Chapter 4 #2
She shakes her head. “Tairneyy was at home with her folks. She could tell I was worried, so she changed our call to video and showed me where she was. Even her parents came to the phone. We only have one car. We…” She draws a shuddering breath.
“I work shifts at a nursing home, and the bus stop is literally out the front, so when Josey got her license, we figured we could share and make it work. She had it last night, since the buses don’t stop out front of the Carpenters’ house.
But since she had it and I didn’t, I couldn’t drive to the cinema myself to check.
I was going to,” she whimpers. “I told Tairneyy I’d catch a bus, but Frank…
” Shaky, she reaches up and knuckles fresh tears from beneath her eyes.
“Tairneyy’s dad said he’d drive in and check it out. ”
“He never found her car?” Drake questions. “What time did he drive in?”
“He got there just before eight,” she rasps. “He said he didn’t see my car, and he didn’t see Jose. He even convinced the manager at the movie theater to let him check every cinema, even the ones being used.”
“And they let him?” I ask.
She nods. “They walked with him, so it’s not like he was trying to get a free peek at whatever was playing.
They searched each one to make sure she wasn’t there.
Frank checked the men’s bathroom, and the female manager checked the female bathrooms. He called me at about eight-thirty to say he hadn’t found her. By then, her phone stopped tracking.”
“Does Josey have a boyfriend?” Drake asks. “Was she seeing someone?”
“Yeah, he…” She brings her phone down again and swipes at the screen.
Scrolling through her photo albums, she finds an image and shows us: young, beautiful, smiling Josephine posing with one arm wrapped around a dude, while the other hand extends forward, kinda how people announce an engagement.
“Caleb,” she murmurs. “Caleb Driver. They’ve been dating since they were in seventh and eighth grade.
” She chokes out a snotty laugh. “He’s a year older than she is, but he’s also the sweetest thing ever. ”
“He’s military?” I ask, since the dude literally wears Army fatigues in the picture.
“ROTC.” She wipes her nose, lowering the phone again and cradling it on her thigh. “They weren’t engaged or anything. They’re both still so young, but they love each other very much and made a commitment to their future. But… for later.”
“So, this is like a promise ring?” Drake gently taps her phone. “A commitment, but without rushing.”
“Exactly. She’s eighteen, which is the same age I was when I had her.
” Her voice breaks with a pained crackle.
“So young. It’s always just been the two of us, detectives, and this has always been a happy home, but she saw how hard I worked, and she didn’t like seeing me stressed, so she knew better than to make the same choices I did at such a young age.
College first.” She sniffles. “Adulthood. Living and traveling and enjoying life. Then she could marry that boy.”
Drake’s pen scratches across the surface of his notebook. Caleb Driver. ROTC. Copeland U. 6 year relationship.
“Where is Josey’s father? When did you and Josey become just you and Josey?”
“Since day one.” She ignores the cup of tea on the side table, but she picks up the box of tissues beside it and fists a handful.
“I was pregnant at seventeen. He was twenty-two.” She exhales a snotty scoff.
“I felt special, because he was older and so handsome. He said how mature I was. How beautiful. Smart. Wonderful.” She shakes her head and exhales a shaky groan.
“At seventeen, I was too young to understand what that was. But as a grown woman, a mom? I’d wring the neck of any twenty-two-year-old who tried that crap on my teenage daughter.
Even Caleb…” She tears her tissue into thin strips.
“Different grades, but he’s technically only three months older than she is.
Jose’s father ran the instant I peed on a stick and realized my life would never be the same. ”
“Have you seen him since?” I question. “Heard from him?”
“He came around when she was four years old, promised the world, claimed he wanted to be an involved dad. I was twenty-one, still so young and na?ve, so I agreed to let him see her. He swore he wanted to work up to a fifty-fifty split custody schedule, but first, we’d try a few hours every other Saturday so she could get comfortable around him.
He was a stranger to her.” She pauses. Swallows.
Whimpers. “The first visit went well. I mean…” She shrugs.
“He filled her up on candy and watched her fall face-first off the slide at the park. He brought her home with a bloody nose and absolutely no clue how to comfort a crying toddler, but still… it seemed his intentions were good. The second visit only lasted an hour instead of the three we’d discussed, then he brought her home and said he had to rush out to something else.
She wasn’t bleeding this time, and she wasn’t flying on sugar, so I believed him.
The third time, despite confirming twice the day before, he didn’t even turn up.
We didn’t hear from him again until she was nine. ”
Beside me, Drake writes as quickly as he can.