The Last Thing She Ever Did(30)

David watched his once-again frantic wife put on a pair of pants and a shirt. When he could see that she was serious, he did the same, but it was dark outside and he didn’t think there was any point in looking until first light. He followed her down the stairs to the front door. The air was cool and still. Only the Jarretts’ bedroom lights were on.

The couple walked past a police car and an officer with a paper cup of gas station coffee.

“We need to look,” David said to the young man behind the wheel.

“He’s all we have,” Carole added.

The officer nodded grimly, and they left him behind.

They made their way toward the bridge, passing a “vacation rental by owner” notorious in the neighborhood for its parties. It was stone quiet just then. A clutch of amber glass beer growlers sat in a cardboard box on the sidewalk. A hastily rendered sign read: FREE TO A GOOD HOME. Except for a breeze shifting the leaves of an alder, it was as if time were standing still. Carole wished to God that it were, that there was a way to roll everything back to the previous morning.

She leaned against the bridge railing while she and David looked upriver. A crane loomed above a construction site a few houses up from the edge of the playground.

“Maybe he fell into a hole over there,” Carole said. “The excavator has a magnetic pull for little boys. You know that’s true, David.”

He reached for her hand on the rail. “The police looked there, Carole. They told me.”

Carole could not be deterred. It was plausible. She could imagine that when she turned her back, he’d gone in the other direction, then right over the bridge and up the river to the construction site. It could have been what had happened.

“Maybe they didn’t see him,” she said.

David held Carole by the shoulders and searched her eyes. “Honey, they used dogs. The dogs’ trail ended at the river. At the driveway. His scent was all over the place. And then gone.”

Next they walked along the river and returned to the play area of Columbia Park. In the center of the grass space above the river was a pirate ship climbing structure that offered slides and various interactive games aligned with the pirate theme.

“Charlie loved to find the treasure,” Carole said. The treasure was a grouping of six items on a spinning wheel that included jewels, coins, and other nods to the pirate theme.

“Loves to,” David said. “He loves to.”

Carole stopped. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Mean to what?” David asked, though he knew.

“Mean to say loved. Yes, loves.”

A dog barked in the distance and a car drove by. Other than that, it was only the two of them—the two of them minus their boy who had disappeared.

“Where were you today?” Carole asked.

He didn’t answer.

“When we tried to call you,” she said.

David looked away. “Out with a supplier,” he said.

“Don’t lie to me, David.”

“I’m not lying,” he said. “Where is this going?”

“You know,” Carole said. “I don’t want to fight about her. Whoever she is. At least I know it isn’t Amanda. At least not her alone. She answered the phone at the restaurant. Whoever you’re screwing . . . you know I don’t even care. I don’t. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“You should be,” David said, refusing to allow her to bait him. Baiting him was a favorite pastime of Carole’s. She did it whenever she drank too much or was angry with someone else. “Our son is missing,” he said. “Let’s focus on that.”

“I needed you,” Carole said. “Charlie needed you.”

David didn’t speak for the longest time. He processed her words. She was looking for a way out of what she’d done: an act of carelessness that caused what he hoped was not a tragedy.

Her eyes were cold, unblinking. “Just who are you screwing these days, David?”

David stopped walking. “Are you seriously going to go there? Our son is gone. I’m not screwing anyone. God, Carole. Let’s focus on what we need to focus on. Getting our son back. Undoing your mistake.”

Carole gave her husband another hard, cold stare.

“I knew you would blame me,” she finally said.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, although his tone contained a hint of uncertainty. She deserved that. “I don’t.”

“Liar,” she said. “You are a terrible liar.”

“You always said I was a good liar.”

“About fucking,” she said. “Yes, a good liar. About things that matter to me, though, not at all.”

David could feel his blood pressure escalate. Carole could make him feel as though he were some kind of a voodoo doll that she could prick with words. There were a million reasons why he put up with it, of course.

In fact, more than a million.

“Were you drinking this morning?” he asked.

Carole threw her hands up in the air and shook her head slowly, emphatically. The remark was a direct jab.

And a familiar one.

“Are you always going to go there?” she asked, careful to contain her anger. “Goddamn you, David. I haven’t had a drink since before Charlie was born and you goddamn know it. You do. You of all people shouldn’t put that on me.”