Cedar Cove 01 - 16 Lighthouse Road

by Debbie Macomber

  They’d been little more than teenagers when they got married. So young…It hadn’t mattered that they’d lived below the poverty line, they were happy. Vietnam had shaken up their lives, but they’d survived and so had the marriage.

  Wednesday night was her aerobics class, and Grace hurried in the front door, coming straight home from the library. To her surprise, the house on Rosewood Lane was dark and silent.

  “Dan?” she called out. Almost always he was home before her.

  Nothing.

  The first thing her husband did when he walked in was turn on the television. He showered and changed clothes, but the TV was on, even if he wasn’t watching.

  He hadn’t mentioned anything that morning about being late. She checked the calendar to be sure he didn’t have a dentist’s or doctor’s appointment, but nothing was noted. Pulling hamburger out of the refrigerator, she hurriedly put together a casserole and placed it in the oven, then packed her exercise clothes and tennis shoes inside her gym bag.

  The phone rang and she answered it immediately, expecting to hear Dan’s voice. The caller was someone wanting to ask her questions for a survey; she got rid of him in short order. Answering the phone prompted her to check the machine, but there were no messages.

  When the oven timer went off sixty minutes later, she took out the beef-and-rice casserole and set it on the stovetop to cool. Wednesday evenings were hectic for Grace. Dan didn’t object to her attending the exercise class, but he didn’t like waiting for her to return before he ate dinner. Consequently, Grace rushed home, got a meal on the table and then rushed out the door to meet Olivia for their seven o’clock class.

  When it was obvious that Dan wasn’t going to be there to join her, Grace ate alone. She picked at the casserole, which was one of his favorite recipes and not hers. Because she’d be leaving him, she always chose a dish she knew he’d enjoy. That was something she did, almost unconsciously, on Wednesdays.

  As she sat at the table, the space across from her empty, Grace reviewed that morning’s conversation for something she might have missed. The alarm had gone off at the usual time. Dan made the coffee and packed his lunch; Grace showered and dressed. They each had toast and homemade strawberry preserves while she wrote her list for the day and he read the Bremerton Sun. After thirty-five years together, they’d settled into the comfort of habit.

  Grace couldn’t recall Dan saying or doing anything out of the ordinary that morning. She’d kissed him on his way out the door, same as usual, mentioned what she’d be making for dinner and said she’d see him that evening. With his thermos and lunch bucket in hand, he’d headed for his truck and pulled out of the driveway. An hour later, after she’d finished wiping down the kitchen counter and running a load of laundry, Grace left for the library. Their morning routine had been the same as always. But where was Dan?

  “You’re making too much of this,” Grace said aloud. It was just that the house seemed so empty. Everything felt slightly wrong without him there. He should’ve been sitting in front of the television, drinking his after-dinner coffee, watching the news.

  Grace delayed leaving for her exercise class as long as she could. Before she went to the gym, she jotted a note and left it on the kitchen counter where Dan would see it when he came in the back door.

  Driving into the lot at the YMCA a few minutes late, Grace noticed that Olivia was waiting for her. Her friend seemed positively lighthearted, and Grace wondered if her good mood could be attributed to the news about James or her dinner date with Jack Griffin.

  “You’re looking terrific,” Grace commented, as they walked into the building.

  Olivia laughed. “I feel terrific.”

  “How was your date?”

  Olivia didn’t answer right away. “Interesting.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I find Jack Griffin an interesting guy. He’s thoughtful, well-read, has strong opinions. He seems open and honest, and yet there’s a hint of…mystery about him. It’s probably nothing important, but you know how much I hate secrets and deceptions.”

  “What kind of mystery?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s friends with Bob Beldon. Apparently they’ve known each other for ten years, but he never once mentioned how they met. It seemed odd, you know?”

