“Her only son died after Thanksgiving three years ago.”
“That’s a hard anniversary to stomach. Losing a child is like no other pain,” Terry said, her face clouding. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if anything happened to Sam.” She shook her head.
“She could still turn up.”
“But you don’t think she will?” Terry’s eyes narrowed on her.
Did it show that much?
She’d never win at poker if she was that easy to read.
Jo exhaled slowly. “Maybe it’s bad vibes, I don’t know.” She met Terry’s gaze and said exactly what worried her most: “There’s the possibility she might have hurt herself.”
“Is that what the husband thinks?”
“No. At least, he doesn’t want to believe it.” Jo blew on her tea, trying to ignore the tightening in her belly.
“But you do?”
“I don’t know.” She’d already said more than she should, despite how much she trusted Terry. Then she realized why her friend was pushing that particular button, and she felt her throat close up.
Terry had her head cocked, and the look in her eyes made Jo uncomfortable, as if Terry could see through skin and skull into Jo’s brain and pluck out thoughts that had been long since swept aside. Ideas born on days too dark to dwell on, when the anger and guilt had been almost too much to bear.
She broke away from Terry’s stare, watching the cup of tea shake in her hand.
Please, don’t spill it. Please, don’t spill.
Terry brushed crumbs off her hands. “Maybe it’ll happen. This story could have a happy ending, you know.”
Like in fairy tales and romance novels?
Jo didn’t buy either.
She shifted in her seat, holding her cup in both hands, the only way to keep it steady.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“You’re right. We should.” Terry didn’t hesitate. “How’s your mother doing at the nursing home?”
Now this one she could handle.
Jo had her response down pat. “She’s doing as well as expected for someone with end-stage Alzheimer’s. They take good care of her, but she’s pretty much a zombie.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jo shrugged, because it wasn’t anyone’s fault, wasn’t anything but the hand life had dealt to Verna Larsen Kaufman. Maybe one she deserved.
“You see her often?”
“I try to go on Sundays.” She didn’t admit that she’d missed more than a few of them. It wasn’t easy, and she didn’t see how that mattered when Mama didn’t know who she was.
Terry watched her carefully. “Have you given any thought to what I said before?”
She sighed. “About forgiveness?”
“Yes.”
Crap.
Jo suddenly wished she’d rehearsed a better answer for this one, too.
She took a slow sip of Earl Gray, fighting the urge to flee, refusing to let the subject get her worked up the way it usually did. As informal as these sessions were, they made her want to curl up like a roly-poly. She squashed the instinct to retreat.
“If you don’t find a way to make peace with your mother, Jo, you’ll get stuck in this place your whole life. You’ll bury the blame, but you’ll never get rid of it.”
“I’m working on it.”
“How?”
She laughed nervously. “God, you’re persistent.”
Terry gave her a look that said, I’m waiting.
Jo let fly the first thing that came to mind. “I’m helping Ronnie go through Mama’s things before we sell the house. I’m dealing with the stuff she left behind, some of his things, too.” She wet her lips. “Isn’t just being there where it all happened sort of like facing my enemy?”
“It can be, if you let it.”
Jo nodded, thinking she’d said something right, at least. “My heart nearly stops, just seeing the door at the end of the hallway, breathing in the same air. I can still smell him, you know, like he’s in the room with me.” Her hands started to shake, and she was careful with her cup and saucer. “It gives me the willies. Ronnie doesn’t understand what’s wrong. She doesn’t know the truth. She thinks I’m upset about the Alzheimer’s.”
“Why don’t you tell her what’s really going on? She’s practically family, Jo, as close as she was to your mother. Maybe it would help for her to learn what your stepfather did to you.”
“C’mon, Terry.”
“It’s possible she already suspects something . . . something that’ll help you get a clearer picture of how things were. Maybe your mother even told her more about why your birth father left, why she drank so much and didn’t pay attention to what was happening to her daughter.”
Jo knew Mama would never have told Ronnie any such thing. Ronnie might have been Mama’s best friend—her only friend—but she was hardly Verna Larson Kaufman’s confidant. Mama had always been so good at pretending life was good when it was anything but.
“Ronnie doesn’t need to hear that Mama—” Jo choked up. “If I try to talk to her about the abuse, what good would it do?”
“It would help her understand your behavior and why it’s so hard for you to visit your mom and deal with cleaning up what’s left behind.”
Jo shook her head.
“All right.” Terry seemed to back off but then leaned forward and asked, “Have you heard from Adam?”
“Adam?” Jo’s hand went to the neck of her sweater, making sure it stood up, so that Terry couldn’t see the mark on her skin. “Can we leave him out of this?” Tea slopped from her cup onto the saucer as she shoved it down on the table, china rattling. She rubbed her hands on her jeans.
Terry’s eyebrows arched. “So you have heard from him.”
Jo exhaled. “He left his wife.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want to push things after what happened before.”
“When he was married, you mean?”
That was another reason why she hated that word comfortable so much. Adam had used it as an excuse to stay with his wife.
