Ink and Bone(46)

“That’s very kind,” said Merri, even though she wanted to gather up her things and run. There was absolutely nowhere to hide from people, though that’s one thing she had learned. You couldn’t get away from good-intentioned folks who hurt you without even knowing.

Jones Cooper came through the door then with a jingle of the bell. The woman looked at him and back at Merri with an understanding nod.

“I’ll get another water and a menu.”

He slid into the booth across from her. She liked his face, strong brow, high cheekbones. Those eyes—what would she call them? Penetrating. The bad guys must squirm before him. Even she felt a little uneasy, wondering what he could see when he looked at her: Someone unstable? Someone desperate? Was she unstable and desperate? Would any other type of person have hired a psychic to find her daughter?

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said.

“You’re at Miss Lovely’s?”

When she confirmed, he nodded his approval. “That’s a good place for you.”

He didn’t go on, but Merri thought she knew what he meant. Better than a rental or one of the impersonal places she might have picked outside of town. At Miss Lovely’s she felt safe and cared for, a rare experience.

The waitress came back with the water and menus. Cooper ordered coffee and a patty melt. Merri ordered a pot of tea and chicken noodle soup.

“I have a couple of things I want to get straight before we continue,” Cooper said when the waitress had gone.

“Okay,” she said.

“After Abbey disappeared, suspicion turned to your husband for a time.”

She bowed her head, took a breath. She tasted the familiar flavor of shame and anger in her mouth. She had to force herself to say the words she’d repeated too many times to too many hired detectives.

“At the time of the abduction, Wolf—my husband—was having an affair,” she said. Merri never got used to the word girlfriend. It sounded so sweet and innocent, when in this case, it was anything but. “The police discovered that pretty quickly, and a lot of time was spent on Wolf and his mistress.” Another strange word, somehow antiquated, with an almost permissive quality.

“They didn’t have anything to do with this,” she concluded.

The police didn’t believe Wolf that he couldn’t identify the men on that trail. That he’d never seen the perpetrators, had his glasses knocked off in the fall, as had Jackson. That all he saw were some vague and fuzzy dark forms through the trees, listened to Jackson get shot, the kids screaming. But he was in shock, terrified for the kids and himself, not thinking about identifying anyone. He’d been plagued by nightmares since. Merri told Jones all of that.

Jones nodded gravely. “I’m sorry to have to bring this up, Mrs. Gleason. But are you absolutely certain he had nothing to do with it?”

It was a question she almost couldn’t bear to answer again.

“What motivation would they have to hurt or abduct Abbey?” asked Merri, trying and failing to keep the annoyance from her voice. “Their thing—it was tawdry, insubstantial.”

She hated the way she sounded, like a jaded New Yorker.

“He was careless, stupid,” she continued. “But he loves his children. He’s—broken by this. Just as I am.”

She looked away, swallowed back the tightness at the base of her throat.

“What do you know about the girlfriend?” asked Jones.

Merri lifted her palms. “Just a girl, some publicist, twenty-five. A total slut, sure.” She didn’t like that word; it was misogynistic wasn’t it? Wasn’t Wolf a slut, someone careless about sex and who they hurt with it? Though why should she be concerned about referring to her husband’s mistress that way? “But not someone who would steal a child. Anyway, they were both cleared of any foul play.”

There was that tone again, cold, disinterested in her husband’s infidelity. Boys will be boys.

Cooper nodded slowly but held her eyes. He saw it all, she thought, every shade and layer of her. He’d already decided that the affair had nothing to do with Abbey; he was just doing his due diligence.

“I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to dwell on uncomfortable topics.”

“Topics?”

He cleared his throat. “There were questions about the prescription drugs you were taking at the time.”

Where do you get your pills? Do you have a dealer? Do you owe anyone money? Would they have come after you? Hurt your family? God, she could still taste the humiliation, the rage, the sick dread. It was a toxin. She might carry it in her body forever, like grief. Maybe it would kill her, show up as cancer or as some mysterious blood disease a couple years from now. When it manifested itself in her body, she would know precisely when she caught the germ.

A tragic event like this put your whole life under scrutiny. If Wolf had been having some petty affair, if she’d been taking too many Vicodin and Abbey hadn’t disappeared, none of it would mean very much. They’d still be shitty parents, but their flaws and mistakes wouldn’t be on display for everyone to see and judge. When you’d failed to safeguard the life of your child, people wanted answers, reasons why such a thing could never happen to them. Nothing like a good public flogging to make everyone feel better about themselves.