Chapter 2
"We need to call the police," Abigail whispered as they emerged onto the porch, "but..."
"But what about the gun?" Cleo asked, her voice low but not low enough for Abigail’s taste.
"Shh! And... I don’t know, I feel like it will cause more trouble... but at the same time—if we don’t tell them, we have to either lie and say they took something else or lie and say they didn’t take anything and will they even care? If nothing was stolen, I mean."
Cleo was pacing back and forth.
"Well, we only saw the g—" she paused as Abigail glared at her, "—the thing for a few seconds. Maybe we were confused? We’re not sure it was a—one of those..."
"Oh, come on," Abigail said, "if we tell them that, they’ll definitely think we’re overreacting."
She wanted to run, turn her back on the house and just run until she couldn’t see it anymore or feel her legs. Abigail turned her gaze to the house. She’d never expected that this trip to Rhode Island would be a relaxing jaunt. She’d been planning on digging into her past and the night of the crash all along, but she’d never thought it would be like this.
The twist in her chest as she thought about it was physically painful, and she knew that if she didn’t call the police, she would have to go back inside and act like nothing was wrong.
"We have to," she said finally, "if I don’t, and there is someone in there... I could never do that to my girls."
Lifting her gaze to meet Cleo’s, Abigail hoped that the pleading look in her eyes would be enough for Cleo to agree.
"Oh my God, don’t put it like that!" Cleo exclaimed, "There’s no way I can let you not call them now, or it would be MY fault!"
Abigail nodded and raised her phone to her ear, 911 already dialed.
***
Abigail observed that the two police officers who sat across from them in the kitchen felt too large for the space. Like cardboard cutouts that were just slightly too big to be one hundred percent realistic. The male officer was broad and with chestnut hair. Abigail just knew in her bones that, given the chance, he would have plenty of football stories from high school. The other officer was a delicate-looking black woman with a New York accent that had gotten thicker the more she spoke to Abigail.
"So, let me clarify," the male officer said, "again, you opened the safe with a code you knew to be your father’s habitual password and found a gun? But don’t think it is his... why?"
Abigail took a deep breath. This was at least the ninth time he’d asked her and she was starting to regret calling at all, despite being very thankful that they had come and searched the upstairs of her home.
"Because this place was a holiday rental for a decade—it would totally track for my dad to give renters the code to have somewhere to put their valuables. Plus, I’ve got a box of his documents being sent to me from storage. I was planning on looking through them to see if there were registration papers and whatever was in there."
"Hmm," he said, nodding and marking something down in his notebook.
"Do you have the records of the people who stayed?" the woman asked.
Abigail shook her head, "No, it was all handled by some property management company that went bankrupt about ten years ago. I tried to look into it when I first got the will, but it had already shut down."
The female officer smiled and nodded, "Right. Well, I recommend that you change your locks and keep an eye out."
"Is that it?" Cleo asked, "You’re not going to look for this guy?"
"With all respect, ma’am," the male cop said with distinctly little respect, "you ladies don’t even know for sure when this break-in happened; in all likelihood, they broke in, found the safe open, and took the gun, realized there wasn’t really anything else of value, and left. You’re lucky, really. Most break-ins where there’s nothing to take get trashed."
Wait, was he saying there was nothing worth stealing in her home!? Abigail glared at the young guy and repressed a smirk as the other officer registered what was happening and rose quickly.
“I’d like one last look around,” she said, “call me paranoid if you like.”
Abigail smiled at the woman and glanced at Cleo, who nodded, understanding that Abigail wanted her to stay in the kitchen and keep the judgey little jerk from poking his nose around her cupboards. Not that there’d be anything to steal, apparently.
As she and the officer entered the hallway, Abigail turned to her and grimaced apologetically, “I’m really sorry but I’ve forgotten your name…”
The officer smiled, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing an appointment card that had a few words scribbled on it in black pen.
“I’m Jada Davis. Here,” she said, “your report number, my name and email.”
Abigail was a little taken aback, “Oh, thank you… that’s very kind of you.”
“But you wanna know why?”
“I mean… kinda?”
Jada laughed, her wide smile lighting up her face and Abigail found herself reflexively smiling in return. As they spoke, Jada gestured towards the stairs and Abigail took the lead.
“Because I know what a jackass he can be and you seem like you’re genuinely concerned, not trying to waste our time or build a case against your ex-husband.”
Abigail flinched, “Wait—what?”
“You would be shocked how many vague B and E reports are people trying to subtly—or not so subtly—suggest their ex was no damn good and therefore they should get full custody, higher child support, or more than the standard division of assets. You see enough of them. You get a nose for it. He reckons he has a nose for it. He doesn’t.”
The woman chuckled, and Abigail quickly gave a short laugh as they reached the top of the stairs. The footprints that had triggered this whole thing were now decimated by the back-and-forth of the two officers as they searched the upper floor for an intruder.
“Wow… That’s pretty depressing,” Abigail said, “but for the record my ex-husband is a remarkably nice person with whom I co-parent successfully. He’s also in London right now.”
“Well then, I guess he’s off the hook,” Jada said, “so this was your old house?”
