“And it doesn’t say who or what she’s visiting?” Sam asks.
I flip through a few of the pages and shake my head. “No. It always says the same thing. Just ‘visit’.”
“So, maybe she didn’t want her mother to know what she was really doing.”
Later that afternoon, I brace myself for another phone call with Julia’s mother. She answers in a more pleasant tone, but I don’t carry a lot of optimism that’s going to last.
“Mrs. Meyer, this is Emma Griffin,” I say.
She lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t have anything to say to you. I thought my husband and I were very clear with you the last time you called. We don’t want anything to do with your dragging up this painful time in our lives again.”
“Please, just give me a few moments of your time. Just a few. There’s something I have a question about, and it has to do with you,” I say.
She hesitates. “With me?”
“Yes. Several times in Julia’s day planner from late October through the beginning of December―”
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Meyer says. “Did you say her day planner?”
“Yes,” I say. “It was one of the belongings left at the University in her student apartment. Your husband mentioned you didn’t take them with you, and said he thought they probably weren’t there anymore. I asked about them and they still had them.”
“So, you took it upon yourself to take the planner?” she asks.
“You didn’t claim it and it has been sitting in a storage locker for thirteen years,” I point out. “But that isn’t what matters. What matters is what I found in it and what it might suggest about when Julia disappeared.”
“She didn’t disappear,” Claire snaps. “I don’t understand why you continue to insist on making this so much more complicated and difficult than it already is.”
“Because she lied to you,” I say sharply, cutting her off so she’s forced to hear me rather than just hanging up on me.
“What did you say?” she asks.
“She lied. In her day planner there’s a note a couple of times a week that says ‘Mom: volunteering at hospital’.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Meyer says. “I told you, she was a remarkable person when she applied herself properly. In addition to her extremely heavy course load and her student organizations and activities, she also volunteered at the local hospital with geriatric patients.”
“No, she didn’t,” I say.
“Of course, she did. We talked about it all the time. She was so compassionate and wanted to make sure these people were given care and dignity, no matter what they were going through.”
“Listen to me. Julia didn’t volunteer at the hospital because the hospital didn’t have volunteers,” I say. “I called them to find out more about what she did there, thinking it might have put her in contact with someone potentially dangerous. The administrator I spoke with said the hospital has not had volunteers in more than forty years. Not in any department. It’s a teaching hospital. Roles that were taken by volunteers are now given to the students. So she was telling you about volunteering, but those were lies.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you know of anyone she might have been spending time with without telling anyone?” I ask. “Someone she might have wanted to see, but would keep it to herself?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Next to the comment about telling you she is volunteering at the hospital, the notes say ‘visit’. There’s no explanation or more details. Just ‘visit’. Does that mean anything to you?” I ask.
“I need you to stop,” she says. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this, but you need to let it go. Whatever happened to Julia can’t be changed now. It’s time to put it behind us and move forward.”
She hangs up, and I tuck my phone into my pocket as I get out and walk into the coffee shop.
Chapter Forty-Five
Seventeen years ago...
Maybe this never would have happened if it hadn’t been for her.
Maybe he never would have started at all, if it hadn’t been for that moment when he looked up and saw her for the first time. She started this.
He shouldn’t have done it. He never should have allowed himself to venture that far. He should have kept it as nothing more than a thought.
It wasn’t new, that compulsion that existed at the very depths of him. It was something he’d always had. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to know what it was like. But it was always an abstract. It was just a thought, something that hovered at the edges of his awareness, but one he could keep under control.
She’d changed that. She’d taken what had once been only thought and turned it into a craving.
That was the difference. The difference between someone who only wonders and someone who is willing to find out.
The difference between thought and craving.
Compulsion and completion.
What had really changed wasn’t just that she suddenly existed in his world. It was more than that. She hadn’t just come into his awareness and made him want more than he ever had. She’d created something. Seeing her had brought every thought, every desire, every urge he’d ever experienced into sharper focus.
It wasn’t just abstract anymore. It wasn’t just about wanting to know what it was like to
