Page 25 of Last Seen

Chapter Sixteen

Theo FaceTimes as she’s going to bed. She debates not answering, texting back that she needs some space, but she also wants to tell him about the weirdness that’s happened, the stranger, leaving the file in the car, how her memories—or whatever they are—seem to be coming back in flashes.

How disconcerting it is not being able to remember everything.

How right he was about the sense of madness chasing her.

She swipes open her phone.

“You called earlier?”

“Uh, force of habit,” she lies. “I admit, I’m still getting used to us not being ... us.”

“I’m not thrilled with that, either.”

“Can we just ... not? I’ve had a very long day.”

“All right. What made your day so long?”

She tells him. All of it, while silently cursing herself for using him as a crutch when she knows things are over. It’s not fair to either of them. And yet ...

“I don’t like this, Halley. You need to stop. The universe is telling you to back off.”

“The universe?” That makes her smile. “When did you get all mystic on me?”

“When plot point after plot point started piling up. Seriously, this story is worthy of a novel. Or one of your shows.”

He says “your shows” in a tone that implies daytime television, but in truth they are all crime related. It sparks a memory, though.

Her mom used to call them “my shows.” She would tape the afternoon soap operas— Days of Our Lives , Another World , Santa Barbara —and, after she kissed Halley good night, would go to her bedroom to watch her shows.

On days Halley was sick, her mom stayed home from work, and they’d snuggle together in her room and watch them live.

She hasn’t thought of that in years. These memories, stealing in on cats’ feet, will unhinge her if she doesn’t find a way to order them. Make them behave.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Theo asks softly.

Halley shakes her head. “Sorry. Everything seems to remind me of something I haven’t thought about in years. A novel, huh? Would you read it if I wrote it?”

“Of course. I’d read anything you wrote. I didn’t take you for a novelist, though.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m about as likely to write a book as I am to get on a roller coaster.

But apparently, my sister did. She was a poet and was planning to write a novel at this retreat in Tennessee.

I just wonder what she was using as inspiration.

The poetry I was able to find online was really dark. ”

His forehead creases in concern. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

“Theo, it’s my past. My mother. My sister. I can’t just pretend everything is okay. Nothing is the same. Every memory I have is ... not real.”

“That’s not true. All of your memories are real. What was the first thing I said to you when we met?”

“ ‘Ma’am, I think you dropped your scarf.’ ” She says it in as deep a voice as she can muster, and it makes him laugh.

“God, do I sound like that?”

“Yours is deeper. You could stand in for James Earl Jones.”

“Yeah, whatever. Now you’re being silly. I’m serious, though. Your memories are fine, Halley. You had a traumatic event that you’ve blocked out. That’s all.”

“Maybe.” She plays with the ends of her hair. “Dad’s getting married, by the way. Another thing he neglected to tell me.” She hears the sarcasm, and so does Theo.

“That’s kind of big news. Are you pissed at your dad for getting remarried?”

“No. Not at all. It just feels like he’s keeping an awful lot from me these days.”

“He had a pretty bad trauma, too, Hals. His wife was killed. His stepdaughter jailed. He was afraid for you. He did what he thought was best. I don’t know that I’d do it any differently if I was faced with the same situation.

Maybe it was better that you didn’t remember?

Those kinds of events can submarine a person.

You were so little ... I don’t know. See, this is why having kids is impossible.

There are no good results. Whatever decision you make, they get pissed at you in the end. ”

“And . . . we’re back.”

He sighs. “I just think that maybe you try to do the remembering in a safer environment. Like with a therapist or something.”

“I’ll think about it.” She yawns. “I’m beat.

Talk tomorrow? Maybe you can tell me about you for a change.

I’m getting bored of me.” The words slip out before she even thinks about them.

Shit. She needs to get a handle on this.

They are separated. They are not they anymore.

But Theo looks happier than she’s seen him in weeks at the ask.

“You could never be boring. I got nothing right now anyway. Just doing my thing. There’s an interesting case brewing in Texas, though.

I’m heading there in the morning. Some alleged terrorists left behind some matériel in a house in Dallas.

Yours truly gets to bring the newbie along to catalog and identify. ”

“That’s good, right? I mean, not that there are terrorists in Dallas, but if he’s being allowed on field assignments, he’s almost done training. You’ll be free again.”

“Right.”

“Charlie?”

“Will be staying next door overnight.” Their neighbor works from home and has a cocker spaniel whom Charlie adores. The two are BFFs. “Can you sleep, do you think?”

“I’ve had two margaritas. I will be dead to the world in five minutes.” She pauses. “Theo? Things are admittedly complicated right now. But I really appreciate you supporting me through all of this. I know it’s been a lot.”

“Car bombs are a lot. This is nothing. It’s dealable. We’ll figure it out. Just promise me you won’t be reckless. I don’t like this idea of you getting in the middle of this.”

“Promise. Give Charlie a kiss for me.”

“Just Charlie?”

“You too.” And she clicks off before he can respond.

