Down the Darkest Road

been granted a search warrant for Ballencoa’s home and vehicle. So much time that any evidence that may ever have been present was gone.

All but one tiny blood sample, too small to test.

That reality was my husband’s purgatory.

From the day that Leslie went missing, he never lived a day without the weight of guilt beating down on him like a war hammer. He blamed himself for losing his temper with Leslie that night at the restaurant. If he had handled that better . . . if he had damned his pride and let her stay home that night . . . if he had been firmer with her earlier on . . . if he had been more understanding . . .

He had damned himself from every possible angle, and punished himself with the brutality of an Old Testament God. And in the end he had pronounced sentence on himself, absent the power to do so to the man who had taken his child.

The most terrible burden that had been put on him, aside from what he had put on himself, had been the spotlight of suspicion that had been cast on him by the public, the press, and the police. He would have gladly lain down and died for either of his daughters. To have people think otherwise had been like pouring acid on his soul.

And the police—completely impotent to deal with Roland Ballencoa—had gone after Lance with the zeal of hunters shooting fish in a barrel. Because he wanted to cooperate, he sat through hours and hours of interviews and interrogations. He took polygraph after polygraph. He had weathered every indignity and accusation leveled at him.

He had fought with his daughter in public. He was known to have a temper. There were holes in the time line of his day that day, time unaccounted for. He wouldn’t have been the first father to lose his temper with a teenage daughter.

What if he had seen her on the road that day, riding her bike home from a softball game she had been forbidden to attend? Maybe he had stopped his car and grabbed her. Maybe in his anger he had shaken her or pushed her. Maybe she had struck her head and died. Maybe he had panicked. Maybe he had panicked and killed her, and yet had the presence of mind to dispose of her body so thoroughly it was never found.

Not once, not for one heartbeat had I ever believed Lance could have hurt Leslie. Not even after the detectives had done their best to drive a wedge of doubt between us. Not even after people who should have known Lance had begun to doubt. I would sooner have stopped breathing than stop believing in his innocence.

My husband’s death was ruled an accident, just another sad statistic against drinking and driving. Half the people who had suspected him of murder believed his death was karma. The other half turned on a dime and mourned him as the poor tormented father, unable to go on without his firstborn child.

His death was ruled an accident. I knew better. Everyone knew better. It was the truth hidden in plain view. He had driven willingly to his death with a police escort, metaphorically speaking. He simply had not been able to take it any longer—the grief, the guilt, the suspicion, the not knowing, the terrible imagining of what had happened to Leslie.

I have never and will never forgive him for what he did that night on the Cold Spring Canyon bridge. I understand better than anyone why he did it. Many nights I have envied him the peace of death and cursed him for leaving the burden of life and living on me.

And yet I loved him so, and still do. His absence punched a hole in my heart that aches every single day and all night long. We were supposed to walk this road hand in hand, side by side. Without him, I have no balance and no anchor.

I miss him with a longing that goes so deep I will never see the bottom of it.

As I look into my future I can’t envision the day that another man will make me feel the way he did. The friend who introduced us always said that Lance and I picked up a conversation where we had left off in another lifetime. I know it will be another lifetime before I feel that again.

Lauren saved her work and got up from the desk. She felt as empty as a ghost, as if anyone could pass a hand right through her and touch nothing. She had nothing left, not even emotion. What a blessing that was. She didn’t have to feel the hopelessness of a lonely future that stretched out in front of her like a deserted road.

She thanked God she had driven away most of the former friends who would have made it their mission to fix her up and marry her off. And her general disposition had served to ward off most of the men who might have taken a shot.

Only once in the last two years had she let her guard down enough to allow a man near her, and then only for mercenary reasons—or so she told herself. She didn’t want to think of herself as a woman with a woman’s sexual needs. Better to believe she had slept with Greg Hewitt as a means to a practical end. She felt like a whore either way.

She put it out of her head now as if it had meant nothing at all.

It wasn’t late—just nine thirty—but the house was quiet. Leah hadn’t been feeling well when Lauren picked her up at the ranch. She had barely eaten dinner and had gone to bed not long after.

Anne Leone had told Lauren her daughter had done fine at her sleepover, but in practically the next breath had expressed her concern that Leah was possibly wound too tight, masking feelings that would have to find an outlet somewhere. And it was true. Leah was very good at masking her feelings. She didn’t like calling attention to herself. Where Leslie had always felt the need to challenge and push boundaries, Leah had always contained herself and meticulously followed every rule. She had always been the perfect child.

Lauren had to admit she had too often been willing to take advantage of that in these years since Leslie’s abduction. The burden of it all was exhausting. If her remaining child chose not to come to her with problems or fears or feelings too difficult to deal with, it was so much easier for her to accept relief than question that illusion of peace. Don’t borrow trouble, her own mother always said. Don’t borrow trouble when you can just ignore it.

She went to her daughter’s room now. A light was still glowing through the crack of the barely open door. Lauren knocked softly and pushed the door open another couple of inches.

Leah hastily swiped tears off her cheeks and pulled the covers up around her. She sat tucked up against the headboard, hugging a pillow. In that instant she looked eight instead of nearly sixteen. A little girl lost in sadness.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Lauren said quietly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

“I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” Lauren said softly, reaching out to touch her daughter’s cheek. “Sad?”

The tears welled up and over her lashes like big raindrops. “I miss Daddy.”

“I do too, baby,” Lauren confessed, taking Leah in her arms and holding her close. “I miss him so much.”

She couldn’t help but wonder where they would be if Lance hadn’t left them. Would they have pulled themselves together by now? Would they have found some way to cope? Would they have left Santa Barbara? Or would the wound have closed up around them and scarred over, the memory of it fading over time?

Or would they have come apart at the seams? The statistics of marriages surviving the loss of a child had been against them. Guilt and blame infected relationships. The differences in how each partner handled the grief often caused resentment.

Lauren would never have given up or given in on the idea of finding Leslie. Would Lance?

“I’m doing the best I can, sweetheart,” she murmured, not sure if her words were for Leah or for her husband.

“I know, Mommy,” Leah whispered.

“Do you know how much I love you?” Lauren asked.

Leah nodded.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded again, looking down.

Lauren knew that was a lie told for her benefit, and as she had done so many times, she accepted it as truth, more willing to take the brief hit of guilt than find out what kind of disaster might be brewing behind door number two. Even if she vowed not to, she would put off changing her ways for another night, using exhaustion as an