Off the Deep End (5)
“Is it possible he had another phone?” Detective Hawkins asked, shifting his gaze back and forth between us.
I shook my head. “Absolutely not,” I said at the same time Mark said, “It could be.”
I whipped around to face Mark. “What do you mean it’s possible he might’ve had another phone?”
He shrugged, and his eyes filled with annoyance at my response. “He’s quite capable of getting another phone on his own, Amber. I don’t know why you insist on treating him like he’s still a child.”
“Really? Just when would he have gotten that phone?” I put my hands on my hips. “All the times he went out?” He knew as well as I did that Isaac had all but stopped going out unless he was with us, and only then because we forced him to go. He rarely ever went anywhere alone unless it was to walk Duke. “Or he ordered it? But we all know who gets the packages and mail around here.” I couldn’t help the subtle dig. It was true. He didn’t help with the household duties any more than he helped with the kids. “Also, you’re forgetting one important thing—even if he got another phone, he’d still have to pay for it, and we would’ve seen that on one of his accounts.” Each kid had a debit card linked to our account, and they both had Apple Pay, so we could see all their purchases. “Isaac definitely didn’t have another phone.”
“He could’ve—”
Detective Hawkins interrupted, jumping in before we spiraled into a bigger argument. “It’s certainly plausible that he erased all of his history going back three weeks, but that would take a long time to do and require some serious work on his part. You’d only do it if there was a really good reason for it, and”—he gave a small hands-only shrug—“you know what that looks like.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It looks like he might have something to hide.”
“What could he be hiding? He doesn’t—”
Mark cut me off. “What does any of this matter, anyway?” he asked angrily. “Who cares if Isaac was hiding anything? None of that makes a single bit of difference. They found his phone on the side of the road yesterday just like those other boys’, and if you don’t do something soon to find him, we all know what they find next. Can we not waste time on this phone nonsense, please?”
CASE #72946
PATIENT: JULIET (JULES) HART
“How long have you known the Greer family?” Dr. Stephens asks, nudging me along with a question after it takes me too long to get started on the story.
“Practically forever,” I say, which is exactly why it’s impossible to know where to begin in the telling of all this. Dr. Stephens tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows at me, clearly not interested in anything less than specific facts. I quickly do the math in my head. “I guess almost seventeen years? Their family moved to Chatsworth Lane the summer after we did.”
Chatsworth Lane was a gorgeous housing community on the east side of Falcon Lake in southern Minnesota where we’d built our forever home. The streets were filled with beautiful custom houses on massive lots surrounded by amazing schools and sprawling neighborhoods. It’s the only reason people lived on that side of town. The entire reason Shane and I had moved to Falcon Lake in the first place. Falcon Lake was a small town exactly forty-five minutes away from Minneapolis, so it gave you the best of both worlds. Chatsworth Lane was one of the prettiest streets in town. The maples formed a gorgeous braided arch over it, and we residents all chipped in to help decorate them with Christmas lights every year.
The Greers had always lived three doors down from us, so it would’ve been nice and really convenient for our families to be close. I’d been dreaming about living on the same street as my best friend since I was a little girl, and I grew up playing house with all my friends that way. We’d pretend our husbands would go off to work while we’d raise the children and keep our respective houses running smoothly together, leaning on each other for help and support. It sounded so 1950s housewife, and it was, but I was perfectly content with the arrangement. It seemed liked a lovely life.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re just going to throw away everything women have worked so hard to gain,” my younger sister, Carrie, would retort every time I brought it up around her when we were teenagers.
“I should be able to be a housewife if I want to.” Always my first line of defense. “That’s a valid choice too.”
Carrie would storm out of my bedroom after that. She couldn’t stand the term housewife. She still couldn’t, but that’s what it was, and I didn’t think I should have to feel bad about letting someone else have a career while I took care of the children. There was nothing wrong with a woman wanting to stay home with the children and letting someone else be the breadwinner. If all choices were okay—and that was the point, wasn’t it?—then that had to be an acceptable option too. I still feel the same way even after all these years. Even after how opposite everything turned out.
“Were your families close?” Dr. Stephens asks, bringing me back to the present.
“We should’ve been, but we weren’t. I tried really hard to make it happen in the beginning, though. Amber must’ve thought I was trying to make her gain ten pounds with all the cookies and brownies I kept bringing over. I started before the construction crew had even broken ground.”