Before she chucks it all and drives straight back to McLean, to his arms, to his bed.

God, this is not going how it’s supposed to go.

All they did before she moved out was fight.

Snarl and spit and slam doors. This gentle, concerned Theo is more like the guy she dated and married, and she likes him.

Maybe leaving has made him see her side of things, finally.

It doesn’t matter. Chemistry was never their issue. There is so much water under their proverbial bridge that a few kind words aren’t going to fix a thing.

Still, the house feels lonely without his handsome face on the screen. She straightens up, gathers up the cat and her phone, checks all the doors again, and wanders up the stairs. She’s asleep within moments of her head hitting the pillow.

The dream is new, a memory unleashed. She is walking down her old street in Nashville.

Birds chirp. Cars whoosh past. A man on a bicycle rings his bell as he goes by.

She is holding something, something soft.

A stuffed animal, a rabbit. Her best friend.

His name is Elvis. He goes with her everywhere.

He is clutched tightly in her arms as she walks up the street.

She’s not supposed to leave the yard, but Elvis saw a beautiful rose on a neighbor’s bush and wanted a closer look.

The rose is pink, just the same color as his nose.

It has so many petals, and they shimmer in the sunlight.

She looks around, up the street, down the street, sees no one, so breaks the rose from its stem and cradles it in her hand.

She scoots back to the house, to her yard, and goes inside to the kitchen. Presents Elvis with his prize.

There are voices in the living room—Mom and Cat, having another argument.

She ignores them, finds a small bowl, fills it with water, sets the rose in it.

It is so beautiful. She will take it to her mom when they stop fighting, and it will make her feel better.

Loved. She doesn’t get enough love. The rose flickers prettily in the bowl, and she sets Elvis on the counter so he can see.

But Elvis is covered in something. His sweet pink nose is bleeding.

She tries to wipe it away, but he comes alive, hopping across the counter, spilling the rose water and knocking over the bowl and leaving a trail of blood behind him.

She hurries after him, only to realize his throat is cut.

Gouts of blood pour from his small body, and she is covered in it, she is crying, there is no more fighting but silence, dark silence, deeper than anything she’s ever heard.

She runs after him and trips, falling. And the scream comes from her very soul, louder and louder and louder—

Halley comes awake sitting bolt upright, the scream dying in her throat. Ailuros is nowhere to be seen; she must have scared him away.

Her chest is heaving. She flips on the light. My God, what was that?

Elvis, she thinks, remembering the soft velveteen rabbit.

Cat had done something to Elvis. Was it real blood?

Or had she scrawled on him in red lipstick?

A slash across his plush little throat. A threat against her?

She’d cried and cried and cried, and her mom had promised to buy her another.

But she didn’t want another, she wanted her Elvis.

So her mom tried to wash him, and his fur tinged red so he was pink, not gray, and that bloody leer from his throat never went away.

Who would do that to their sister’s favorite toy?

The bosom buddy Halley insisted sit at the kitchen table and have his own plate of food at dinnertime?

She hated me. Cat hated me.

Halley realizes she is crying, that her heart hurts. Theo is right. Maybe she’s better off not remembering. She wipes her face and lies back down, but sleep will not come again.

She is motionless and quiet, breath shallow, forcing her mind to that spot of darkness within and getting nowhere.

When the first rays of dawn turn the light in the window milky, she gets up and moves downstairs woodenly. She makes coffee, going through the motions, still not fully awake.

The dream—the memory—is so vivid still. She doesn’t want to think about it, but her mind is compelled to reach back, to look, to see.

The rabbit with its throat cut; her tripping in the living room—how much of this is metaphor, and how much of it is real?

What had she tripped over? Her mother’s body?

And there it is, bright in her mind, the photo she stared at last night playing out in Technicolor, her mother with red stains spreading across her chest and her eyes open, the tears, her mouth moving.

What is she saying? She’s telling Halley something.

Halley closes her eyes and strains to access the memory; what is it? That thin whisper, so light, almost impossible to hear. One syllable. She says it again and again. These are her mother’s last words.

“Run. Run. Run.”

Blackness.

Chills course through her body. Halley opens her eyes.

Her heart is pounding. The mug is clenched in her hands, empty.

She is in the kitchen of her home in Marchburg.

The file on her mother’s murder is spread across the kitchen table, photos a jumbled mess, everything out of order, the stacks disturbed as if she’d stirred them with her hands like shuffling a large deck of cards. And the doorbell is ringing.

She sets the mug on the table and hurries to the door. Glances out the sidelight at a female face she doesn’t recognize.

“Don’t open the door for strangers,” her dad used to say. But she is a grown-up. The woman on the step is older, midfifties, dark hair streaked with gray in a perfect, shiny bob and kind brown eyes ringed in dark smudges. She looks very tired.

Halley opens the door, and the woman smiles politely. She has large, straight teeth.

“Good morning. I’m Jana Chowdhury. We spoke yesterday. May I come in?”