One of Those Faces (90)

Otherwise, silence.

The small line of trees across from me took the brunt of the wind from the lake, but with each crash of the waves, a new chill breezed past.

The couple came out now, flanking a thin, dark-haired girl.

I sprang from my seat, my knees popping as I jogged across the street. I slowed to a walk as I neared their car. Their backs were to me as they loaded a TUMI suitcase into the back.

“Excuse me!” I called before the girl could get into the open back seat door.

They all turned toward me, the couple instinctively closing around the girl.

“I have a quick question.” I locked my eyes on the girl.

She backed away.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the woman demanded. She looked me up and down. She took in my rough hands with bitten-down nails and leered at the dark circles under my eyes.

I focused on the girl. “Did you meet someone named Erin in there?”

The couple turned to the girl and tried to usher her inside the car, but she held her ground. “Why?” she asked hesitantly.

My heart started beating normally again, the feeling returning to my limbs. She was in rehab. “I’m a friend of hers and . . .” I surveyed the fragility of the girl. She could be no more than sixteen. She couldn’t handle this news. “I’m trying to track her down. I think she was here for a while, but I don’t know if she’s still there. They won’t let me visit her.”

The girl stepped up beside her parents. “She was here,” she said. She glanced back toward the front door of the building. “A man came to pick her up.”

“Her dad?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She didn’t say that. She just left.” The couple had allowed a little space for the girl to lean closer toward me. “I saw her go out to the common area and walk out with him.”

I swallowed. “What did he look like?”

She rocked back on her heels. “Um, he was tall. I didn’t really see him very well from the front.”

The mom glared at me. “Are you done now?” she asked through clenched teeth, waving her daughter into the car behind her.

“Thank you,” I said absently before they closed the door on the girl.

The woman eyed me even once she was sitting inside the car and as they pulled out of the parking lot.

I glanced at the building. It was worth a shot. I strode in through the door, the smell of disinfectant and lavender assaulting my nose and stinging my eyes. The attendant at the front desk didn’t acknowledge me until I was upon her. “Yes?” she asked.

“A friend of mine was staying here, but I heard that someone checked her out?”

She waited for more. An actionable reason to help me.

“Her name is Erin Braughton.”

She frowned and looked back at the desk. “Unless you are on a list of approved guests or one of her doctors, I can’t even discuss the status of any patient here. What is your name?” She shuffled through a small stack of papers in front of her.

Damn. “So, no one could have checked her out unless they were on that list, right?”

She glanced back up at me. “That’s right. Your name, please?”

I shoved my freezing hands into the pockets of my coat. “Never mind.” I backed away and turned from the counter, the frigid wind blasting against my face and body as I stepped out the door.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


I pulled up the article. My face crumpled at the picture of her. She was beautiful. I remembered that picture from one of the frames in her apartment. My eyes stung.

It wasn’t really what I was expecting of an article in the Crime section. Danny had written a memorial of sorts. He glossed over the details of where and how she’d been found. He wrote about her work, her schooling, and her family.

Her Wicker Park community mourns the loss of a kind and dedicated friend. “She was the only person who took care of me when I first moved here,” a close friend of Ms. Braughton said. “She saw something special in everyone.”

It wasn’t sensational. It wasn’t interesting. It was kind. It was almost unbelievable that it had gotten published.

I closed my computer and slid it across the bed, leaning my head against the wall. Danny was right. I should’ve gone to the funeral. He’d tried to tell me I’d regret not going, but my stomach had turned at the thought of seeing Erin stiff in the casket.

Eventually, that would be me. A lump hardened in my chest. But no one would be there. What did it say about me to think of my own death at this moment?

I heard the front door close gently. Footsteps across the wood floor.

The bedroom door creaked softly, and Danny’s sandy hair appeared first through the doorway. He looked at me on the bed and smiled weakly.

“Hi,” I said, sitting up from the wall.

He closed the door and leaned against it, unzipping his coat. “Hey.” His face was pale. He threw his coat in the general direction of the closet and grabbed at his necktie.

From his expression when he returned, I knew I had been right not to go. “I read your article,” I said.

He finished unwinding the tie from his neck and tossed it on top of the coat.

“You quoted me.”

He walked into the closet. “I didn’t think you’d mind since I didn’t name you.”