The Last Thing She Ever Did(41)

Liz took her arm. “My friend’s little boy went missing.”

“Your friend scared the crap out of Evie!”

“Sorry,” Liz said.

Carole looked completely mortified. “I am. I really am.”

Evie was crying and her mother swept her into her arms. “Scaring a little kid like that,” she said. “That’s really twisted.”

Liz felt as if she were going to vomit. If Charlie stayed missing, if there was no end to the story of what happened to him, Carole would roam Drake Park or shopping malls or anyplace where kids congregated, looking for her son. She would be trapped in a kind of hideous limbo. She’d suffer until her dying day.

Dear God, she thought as they walked back home, what have I done?

“Jaycee Dugard made it home,” Carole said.

“Yes, she did.”

But Charlie isn’t going to. I absolutely know it.

“I know he’s coming home too,” Carole said. “He’s out there and we just need to find him.”

“Right,” Liz said.

“I had a dream last night that he was a teenager. I wasn’t living here anymore. I’m not sure where I was. Somewhere warm. I was sitting outside on my front porch when I saw a young man walk toward me. I jumped to my feet because I knew right away that it was Charlie. Even though I couldn’t really see his face, I just could feel it inside that my son had come home to me. He was so big. A young man. He told me that he’d been held captive and that he’d escaped.”

They stopped by the bridge. Tears had puddled in Liz’s eyes. Carole’s too.

“Oh, Carole,” Liz said. There were no other words.

“I know. It was so real. He was so handsome. I told him that I’d never stopped looking for him. I told him that I’d known all along that he was alive, that the part of me that is a mother could not die just because he was missing.”

Some paddlers went under the bridge; one of them was playing country music on a smartphone.

“Dreams are powerful,” Liz said. She’d had a few of her own. All had been ugly. All had been a product of her growing guilt.

“I know it’s just a dream,” Carole said, “but I really do think there is some kind of truth in what came to me. That my son is alive. That he will be coming home, and I won’t ever stop believing that no matter how long it takes.”

Liz wished more than anything that Carole’s hopes were true.

But she knew a whole lot better.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MISSING: THREE DAYS

Owen shut his office door behind Liz and pulled the miniblinds on the sidelight. They stuck a little and he yanked hard, nearly pulling the whole unit off the wall. His face was red. Liz didn’t care. She was suffering, and he was going on with his life. Owen could come here to his office every day to forget what she’d done. She was forced to sit at home, looking out at the river, comforting Carole.

And now dealing with the police.

Liz folded herself into a chair. She smelled of wine. Her brown hair was a mess; her hastily made ponytail had come loose. Her face was devoid of makeup, her eyes rimmed in red.

“You cannot come here like this,” Owen said. “Holy crap, are you drunk?”

Liz glared at him. “No, I’m not drunk,” she said, nearly in a growl. “I’m scared, Owen. I’m goddamn scared. I should have told the truth. I should never have listened to you.”

He looked past her at the shuttered sidelight. “Keep your voice down, Liz. You need to pull yourself together.”

“Keep my voice down? I can’t even think anymore. Look at me, Owen,” she said, holding out her hands. “I can’t stop shaking. We need to tell the police the truth. They are going to find out. They are. I know it. They are going to find out and I’m going to go to prison.”

“They aren’t and you aren’t,” Owen said, hovering over his unraveling wife and grabbing her thin shoulders. His words came out in a whisper yell, the kind parents use when a kid is acting up in a restaurant.

“I killed him,” she said. “I killed him.”

“Shut up! Don’t say that! You stop that right now.”

He shook her, and her body went limp for a second.

“Owen, what I did was wrong.” She looked up. Tears streaked her face. She searched her husband’s eyes, looking for something that didn’t seem to be there. “What we did was wrong.”

He ignored her last words. “What did the police say? What did you say to them? Talk to me, Liz. Take a breath and keep your voice down. Okay?”

“They wanted to know if I’d seen anything. Or anyone. They just kept pounding me with questions over and over. They were grilling me. They were. I think they know something.”

Owen perched on the edge of his desk and leaned toward his wife. “They weren’t grilling you. Get a grip. They are doing a routine investigation. They have to talk to everyone. No one knows what happened to Charlie.”

“I do. You do.”

“No,” he said. “We don’t. You need to tell yourself that a thousand times over so that you can believe it. We don’t know. We don’t have any idea. I was at work, and you were taking your test.”

“What if they find out that I didn’t take my test?”