All the Dangerous Things(22)

Somewhere in between, like purgatory.

I glance at the clock before making my way over to my laptop and skimming a few emails—some true crime fans who managed to find my address; a couple of interview requests, mostly trash—and click back over to the TrueCrimeCon article I was reading on Monday. I refresh, scrolling back down to the comments to see if there’s anything new.

So we’re just going to ignore this woman’s history, then? Her past?

Leave her alone! She’s a grieving mother.

That poor child. Let’s not forget he’s the real victim here.

He’s in a better place.

I feel a catch in my throat, my mouse hovering over the last one. He’s in a better place. It was left yesterday, one year from the day of Mason’s disappearance. My eyes scan the username. It’s generic, a mess of random numbers and letters with a default gray silhouette as the profile picture. I try to click on it, but it takes me nowhere.

I wonder what that means: He’s in a better place. I stare at it, my eyes drilling into the screen until the letters start to blur and double. I get lost there for a second, staring, until I shake my head and copy the URL, composing a new email to Detective Dozier and dropping it into the body.

“Read the last comment,” I type. “Can we trace the IP address?”

I shoot the email off with a swoosh and close my eyes again, exhaling slowly. Then I stand up, grab my purse, and force myself to walk out the door.

I make my way inside a little corner bistro called Framboise, a place near the office I used to frequent for lunch. I’m early, intentionally, so I take a seat at the bar and order a glass of Sancerre and a crock of French onion soup—but when the food arrives, I can’t bring myself to eat. Instead, I take my spoon and push down on the melted cheese, watching the brown liquid gush through the top and start to pool.

It reminds me of a footprint in pluff mud, swamp water leaking out.

I stare into the bowl, setting myself adrift for a second. I can hear the street getting noisier as the square comes alive with art school students walking home from class and young professionals sneaking away from their desks to catch a happy hour special. I vaguely register lights from outside twinkling in the distance; the clack of horse-drawn carriages pulling tourists to dinner across rough cobblestone roads. It’s a rhythmic sound, peaceful. Like the steady click of a metronome or a fingernail tapping against a glass pane window.

I feel my head start to bob, heavy, like it’s slowly filling with sand. Like soon my neck won’t be able to hold it on its own. Like it might topple over and break.

Click-click-click-click.

“Mrs. Drake?”

I jolt at the sudden closeness of a voice, my head popping up like someone yanked me back by my hair. I glance around for a clock and try to imagine how I must have looked, staring down at the bar top, a hazy mist coating my eyes for God-knows-how-long.

Five seconds, maybe. Five minutes. My body, here, but my mind, somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

“Sorry,” I say, looking up, blinking a few times to clear the fog from my eyes. “I was lost in thought for a second there—”

I have to squint to make out his face in the dim restaurant light, my eyes still bleary, and it takes me a moment to recognize him. It’s Waylon—of course it is, that deep, velvety voice—hovering just above the empty barstool next to mine. I rub my eyes, trying to pull it together. The bar is busier than it was when I first sat down; my soup, still untouched beneath me, already congealed.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asks. I can tell he’s uncomfortable, like he’s intruding on a private dinner instead of simply showing up at the place and time we had agreed.

“Of course not,” I say, gesturing to the barstool beside me. I watch as he glances around the restaurant before self-consciously ducking his head as he sits, as if to make himself seem smaller. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“Are you kidding?” he asks, flagging down the bartender and ordering a whiskey on the rocks. “I dropped everything when I got your note.”

I take a sip of my wine. Back when I emailed him on Monday night, I wasn’t really sure what I was proposing—just that I was open to trying something new, something different. Something that might actually work. He had responded within seconds, almost as if he had been sitting right there on his own computer, waiting for me. Willing me to hit Send.

“Savannah’s a cool town,” he says, his arms vaguely gesturing around us. It’s a well-intentioned attempt at small talk, I know, before diving into the real reason we’re here.

“It is.”

“Have you always lived here?”

“No,” I say, hesitating. I don’t really want to elaborate, but when Waylon is still quiet, still staring at me, I keep talking to fill the empty space. “No, I’m from Beaufort, South Carolina. It’s another coastal city, albeit smaller than Savannah. Port Royal Island.”

“What was growing up in Beaufort like?”

I stop and stare at Waylon, suspicion creeping into my chest.

“I’d prefer not to talk about that.”

Waylon raises his eyebrows, and I feel my heart begin to race, beating hard in my throat. I realize now that no matter how many times I’ve done this, no matter how many times I’ve told my story, this time, it’s different. This isn’t detached, standing on a stage somewhere and reciting the same thing over and over again to strangers at a distance.