Wherever She Goes(19)

I should be grateful for that. This raw footage will be removed soon, and I will disappear. That’s what I want. Let me fade back into anonymity again. My fear is not that the police will come after me. The statute of limitations has already run out on my crimes. But if my past catches up, it’ll give Paul so much ammunition that I might as well sign Charlotte over to him now.

I’m glad that I’ve been cut from the official news clip. The problem is it means my claim is being ignored. There’s even a brief note under the raw footage, reassuring the viewer that no child is missing.

No child is missing.

Not even “no child has been reported missing.” My claim has been red-stamped with the absolute certainty of a veto.

Please ignore this woman. No child was harmed in the making of this murder.

I don’t need to hack into the police department email server now. I know what they’ve decided. No child has been reported missing, and so my claim is being ignored. Understandably ignored. I must admit that. This isn’t a case of incompetent policing. Officer Cooper, at least, has been fair and patient with me. The fact remains, though, that three days have passed with no evidence of a missing child.

Because his mother is dead.

That makes perfect sense to me, but I can see how it sounded to Officer Jackson, considering that she already thought I was attention-seeking. There’s nothing to tie this boy to the dead woman.

Over and over, I refresh the news page and pray that I will see more. An update. That the woman has been identified, and the police have discovered she did have a child, who is now missing. Once that’s out, the authorities will throw all their resources into the hunt, and the child will be found, frightened but safe, the killer caught, the young mother avenged.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except they don’t, do they?

His mother is still dead. And her son will live with that forever.

I know what that will be like. I know exactly what it will be like.

I tell people my mother died when I was “just a baby.” I’m parroting the words I heard growing up. People often presume that means she died in childbirth, and I don’t correct them. The truth . . .

The truth is the sickening crunch of metal. The world spinning, flipping upside down. Me, screaming, wordlessly screaming in absolute terror. Then my mother’s voice, weak and whispery.

“Bree?”

Her fingers finding my arm. Clutching it. Her hand wet and sticky.

“It’s going to be okay, Bree. Someone will come.”

Someone will come.

Night fell, and the car went dark. My mother told me she loved me. Over and over, she told me. And then, after a while, everything went quiet.

Once I admitted to my father what I remember.

“Stop that.”

“But I—”

“You couldn’t remember that. You were just a baby.”

Except I wasn’t a baby, not in any more than the colloquial sense. I’d been two years old, and I do remember. I remember waiting for someone to come and save us. I remember hearing cars passing on the country highway. I remember that no one stopped, not until the next day, morning sun glinting off the car, and by then it was too late.

People saw the car. They must have. Whoever hit us knew what they did, and they just kept going, driving away as fast as they could. Then others passed, and they saw a damaged vehicle in the field, and they told themselves there was no one in it. Just a crashed car waiting for a tow truck. Or kids abandoning a wreck after a joy ride.

I’m sure no one’s in it, and really, I don’t have time to stop and check.

My mom died when I was a baby.

I was not a baby. I was old enough to have toddled to that road and gotten help.

“Stop that, Bree. You were trapped in a car seat.”

“Maybe if—”

“You were a baby.”

I was not a baby.

My phone rings. I jump. It isn’t a number I recognize, so I wait to see if they’ll leave a message. When they don’t, I stare at my list of received calls, and see Paul’s number, from yesterday.

I’ve thought of calling him. Twice, I’ve gotten as far as pulling up his number, my finger hovering over the Call icon.

Hey, Paul. Sorry to bother you at work, but I, uh, need to tell you something. So there’s this news clip . . .

Is that really necessary?

This is the question that stops me. The video clip will probably be removed. My name doesn’t appear in the article. Paul is the kind of guy who flips through his headline feed once a day and assimilates the data based on that. Unidentified Woman Murdered in Grant Park. Check. City Hall Arguing over Infrastructure Budget. Check. Tensions Rise in Middle East. Check.

There, I have a basic idea of what’s going on in the world, now let’s get back to work.

When we were dating, I learned that if I mentioned current events I’d get a long pause followed by him saying, “Tell me more about that.” He was happy to get the information; he just felt no need to seek it out on his own. If I wanted that kind of conversation with Paul, I was far better off delving into the background of the news. Let’s talk about the issues surrounding murdered women. Let’s talk about the city’s infrastructure problems. Let’s talk about the history of the conflict in the Middle East. That’s what interested him, and I remember how exciting it was to be able to talk to someone who wanted a conversation deeper than news bites, a guy who knew the history behind those news bites, who actually enjoyed talking about it, having a real conversation.