“We’re not in love anymore,” he’d told her, “and she’s away half the time, helping her firm open an office in Los Angeles. It’s a comfortable arrangement, but there’s nothing romantic about it.”
Jo had bought it at first, thought it would make her life easier not to have him around too much. It kept some distance between them. Though, in the end, she’d wanted more of him than she could have. Instead of delivering an ultimatum, she’d moved to Plainfield, leaving it up to him whether to come after her or not.
Finally, last night, he had.
“Did you ever tell him about your past?”
“No.” She swallowed and glanced toward the window, trying to ease her rapid heartbeat. She focused on the scudding pewter-colored clouds beyond the frame of glass not obscured by the shade. “Trust is hard for me.”
“I know it is.”
“I don’t want to blow this.”
“You won’t.” Terry took her hand and held it.
“I don’t want to run anymore.”
“Then stop.”
“Did I tell you that I left home when I was fifteen?” Jo focused on the fine blue veins beneath Terry’s skin. “Mama drank more than ever after he died, because she had no man around, and that just about killed her.”
She lifted her gaze and met her friend’s eyes.
“Something happened in those months, the worst possible thing.” She hesitated, blood rushing like wind in her ears, and she wondered if she should shut up now before she couldn’t take it back. “Mama couldn’t handle me. God knows I didn’t know what to do. So I went away, until it was okay to return. Until we could pretend like nothing was wrong.”
“It’s okay, you can tell me.”
Jo closed her eyes for a minute, shook her head.
The pale fingers squeezed hers. “When you’re ready.”
Jo figured that might be forever.
&nb
sp; She switched the subject again. “It’s not like Adam thinks I’m the girl next door.”
Terry cocked her head, looking as serious as before. “He’s stronger than you give him credit for. He came after you, didn’t he? He didn’t let you go.”
“It’s different now, Terry. It’s real to me.”
“And that scares you?”
Jo withdrew her hand from Terry’s grasp, got up, and walked toward the window. She crossed her arms to quell the flutter in her chest. “Running naked across LBJ in rush-hour traffic would be less frightening.”
“You won’t always feel that way.”
She set her palm flush against the glass. It was cold and rattled from the wind, vibrating against her skin. “You really believe that?”
“I do.”
Jo pressed her lips together, nodding.
Maybe someday she’d believe it, too.
I had the dream again last night.
It was much the same as before. I was running to the house, tearing through the front door, calling Finn’s name and searching frantically for him. I felt so panicked, I couldn’t breathe. Everything moved too slowly. The air rippled like water, and my legs pushed through sludge.
“Finn!” I kept yelling. “Where are you? It’s Mommy.”
Then I saw him out back, sitting up in the tree, his legs dangling.
I went to the sliding door and pushed, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Finn, no!” I shouted at him through the glass as he stood up on a branch. The limb began to sway, ready to snap.
I watched him teeter and screamed. The ground was so far below, stark-white stones circling the pink petunia bed at the foot of the tree.
He looked up. His eyes were big and blue. I can picture them so clearly. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and I know his world must have been frighteningly blurry. Could he even see me from so far away? With a crack, the branch snapped, and he toppled forward, headfirst to the ground.
I woke up screaming and sweating, my heart pounding.
“You’re all right, Jen,” Patrick kept saying over and over.
But I wasn’t all right, and I won’t be until I understand what Finn keeps trying to tell me.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time Jo had finished her session of soul-baring with Terry, she felt unsettled and drained. So when her cell rang as she was belting herself into the Mustang, she answered less than delicately. “Yeah?”
“Detective Larsen?”
“Yes. Who is this?” She didn’t recognize the number.
“Kevin Harrison,” the man said, clearly affronted. “You left a voice mail earlier, something about my ex-wife. Is she in trouble?”
“She could be.” Jo looked up as a car pulled into the space opposite her. “She didn’t go home last night, and her husband’s frantic. Perhaps she contacted you?”
“Look, Detective, I haven’t seen Jenny since our divorce, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Whoa, not so fast, buddy. “Maybe you can. You and Jenny lost your son three years ago next week. I’m wondering if the anniversary might have something to do with her disappearance. Do you have a clue where she might have gone? You probably know her better than anyone.”
He made a noise, a surprised sort of laugh. “You really do have it wrong. I hardly knew Jenny at all, except to say that, whatever Jenny’s done, I’m sure she brought it on herself.”
“But, Dr. Harrison—”
He cut her off. “I hope you find her.”
And that was that.
Jo glared at the phone before tossing it on the passenger seat.
Thanks for nothing, asshole.
Maybe she was rushing to judgment, but she instantly pegged Harrison as an arrogant son of a bitch who wore expensive suits and handmade shirts with French cuffs and thought the world revolved around him. How had Jenny ever ended up with someone like that? And then she’d paired up with another winner: Patrick Dielman, the control freak.
Wow, Jenny, but you sure knew how to pick ’em.
Jo shook her head and started the car.
By the time she’d extricated herself from the Dallas traffic, dusk had fallen.
It was close to the time Jenny had gone to the Warehouse Club the previous night, and Jo found herself wondering if the woman had been playing her radio, going over her shopping list, contemplating what to fix for dinner. Or had she been preoccupied with darker thoughts, a need to run away, to disappear?
