Off the Deep End (58)

“I never realized until Gabe was gone how much all of our conversations centered around him. What he was doing and how he was feeling. What he’d said that day. Who he was hanging out with. His grades. Our concerns. We were always planning. Plans for the summer. Winter. Camp. College. Oh my God, college.” I shake my head, remembering how stressful it’d been to think about college. Back when we thought the hardest thing we were going to have to deal with was an empty nest. That’s nothing. I don’t even have a nest anymore.

“Do you ever wonder what Gabe would say if he could see you right now?”

Dr. Stephens totally blindsides me with his question, and my mind stumbles backward. So do my words. That was a nasty trick. Get me going. Spilling. Talking as fast as I can and then quickly slam one in. It worked. He caught me by surprise, and it shows.

He asked the one question I don’t let myself think about. We’re not going there, though. It doesn’t matter what Gabe would say about what I’m doing. He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.





SIXTEEN


AMBER GREER


I slowly slid out from underneath Katie’s arm just like I used to do when she was a baby and she’d finally fallen asleep after a long battle of crying it out. I held my breath in the same way I had then, like even the sound of it had the power to wake her. Normally, I hated the carpeted floors in our master bedroom. They were the only ones we hadn’t replaced with wood in the entire house, but I was grateful for them tonight because they muffled the sound of my footsteps as I hurried across our bedroom to follow Mark downstairs. He’d gotten out of bed just a few seconds ago after he thought we were both asleep.

All I’d done since we got back from the police station this morning was stare at him in amazed wonder. We told each other everything. We weren’t supposed to have secrets. Nothing about his physical appearance had changed. He still filled out the same lanky build and had all the same features, but he’d turned into a different person right in front of my eyes. This man who I thought I knew better than anyone else in this world. Whose sentences I could end. Whose jokes I could tell. Whose next moves I could almost predict. But he looked like a stranger to me. I studied him like someone I was meeting for the first time.

Unlike my obsessive focus on him, he’d barely given me a second glance once we got home. He disappeared into the guest bedroom and stayed there until all but the night shift officers had gone home for the evening. There were always two people here throughout the night since it wasn’t like kidnappers would only issue their demands during working hours, but they gave us our privacy and hung out in the garage.

Mark’s paranoia was palpable, and it’d worked its way into me. It was taking over the house too. It felt like all the officers were infected with it, looking at me differently when they said their goodbyes, but that was probably just in my head. I’d spent most of the day cleaning and scrubbing all the bathrooms since I didn’t know what else to do with myself.

Mark had followed the same routine to get himself to sleep every night since Isaac had gone missing. He was a creature of habit even in his grief and pain. The moment he poured himself a glass of water instead of his usual bourbon at six, I knew something was up. He wouldn’t veer from his routine without a reason, and the whole point of his booze-and-pill cocktail was to put himself to sleep. That only meant one thing—he didn’t plan on sleeping tonight.

Dinner only confirmed my suspicions that something was going on. He couldn’t sit still, and he was never one to fidget. He kept jiggling his legs underneath the table and knocking things around with his arms like he’d forgotten how to use them. Finally, he gave up trying to sit with us. He got up and paced around the dining room instead, muttering to himself underneath his breath.

“What’s wrong with Dad?” Katie had asked, eyeing him over her plate at the dinner table.

Tonight’s dinner wasn’t anything like our usual dinners. We sat around the table with our reheated hot dish. Our freezer was packed full of them. Besides answering the phone all day long, my dad’s other job was to take care of the never-ending food chain being delivered. We had enough frozen casseroles to last us through the winter. Despite the fact that we’d all skipped lunch, none of us were eating. We picked at the food, moving it around the plate without actually ever bringing it to our lips. Mark had just stared at his until he’d finally pushed it away. He hadn’t even picked up his silverware.

“It’s been a rough day.” That’s what I’d told Katie. Thankfully, she hadn’t asked for more details, and she was still sleeping peacefully as I tiptoed out the door, straining for any sound of Mark. As I made my way down the stairs as carefully as I’d walked across the bedroom floors, I heard noises coming from the kitchen. I put my hand over my mouth and tried not to giggle. That was what I got for being so suspicious and paranoid. He was probably just making himself a sandwich because he couldn’t sleep, and he hadn’t touched his plate at dinner, so he had to be starving. Still. I kept quiet just in case and crept into the kitchen, admonishing myself the entire time for overreacting and being so suspicious.

The kitchen was empty except for the command center set up on the table. Everything else was in its place. There was no sign of Mark. I heard rustling in the laundry room.

I plastered myself against the wall and slid down to the doorway leading into the laundry room. I needed to stop being so silly. This was Mark. He wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t be.