Chapter 19

Jess

Jack O'Brien owns the property where we found the body.

Shane's words slide down my neck, landing in my belly like lead as I stare into the darkness behind Sammy's. My phone, pressed to my ear, is cold, my bare hands already half-numb.

"So Alice's uncle owns the house where we found Ella's bloody backpack and a body," I say.

"He bought it and the surrounding land last year, before the Harpers went missing," Shane says. "He plans to extend the gated community he's been building over by Killer's Grove, but it's been tied up getting planning permission."

"Hell of a coincidence." My voice is heavy with sarcasm.

"For sure."

It's stopped snowing now, the clouds scuttling across an iron-gray sky, dancing over a yellow moon curved as sharp as a scythe.

"Do you wanna . . . ," Shane begins, hesitant.

"Spit it out, Shane."

"Meet me at Jack O'Brien's office tomorrow morning?"

"I'll be there."

At home, I pull my motorcycle up to the curb and sit for a moment, engine going. The automatic timer has kicked on, the lights releasing a homey warm glow. But inside, it's cold and empty, a brooding silhouette forever altered by Isla's death.

I think of what it would be like if Mac were still here. The fire dancing in the grate. The smell of something comforting cooking, a roast or a casserole. How he'd set down his book when I walked in. How was your day? he'd ask, and he'd take me in his arms, and all the darkness of my job would melt away.

I shake the regrets off and pinch the remote control attached under my seat. The garage opens, and I pull inside.

The house bullies me with its silence. After seeing Will and Mac at the pub, I feel unsettled, badly in need of a drink. Of course they know each other, but I didn't know they were drinking buddies. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm not exactly sure why.

I go directly to the kitchen for my routine.

The thing I do, I need to do, every night.

Some recovering alcoholics turn to religion, some to exercise, but we all have something. This is what I do to remind myself.

I pour two fingers of Jack Daniel's into an old plastic Snoopy cup, Isla's favorite. Over time, one of Snoopy's ears and part of an eye have been scratched off. It looks like he's winking.

I swirl the booze, let the sugary scent of vanilla and oak rise up to greet me. I imagine the soothing burn, feel the tightness in my throat. Only a thin piece of plastic separates me from my past, from who I was.

I open my phone, scroll through my pictures to one of Mac, Isla, and me at Disneyland the year before the accident. We're all wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

You're worthless. A killer. They deserved better than you.

Sometimes the whiskey is cruel.

"One little drink." My gaze slides again to the picture.

This is what you lose.

I stand there, inhaling and exhaling. Then I toss the whiskey down the sink.

I put some Christmas songs on and pull out ingredients for gingerbread Santa cookies. I eat a Cup Noodles as I mix and sift and stir. The scent of sugar and spices floats through the house, the music moving from familiar Christmas songs to weirder ones by pop stars I've never heard of.

My love affair with baking began shortly after rehab. Will picked me up with a container of cookies his wife, Shelby, had baked. That night, I got home from seeing Mac and I cried on the floor while eating them. They tasted like heaven, like nostalgia and hope. I decided to make them myself. I baked and baked and ate and ate.

My love affair with swimming began soon after.

I mix red and white buttercream frosting and decorate my Santa cookies, then leave them on the counter and move into the living room. I flick on the gas fire and lie down on the couch, prop my bad leg on a cushion. It's been a long day, and it's throbbing, an insistent, dull ache.

I stare at the flickering flames, steering my mind in a different direction. Something I can't figure out: Why didn't Pete Harper speak to me?

I'm pinned by a horrible realization. Maybe the dead won't speak to me anymore.

Giving the dead a voice doesn't absolve me of what happened to Isla. But maybe that's what I've been hoping. That solving this case, and the next one, and the one after that will turn me into someone who deserved the family she had. Can I ever be that person?

I'm drifting off, weighted by invisible anchors. I dream something is beeping, the warning sound of a dying battery.

The temperature in the room dips, ice trickling down my spine. An uncomfortable pressure builds, somewhere between my ears. The air has turned dense, pounding at my skull. Beep. Beep. Beep. The fine hairs on the back of my neck rise as I jerk awake.

The doorbell is ringing.

I expect Isla to be here, but she isn't. I've been seeing her less lately. My shrink has theories. I'm healing. Letting go. Allowing my mind to explore the possibility of a life without her. Things I'm supposed to do. But seeing Isla, knowing she exists, if only in my mind, maybe I don't want to lose that.

The doorbell goes again. I scoop my cane off the floor and yank the door open.

"Mac," I breathe.

My estranged husband looks a little unkempt, a lot drunk. His eyes are red and bleary, stubble bristling his jaw.

"You stopped calling," he slurs. The scent of whiskey is sharp on his breath.

They say 80 percent of marriages end after the death of a child, but I'd say that figure is higher when one is directly responsible for the child's death. For so long afterward, I wasn't able to face Mac. My shame was a physical thing. I'm still haunted by Isla, but I'm trying to focus on the future, too.

"Why are you here?"

His hands reach up, scrubbing at the webbed reds of his eyes. "For the anniversary."

I look over his shoulder at the snowy road. I can't send him back out in this.

"Why don't you come inside?"

Mac follows me into the living room, swaying a little before slumping onto the couch. I bring him a glass of water and a gingerbread cookie on a plate.

He lifts one eyebrow. "Cute." The old Jess never baked so much as a chocolate chip cookie. "How are you?"

"Good."

The lie sits between us, a jagged crack too deep to fill. The problem with lies is they leave debris—debris that eventually needs to be swept up.

