by P J Parrish
“You didn’t come all this way just to bring my dog back to me,” she said finally.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said.
Amelia sat back in the booth, considering him carefully. She had thought about Clay Buchanan often in the last two weeks, but she couldn’t figure out why. And sitting here across from him now, being this close to him, she felt a strange connection. She had heard or read somewhere that if you saved another person’s life you were responsible for that person forever. Maybe it worked in the reverse, too. Maybe that one moment at the lake, when he had let go of her, had bound them forever to each other.
But was she fine? Not completely.
“I have something to show you,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out an ivory-colored envelope. She took a paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and handed it to Buchanan.
“This came in the mail yesterday,” she said. “I haven’t shown it to Jimmy. I didn’t want to worry him.”
Buchanan read it out loud, quietly. “You took my life, my family, and the man I loved. Now I have nothing and you have everything. I will make you pay for what you did.”
He lowered the letter and looked at the postmark on the envelope. “Who do you know in Tampa?”
“No one,” she said.
Buchanan reread the letter.
“Do you think it’s from Joanna?” Amelia asked. “She’s broke and her husband is facing the death penalty.”
Buchanan shook his head. “I think there was a part of Joanna McCall that sincerely liked you.” He paused. “Plus this isn’t her style.”
“Then who sent it?”
“Someone younger. Someone very selfish. She uses the word ‘my’ or ‘I’ five times. It’s all about her.”
Amelia frowned, but before the name came into focus, Buchanan said it.
“Megan McCall.”
Amelia stared at him.
Buchanan nodded. “She came to see me, and she told me lots of interesting stuff. She said that Alex abused you.”
“What? Alex never touched me.”
“She told me she had been raped in college and that she confided in you about it.”
Amelia just shook her head. “We barely talked. God, I’d remember something like that.”
Buchanan hesitated. “And she told me that it would be better for you if I just let you disappear for good.”
Amelia was quiet, letting the pieces click into place in her head. “It was Megan,” she said finally. “I knew Alex was having an affair with someone, and that is who it was.”
Buchanan said nothing, and she realized he had been waiting for her to give voice to what he already suspected. She looked down at the letter, folded it, and slipped it back in her pocket.
“You still got that revolver?” Buchanan asked.
“Yes.”
“Keep it handy.”
They both looked to the windows, and the silence grew, stretching into discomfort.
“So, are you going to stay here?” Buchanan asked finally.
She nodded. “Jimmy says I could teach dance.” She paused. “I can’t teach.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I think it would be too . . . safe.”
She was surprised to see him smile slightly and nod. She took a drink of beer.
“You’d make a good investigator,” Buchanan said.
“What makes you say that?”
“You have the right kind of mind. You stayed one step ahead of me for a long time.”
She slowly set her glass down. It had been there in the back of her mind all week, this question of what she was going to do with herself now. But she hadn’t realized until this moment that the answer had been inside her since that first day she walked out of the hospital back in Fort Lauderdale.
It was there in the faces of the people she had met. The redheaded woman in the pawnshop warning her to run from any man who would hit a woman. The old man on the bus trying to spirit his great-grandson away from a bad home. And Hannah, having to pick up a gun to defend herself from her own husband.
“I want to help people start over,” she said. “Maybe even disappear if they need to.”
Buchanan had picked up his beer, but he didn’t take a drink. He set the glass back down on the table and just stared at her.
“You think that’s crazy, right?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Again, they fell quiet. Amelia sensed Buchanan wanted to say something, but he just sat there, his fingers tapping lightly on the beer glass, his eyes looking out at the blanket of gray outside the windows.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“What are you going to do?”
Buchanan shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure. I can’t go back.”
“Back where?”
“Where I was.”
“Nashville.”
“No, where I was in my life.”
“Why not?”
He looked away again, and when his eyes came back to her the color had changed, less blue, almost the color of the fog.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked.
She nodded.
“My wife and son are gone,” he said.
He started slowly, but then it poured out of him, what had happened to his wife and baby son and what had happened to him after that. It was hard to hear, but Amelia listened, not saying a word, until finally Buchanan sat back in the booth. He seemed spent and couldn’t look at her.
“What about the grand jury?” Amelia asked.
“They didn’t indict me,” he said. “They didn’t believe my daughter’s memories were . . . reliable.”
Amelia nodded. “Someone told me once that memories are like diamonds. The fake ones can seem the most real.”
“But if Gillian believes them, she still thinks I’m a killer. How am I supposed to live with that?”
The waitress appeared. “Two more?” she asked.
“No, just the check, please,” Buchanan said.
She set it on the table and left. Buchanan picked up his glass and finished his beer.
“Come on,” Buchanan said. “I’ll walk you back.”
