling her body. Saliva clogged her throat. A burning, aching sensation started behind her eyes. The precursor to tears. “I can’t,” she whispered.

Both she and Gretchen had done a lot of work to process all their trauma, to learn how to feel and manage their emotions, how to communicate and move through crises in healthy ways. Years of therapy, of practicing their newfound skills with those closest to them, had helped but dead inside was still a default setting. Any alternative was too damn scary.

Gretchen knew it.

“Then forget about being Noah’s wife right now,” she said. “Be the investigator who cleared that house tonight. Can you do that?”

Slowly, Josie nodded. She touched her cheek. No tears had escaped.

“Heather Loughlin is here. She caught the case. I’m going to send her in.”

Josie gave another mute nod. Heather was a detective with the state police Criminal Investigation Division. She worked with the Denton PD often on cases in which jurisdiction, evidence, or witnesses overlapped. Josie knew her to be thorough, fair, and persistent. As Noah’s wife, she was glad Heather was taking point on this.

Trout bumped against Josie’s legs, still whining. He didn’t even acknowledge Heather when she took Gretchen’s place.

“Never thought we’d be meeting like this,” Heather sighed. Her trademark blonde ponytail was messier than usual. The skin around her eyes was puffy. She’d been wakened in the middle of the night, like everyone else. A notepad and pen appeared in her hands, along with a pair of reading glasses, which she perched on her nose. “I read your initial statement, but I want you to walk me through what happened tonight anyway.”

Josie blinked, willing her brain to come back online. She couldn’t work this case herself. Couldn’t do anything, really. She’d be on the sidelines, which meant the only thing she could do to help her husband was to answer all of Heather’s questions. Her mind needed to be quick and alert. Trout gave a little cry of protest that the second human to appear in the kitchen in the last ten minutes also hadn’t fixed Josie, and then he flopped down across her feet. Josie’s throat felt dry and scratchy. She took a sip of the tea, now cold, and told Heather everything. Then she waited for the barrage of questions she knew were coming.

The same ones she’d ask if she were in the other chair.