Chapter 25
Cole
The painkillers were wearing off.
That was the first thing I knew. The ribs were back. The shoulder was back. The kidney they were watching was doing something my body didn't have a name for, and my head wasn't ready to look at.
The room was light. Late dawn, gray-blue. I turned my head on the pillow.
The chair next to the bed was empty.
I told myself she'd gone for coffee.
I told myself she'd gone to call Jamie. To check on Noah. To eat something downstairs.
I lay still and let the stories happen.
After a few minutes, a nurse came in. The early one. Different from the night nurse. She had a clipboard.
"How're we feeling, Lieutenant?"
"Where'd she go?"
"Sorry?"
"The woman in the chair. Last night."
She looked at the chair. Looked at her clipboard. Flipped a page.
"Looks like she signed out at three eighteen. Said she had to handle something. I'm sorry—I'd assumed you knew."
"Yeah. No. Thanks."
She did the vitals. Asked me about the pain on a scale of one to ten. I told her four.
It wasn't four.
She left.
I looked at the chair.
The indentation in the cushion was gone. The chair had been sat in long enough last night that the seat had taken the shape of her, and that shape had finished smoothing itself out in the hours since she'd gone. The chair was a chair again.
I got my phone off the side table.
I called her.
It rang once and went to voicemail.
Her voice on the recording said the thing her voice said on the recording. Hi, you've reached Tessa. Leave a message. The pause before leave a message. The small smile in Tessa. The recording was the same. The world was different.
I called again.
Voicemail.
I called Jamie.
She picked up before the second ring.
"Cole."
I'd never heard her voice do that.
"Cole, she dropped Noah here yesterday afternoon. Around four. She said she had an errand. She didn't come in. She didn't—"
I didn't say anything.
"She didn't come back, Cole."
"Okay."
"I thought she was going to the hospital. I thought—"
"I know. Jamie. It's okay."
"Cole—"
"I have to go."
I hung up.
I sat up.
The ribs did a thing. The kidney did a thing. The shoulder did a thing.
I sat up anyway.
The clothes from yesterday were in a plastic bag in the cabinet under the sink. Gravel-dusted at the knees. Blood at the collar. They'd cut my shirt open down the front; somebody had taped it back together with two strips of medical tape. I was going to put it on anyway.
I got the gown off with my good hand. I got the shirt on. The arm in the sling stayed in the sling. The taping at the front held. The buttons didn't. I left them.
I was working on the laces of one boot, sitting on the edge of the bed with my forehead pressed against the mattress because bending was a different kind of wrong than I'd been expecting, when the door opened.
"Cole."
Quinn.
She had a coffee in one hand, and she was across the room before the door had finished swinging.
"Cole. What are you doing?"
"Going home."
"Get back in the bed."
"Tessa's gone."
Her face did the thing it had done in the gravel.
She set the coffee on the side table. Hesitantly.
"Gone where?"
"I don't know. She left around three. Dropped Noah off at Jamie's yesterday. Hasn't come back. Phone is off."
Quinn didn't say anything for a beat.
Then: "I'm driving."
"Quinn—"
"You're not driving anywhere. I'm driving. I'll sign you out AMA. Sit back down."
I sat back down.
She found a nurse. She signed me out with her badge number. She told the nurse I was leaving against medical advice, and she was taking responsibility. She was back in the doorway with a wheelchair I had no intention of using inside ten minutes.
"Cole."
"I'm walking."
"You're sitting."
"Quinn."
"Sit."
I sat.
She wheeled me out.
She didn't say anything in the elevator. She didn't say anything in the lobby. She didn't say anything when the morning hit me coming out of the doors, and I had to keep my eyes shut for a beat because the light was too bright.
She helped me into the passenger seat of her car. She buckled the belt for me. She came around to her side.
"Where am I going?"
"Apartment."
She drove.
I watched the streets the way I always watched the streets and didn't see any of them.
She parked at the curb in front of the building. I told her to wait. She told me she was not waiting.
I didn't argue.
The three flights took me longer than I wanted to think about. Quinn was a step behind me the whole way. She had her hand on my good arm at two landings. I didn't shake her off.
I got the key in the lock on the second try.
The apartment was the apartment.
The kitchen had been wiped down. The dishes were in the rack. The bed I could see through the open bedroom door at the end of the hall had been made.
The fake ring was on the counter.
It was in the small velvet box I'd put it in when I'd given it to her. The box was open. The ring was sitting in the velvet groove I'd shaped my thumb across in a jewelry store last summer when I'd been deciding which one was hers.
Next to the box was a folded piece of paper.
I went to the counter.
I picked up the paper.
I unfolded it.
The handwriting was hers. Small. Careful. The way Tessa wrote—even when she was leaving, the letters were careful.
Don't look for me. Take care of Noah.
I read it.
I read it again.
Quinn was in the doorway. She hadn't come in. She was watching me.
I folded the paper. I put it in my pocket.
I picked up the ring. I put that in my pocket, too.
I went down the hall to our bedroom.
I opened the closet.
I stood in front of it for a long beat.