  Grace wasn’t sure she did, but she let her friend continue talking because it distracted her from worrying about Dan. She was overreacting, she told herself again, but then she had a tendency to do that. Her imagination frequently got the best of her. The girls were never just late, they’d been in a horrible car crash and were lying in a ditch bleeding, calling out for her. That was just how her mind worked. It was probably all the murder mysteries she read.

  “You’re certainly quiet,” Olivia remarked.

  “Me?” Grace returned, acting surprised.

  “Yeah, you. Is something wrong?”

  “What could be wrong? I’m fine—great. Excited about Kelly’s news.”

  “How’s Dan?”

  Olivia always did have a way of homing in on the problem. Grace glanced toward her and sighed.

  “It is Dan, isn’t it? Is he in another one of his moods?”

  They entered the crowded locker room and Grace found a place on the bench. “No. Actually, his spirits have been good lately. I know we’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but this is a positive time for us both.”

  “Stan and I had our own roller-coaster ride.”

  This wasn’t encouraging, seeing that her friend had been divorced for nearly fifteen years.

  Olivia looked away. “You know what I mean.”

  Grace nodded. Olivia might be divorced but, regardless of anything she might say to the contrary, she remained linked to Stan by more than their children. He’d been the love of her life, and the death of their oldest son and the divorce that followed hadn’t changed that. Stan would always be part of Olivia’s life, even while he was married to another woman. Grace understood this. She doubted that Olivia fully recognized the strength of her bond to him.

  “What’s up with Dan?” Olivia pressed.

  Grace stripped off her sweats and changed her shoes. “He isn’t home from work yet.” Then, before Olivia could chastise her for worrying, she added, “He probably had an appointment and forgot to tell me.”

  “He might have said something and it slipped your mind,” Olivia suggested.

  “Sure.” Grace had already considered that scenario, but didn’t really believe it. Something was wrong. Her heart told her and her head echoed that certainty, pounding with fear.

  Probably because of her pent-up anxiety, Grace had the best workout of her life. By the time class finished, she was so weak she could barely walk back to the change room.

  “Call me,” Olivia said as they strolled toward the parking lot. The air was damp and cold, and their breath came out in little puffs of fog. The huge lights in the asphalt lot cast a bluish glow.

  “I’m sure Dan’s home by now,” Grace murmured.

  “I’m sure he is, too,” Olivia said, but her words rang false.

  Grace waited until Olivia was inside her car before she got into her own. As she turned down Rosewood Lane, her heart beat so loudly it sounded like a distant drumbeat in her ear. She felt almost as though she were sitting in a theater and the music preceding a tense moment in the story had begun, growing louder and louder around her.

  Other than the porch light, the house was still dark. Dread suffused her whole being. She could hardly breathe.

  Where the hell was Dan?

  Then it occurred to her that he might be in bed. If he’d had to work overtime or been delayed in traffic, he’d probably arrived home exhausted. In that case, he’d have showered and gone straight to bed.

  Only Dan’s truck wasn’t in its usual parking space. Going inside, Grace sat her gym bag in the laundry room, then moved into the darkened living room and slowly lowered herself into her husband’s recliner. The cushion gave,
broken down by years of use, and she sank into the comfortable old chair he loved so much. That was when she started to shake.

  She waited fifteen minutes, then walked into the kitchen and reached for the phone. Without turning on the light, she dialed Olivia’s number and let it ring until her friend answered.

  “Dan isn’t here.”

  Olivia didn’t say anything for several tense moments. Then calmly, as though this was an everyday occurrence, she said, “I’ll be right over.”

  Seven

  Grace sat up all night, her fears out of control. Olivia had stayed up with her until after midnight, when she’d fallen asleep on the sofa out of sheer exhaustion. Grace let her friend sleep. There wasn’t anything Olivia could say that would reassure her. Nothing either one of them could do, for that matter. None of this felt real.

  At six-thirty, just as the first light of morning crept toward the horizon, Olivia woke. Bolting upright, she blinked rapidly and looked around.