Abigail nodded, “Yeah, we left when I was just out of high school. Honestly, I figured we sold the place, but when my parents died, I found out we still had it.”
“Right, that’s rough,” Jada said as she headed to the end of the hallway and jiggled the window in its frame.
“Yeah, you’re not wrong. I was a brand new mom to twins at the time, health issues galore, and honestly, I just didn’t have the energy to deal with it. I did the bare minimum to accept the place legally and then just ignored it for ten years. I cannot even begin to think about how much the upkeep has cost over the years…”
She cut herself off, realizing how snobbish she probably sounded complaining about how hard it was to be given a house and then be able to ignore it for a decade with no real repercussions.
“Hmm.”
Jada moved into the main bedroom, Abigail’s parents' room. She hesitated at the door. She hadn’t been in here for decades, and even at her age, with both her parents passed, Abigail still felt the urge to knock before entering. Taking a deep breath, she ran her knuckles along the doorframe as she stepped through it.
“Which, you know, I’m very lucky we were able to absorb that,” she said, trying to mend the awkwardness, “lucky I didn’t have to deal with it all while in hospital.”
“Rough birth?” Jada asked, looking over at Abigail from the window she was checking.
“Twin girls who are both almost as tall as me already, and they’re only eleven.”
Jada’s eyes went wide, “Oh, Momma, that’s… yeah, that’s a rough one. But I bet they’re beautiful.”
The officer’s contagious smile lit up her deep brown eyes, and Abigail couldn’t help but smile back.
“They are,” she said, “the twin lights of my life.”
Jada nodded and grinned as she checked the other window. “These all look good in here—next bedroom?”
Abigail eyed the built-in closet. She didn’t remember it being there when she was a kid, but nodded and moved on to the guest room behind Jada.
“Your girls aren’t with you, though?”
“No, they’re in London with their dad for the summer.”
The other woman turned to look at Abigail, her meticulously groomed eyebrows raised. "Wow, you really do co-parent successfully. I don’t think my mom would have let my dad take me to the grocery store, let alone out of the country!”
She smiled and shrugged, “I’m not thrilled about the distance, but it gave me this chance to come up here and sort some things out.”
“Things?”
Abigail hesitated; she’d almost forgotten that this woman was a police officer on duty, and all these questions were probably one hundred percent on the record. It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong… except discovering a potential connection to a financial scam, potentially illegal surveillance of her father’s clients, and that whole day she spent trespassing in warehouses with Bee. She just didn’t feel like explaining her whole medical situation to her, that was all.
“Oh, yeah, you know…” she gestured around.
“Hmm.”
They were heading down the hallway to the last bedroom now, her old bedroom. The anxiety of the entire situation weighed down on her. She’d spent so many hours alone in her room growing up, all her socializing had been downstairs in the kitchen, and she wasn’t sure she was prepared to see the changes.
“This one was mine,” she said, stalling.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It’s a bit weird, honestly,” she said, “knowing random strangers were sleeping in here for years. You know, when you’re a teenager, you put your personality up on the walls.”
Jada nodded sympathetically. “I can see how it might be a bit weird.”
“Would you mind if I…?”
“Didn’t come in? No, not a problem, just hang out by the door.”
Abigail sighed with relief. It got her out of the awkward conversation and made her see her old room again for the first time with a stranger.
Or, at least, she thought it did.
“So, why’d you move?” Jada called.
Abigail winced.
“Well, actually I got into a car accident with my boyfriend and it was all a bit much after that.”
“Oh dang! I’m sorry… did he…?”
She winced again, unsure how to answer that.
“He survived the crash, but he ran off after. Never saw Jacob again.”
The petite officer appeared back in the hallway, “Jacob as in Givens? Jacob—local unsolved mystery teenage runaway—Givens? Used to scare high schoolers against drink-driving?”
“He was not drunk!” Abigail exclaimed, “Do people say that!?”
Jada shrugged, “That’s what the health teacher said when we were there for community engagement day last year. That was the first time I heard about it.”
Anger boiled under Abigail’s calm fa?ade. She might not remember the crash itself, but there was no way Jacob had been drinking and driving.
“Well, if you see them again, set them straight,” she said, turning and retreating downstairs.
Abigail was still fuming as she reentered the kitchen to see Cleo scrolling on her phone and the male officer writing short notes on his notepad with his ear tilted down towards his radio. Much to Abigail’s quiet satisfaction, it seemed that Jada hadn’t remained upstairs poking around but had followed her down.
"We gotta go, Davis," he said, shutting the notebook and pocketing it, "some kids set fire to a van in a parking lot and we get to go and see what’s left."
"Sure thing, Dale," Jada said, pausing to smile apologetically at Abigail. “Oh, and Abby? I will be sure to set the record straight on what we were discussing. There’s no place for misinformation in prevention; it only weakens the position of those making the arguments."
She grit her teeth but nodded in return. At least Jada could admit that and it made Abigail slightly happier to know that someone else would be looking out for Jacob’s memory. Cleo waited until they had both heard the front door click shut before turning her questions on Abigail. Dutifully explaining what had happened upstairs, Abigail found herself staring longingly at the tea making station but she just didn’t have the energy to go through the motions of brewing something.