Silence expands and stretches. I sneak my knuckles into my thigh, trying to release the pain. I have a sudden sense of déjà vu, like I'm sitting inside a memory, the present and the past, dread and longing.

"Where are you staying?"

"My parents'." He eats the cookie in a few quick bites.

Mac's parents don't speak to me anymore. I'm not sure if they're too caught up in their own grief or if they still blame me, but it doesn't matter. I blame myself enough for all of us.

"Oh."

My one-word reply sounds stiff, awkward. Is it really possible that only a little over a year ago, we were a couple? He knew me deeply, intimately, like his finger could trace me like braille. Like I was a road he'd memorized, rutted and uneven. And now we are like strangers.

Mac and I met at a bar in Boston. I was meeting my sister, who introduced him to me, waggling one eyebrow suggestively behind a curved palm. He was tall and lean, this long-limbed guy with shaggy blond hair and a wide, white-toothed smile. He looked like a hippie, not a law student, with his scuffed Converse and his beaded leather bracelet. It turned out his niece had made it for him, which I found endearing.

What do you call it when you find someone you've been waiting for your whole life? Love at first sight? I'm not sure I believe in that, but there was something about Mac that made me want him to stay. Not just that night, but every night. It was like finding my way home.

I wanted to be the reason for that smile, wanted to live in his blue eyes. He was funny and smart and hot . Very hot. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. A defense attorney and a cop, we had all the cards stacked against us, but we made it work. Until Isla died.

"Why were you with Will?" I sit in the armchair, leaning my cane against my knee.

"Ran into him in town. He mentioned you'd been demoted for this new case." Mac studies me. "Do you want to talk about it?"

This is something I used to do when a case got sticky: talk it through with Mac, unraveling the threads that had knotted in my head.

"All right." I adjust in the armchair and tell him about the Harper case. "Why would a family in perfect health, with no crazy debts and no reason to run, walk away from their entire life, but leave their teenage daughter behind?"

"They wouldn't," he says immediately.

"So they're dead."

"Most likely. Have you found a connection to the body in the suitcase and the backpack?"

"Nothing concrete. But the blood on the backpack is Ella Harper's. The house where we found the body and the backpack is owned by Jack O'Brien, her uncle, and it's walking distance from Killer's Grove, where the Harpers went missing."

Mac leans forward, elbows on knees. "Enemies?"

"Pete and Laura were active in the community. Laura volunteered by painting with underprivileged kids. Pete was a member of a local photography club. They had good credit history, not even an outstanding parking ticket between them. They were well liked with literally no enemies."

"Well, that can't be true," Mac counters. "Nobody has no enemies. There has to be somebody out there who had something against one or both of them. Even if they loved them, too. It's possible to feel love and hate at the same time."

My mouth goes sticky. I want to ask: Is that how you feel? But I don't.

Mac pokes a finger onto his empty plate, gathering the cookie crumbs.

"There were rumors Laura Harper was having an affair. Never confirmed in any interviews, though. If it's true, it makes the theory that Pete did it more compelling, but it still doesn't explain why he'd leave one daughter alive and not the other."

Mac thinks about that. "You know I went to Black Lake High with Pete?"

My eyebrows lift. "Seriously?"

"He was a couple of years below me, so I didn't know him well. Pete was one of the smart kids, a little shy, chess club, band club. But he had a sense of humor, which gives you an edge in high school. People liked him. I wouldn't pick him for a family annihilator."

"He fits. A loving husband, a good father, not known to criminal justice or mental health service, seen publicly as successful and well liked. And if there was an affair, possibly even a family breakup, that's the most common cause of family murders."

"True. Self-righteous killers hold the mother responsible for the breakdown of the family. Maybe he found out about the affair. Maybe she was going to leave him. I just ... I don't know. The Pete I remember was just a nice, normal guy."

"Even nice guys can turn into family annihilators," I point out. "You never know with some people."

"But you don't think he did it."

I sigh, rub my thigh. "I guess I don't want to tell a girl who lost her family that her father's the one responsible."

"You're protecting her."

"Maybe."

Again, silence stretches between us, the flames dancing in the shadows. But this time it feels warm and comfortable, like chicken soup on a wintry day.

"If I'd stayed, would we have worked things out?" Mac's voice is low and ragged, like he's swallowed coal and the sound is filtering through the jagged edges. "Would we still be together?"

Mac's words stab ice picks into every raw nerve. And then he's at my knee, hands grasping mine. His eyes, the color of sea glass, are rimmed with red, glistening with unshed tears. The booze on his breath smells sweet. I want to lick his lips.

"It wasn't your fault, Mac. I pushed you away. I went ... insane. I think I still am."

"You can go insane. What happened, it isn't fair. You can cry and scream and go completely crazy. You have the right to do that. We both do. Just come back. All right? Just come back to me."

His face is a constellation of emotion, but the truth about grief: it makes you selfish. My pain felt bigger than his. It still does.

"Maybe, one day, we can find a way of surviving without her," Mac says. "Together."

I drop my forehead to his, tears welling in my eyes.

Our left hands are entwined, wedding rings pressed together. I've never taken mine off, not once. Has he?

"I don't deserve you," I whisper.

"Let me be the judge of that."

And then his mouth is on mine, his hands in my hair. He smells of lemongrass and whiskey and heat and I want him, God I want him. Our bodies are like forgotten shipwrecks on the ocean floor, rising to the surface to be exposed to the harsh white sun once more.