  “Have you heard anything?” she asked, rubbing her face with both hands.

  Grace shook her head. She’d brewed a pot of coffee, more for something to do than any desire for caffeine.

  “I think it’s time I called Troy Davis,” Olivia said in that no-nonsense way of hers. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?”

  Grace nodded, and automatically poured them each a cup of coffee. She stood in the kitchen, sipping hers, while Olivia made the call to the local sheriff’s office. She found it difficult to keep her mind clear and focused. The sleepless night hadn’t helped. Her thoughts were fearful and obsessive—ideas of where Dan might be, what could have happened, what plausible reason he might have for not coming home.

  “Troy isn’t on duty until seven,” Olivia explained when she’d finished.

  “Should we go there ourselves?”

  “No, I talked to Lowell Price and he said Troy would take a drive out here. He knows Dan and he’ll want to handle this personally.”

  Grace felt a tremendous sense of relief. “Should I phone the girls?” After all those sleepless hours of worrying, she seemed incapable of making decisions.

  Olivia appeared to weigh her answer. “Why don’t you wait until after you’ve talked to Troy?”

  “All right.” She hated the idea of alarming her daughters, but they had a right to know their father had disappeared. Dear God, where could he be? Never in all the years they’d been married had Dan done anything like this. Something had to be very wrong.

  “Have you given any more thought to where Dan might’ve gone?”

  She had, but Grace found it hard to voice the words. “Lately…before Kelly announced she was pregnant, Dan’s been…” She didn’t know how to continue and struggled not to break into tears. “I think there might be another woman.”

  “Dan? No way! He’s not the type.” Olivia shook her head adamantly. “Not Dan,” she repeated. “No way.”

  Grace found it hard to believe herself. But unlikely though it seemed, the thought refused to leave her mind. “I realized a long time ago that we don’t have a perfect marriage, but lately it’s…it’s as though something’s changed in Dan. He’s different.” There, she’d said it, but putting into words exactly what was different about her husband proved far more difficult. She knew he was restless. He’d been moody for thirty years, ever since Vietnam, but lately the swings had been wider, more extreme. Whenever she tried to draw him out, get him to confide in her, Dan seemed to resent her effort. That had led Grace to wonder if there was someone else he was talking to, someone else he’d come to care about. The only time he’d been himself lately was when they’d heard Kelly’s wonderful news. After their daughter’s announcement, everything had been better—for a while. Now this.

  “Dan just isn’t the kind of man who would cheat on you,” Olivia said in a confident voice.

  “Do any of us really know our husbands?” Grace asked quietly. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but her friend had learned that lesson the hard way. Apparently Stan had met his current wife while commuting on the ferry to his job in Seattle. Grace didn’t think he’d been involved in an actual affair with Marge, but she’d offered a sympathetic ear after Jordan’s death and had helped Stan deal with the guilt and anger that followed. His relationship with Marge had been one of emotional rather than sexual intensity. It was the only thing that could explain how quickly he’d remarried.

  Olivia didn’t answer right away. Carrying her mug, she paced the area in front of the sofa. “What makes you think Dan might be seeing someone else?”

  Grace didn’t have any specific details. “It’s more of a gut feeling,” she said with a helpless shrug.

  “Think back over the last six months. Has he taken special care with his appearance, attended meetings at odd times of the day or night?”

  Her mind was a blank. “Uh…not that I recall.”

  “Didn’t you say he went hunting last fall?”

  Grace nodded. He’d taken up the sport after a long absence, and while it wasn’t something she could possibly like, she’d been grateful that he was showing interest in an activity other than watching TV. He’d left on a Friday afternoon in late October and returned on the Sunday evening. He’d spoken enthusiastically about his trek through the woods, more voluble than he’d been for quite a while.

  “He went alone?” Olivia asked.

  Dan hadn’t mentioned anyone else, but at the time Grace hadn’t thought of that as odd. He didn’t have a lot of friends and often preferred his own company.