They went to the cash register where Buchanan paid for the beers, and they stepped out into the cool fog. The ocean was lost from view, and the only thing visible was a soft glow of lights coming from the Cliff House at the far end of the street.
“The air here smells like medicine,” Buchanan said. “Like if you breathed it long enough, it could heal you.”
“It’s the eucalyptus trees,” Amelia said. She hesitated, shifting the bag holding Brody. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Almost like new.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Buchanan didn’t look at her.
“For shooting you, I’m sorry.”
Still he wouldn’t look at her. So she stepped closer, moving around in front of him so she could see his face. She was astonished to see tears in his eyes.
“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked.
Amelia touched his sleeve and nodded. Anything else would have made her break down.
They started walking back up the street. Amelia took Brody out of the tote, and he walked along on his leash for a while but then stopped cold and looked up at her, waiting. She scooped him up and carried him the rest of the way.
At the door to the apartment building, she turned to face Buchanan.
“Your daughter . . . you asked me how you live with her thinking you killed her mother,” she said. “You do it by proving her wrong.”
Buchanan was quiet, staring at her.
“You
said the police never found your wife and son. You need to do it. You need to find them.”
She knew he understood what she was trying to say, that even though they were dead, he’d have to find them or he’d never be at peace. It was what she had learned about her mother and Ben. Especially Ben.
Buchanan looked away and for a moment she thought she had offended him. But then he turned back and held out a hand.
“Good-bye, Amelia Brody,” he said.
She hesitated. Then she leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. When he pulled back, he couldn’t meet her eyes. He gave her a brisk nod, turned and walked away.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Rayna Buchanan’s life was spread out before him on the bed.
It had been a long time since he’d looked at this stuff. And even longer since he had looked at her. At least in the way a man should look at a wife.
He was back in Nashville, back in his apartment. It was near two in the morning, a February sleet storm was pinging against the window, and sleep was still far away. Two months had passed since he had returned home. In that time, he had thought often about Amelia Tobias, and the fact that he had managed to keep her alive gave him a small piece of comfort.
But it was not Amelia who had come to him in the dark on nights like this when he had trouble sleeping. It had been her husband, Alex. The man was as shallow and selfish as they came. But he had walked away from his job, his home, and his easy life, and with a gun in hand and against all odds that she would take him back, he had gone in search of the woman he loved.
Tobias had been crazy, of course, made crazier by the constant swill of vodka. But still, Buchanan couldn’t help but admire that part of Alex Tobias that reacted with passion when hit with the hard reality of what he had done to his marriage.
Had it been too late for Tobias?
Of course it had.
Buchanan picked up a photo of Rayna taken at the Loveless Café, a countrified hot spot for biscuits and gravy just off the Natchez Trace, south of Nashville. Buchanan had taken the picture at the start of their driving vacation, five great days that had taken them down to the Gulf Breeze Motel in Dauphin Island, Alabama, where Gillian had been conceived. Or that’s what Rayna had always wanted to believe.
In the photo, Rayna was standing under the café’s vintage neon sign, wearing a white sleeveless blouse, dark Capri pants, and a ponytail. It looked like a snapshot from the fifties.
Buchanan stared at the photo and then he looked up, into the shadows of his bedroom.
“Are you here, Rayna?”
He heard nothing.
“I need to know something,” he said. “I need to know if it’s too late.”
Still, silence.
He started to set the photo back in the box and then paused. It was just an old shoe box, but it had been Rayna’s depository of memories, something she had kept from her early twenties, long before she met him. She had stored all their newer photos on the computer, but she had always said that when she got lonely she liked the idea of being able to hold in her hand the people who were gone.
He propped the photo up against the lamp on his nightstand, put the top back on the shoe box and set it aside. He turned his attention to three manila folders bound with a rubber band.
In the early days of the investigation into Rayna and Corey’s disappearance, he had made one friend at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, a sergeant who was a few weeks from retirement and, as it turned out, six months from a heart attack. The cop had always believed that Buchanan was innocent and had slipped him copies of some investigation reports.
Buchanan had looked at them once or twice in the past five years, but he’d been so lost in his grief—and the bottle—that nothing in them made any sense.
But now he was ready to take another look.
There wasn’t much there.
A few statements from his neighbors in Berry Hill. A couple of reports on sex offenders who lived nearby. And, stuffed by themselves in the third folder, four color photographs of Rayna’s abandoned car.
He had seen the photos before but the memory of where and when was fuzzy. Now, as he looked at them, something caught in his chest, sharp as a knife.
The driver’s door standing open. A close-up of the headrest, stained with blood. Rayna’s brown loafer, left in a puddle near the rear wheel.
