Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(46)

At first, I didn’t understand, but then the pieces of the story emerged. Brian had called Mrs. Ennis at six a.m., when the snow had first started falling. He’d been watching the weather and, in his adrenaline junkie way, had determined this would be a perfect powder ski day. Sophie’s daycare was bound to be canceled. Could Mrs. Ennis watch her instead?

Mrs. Ennis had agreed, but she’d need at least an hour or two to get to the house. Brian hadn’t been thrilled. Roads would be getting worse, yada yada yada. So instead, he offered to drop Sophie at Mrs. Ennis’s apartment on his way to the mountains. Mrs. Ennis had liked that idea better, as it kept her off the bus. Brian would be there by eight. She agreed to have breakfast waiting for Sophie.

Except, it was now one-thirty. No Brian. No Sophie. And no one answering the phone at the house. What had happened?

I didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Refused to picture the possibilities that immediately leapt into my mind. The way a teenager’s body could eject from a car and wrap around a telephone pole. Or the way the steering column of an older, pre–air bag vehicle could cave in a grown adult’s chest, leaving a man sitting perfectly still, almost appearing asleep in the driver’s seat until you noticed the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Or the eight-year-old girl, who’d just three months ago had to be cut out of the crushed front end of a four-door sedan, her relatively uninjured mother standing there, screaming how the baby had been crying, she’d just turned around to check the baby.…

These are the things I know. These are the scenes I remembered as I slammed my cruiser into gear, flipped on lights and sirens and fishtailed my way toward my home, thirty minutes away.

My hands were shaking when I finally careened to a halt in front of our brick garage, front end of my cruiser on the sidewalk; back half in the street. I left on my lights, bolting out of the cruiser and up the snow-buried stairs toward the dark home above. My boot hit the first patch of ice and I grabbed the metal railing just in time to keep from plummeting to the street below. Then I crested the hill and was pulling on my front door, working my keys with one hand, banging on the door with the other, even as the dark-eyed windows told me everything I didn’t want to know.

Finally, with a sharp wrench of my hand, I twisted the key in the lock, shoved open the door.…

Nothing. Empty kitchen, vacant family room. I rushed upstairs; both bedrooms unoccupied.

My duty belt jingled loudly at my waist as I rat-tat-tatted back down the stairs into the kitchen. There, I finally paused, took several steadying breaths, and reminded myself I was a trained police officer. Less adrenaline, more intelligence. That’s how one solved problems. That’s how one stayed in control.

“Mommy? Mommy, you’re home!”

My heart practically leapt out of my chest. I turned just in time to catch Sophie as she hurtled herself into my arms, hugged me half a dozen times, and started prattling about her exciting snow day in one long breathless rush that left me dazed and confused all over again.

Then I realized Sophie hadn’t returned alone, but that a neighborhood girl was standing in the doorway. She raised her hand in greeting.

“Mrs. Leoni?” she asked, then immediately flushed. “I mean, Officer Leoni.”

It took a bit, but I managed to sort it out. Brian had definitely gone skiing. But he’d never taken Sophie to Mrs. Ennis’s house. Instead, while loading his gear, he’d run across fifteen-year-old Sarah Clemons, who lived in the apartment building next door. She’d been shoveling the front walk, he’d started talking to her, and next thing she knew, she’d agreed to watch Sophie until I got home, so Brian could get out of town faster.

Sophie, who was enamored with teenage girls, had thought this was an exciting change of plans. Apparently, she and Sarah had spent the morning sledding down the street, having a snowball fight, and watching episodes of Gossip Girl, which Sarah had TiVo’d.

Brian had never clarified his return, but had informed Sarah that I’d appear home sooner or later. Sophie had caught sight of my cruiser coming down the street and that had been that.

I was home. Sophie was happy, and Sarah was relieved to turn over her unexpected charge. I managed to scrounge up fifty bucks. Then I called Mrs. Ennis, reported back to dispatch, and sent my daughter, who was hopped up on hot chocolate and teenage television shows, outside to build a snowman. I stood on the back deck to supervise, still in uniform, while I placed the first phone call to Brian’s cell.

He didn’t answer.

After that, I forced myself to return my duty belt to the gun safe in the master bedroom, and carefully turn the combo lock. There are other things I remember. Other things I know.

Sophie and I made it through the evening. I discovered you can want to kill your spouse and still be an effective parent. We ate macaroni and cheese for dinner, played several games of Candy Land, then I stuck Sophie in the tub for her nightly bath.

Eighty-thirty p.m., she was sound asleep in bed. I paced the kitchen, the family room, the freezing cold sunroom. Then I returned outside, hoping to burn off my growing rage by raking the snow from the roof and shoveling the side steps and back deck.

At ten p.m., I took a hot shower and changed into a clean uniform. Did not remove the duty belt from the safe. Did not trust myself with my state-issued Sig Sauer.

At ten-fifteen, my husband finally walked through the front door, carrying a giant bag and his downhill skis. He was whistling, moving with the kind of loose-limbed grace that comes from spending an entire day engaged in intense physical activity.