The Last Thing She Ever Did(63)

In the background, Liz caught a glimpse of her parents shaking their heads in disgust. The officer went to them while a nurse checked on Liz’s vitals.

“We’re pretty sure he was drinking,” she said, her voice low, but not low enough. “Blood tests were taken too late to get a reading on any alcohol. We waited too long. We won’t be able to prosecute, but I’d watch that one. He might seem like a good guy, but anyone that would take a nip in the morning wouldn’t be anyone I’d want my kids around.”

Dr. Miller had been drinking that morning. The police and her parents said so. They said so in a kind of whisper. A whisper is a very effective way of making sure everyone hears.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

MISSING: TEN DAYS

Carole was a nighttime migrant. She slept on the couch. In a chair in front of an infomercial on pressure cookers that played early in the morning. Finally, she found comfort in her son’s bed. It was as much to get away from David as it was to be close to the boy who had disappeared from the river’s edge. Questions from the police and innuendo she saw online suggested that David had been cheating on her. That hadn’t really been news. He’d done it before they moved to Bend. A leopard, her mother told her more than once, could never change his spots.

For the longest time Carole had been all but certain that her husband was seeing Amanda Jenkins. So pretty. So young. David’s type. She saw the way he touched her lower back at the restaurant one time when he was presenting the menu to the servers on opening night. It was a gentle touch, a pat that lingered too long. Carole had wondered if there was a lower-back tattoo in the place that he’d touched. If he’d seen it while he made love to her. Was it at the restaurant, in the pantry? Carole and David had done the same thing before they got married. Was it at the girl’s apartment? Or had they slept together there, in Carole and David’s home?

When she got to know Amanda, she decided she was too smart to fall for her husband. If nothing else, surely he was too old for her. And when it came down to it, it didn’t really matter. Carole had her art, and then Charlie. David had been little more than a distraction from the things at the center of her universe. At times, a fun and even sexy distraction. That was a while ago.

Carole didn’t have it in her at the moment to create a scene by launching a slew of accusations. She was so done. All of her emotions had been wrung out like a bar rag, and there was very little anger to throw at David. Their son was gone.

What did anything else really matter?

She knew he’d look for her in Charlie’s room when he got home from Sweetwater, so she waited in the little bed, smelling the pillowcase scented from the baby shampoo that she still used on his precious head at bath time.

Charlie, come home to me. Charlie, you are my only real joy. My sweet little love.



A few minutes after midnight, David’s beloved Porsche came down the driveway, the engine over-idling in that show-offy way that stroked his surprisingly fragile ego by commanding everyone in earshot to look up and admire all that he had. David never did anything without making sure others could see it. If he bought a piece of jewelry for his wife, it was only so he could point to it and talk about the good deal he’d been able to negotiate. David lived to brag, but he’d never admit that. To be a braggart was gauche. He saw himself as far too sophisticated for that. Carole listened as the garage door went up. She could feel the slight vibration that came with the sound of the chain pulling the door upward. A beat later it went down. Next, David disarmed the alarm. He was getting closer. For some reason her heartbeat quickened a little. She’d do what she needed to do. She didn’t see that she had any other choice.

He made his way to the kitchen. Opened a bottle of nonalcoholic beer. Silence as he took a drink.

Everything David Franklin did was very predictable.

Just as his affairs had been.

“Babe?” he called into the darkened hall that led to the bedrooms. His footsteps found his way to her. “You in here?”

“I’m here,” she said.

He stood there. Moonlight seeped in through the miniblinds, marking the walls and Carole’s face like war paint.

“You going to sleep in here again tonight?” he asked.

Silence. Her heart was broken, and she didn’t want a fight.

He looked down at her, crumpled as she was in their son’s bed. “Carole?”

She stayed quiet, the bands of light from the blinds shifting on her face. “We can’t stay together,” she finally answered, barely looking at David. She ran her fingertips over the grosgrain edge of the Star Wars duvet; it had been Charlie’s favorite for building forts in the dining room. “I don’t think so. Not now.”

David sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his wife, but she stiffened and pushed him away.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

Again the bars of light moved across her face. “David,” she said, “you know.”

But he didn’t. Or at least the look on his face indicated as much. Her words were a riddle, and he didn’t understand Carole.

“Our son is missing,” he said. “We need each other right now.”

There were a million things she could fling at him, but she chose only one. “You go to work like nothing’s happened, David. You’re carrying on like it was nothing. Like Charlie was nothing. There’s something seriously wrong with a man who would do that.”