And the last photo . . .
A shot of an empty blue and white Hug-Me-Tite car seat.
Buchanan touched the last image with his finger and began to cry. He probably could have cried himself to sleep—there was so much still inside that needed to get out—but then he realized his tears were dripping onto the photo. He quickly pulled himself together, wiping his face with his sleeve, and carefully tucked the photos back in their folder.
He would need to keep the photos pristine. He would need all of this, little as it was, if he was going to find Rayna and Corey.
And he would find them.
He was never more sure of anything in his life.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The sky was the color of a spring iris, but there was still some scattered snow, like a clothesline had broken and left white sheets strewn on the ground.
It was cold, and Amelia reached down and kicked the car’s heater up a notch.
“Are you warm enough?” she asked.
The Bird, sitting in the passenger seat, gave a grunt but didn’t look at her. She was too intent on looking out the window. Amelia wondered what she was thinking. The Bird hadn’t been out of the nursing home in a long time, Jill had told her, and her view of the world had narrowed to what she could see from the window of her room.
That’s why Amelia had wanted to take her out today. Jill said The Bird’s mood hadn’t been good lately. Maybe this would cheer her up.
So far, the trip hadn’t gone well. When Amelia had arrived at The Edge of Heaven that morning, it had been a repeat of her last visit in December. The Bird seemed happy to get the Teaberry gum that Amelia brought, but she still didn’t recognize her.
It was never going to change, Amelia thought as she turned the rental car off US 71 and down a side street. This was how things were now for her and her grandmother. But she was coming to accept that. It was similar to what she felt for Clay Buchanan. He had e-mailed to tell her that he had begun investigating the disappearance of his wife and son. She had written back saying she was still staying with Jimmy and had started work at a women’s shelter. They had exchanged other e-mails since, which left Amelia with a sense that while they would always be in each other’s lives, there would still be a space between them.
Amelia glanced over at The Bird.
She was swathed in a red down parka that Amelia had brought for her. But there was a peacock brooch pinned on the front, one of the pieces of jewelry Amelia had found in the box of mementoes Buchanan had returned to her.
“What day is it?” The Bird asked.
“Wednesday,” Amelia said.
“What month is it?”
“February.”
The Bird nodded, looking out the window. “February is Mother Nature’s way of giving us the finger.”
Amelia laughed.
They turned onto Fairfield Street, and Amelia slowed the rental car and then stopped in front of the faded gray house. She turned off the engine and looked over at The Bird.
“Is this where you live?” The Bird asked.
“Well, I’m thinking about maybe coming back here in the summers,” Amelia said. “What do you think?”
“I think it needs to be painted.”
“Let’s go inside,” Amelia said.
The realtor who had been caring for the house had given Amelia the key. Amelia helped The Bird make her way slowly down the sloping yard and they went inside. The air was musty and cold, and when Amelia tried to turn on a light, not
hing happened. The Bird was standing in the middle of the living room, her eyes flitting over the old furniture, the fringed lamps, and flowered wallpaper. Then she walked slowly to the back windows.
Amelia came up behind her and they stood side by side, looking out at the lake.
“It’s really cold in here,” The Bird said finally.
“Yes, it is. Maybe we should go.”
The Bird nodded and started back toward the door. Then she stopped. She was staring at something. At first Amelia thought it was the aluminum walker in the corner, but then The Bird went to the old player piano. She looked at Amelia then back at the piano.
“Do you play?” Amelia asked.
The Bird nodded. “Yeah, with my feet.”
She eased down onto the piano bench, putting her feet on the pedals, but she didn’t try to pump them. She just sat there, staring straight ahead.
Then she began to sing, so softly that Amelia could barely hear her.
“Life is long since you went away, I think about you all through the day, my buddy. No buddy quite so true . . .”
Amelia went to the piano and sat down next to her grandmother. The Bird had stopped singing. But Amelia knew the words.
“Miss your voice, the touch of your hand, just long to know that you understand, my buddy,” she sang. “Your buddy misses you.”
The Bird looked at her with cloudy green eyes. Then she smiled.
“You’re my Mellie,” she said.
Amelia took her grandmother’s hand in hers. “Yes, I am,” she said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes two of us to write a book. But it takes many others to make it fly. So stand up and take a bow . . .
SJ Rozan, dear friend, fellow writer, and avid birder whose expertise gave our character Clay Buchanan wings.
Tom Clark of Motorcar Gallery Collectible Exotics in Fort Lauderdale, who knows his gull wings.
Peter Lent, esq., an odd bird who is nonetheless okay for a lawyer and Patriots fan.
Sharon Potts, Neil Plakcy, Christine Jackson, and Miriam Potocky, who helped push this story out of the nest.
