chuckling to themselves over our little show.
When I spoke again, I tried to keep my voice under control. But I couldn’t keep the desperation out of it. “This is our only hope right now, Ryan. Shit, this is the only hope we’ve ever had.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “You’ve got to do something, goddamn it! Ryan-” My voice almost broke. “This is it, you know? This has to be it.”
“She’s agreed to meet with a sketch artist from the Columbus PD,” he said. “We’ll set it up in the next day or two. We’ll get the sketch out to the media.”
“Is that all you can do?” I asked.
“The sketch should get us a lot of attention,” Ryan said. “We’ll hear things, but not necessarily the right things. It’s not a magic bullet. I don’t want you to think it is.”
“You need to get behind the sketch, Ryan,” Liann said. “You need to push it to the press like you believe in it. And no mention of Tracy’s occupation or past criminal history. It’s irrelevant.”
“Tom,” Ryan said, “I don’t want to downplay what happened here tonight. It’s a good lead, maybe the best we’ve had. We should all be glad about that, and we’ll work it as far as it will take us.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got another case we’re wrapping up, so I have to get back, but if you or Abby”-he emphasized our names, excluding Liann-“have any questions, please call. Anytime, just call.”
I fell back onto the bench, my weight carrying me down. I let my elbows rest on the tops of my knees and watched Ryan go around and open his car door. He stopped before he climbed in.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t at the church today,” he said. “I meant to be. I try my best to attend those events, but this other case. .”
He didn’t finish the thought. He started the engine, and the tires kicked up gravel while Liann and I watched him go.
Chapter Nine
A light burned in our living room when I came home, and at the end of our driveway sat two cars-Abby’s and Pastor Chris’s. He must have driven her home after the graveside service and the potluck, and he must have stayed to keep her company while waiting for me. A knot of jealousy twisted in my gut. Buster was right-there was little or nothing left between Abby and me. In fact, for the past six months, I’d been sleeping alone in the guest room. Our hand-holding at the church felt, just hours later, like a forced gesture, one given in to out of the emotion of the moment.
I entered the kitchen through the back door. The house was quiet, the kitchen clean. The red light on the coffeemaker glowed, and the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air. I remembered the evenings I came home from work when Caitlin was still a toddler. The excitement I felt at just coming through the door, being with my wife and child. The comfort of having such a secure and solid home and family. I thought it would never end.
“Abby?”
I moved down the hallway to the front of the house, past a wall of framed photos. Our wedding. Caitlin through the years, including the one I carried with me at all times, the one I’d shown Pete at the Fantasy Club. But I also saw the empty spaces where Abby had removed some photos of Caitlin-her kindergarten portrait, a photo of her as a newborn, a snapshot of her soccer team. Pieces of Caitlin disappeared before my eyes as I walked down the hall.
Abby sat on the end of the couch but didn’t look up or meet my eye. Pastor Chris did. He sat legs crossed, a mug of coffee in his hand, and when he saw me he smiled, his face full of cheery judgment.
“Evening, Tom,” he said, as though he and I were old friends getting together to shoot the breeze on a fall evening.
“I need to talk to Abby,” I said.
“Of course,” he said.
“Alone.”
Abby kept her head down. She held balled-up tissues in her hand, and her cheeks looked blotchy and raw. I waited, my lips pressed tightly together.
Pastor Chris leaned in close to Abby and whispered something I couldn’t hear, even in the small room. She nodded her head in response. The intimacy, the closeness of the gesture, carried out as it was right before my eyes made me mash my lips together even tighter.
Pastor Chris set down his mug, uncrossed his legs, and stood up. He placed his hand on Abby’s shoulder.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Abby,” he said. He nodded at me. “Tom.”
“You won’t see me tomorrow,” I said.
Pastor Chris didn’t blink or appear thrown off stride. He held his smile and considered me with the perpetual placidity of the truly certain.
“But our door is always open to you,” he said, and left the house as though he didn’t have a care in the world, leaving Abby and me alone.
“Abby?”
I settled into an overstuffed chair across from her.
“Abby, I have something to tell you. Something pretty amazing.”
“You humiliated me today, Tom.”
Her words hung between us, a thick cloud of recrimination. I knew the way Abby acted when she was angry or hurt. She was a lot like me in that regard. She seethed, quietly.
“I know, but-”
“Everybody wanted to know where you were, why you weren’t there with us. What was I supposed to tell them?”
“Tell them you lied.”
“What?”
“All that bullshit at church, all the stuff about heaven. Pastor Chris saying I believed Caitlin was in heaven.”
“I don’t have control over what Chris says.”
“Right.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I didn’t want to fight; I wanted to tell Abby about Tracy, about my conversation with Ryan, about the sketch. I forced a calm into my voice that I didn’t feel. “I felt trapped there, Abby,” I said. “It felt like I was watching a play, and I was in the play but I was also watching myself. And I felt no connection to any of it. It didn’t seem like they were talking about me anymore, about my life, so I needed to leave. I should have told you. But I found something out. That’s what I came home to tell you.”
“You left me standing alone at our daughter’s grave.”
“It’s not her grave. Don’t say that. It’s not her grave at all. That’s what I’m telling you. Someone saw her. Someone I met today. They saw Caitlin. Alive. She’s alive. The police came, Ryan came, and he took a statement, and they’re going to do a sketch and everything, and it means she’s alive.”
Abby looked at me for the first time. Really looked at me. The tip of her nose was red from where she’d rubbed it with the Kleenex. Something stirred inside me for this woman. Not as simple as pity, which I might feel for a stranger. It was something more complicated, something deeper. The thick roots of love and resentment tangled together and were almost impossible to unravel. I thought I was reaching her.
She swallowed and took a deep, phlegmy breath. She sounded mucus-choked from the tears and snot.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“Someone saw Caitlin,” I said, speaking slowly, enunciating clearly. “A witness. She saw her.”
“Who saw her?”
“A dancer from a club in Russellville.”
She rolled her eyes. “A stripper.”
