Page 43 of Marked By Shadows
“None of you care!” Melissa shouted at them. “She could be dead and none of you care!”
I scooted closer to Alex, careful not to touch the leg he was using to press the pedal, but leaning against his hip. He paused and glanced at me, looking at the group for a moment before his gaze fell behind me. He frowned. Was the cat still there?
“Alex?” I whispered.
“Sit on my other side,” he instructed.
I blinked at him, but crawled around to the opposite side of his chair and wrapped myself around his other leg. He returned to his sewing, occasionally looking up, and toward the machine we had been using. I wondered what he saw. The cat? Perhaps even Byrony’s ghost? He didn’t tell me, and I was okay with that. Instead I focused on watching him stitch and tuning out the others. Even as the argument escalated.
“We do care. That’s why we are trying not to get in their way,” Nicole defended.
“None of us are from here,” Julie pointed. “Except Freya. I wouldn’t know what to look for even if we were out there.”
“How hard is it to look forpeople?” Melissa demanded.
“If you’re so worried then why aren’t you out there?” Jonah asked. “We all stood on the back porch watching the police for a while. They are in the woods. Not just one or two of them, but many. You saw them same as we did. They asked us all questions. Talked to everyone. If someone hurt Byrony and Joe, they are the ones equipped to help them. And as a black man, I can assure you, there are only a handful of things I trust the police with. Finding a famous white girl and her boyfriend, is one of them.”
Melissa paced. And I could almost feel the anger and tension rolling off of her. Her hands were clenched at her sides and she vibrated with an energy that indicated she wanted to hurt someone.
I suspected it was more self-loathing than anything else. A frustration of being unable to really do anything perhaps. And I tried to understand, if it was Alex missing, I’d be freaking out too. But not on the only people I had for support right now. Alone in another state without Alex? I’d have turned to Freya and Chad and MaryAnn for comfort. Maybe Melissa didn’t feel close enough to any of them to find something other than rage.
“The detectives on site said they would let us know if they needed anything,” Alex said, glancing up a time or two. His gaze fell back to the other machine often enough that I worried at my lip over what he was seeing. “It’s my understanding, that this early in the process, they are ruling out all possibilities.”
“What other possibility could there be?” Melissa demanded.
“Dozens,” Chad chimed in. “They got lost. They caught a ride with a friend. They wandered onto someone else’s property. That one of them was hurt and the other took them to the hospital. There are dozens of possibilities. Not all of them mean they are missing or hurt. We see stupid drunk kids back home do really dumb things all the time. They get reported missing and someone finds them at a friend of a friend’s house ‘cause they were too drunk to remember how to get home.”
“They weren’t drinking,” Melissa defended.
“Do you know that? You left them. They could have done anything after you left,” MaryAnn pointed out. “Look. I’m worried too. But getting mad at us is not going to bring them back.”
And wasn’t that the truth? How many times after Alex had gone missing, did Lukas scream at me or Sky, or even his fellow cops? He lashed out until they forced him onto paid leave, requiring him to see a therapist before he had any chance of returning to work. He hadn’t gone. Not until Alex came home. Sky said Lukas was going to therapy now, twice a week. It was that or give up his job. He hadn’t really had enough time to experience change from his sessions, but I hoped it helped them both.
Finally, Alex stopped the machine, finished with the stitching. Edge to edge filled with design. He freed the piece from the machine and took it back to the cutting table, taking a wide berth around the machine we had used to sew it together. I frowned at the empty space.
“What’s next?” Alex asked.
“We trim the extra off and bind it.” I looked at the regular machine.
“Maybe we can use a different machine?”
“My regular machine is in our cabin.” I glanced at the clock. It was almost three in the afternoon. “Why don’t we trim it and then take it back to the cabin.” I’d be thrilled to escape the group right now. The anger, frustration, and irritation was growing among them like a tangible thing. They still bantered back and forth, arguing about things they could do, should do, and whether or not the police would let them. Tuning them out was the only way I could breathe through all that aggression and the lingering sense of unease that filled my gut.
“Sure. Then we can head out to dinner.” Alex laid out the quilt, holding up the ruler and rotary blade for me. Getting away from the house sounded like a good idea too. He kept glancing at the unused machine, gaze flicking to meet mine several times as he seemed to be telling me to stay away from it too.
I trimmed the piece with practiced efficiency, threw the waste away, and folded up the quilt, gathering the binding I’d created so I could finish it later. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow morning for the first day of the convention,” I told the group as I followed Alex to the door.
“You won’t be back later?” Julie asked.
Not if I could help it. I needed to be away from them if I was going to last the rest of the trip without screaming at someone.
“Nah,” Alex said. “We’re going to eat out and then have a quiet evening in. I think we could both use the rest.”
Everyone wished us well, except Melissa, who seemed to glare at us on our way out. I admit I didn’t understand her. When Alex vanished, I’d spent a lot of time badgering the police and Lukas for any news. I’d also wasted a ridiculous number of hours watching the camera feeds from my garden, like it had some sort of portal he would magically reappear from. If Alex had gone missing from the woods, I’d be out there, either bothering the cops, or searching myself. Maybe they’d told her they didn’t want her around? If she had bothered them as much as she was bugging us, then perhaps that was the case.
I sighed as we made our way across the lawn. There were police in the woods. I could see them, a handful of who seemed to be moving methodically through the area. So they were searching. Had they found anything yet? Perhaps were looking for evidence?
“The aggression did something to the cat,” Alex said as we reached the cabin door and I unlocked it.