Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(17)

I was afraid that she’d seen Vee running from the house, that somehow she just knew, like I was wearing a neon sign or something. But it’s not that at all.

I rush to the bathroom. It’s a wreck. Vee left shampoo bottles in a mess, wet towels on the floor. I take the towels to the laundry machine, then come back and clean up the spills. By the time I’m done it looks okay again, and I’m calmer. A little.

“Sorry,” I mumble to Mom as I head into the kitchen. “I think I was sleepwalking.”

“Really.”

“Maybe I was just really tired.”

She doesn’t buy it, not for a second.

I told Vee to come back.

Oh God.

This isn’t going to work. Not at all.





6

GWEN

In the morning I make it official: I write a letter, using the format approved by the state of Tennessee, to remove my kids from the Norton Independent School District, and I enroll them in the Tennessee Virtual Academy. Both Lanny and Connor seem relieved, and so am I. I’ll make arrangements to pick up the contents of their lockers later, and that’ll be it. I think about calling a real estate agent, but I know I need to think about this and talk to the kids. Decide as a family. My impulse is to move on from Stillhouse Lake, but something the kids have been angry about in the past few years is that I run from things. I do it to keep them safe, but I understand their frustration. If we’re moving this time we have to decide it together.

Meanwhile, I’m glad the kids are safer now, but it does make my job harder. I’d planned to take off for Knoxville today and interview the mother of the missing young man I’d been hired to locate, but even though Lanny insists (of course) that she and Connor can stay by themselves while Sam’s at work, I don’t buy it. So after letting them log into their new virtual schools and get their assignments, I order them into the car with me.

Road trip.

They’re not thrilled, which is annoying but typical; they’ve both reached the age where anything I want or need them to do is a horrific burden, but I know that beneath that facade they’re actually okay with it. Lanny’s subdued after the weirdness this morning; she warms up once we’re in the SUV and heading out on the road—with doughnuts, of course—and commandeers the sound system to play her own driving soundtrack, which I allow because it makes life easier and my daughter actually has decent taste in music.

Connor asks me about the case I’m working on.

“It’s a missing college student,” I tell him. “His name is Remy.”

“His name,” my son repeats. “I thought only women went missing.”

That’s troubling, but I can see why he’d think so. The big media blitzes almost exclusively happen for missing children, teen girls, and adult women. White and pretty, preferably. It’s rare to see the major networks covering a missing young woman of color as a priority.

And almost never young men of any race, even though they can and do go missing too.

Connor’s still curious. “Did something happen to him?”

“Maybe. He disappeared one night when he was out with his friends.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found?”

“College students don’t run away,” Lanny says. “They already ran away from home. Legally.”

“Sometimes they run from other things,” I tell her. “Life. Responsibility. Problems with relationships. And it’s also possible he could have gotten involved with bad people, or gotten into drugs, or had a mental break. Maybe even an accident, though that’d be unlikely under these circumstances. It’s impossible to tell right now. That’s why I’m going to talk to his mom, to get a better picture of who he was and what could have happened.”

“Can we come in with you?” she asks. She hates being left out, and I have to admit she’s certainly got a case for being able to handle serious issues. But her behavior this morning concerns me. I don’t know what’s going on in her head right now.

“Sorry, no. I can’t,” I say. “I’m on the clock, and it won’t help my client trust me if I bring you guys along. So . . . I was thinking that I could take you both to that zip line place you like so much—”

“Navitat?” Connor beats Lanny to it by a couple of seconds. “Cool.”

“Yes, Navitat, and let you guys off on your own for a couple of hours; then I pick you up. Lanny—”

“I’m in charge,” she said. “Like I don’t know?” But she’s not displeased. Neither is Connor, come to that; my kids have pulled together recently, where they’d been pulling apart before. And they both nag me regularly for a little more autonomy. Navitat’s a safe place with good security, and I can trust them that much.

I don’t want to, though.

It’s just for a couple of hours, I tell myself, and try not to think of all the people out there who’d love to terrify, hurt, or even kill my children. On top of the usual child predators, there are more personal enemies who’d jump at the chance to “avenge”—their word, not mine—Melvin Royal’s victims by taking out his own family. Some of them have at least some reason to feel that way, because they lost their own loved ones. Most of them just like an excuse to indulge their constant and free-floating hatred.