Little Secrets(16)
The office door closes behind her. Marin doesn’t hear her speaking in the waiting room, which has a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist. She realizes after a few seconds that there is no phone call. Castro is giving her client some time alone to react, to fall apart if she needs to. It’s kind of her, but Marin isn’t going to fall apart. At least not right now. She’s good at faking it. She knows she can quash it until she gets home, where she can lose it in private, without anyone watching, with her pills and a bottle of wine.
Marin got cocky. It’s the only explanation. Especially once she had Sebastian, after four difficult rounds of IVF. She’d been given too much—too much money, too much success, too much love from her husband and child—so the universe set out to correct that imbalance of abundance by taking the one thing from her that meant anything.
Her son.
Numbness is beginning to set in, and she’s grateful for it. She knows from experience that humans can only tolerate intense emotional pain for so long before things begin to dull. It’s the body’s way of coping, and it isn’t so much relief as it is a reprieve. The pain will be back. Marin will feel every ounce of it later, and when she does, she’ll wash it down with a Xanax and a bottle of cab sauv before it gets too bad.
The office door opens again.
“I’m back.” Castro drops into her seat. Marin notices, and not for the first time, how slim she is. A size 4, maybe even a 2. Marin’s never been that tiny. Not even when she was sixteen and bulimic.
The PI looks at her closely. Marin knows she looks fine, and she wonders if the other woman is judging her for it. Is it more acceptable for her to be a basket case than to handle all this information about Derek like a champ? She wants Castro to like her. Marin wants her to feel for her, but not feel sorry for her.
She’s never done well with other people’s pity, especially other women. She does, on the other hand, crave their validation. She suspects it comes from having a mother who was really hard on her, right up until the day she died.
“I put a small file together for you, if you want to look at it when you get home.” Castro types something. “I just emailed it to you.”
Marin’s phone vibrates a few seconds later. She pulls it out of her pocket and checks to make sure the file opens properly. She taps on it and it downloads. “Got it,” she says.
“I want to be honest with you.” For the first time since they met, Castro looks upset. “When I got these photos yesterday, I wasn’t even sure I should tell you about it. It isn’t what you hired me for, and I thought it might be possible that you already knew about the affair. I didn’t want to make it awkward. You’re already dealing with a lot.”
“You did the right thing,” Marin says. “I was clear with you at the beginning, and I asked you to tell me everything you discovered. Don’t feel bad. I’d rather know. I … I can’t deal with any more unknowns.”
Castro exhaled. “Okay. That’s what I figured.”
She catches the PI glancing at her watch. That must be it for today, then. Marin finishes the second bottle of water, then reaches for her coat. It feels like she’s moving in slow motion. Being emotionally blindsided knocks the wind out of a person.
“One more thing, before you go,” Castro says gently. “This might be a good time to reevaluate our goals here.”
Marin pauses, resting her coat in her lap. “What do you mean? My goals haven’t changed.”
“At our last meeting, I told you I’ve been repeating the entire investigation PD did sixteen months ago. Nobody in your inner or outer social circles has flagged as suspicious. I’ve sifted through all of Derek’s past and present employees, his business contacts, your employees, your business contacts, and your entire client roster for the year leading up to Sebastian’s disappearance. The camera footage from the market has been dissected by two different video forensic specialists I hired personally. Nothing new has surfaced. It’s been more than a year now, and we have no new leads.”
Marin suspects what the PI is going to say, and braces herself. Seattle PD and the FBI did a comprehensive search immediately after Sebastian went missing. Their son’s picture was all over the local news within two hours, and his Missing Child poster went viral on Facebook and Twitter the next day. A few days after that, the case had garnered national attention, prompting accusations of classicism and elitism because the authorities appeared to be giving the Machados special treatment. But neither Marin nor Derek could apologize for that. Why not use every advantage they had? What was the point of having money and powerful friends if they couldn’t help in a situation like this? They were desperate to find their son. Any parent would be.
Castro is watching her closely, and Marin forces herself to focus.
“I don’t want to waste your time and money, but I feel like we’ve come to a place where I can say to you…” Castro sighs, and puts her hands in her lap. “I know it doesn’t make any sense at all, and it’s incredibly painful and unfair, but a lot of the time … these kidnappings just aren’t personal.”
Jesus Christ, Marin hates when people say that. It’s the exact same thing the police said. Dr. Chen said it, too. But it doesn’t make it easier to know that it wasn’t personal. It doesn’t help at all to think that her four-year-old child got kidnapped only because he happened to be the kid in closest proximity to the psychopath who stole him.