second longer than usual. When they released each other, Jordan’s eyes naturally gravitated toward the computer monitor. Dave quickly minimized the screen, turning it into a tiny icon in the bottom corner.
“Good night, pal.”
“Good night, Dad.”
“Close the door, okay?”
He nodded, doing as he was asked. Dave wiped his eyes and hit the icon. The screen came back on. He moved the arrow back over the link. One more click would tell him exactly where his wife was.
When he had first gotten the cell phones and signed a contract that would have made his mortgage broker feel inadequate, the salesman had offered a bunch of mind-numbing smart-phone options, most of which Dave had ignored. But when the salesman raised the idea of activating the GPSs on the phones for only five dollars per month, Dave had accepted. At the time he had pretended to himself that it was for peace of mind-in case of an emergency. Suppose Jordan went missing? Suppose Kaylie didn’t call in for hours? Suppose Megan got carjacked?
But the truth was, a truth that Dave had never even whispered to himself, he had never fully trusted the woman he loved and fully trusted. Yes, that made no sense. She had a past. He knew that. So did he. Everyone did, he supposed. You come to a new relationship shedding the skin of the old ones. That was a good and healthy thing.
But with Megan, there was something more. Much of what she told him about her past didn’t really add up. He didn’t exactly ignore it, but he let it go. Part of him didn’t want to threaten the good karma. Even now, after all these years, he still couldn’t believe that Megan had chosen him. She was so beautiful and smart and when she looked at him, when she smiled at him, even now, even after all these years, he still felt the pow. When you are lucky enough to experience that, when you get to have that pow as part of your daily life, you don’t look too hard at the whys and hows.
Dave had been happily passive, struck dumb by what he considered his blind luck, but today had shattered the calm. That giant hand kept shaking and shaking his world, and when it was put back on the shelf, it would never be the same. That was the part they tell you but you can’t ever really believe-how fragile it all is.
Night had long since fallen. The house was quiet. He wondered whether he had ever felt alone, and he guessed that the answer was no. So without thinking about it any longer, Dave clicked the icon.
A map came up. Then Dave Pierce hit the zoom button once, twice, three times, closing in slowly on exactly where his wife now was.
19
Megan and Ray faced each other, maybe ten yards apart.
For the first time since that horrible night seventeen years ago, Megan was looking at the man she had loved and abandoned. Ray stared back, seemingly frozen, his still-handsome face a mask of anguish and confusion.
Emotions ricocheted through her. She didn’t move, didn’t think, didn’t try to sort through them. Not yet. She just let them overwhelm her, take her down, bring her up. Former lovers are always the ultimate what-if, the supreme road-not-taken, but with Ray, it was even deeper. Most couples move on for a variety of reasons. One outgrows the other, one or the other loses interest, loses that feeling, has different goals and wants, finds someone new.
None of that happened with Ray. They were instead torn asunder as if by a natural disaster, and when that happened, her feelings for him-yes, it was love-had been as intense as ever. He, she was sure, had felt the same. There was no gentle distancing, no harsh words, no hardening of the heart. One moment they were together, connected, in love. The next it was all gone in a pool of blood.
Without warning, Ray broke into a sprint. She did the same as though suddenly released from some unseen gate. They ran into each other hard, the impact sending them reeling. They held on tight, neither speaking, her cheek against his chest. She could feel the muscles under his shirt. Supposedly, once a moment passes, it is gone forever, but the truth was, it startled her how fast the years could fall away, how quickly we can go back and find the old us, the true us, the us that never really leaves.
A friend once told Megan that we are always seventeen years old, waiting for our lives to begin. More than ever, clutching to this man, Megan understood that.
They didn’t let go. For nearly a minute they just stayed there, holding each other under Lucy’s watchful eye. Finally Ray said, “I have so much I want to ask you.”
“I know.”
“Where have you been all these years?”
“Does it matter?” she said.
“I guess not.”
The grip loosened a bit. She pulled back and looked up into the face. He had two, maybe three days of stubble. His hair was still tousled albeit with a bit of gray now at the temples. When she looked into those dark blue eyes of his, the jolt sent her into a free fall. She felt her knees buckle.
“I don’t understand,” Ray said. “Why are you back?”
She cleared her throat. “Another man is missing.”
She wanted to gauge his reaction, but all she saw was pain and confusion.
“It happened on February eighteenth,” she said. “The same day as Stewart Green disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
Ray opened his mouth, closed it again. Behind him Ventura’s Greenhouse, a popular restaurant and what they called “beer garden,” was in full swing. People were watching them. Megan took his hand and walked to the far side of Lucy, near the old gift shop, where they’d be out of sight.
“So,” Ray said, something odd in his voice, “after seventeen years, you come back and now another man is, I don’t know, gone.”
Megan turned to him. “No, I came down after.”
“Why?”
“To help.”
“Help with what?”
“To help figure out what happened. I tried to run away from it, but now he’s back.”
Ray shook his head, looking even more confused. “Who’s back?”
“Stewart Green.”
His voice had a snap in it now. “How can you say that?”
“Someone saw him.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ray looked dazed. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Yes, Ray, you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the photograph you sent the cops.”
Again he opened his mouth. Again nothing came out. Megan turned toward the fence that surrounded Lucy. She put one foot on the wall of the gift shop and hoisted herself up and over it. She took out the old key and showed it to him. “Come on.”
“You think that still works?”
“Doubt it.”
Ray didn’t hesitate. He hopped the fence too. They moved under Lucy’s belly, the one that housed the structure’s largest room, toward her rear leg. As she put the key in the lock, Ray came up close to her. She could feel the heat from him.
He tried to keep the pain from his voice, but he couldn’t do it. “Why did you run away that night?”