  “Did he bring home any game?”

  “No.” But that made sense, too, since it’d been years since he’d gone hunting. Putting down her coffee, Grace frowned, remembering that weekend. “Are you suggesting he was with someone else?”

  Olivia boldly met her look. “I wouldn’t know, but deep down I think you do.”

  Perhaps she did. That free weekend had been wonderful for her. She’d spent a delightful two days with Maryellen and Kelly, shopping at an outlet mall in Oregon. It’d been their first “Mother-Daughter Getaway Weekend,” an event they hoped to repeat annually.

  “He seemed…happy,” Grace murmured. He was so rarely in a good mood that it’d struck her as unusual. She couldn’t believe that a man would go from another woman’s bed and then home to his wife, without somehow betraying his guilt. She couldn’t accept that her husband was capable of such a thing, and yet…

  They heard a car outside and Olivia glanced out the living-room window. “Troy’s here.”

  Grace had opened the front door and was standing on the porch as Sheriff Davis came up the walkway.

  “Thanks for coming,” Grace told him, grateful he’d decided to attend to this himself.

  Troy removed his hat as he stepped into the house and nodded in Olivia’s direction.

  “I wasn’t sure who else to call,” Olivia explained.

  “You did the right thing.” Troy was a good-looking man who’d been two years ahead of them in school and the biggest heartthrob in Cedar Cove. He’d gone into the service after graduation, then joined the sheriff’s department on his return. For the last thirty-eight years, he’d kept order in their community; ten years ago, he’d been elected sheriff. Folks liked and trusted Troy.

  Grace invited him to make himself comfortable and he chose to sit in Dan’s recliner. He carried a clipboard and had a pencil ready.

  “I take it you’d like to file a missing person’s report.”

  “Please,” Grace said, nearly choking on the word.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said gently.

  Grace told him everything she could think of. Although it broke her heart, she mentioned the hunting trip and Olivia’s suspicions that there could be another woman in his life.

  “Do you think there’s someone else?”

  Grace raised her hands in a gesture of defeat. “What is it people say? The wife is always the last to know.” The more often she acknowledged the possibility, the more real it seeme
d to become. She told herself Dan wouldn’t do that to her, to their daughters. She had to believe it. Yet she knew something wasn’t right and hadn’t been for a very long time.

  “What happens next?” Grace asked once the report had been completed.

  Troy glanced at Olivia and then back at her. “Actually, nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Grace was appalled.

  “I’ve checked both hospitals in the area, but they don’t have anyone admitted under Dan’s name, nor do they have any unidentified patients.”

  “He hasn’t been arrested, has he?”

  “No,” Troy confirmed. “Not by us and not by the State Patrol.” In other words, no one knew anything about Dan or could guess where he might have gone. “As far as I can see, there isn’t any evidence of foul play.”

  Grace nodded. She’d walked through the house a dozen times during the night, looking for even the tiniest clue that would tell her where Dan might be. She’d combed through his pockets, his dresser, everything.

  “Then we have to assume Dan is missing of his own accord,” Troy said calmly.

  Confused, Grace looked at her friend. “What Troy is saying,” Olivia told her, “is that it isn’t a crime for an adult to run away.”

  “Husbands and wives abandon their families. Unfortunately it’s a common occurrence.”

  “If that was the case,” Grace snapped, “then Dan would’ve taken something with him, don’t you think? All he had were the clothes on his back.”

  “I realize it might not make sense,” Troy went on.

  “Make sense?” Grace echoed. “This is ludicrous! My husband is missing and the police won’t do anything to help me find him.”

  Troy held her gaze. “I’m sorry, Grace, but that’s the law. If anyone sees him, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered, crossing her arms. She was furious, embarrassed and filled with a restless energy she didn’t know how to dispel.

  It was then that Grace heard the back door open and close. A moment later, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, her husband walked into the living room.