Leaving Time(31)

I watched Donny walk away, but I never joined him at the party. Instead, I returned to my desk and worked the last page of the ME’s report free from its staple. Folding it into quarters, I slipped the page into the pocket of my jacket.

I put the rest of the ME’s report in the closed case file of Nevvie Ruehl and instead pored over the evidence I had for the shaken baby. Two days later, Donny officially retired, and I got the teenage cheerleader to confess.

The elephants, I heard, adapted well in Tennessee. The sanctuary land was sold—half to the state in conservation, and half to a developer. After all the debts were paid, the remaining funds were managed by a lawyer to pay for the residential care of Thomas Metcalf. His wife never came back to claim any of it.

Six months afterward, I was promoted to detective. The morning of the ceremony, I dressed in my one good suit and took, from my nightstand drawer, the folded page of the ME’s report. I tucked this into my breast pocket.

I needed to remind myself that I was no hero.


“She’s missing again?” I ask.

“What do you mean again?” Jenna answers. She sits down in the chair across from my desk and folds her legs, Indian-style.

That, at least, cuts through the fog in my brain. I stub my cigarette out in a stale cup of coffee. “Didn’t she run off with you?”

“I’m going to say no,” Jenna says, “since I haven’t seen her in ten years.”

“Wait.” I shake my head. “What?”

“You were one of the last people to see my mother alive,” Jenna explains. “You dropped her off at the hospital, and then when she disappeared you didn’t even do what any policeman with half a brain would do—go after her.”

“I had no reason to go after her. She signed herself out of the hospital. Adults do that every day—”

“She had a head injury—”

“The hospital wouldn’t have flagged it as long as they felt she was safe to be checking out, or else it would have been a HIPAA violation. Since they didn’t seem to have a problem with her leaving, and since we never heard otherwise, we assumed that she was okay and that she was running off with you.”

“Then how come you never charged her with kidnapping?”

I shrug. “Your father never officially reported her missing.”

“I guess he was too busy being electrocuted as part of his therapy.”

“If you weren’t with your mother, who’s been taking care of you all this time?”

“My grandmother.”

So that was where Alice had stashed the baby. “And why didn’t she report your mother’s disappearance?”

The girl’s cheeks flush. “I was too young to remember, but she says she went to the police station the week after my mom disappeared. I guess nothing ever came of it.”

Was that true? I couldn’t remember anyone formally lodging a missing persons complaint about Alice Metcalf. But then maybe the woman hadn’t seen me. Maybe she’d seen Donny instead. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Alice Metcalf’s mother had been dismissed when she asked for help, or if Donny had tossed the paperwork intentionally so that I wouldn’t stumble across it, because he knew I’d want to follow up and drag out the case.

“The point is,” Jenna says. “You should have tried to find her. And you didn’t. So you owe me now.”

“What makes you so sure she can be found?”

“She’s not dead.” Jenna looks me in the eye. “I think I’d know it. Feel it.”

If I had a Ben Franklin for every time I’d heard that from someone who was hoping for good news in a missing persons case only to have the remains turn up—well, I’d be drinking Macallan whiskey, not JD. But instead I say, “Is it possible she didn’t come back because she didn’t want to? A lot of people reinvent themselves.”

“Like you?” she asks, staring right at me. “Victor?”

“Okay, yeah,” I admit. “If your life sucks completely, sometimes it’s easier to start over.”

“My mom did not just decide to become someone else,” she insists. “She liked who she was. And she wouldn’t have left me behind.”

I did not know Alice Metcalf. But I know there are two ways to live: Jenna’s way, where you hang on to what you have in a death grip so you don’t lose it; or my way, where you walk away from everything and everyone that matters before they can leave you behind. Either way, you’re bound to be disappointed.

It’s possible that Alice knew her marriage was a mess, that it was only a matter of time before she screwed up her kid, too. Maybe, like me, she cut bait before her life got even worse.

I spear a hand through my hair. “Look, no one wants to hear that maybe she’s the reason her mother flew the coop. But my advice to you is to put this behind you. File it away in the drawer that’s saved for all the other crap that isn’t fair, like how the Kardashians are famous and how good-looking people get served faster at restaurants and how a kid who can’t skate to save his life winds up on the varsity hockey team because his dad is the coach.”

Jenna nods but says, “What if I told you I had proof that she didn’t leave of her own free will?”

You can give the detective shield back, but you can’t always get rid of the instincts. All the hair on my forearms stands up. “What do you mean?”