My clothes were where they had been. Hers were where they had been. The shoes were lined up where they had been. The only thing missing was a thing I had not known was there to be missing.
There was a square of empty space at the back of the closet, on the floor, behind the long coats. The corner of the carpet was slightly compressed where something had sat. The kind of compression a bag makes when it sits in one place for a long time.
I had lived in this apartment with her for months.
I had not known there was a bag.
I closed the closet door.
I went back out to the kitchen.
Quinn was at the doorway still.
"Bakery."
"Cole—"
"Bakery, Quinn."
She didn't argue.
She drove. I sat with the note in my pocket and the ring in my pocket on top of it and watched the streets go by.
Mrs. Thompson came around the counter when she saw my face.
I told her.
She didn't ask for details. She told me, fast and clean, about the bag.
It had been ready since the first week Tessa came to Havensworth.
Cash. Documents. Two sets of clothes for her and for Noah.
A burner phone Tessa had bought at a gas station the morning she'd fled Nicholas.
The bag had sat in the back of the closet for eight months.
Mrs. Thompson had hoped she'd never use it.
She said it the way Mrs. Thompson said hard things to people she loved: without softening any of it.
"Cole. She's been ready. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, ma'am."
Benjie was at the case. He'd gone still while Mrs. Thompson had been talking. I asked him if Tessa had ever said anything. Anywhere. A city, a state, a place she liked the sound of.
He thought for a beat.
"She said once she wanted to be somewhere she could feel warm again. Palm trees. She was joking, kind of. I don't know if it helps."
"It helps."
In Quinn's car. The door shut. The engine on.
"Where now?" Quinn said.
I thought about Noah at our kitchen table a few months ago. Building a model with me. We'd been talking about something else, and he'd said it offhand, the way Noah said important things when he didn't know they were important.
Mom always said if things got really bad, we'd go somewhere with palm trees.
I'd thought it was a vacation thing. I'd nodded. I'd kept gluing the wing.
Palm trees.
"Sam and Jamie's first," I said. "I need to see Noah."
"Then?"
"Savannah."
"Savannah?"
"Greyhound terminal. She wouldn't use the one here. Two hours south. Different state, different jurisdiction. From there, she can go anywhere."
Quinn looked at me for a beat.
"Okay."
She put the car in drive.
Sam was on the porch when Quinn pulled up.
He'd known I was coming. Quinn must have texted from the bakery.
He came down the steps without saying anything. He met me at the bottom of the porch, put a hand on my good shoulder, and looked at my face. He took the version of me he was looking at and put it into the version of me he'd known for sixteen years and did the math.
"Tell me what you need."
"Keep Noah here. I'm going to find her."
"Done."
He turned and led me up the steps. Jamie was in the front room. Her eyes were red. She'd been crying. She'd been carrying it since I'd hung up on her.
She came across the room and hugged me. Carefully. Around the sling.
"Cole. I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault, Jamie."
"I should have—"
"You couldn't have known."
She held on for a beat longer than the hug should have lasted. Then she stepped back. She wiped under her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"He's been waiting at the window."
I nodded.
Noah was in the living room with Jack and Ben. He saw me through the doorway. He got up and walked over.
He walked the careful way. The way a nine-year-old walks when he is trying not to scare an adult.
I crouched.
It cost me. I didn't let it show.
He stopped a foot away from me. He looked at the sling. The gauze at my eyebrow. The bruises along my jaw. The state of me.
"Cole. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, bud."
"You don't look okay."
"I will be. I promise."
He looked at me a beat longer.
"Mom didn't come back."
"I know."
"Where is she?"
"I don't know yet, bud. But I'm going to find her."
He nodded.
His face was working at being a face. He was using everything he had at nine to not let it do the thing it wanted to do.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"Are you coming back for me?"
Something in my chest did a thing I had not been ready for.
I put my good hand on the side of his head.
"Yeah. I'm coming back for you. I'm coming back for both of you. I won't leave you behind."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
He nodded.
He didn't say anything for a beat. Then:
"We still need to finish the trim on the upstairs window."
"Yeah, we do."
"The one in your room."
"Yeah."
"I'll wait."
I had to swallow before I could answer him.
"Yeah, bud. You wait. I'll be back."
He stepped forward and hugged me. Cautiously. Around the sling. The way Jamie had hugged me.
I held him there for a count.
Then he let go. He stepped back. Jack had come over from the couch. He put his hand on Noah's shoulder the way Sam put his hand on a shoulder—same weight, same hand shape, twelve years old and already moving like his father.
"Come on, Noah. We can play while we wait."
Jack led Noah back to the couch.
I stood up.
It cost me. Again, I didn't let it show.
Sam was at the door. Jamie was beside him.
"I'll call when I find her."
"Every hour either way."
"Sam—"
"Every hour, Cole."
"Okay."
He walked us out to the car. Quinn got in the driver's side. I got in the passenger side.
Sam stood at the open passenger window. His hand on the frame.
"Bring her home."
"I will."
He stepped back from the car.
Quinn pulled away from the curb.
She drove south.