“I don’t think you understand, Detective. Jenny doesn’t have friends. She just has me.”
What Jo did understand was that everyone had secrets, ones they kept even from those who were closest. Patrick Dielman could have believed his marriage was solid as a rock, but Jenny might have felt differently.
She guided the Mustang toward the southwest corner of town, where the Warehouse Club was located in a retailing mecca of restaurants and shops called Town and Country Center.
Until recently, Plainfield had still retained a rural feel, with acres of pasture, cows, and horses grazing behind fences that extended to the shoulder of roads and highways. Scrubby trees and bristled pines had dotted the landscape. An occasional office building or new subdivision had popped up, but those were few and far between the blue sky and green spaces.
In the past few years, the floodgates had opened. Folks had sold their homes in Richardson, Plano, Arlington, Fort Worth, and Dallas, packing up and moving to Plainfield until the population grew at the pace of rabbits on Viagra. The green was slowly swallowed up by concrete, the trees replaced by walls and roofs, glass and steel.
Ta-da.
Suburban sprawl.
Jo figured they’d outgrown the rural label once the cars had outnumbered the livestock.
She pulled into the Warehouse Club lot behind a line of vehicles with blinkers flashing and inched forward. As she scoped out the width and breadth of the enormous parking lot, she wondered if anyone would have noticed a lone woman in trouble.
Someone laid on the horn behind her, and she glanced in the rearview mirror to see an impatient teenager in a Camaro give her the finger.
Nice.
She waited until a mother pushed a stroller safely across the zebra-striped path before she resumed her creep forward.
The Camaro took a hard left up a wrong-way lane, tires squealing.
Jo sighed.
Talk about an accident waiting to happen. The iPhone generation thought everything and everyone should move at warp speed. And God help you if you got in their way. Respect didn’t come easy, not with age, not even with a badge.
But maybe her own age had something to do with her perception.
The only free space she could find was so far back, she was almost out of the lot altogether. As she exited the car and locked the door, she figured it was a good thing Hank wasn’t with her. He wouldn’t walk that stretch of asphalt, especially in this wind.
Jo wasn’t too thrilled about it herself, but she tugged up her collar and shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets, trying to stay warm as she trudged past car after car, each of a decidedly upscale make and model. She strode by people with bags and boxes loaded on dollies, finally giving a nod to a Warehouse Club employee in red trousers and jacket trying to direct a serpentine line of shopping carts toward the building.
She assessed the light poles standing guard over the football-field-size area and spotted surveillance cameras directed down. She felt a flutter of hope, figuring the store had surely saved video from yesterday. If so, they should be able to find Jenny Dielman, see when she and her Nissan had shown up and when they’d departed.
There wasn’t a security guard in sight, just the occasional employee in red helping a customer out or retrieving the ever-amassing carts from the gated corrals.
She looked up as she stepped through a pair of doors that automatically slid apart and noted two black boxes pointing at her from different angles.
They had the doors covered, too.
If Je
nny had made it inside, she would be recorded.
Lord, let me get lucky.
“Can I see your card, ma’am?”
An elderly man with thick black glasses and bushy eyebrows in need of detangling stopped her from getting more than three feet inside the store. He had on a red vest with a big button exclaiming WE LOVE OUR SHOPPERS! Looking over his shoulder, Jo glanced at the enormous space, the gray concrete walls and endless shelves packed with merchandise. The murmur of voices seemed magnified, a constant hum in her ears.
“Your card?” he said again.
She smiled and retrieved her leather wallet from her bag, showing him her ID and shield.
“You’re the police?” the man said, caterpillar brows bristling. “You here on a bust?”
A bust? It was all she could do not to laugh.
“No, nothing like that,” she assured him. “I’d like to speak with Owen Ross if I could. Can you tell me where I might find him?”
“Owen? Sure.” A shaky finger pointed her toward a big counter where a line had gathered. “He’s at customer service. Ya need me to take you over?”
“Thanks, but I’ll manage.” She kept out her wallet but slipped her hand back inside her bag to retrieve the photograph of Jenny. “By any chance, were you here last night between five and five thirty?”
He nodded. “Five days a week from two to ten.”
“Do you remember seeing this woman come in sometime after five o’clock? She would have used a guest pass.”
He took the photo and studied it, wrinkled brow further creasing. “Pretty girl,” he remarked. Then he shook his head and handed it back. “I wish I could tell ya I’d seen her, but we get so many new ones in with those paper passes that they all sort of blur together.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
Farther over, near the rows of cash registers, Jo spied a security guard in a blue uniform, walkie-talkie clipped to his belt and no weapon in sight. He was beyond middle age, with a paunch that beat Hank’s hands down and a bored expression on his bloated face. She figured he’d easily lose to a shoplifter in a footrace.
The rent-a-cop caught her staring, and she turned away, heading to the customer service counter. She walked straight to the front despite the lines, prompting displeased murmurs and a lone cry of “Would y’all take a number like everyone else?”
Walk Into Silence Page 5
