Page 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE GOFFMANS

Alice looks at the bloody sweatshirt that sits on the passenger seat of her car. As soon as she parked in the visitor spot in front of the campus police station she felt a wave of overwhelming anxiety, a sense of impending doom.

She’s suffered panic attacks enough over the years to understand that she’s not dying—that her shortness of breath, the pain in her chest, the tingling in her hands, are physical manifestations of the maelstrom going on in her head. The questions that kept her up all night: Where is Felix? Why hasn’t he called? Whose sweatshirt was in his laundry? And why is it covered with blood?

She starts the breathing exercise the counselor taught her long ago. She began having panic attacks in the early days of her marriage, when her teenage husband was prone to punching holes in the wall. It was the unpredictability of it all—how he could go from smiling and joking to putting a fist through drywall without warning. His fist eventually moved from the wall to Alice. When his aim turned to her little boy, Alice did the only courageous thing she’s ever done in her life. She scooped up Felix in her arms, walked to the bus station, and headed west.

Though the panic attacks have subsided over the years, they’ve never completely gone away. They remain unpredictable, like her ex’s rage.

Continuing her deep, measured breaths, she repeats a mantra, “This too shall pass,” over and over again. She feels like she’s drowning, the water rising and about to swallow her. Alice’s mind flits to the student who died this week: Natasha Belov. Was this how she felt trapped in that sea cave?

Alice squeezes her eyes shut. This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.

At long last, her heart rate slows and her thoughts begin to clear.

She needs to get out of the car, go into the police station, and turn the bloody sweatshirt over to Chief McCray. It might be connected to the disappearance of the kids. It might help find Felix and his friends.

But her thoughts jump to the file she absconded from the dean’s office. The one he’s been asking about. The one that told lies about her Felix.

This too shall pass.

As if in a trance, she climbs out of the car, walks to the back of the vehicle, and opens the trunk. There, she throws the blood-covered hoodie next to the file and slams the lid shut.