Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(20)

“What kind of business does your husband have?” I ask her. It’s probably in the records, but it’s something to keep her moving. She can’t seem to look away from her son’s face.

“Cars,” she says. “We’re the biggest distributor in our parish. And boats too. Do a good trade in those as well. A few RVs, mostly used, though.”

I nod. I can’t imagine she’s been out of this apartment for quite a while, so when she’s saying we, I understand that means my husband. Her job now is tending this graveyard. “Okay. Thank you, that’s very helpful. Now, let’s talk more about Remy, if that’s okay . . . Your last conversation was about this Carol, is that right?”

“Fight,” she corrects. “Well, more or less. I didn’t like him being around someone who was in trouble, like Carol was.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t really know. He didn’t give me any details about that, and he got sharp with me when I tried to find out. Then we fought about how he wanted to spend Thanksgiving with Karen and her family, can you even imagine? In Connecticut. I put my foot down and said, ‘No, Remy, you come on home. You let that girl go be with her family and you come be with yours.’ He didn’t like that, and he told me he’d think about it.” Her eyes are welling up with shimmering tears, and her face is reddening under the pressure of her grief. Her voice takes on an unsteady shiver. “Thanksgiving was just a week away when we had that conversation, you know. I was already planning the meal. He told me to keep on like I was doing while he thought about it, so I did. Even after I couldn’t get hold of him to be sure he was coming, I cooked dinner. I thought he’d just show up. Or at least call. But we sat there at the table and just . . .”

She breaks. I can see it in my mind—the family gathered at the table, the empty place, the food cooling in the bowls while they stare and wait and wait until it’s obvious there will be no Thanksgiving miracle, no Remy knocking on the door, flashing them that easy, wonderful grin and telling them he was sorry to worry them.

I push a box of Kleenex on the table toward her, and she takes a handful and presses them to her face as she sobs. It takes a while, and as I wait I begin to smell something baking. I wonder if it’s coming from the other apartments around us, but then a kitchen timer dings, and Ruth gasps and jumps up, loose tissues fluttering toward the coffee table as she drops them.

She heads into the kitchen. I follow and stand at the doorway as she pulls on oven mitts and takes a tray of cookies from the oven. She places it on the stove and shoots me a trembling smile. “Remy’s favorites,” she says. “Peanut butter chocolate chip.” She moves the tray to the kitchen counter under the window, slides it open, and I feel the breeze drift in. “Want one?”

“Sure,” I tell her.

She expertly slides one from the baking tray onto a little plate and hands it to me. “Coffee with that?”

I nod, and she pours me a cup from an already-brewed pot. We sit down at the small colonial kitchen table with our coffee and cookies, and Ruth says, “I make these every week now. Every day, when I first moved here. I keep thinking . . . I keep thinking that if he smells those fresh cookies, he might just come home. I open the window so he can smell them from out there. Wherever he is. I know I should stop, but I can’t. Stupid, isn’t it?”

I take a bite of the cookie. “It’s delicious,” I tell her. “And no. It’s not stupid at all. Desperate, maybe, and painful, but that’s normal, Ruth. You need a little hope.”

“I do, yes.” She takes a deep breath and drinks some coffee, visibly steeling herself. “Do you think he’s dead, Ms. Proctor?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her, which is the truth, but not all of it by any stretch. “I’m starting from scratch right now. I’m going to go over everything. The police are good at this, but they also have lots of priorities, lots of cases on their desks. It isn’t that they don’t try, but that when clues dry up, they have to move on to the next critical window for another family. The reason we’re able to do more is that we just have more time to devote to you. And I promise you, I’ll take this as far as I can.”

She’s looking at me oddly now. Frowning a little, with an intentness to her stare that means she’s actually taking me in as a person instead of a placeholder. “You seem really familiar. Don’t I know you?” she asks.

“We’ve never met,” I say. I know where she’s going. I just don’t want to help. I take another bite of the mourning cookie. “Ruth, never mind about me. Did Remy have a car?”

“A car? Yes. It’s here. In the apartment garage. The police went over it, didn’t find anything at all. He didn’t drive that night.”

“Okay. Who did he go out with?”

She lists names as easily as if they were her own lifelong friends. A kind of mantra, really. I make sure the recorder catches all of them, but the list sounds the same as what was in the files; I just like to be sure.

“Did Remy mention anything odd happening in the weeks before he disappeared?” I ask her. “Phone calls, emails, anything strange on his social media?”

“No. Nothing. He kept some old letters and cards from friends and girlfriends. Do you want those?”