Mother May I(42)

Now, that was interesting. He’d taken Gabrielle’s faith in the quick search functions with a grain of salt; he still believed that the Wilkersons were in those files. So either Trey was lying or he really, truly did not recognize them. Which meant . . .

He saw the conclusion Bree would want to jump toward, and it worried him. He went back into the great room.

She was folded up on the sofa, staring at her own cell phone like it was made of snakes.

“I’m not going to tell Trey.” She said it loud, defensive, as if she’d been fighting with Marshall about it for a solid ten minutes before he came into the room. “I did text him, okay? I apologized for being out of touch but told him the little flu I had was awful. He knows about Spence, so he’s already headed home. He got a seat on an eight-o’clock flight. I’m not going to call him when I can tell him at home, in person, tonight.”

He didn’t want to join her in the fight she’d started without him, but she had to talk to her husband. “You think face-to-face will make it easier?”

“No,” she said, fierce. “God, not at all. But when I tell him, Marshall, when I ask him ‘What did you do?’ I need to be looking right into his eyes. It’s the only way I’ll know if his answer is the truth. Ever.”

He understood her then. She wasn’t fighting him. She was only fighting for her marriage as well as her child.

He said, “I texted Trey, too. Sent him some pics of Geoff’s parents.”

“You found them?” She was up and coming toward him then, so fast. “Show me!”

“I copied you on the email.” She scrabbled for her phone, then paced away, staring down at their names, their faces. “Trey didn’t recognize the old woman or the Wilkerson family, and Gabrielle can’t find any Wilkersons in the files. Or at least she hasn’t yet.”

He could see her putting it together.

“I don’t know them either, Marshall.” For the first time since this had begun, she sounded genuinely hopeful. She’d seen what it might mean and was jumping to the exact conclusion he’d feared. “Trey doesn’t recognize them?”

“That’s what he said.” Emphasis on the last word.

She smiled, though, a true wide smile, so beautiful it took his breath. He held his hands up, palms down in a calming gesture. But it was too late.

“It was Spence!” she said. “This is something Spencer caused, behind Trey’s back! Spence was up to his neck in something really awful. Like bribing a judge or who knows what. Could be anything, but if it’s not in the files, then it’s nasty enough that Spencer didn’t leave a paper trail. The mother thinks Trey was in on it. But he wasn’t. He doesn’t know them. If we can prove that Trey didn’t know—”

“That’s a big leap,” Marshall said. “It’s a lot of leaps. Gabrielle could still find—”

“It makes sense, though!”

It did, but her hope in this best possible explanation would close her mind to other possibilities. He could not afford that luxury. The problem was, with Spence gone and Gabrielle’s searches coming up empty, there was only one way to uncover the connection. He’d have to talk to the Wilkersons.

It was the last thing he wanted to do. They would be reeling from their child’s disappearance and the awful pressure of being wrongfully suspected. And for them Geoff was missing. Nothing on the wife’s social media indicated they thought he was dead, but Marshall couldn’t tell them the truth. They would want to know all the details, and he’d be implicating Bree. The whole thing was tricky as hell, but he didn’t see another way. Not in the time they had.

“I have to go to Gadsden,” he told her. “Now.”

“Damn right we do,” she said.

He blinked. “You have to talk to Trey.”

She waved that off. “How far is Gadsden? Two hours? At most? Trey won’t be home until late. I can’t sit here alone all day, waiting for him. I swear to God, I’ll go insane. The girls are with Mom, and I need to be doing something to help Robert. This is it.”

He didn’t know how to tell her no, but he should. “We can’t tell them the truth. We have to be careful and hard on them at the same time. It will be difficult. Not comfortable or kind.”

“I’m coming,” she insisted. “I’ll follow your lead. I know we can’t go in honest. But I’m a good actor. This is something I can do.”

Maybe she could. This was the woman who, with her baby freshly missing, had put on a fancy dress and lipstick and lied and lied and lied. Every word and glance and smile at the gala had been a separate deception. She’d fooled him for quite a while, and he had a damn good track record for spotting liars.

“Okay,” he said.

“We’re going to get Robert back,” she said. She came to him then, eyes blazing with hope and so much boldness. She took him by the arms, and in the set lines of her face there was nothing of her anxious, rules-bound mother. This courage was a thing Betsy had fostered in her. It was like seeing a small piece of his wife, alive in her.

Betsy lived on inside him, too. She had formed him. She was the one who’d told him every day, with only her easy, unblinking faith, that he was nothing like his father. That he was the kind of man a person could count on.