Little Secrets(86)

“His father had such a temper,” Lorna had said during Marin’s last visit. The older woman was grinning, as if the memory were funny, as if the word temper didn’t mean that he’d spent their entire marriage beating on her and bullying everybody else. “And J.R. is the exact same, just like his father, when he doesn’t get his way.”

“J.R.?” Marin asked, confused.

And then she remembered.

When he started college, Sal started going by his actual first name. But in his hometown of Prosser, he’d grown up with his mother—and everybody else—calling him J.R. It was easier for Lorna, and the winery employees, for her husband’s and son’s names to sound different.

J.R. was short for “Junior.”





Chapter 27


Still no word from McKenzie Li, and from the looks of things, her roommate is starting to panic.

Marin sits in her office at the salon, munching on one of the bagels brought in for the staff meeting earlier that morning. For the first time in months, she did not receive a good morning text from Sal, asking if she was alive. It feels awful. It’s hard to imagine that their friendship is done, but she doesn’t know what she can do to fix it … or if she even has the energy to try.

She refreshes Tyler Jansen’s Facebook page for the third time. He posted an update about his roommate this morning, and the comments have been coming in steadily for the past couple of hours. The new post includes a photo of McKenzie at the Green Bean, hair freshly pinked, apron tied around her waist, wearing a T-shirt that reads Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda. The Facebook post includes a link.

I’ve filed a missing persons report on McKenzie Li. Here is the official link. If anyone has info, please call the number immediately. And then please call me. She’s been missing for four days now, and given her mother’s condition, I’m the only one looking for her.

Her mother’s condition? Marin scrolls down, reading all the comments, chewing the bagel but not tasting it. The post has been shared over a dozen times already, and it’s up to a hundred comments and counting. Two comments in particular catch her eye, both written by a woman named Pearl Watts, who appears to be a former neighbor of the Li family.

The first is a response from Pearl to someone asking if McKenzie’s mother is even aware that her daughter is missing. Pearl wrote, Unfortunately even if she were told, I doubt Sharon would remember. Her Alzheimer’s is v. advanced. I visit her in Yakima every other week at the assisted living center & sometimes she knows me, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s v. sad.

Yakima? Eastern Washington? That’s not far from the wineries.

The second comment is on its own. Pearl wrote, Kenzie is a lovely young lady & everybody here in Prosser is praying she’s found safe.

Prosser. She’s from Sal’s hometown? What are the chances?

Marin shifts in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Something about this doesn’t feel right. Marin had shown Sal a picture of McKenzie, and he hadn’t seemed to recognize her. Mind you, she’d been drinking heavily during that conversation, so her recollection might be fuzzy, but surely her best friend would have said something immediately if he’d recognized a girl from his hometown. He’s nineteen years older than McKenzie, and would have moved out of Prosser for college before she was born, but the town is so small.

Marin ponders it some more, feeling the connection of something about to form … but the thought slips away before she can tie it together.

And what does Derek know? Is he even aware that his lover of six months has disappeared, and that a missing persons report has been filed? It feels like things have officially ended between him and McKenzie, but still, how can he not know? Vanessa Castro’s words come back to her:… this makes two people in your husband’s life that have disappeared. Which makes him the common denominator.

Now that the police are involved, it’s only a matter of time before they question Derek. In fact, maybe she should give him a heads-up that they might be knocking on the door any day now. But that would mean admitting to her husband that she knows about the affair.

Marin wishes she didn’t know. She wishes she’d never found out. She wishes she’d never started this.

She goes into the App Store, finds the Shadow app, and reinstalls it on her phone. All she has to do is reenter her login and password at the prompt and confirm Derek’s phone number. This time, however, when the app asks her if she wants to shadow all of Derek’s contacts or only specific numbers, she selects “All.” Her husband’s a busy man, and Marin’s phone might very well blow up with notifications, but it’s possible McKenzie has another phone that she’ll use to contact Derek. Or maybe someone else will try to contact Derek about McKenzie.

Marin needs to know what her husband knows. And at some point, she needs to figure out what Sal knows.

A minute later, it’s done. Like the first time, she waits for it to sync, half expecting a flood of text messages from Derek’s phone to download, even though the app can only shadow in real time.

Nothing.

A tap on the arm makes Marin jolt, and she drops her phone onto her plate, where it lands with a clang next to her half-finished bagel.

“Sorry, Marin,” Veronique says with a laugh. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just letting you know that your one thirty is here.”