A Flicker in the Dark(40)

“Did you ever witness your father interacting with Lena Rhodes or any of the other missing girls?”

“Yes,” I said, my mind flashing back to the festival. The way he was staring at her and her long, smooth stomach. The way he ducked his head when he realized he was caught. “I saw him watching her once at the Crawfish Festival. When she was showing me her belly-button ring.”

“What was he doing?”

“Just … staring,” I said. “She had her shirt pulled up. She caught him looking, and she waved.”

My mother scoffed beside me, shook her head.

“Thank you, Chloe,” the sheriff said. “I know this wasn’t easy for you, but you did the right thing.”

I nodded.

“Before we let you go, is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your father? Anything that might be important for us to know?”

I exhaled, held myself tightly in my own arms. It was hot in there, but suddenly, I felt myself shiver.

“I saw him with a shovel once,” I said, avoiding my mother’s stare. This was news to her. “He was walking across our yard, coming from the swamp behind our house. It was dark, but … he was there.”

Everyone was silent, this new revelation settling over the room like a heavy morning fog.

“Where were you when you saw him?”

“In my room. I couldn’t sleep, and I have this bench, right below my window, where I like to read … I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” I said. “I … I didn’t know…”

“Of course you didn’t, sweetheart,” Sheriff Dooley said. “Of course you didn’t. You’ve done more than enough.”



* * *



A roll of thunder shudders through my house now, making the wineglasses hanging upside down from our liquor cabinet rattle like chattering teeth. Another summer storm is rolling through. I can feel the electric charge in the air, taste the impending rain.

“Chlo, did you hear me?”

I glance up from my wineglass, half full of cabernet. The memory of Sheriff Dooley’s office starts melting away slowly; instead, I see Daniel, standing at our kitchen counter, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a butcher knife in one hand. He got back from his conference earlier this afternoon; when I arrived home from the office, I found him dancing to Louis Armstrong through the kitchen in my gingham apron, the ingredients for tonight’s dinner spread across the island. The image makes me smile.

“Sorry, no,” I say. “What was that?”

“I said you’ve done more than enough.”

I squeeze my glass a little more tightly, the delicate stem threatening to snap from the pressure between my fingers. I rack my brain, trying to remember what we were just talking about. I’ve been so lost in thought these last few days, so consumed in memories. Especially with Daniel being gone and the house being empty, it’s almost felt as if I’ve been living in the past again. When the words escape Daniel’s lips, I can’t tell if they actually came from him or if I imagined them, conjured them up from the recesses of my mind and placed them into his mouth to regurgitate back to me. I open my lips to speak, but he cuts me off.

“Those cops had no right to show up at your office like that,” he continues, his eyes focused on the cutting board beneath him. He chops some carrots, moving the blade in quick, fluid motions before scraping them to the side of the board and moving on to the tomatoes. “Thank God you didn’t have any clients in there yet. That could have really hurt your reputation, you know?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. I remember now. We had been talking about Lacey Deckler, about Detective Thomas and Officer Doyle questioning me at work. It felt like something I should tell him, in case her last known location ever became public knowledge. “Well, I was the last person to see her alive, I guess.”

“She might still be alive,” he says. “They haven’t found her body yet. It’s been a week now.”

“That’s true.”

“And the other girl … she was missing for, what, three days before they found her?”

“Yeah,” I say, swirling the wine in my glass. “Yeah, three days. So it sounds like you’ve been following all of this, then?”

“Yeah, you know. It’s been on the news. Kind of hard to avoid.”

“Even in New Orleans?”

Daniel keeps chopping, the tomato juice running across the cutting board and pooling onto the counter. Another roll of thunder vibrates the house. He doesn’t reply.

“Does it sound like it could have been the same person to you?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light. “Do you think they’re, you know … related?”

Daniel shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he says, wiping the tomato juice off the blade with his finger before popping it into his mouth. “Too early to tell, I think. So what kinds of questions did those guys ask you?”

“Not much, really. They were trying to get me to tell them what we talked about in our session. Obviously, I wouldn’t, which kind of bothered them.”

“Good for you.”

“They asked if I saw her leaving the building.”

Daniel glances at me, his brows furrowed.

“Did you?”