Chapter Seven #2
“Is that what happened?” she says with so much compassion, I think I’ll burst into tears.
“You’re the one who pointed it out,” I say to Andi. “You thought it was him, too.”
“I didn’t understand at first, though,” she says. “I mean, for a second that’s what I thought, and I just reacted and texted
you . . . but of course I thought about it for two more seconds and felt terrible that I even said anything. It was just a
shock. I . . .”
“What photo?” Sasha asks, looking from Andi to me. I pull out my phone.
“You never met Jack. You can be the judge. The selfie we took last night,” I say, opening my photo app and turning the screen
around to show her. She squints at it.
“Okay,” she says, not knowing what she’s looking for.
I point to the figure in the background. “That man,” I say, then I quickly scroll to a photo of Jack from a few weeks before
he died. One of my favorites. We’re in Martha’s Vineyard sitting at a seaside restaurant and he has Hallie on his lap. They
are both wearing lobster bibs and smiling for the camera. I turn the phone around to show Sasha.
“I know the theater photo is dark, but I know what I saw. I know my husband,” I say, my voice cracking ever so slightly. Then
I see something very unexpected. Sasha’s reaction. She tries to hide it, but I see her squint at the image and look very perplexed
for a moment. She studies it and then shakes her head ever so slightly.
“What?” I say, snapping back the phone from her hand. She looks up like she’s just been snapped out of a trance.
“Nothing,” she says.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says again, shaking her head and taking a deep breath. “It’s just—I’m very sorry for . . . your loss is all.”
Andi cuts her off. “Well, half the women in the Cloverhill Elementary Facebook group have already told the story about how
you ran out of the theater calling after someone, but nobody saw a man.”
“But you see him. There.” I stab my finger at the photo.
“It looks a lot like him,” Sasha says.
“It sure does, I’ll give you that,” Andi says. “But, Regan—”
“What? But what?” I snap.
“Nothing. I have no idea how to explain it. I don’t know what to say,” Andi says.
We start to walk again, looking out into the misty trees, trying to fulfill our task, although I don’t think any of us expects
to find something out here. I’m not surprised there’s already talk, and I’m not surprised Andi is skeptical; that’s her way
of protecting me. I’ve known her long enough to know that. What I can’t shake is Sasha’s reaction. I watch her peering into
the thick brush and holding her Starbucks cup with one mittened hand. What the hell was that? It was like she recognized him
and it gave her a shock.
“He ran,” I say, and they both stop and turn to look at me.
“What do you mean?” Andi asks.
“I followed after him. I chased the taxi he got into. I followed it all the way across town. He ran from me. He heard me call his name and he kept going and got on a train. Who takes a train? And especially, who takes a train directly from a community play? At intermission?” Sasha and Andi look at one another and then back to me.
I hate it. I hate what they’re thinking and how I can tell they think I’m off my meds or something.
I take out the paper train schedule from my pocket and unfold it, shoving it toward them.
Sasha takes it, and Andi moves in to look at it over her shoulder.
“Wait. You . . . literally chased the guy to the train station?” Andi says.
“It makes five stops before ending in Windsor Locks. He could be anywhere,” Sasha says, and Andi gives her a look I can only
interpret as “don’t encourage her.”
“I did. What would you have done?” I say softly, beginning to feel completely defeated—not heard. I take back the paper schedule
and fold it into a neat square. I make a just-drop-it gesture with my hands, and I sigh. I begin walking ahead of them, blinking
back tears. I hear the caw of a crow circling in the gray, empty sky above us. The sound is hollow and the air is wet and
cold and I desperately want to be home.
“You could post his photo on social media sites in these cities. Every town has different Facebook pages from some community
group or another,” Sasha says. “There are a lot of places you could post his photo since you have it narrowed down to a handful
of cities. Ask if people have seen him. Give your contact info for any leads. It’s not that many places. They aren’t huge
cities, either,” she says. Andi raises her eyebrows at that.
We all stand looking at one another under a canopy of dead trees in these eerie, dense woods where we have been tasked to
ensure Tia’s dead body hasn’t been hidden by a psychopath or mauled to death by wild animals, and it’s all so surreal, it’s
dizzying.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Andi says, breaking the silence, and then we walk.
Quietly now, more intent in our search, focused as we trek the last couple of miles to the halfway mark, which is a lakeside pub just past Andi’s house where Sandy has arranged for one of the church buses to take folks back up the shore to where their cars are parked.
The team that started at the bottom of the lake will be about an hour behind, so by the time they make their way up, the bus should be back to collect them.
I think of Tia’s poor mother and wonder how she even had the wherewithal to plan all of this in her state. I suppose it’s
like the mother who can lift a car off her trapped baby in a forced moment of superstrength when their child’s life hangs
in the balance.
I think we are all incredibly relieved when we arrive at the last stretch, out of the woods and into the clearing by the lake.
We walk the trail behind Andi’s house and onto her property. There is a group of five that has been keeping pace ahead of
us who arrived first, and I see them poking around in Carson and Andi’s woodpile and inside the shed they have next to a small
wooden fence, lined with cans and bottles for shooting practice. It could be a photo of anyone’s yard in anyone’s home in
the county. Nothing odd, except Andi.
She stops cold, pulls the hood off her head and squints to see something. I look to where she’s looking and see the garage
door open. Inside, Carson is there, and I see a police car parked in the dirt clearing and an officer standing inside the
garage with Carson, and they’re . . . I don’t know. It looks like they’re moving a freezer together, one on each side.
Andi cups her mouth with both hands and her face drains of the little color it had. Her eyes roll back in her head as she
passes out cold and hits the ground with a hard smack.