Chapter 3
Ethan stared at him.
“You went back?”
“I had to.”
The deputy’s expression softened, though his voice stayed neutral. “What happened?”
“Mom pushed the key under the door.”
“And said?”
“‘Bug, get Dad. Don’t tell Claire.’”
“Anything else?”
Noah stared at the ground.
“She said she was sorry.”
The sirens had stopped, but Ethan still heard them.
He turned away for a moment.
His brother stood twenty feet off, watching Claire. The priest had gathered several guests beneath the small cemetery shelter. Nobody seemed willing to leave. Lauren’s funeral had become a crime scene, though nobody yet knew which crime.
A deputy asked Ethan for the address.
Ethan gave it.
The deputy relayed it over the radio.
Units were already going.
“I’m going too,” Ethan said.
The deputy shook his head. “You stay here until we finish getting statements.”
“My wife may be locked in my basement.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
The answer came too sharply.
The deputy took it without reacting.
“You have an eight-year-old standing beside you,” he said. “Officers are going to that house right now. If there’s somebody inside, they’re not waiting for you.”
Ethan looked at Noah.
His son’s face had gone pale.
The deputy was right.
Ethan hated him for being right.
He crouched again.
“Hey.”
Noah looked up.
“You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
“Do you believe me now?”
The question hurt more than accusation would have.
Ethan nodded.
“Yes.”
Noah studied him as though checking for dishonesty.
Then he whispered, “You didn’t before.”
“I know.”
Lauren had often accused Ethan of trying to fix emotional injuries too quickly. He would apologize and immediately reach for the sentence that made everything normal again.
There was no sentence.
So he said, “I should have listened.”
Noah looked toward the coffin.
“Is somebody really in there?”
Ethan had no answer.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered before the first full ring ended.
“Mr. Blake?”
“Yes.”
“This is Deputy Harris at your residence. We’ve located a secured basement door. We’re hearing a person inside.”
Ethan’s knees weakened.
He put one hand on the coffin to keep himself upright, then jerked it away as if burned.
“Is it Lauren?”
“We’re making entry now.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“Not yet.”
A crash sounded through the phone.
Then voices.
Then nothing clear.
Ethan pressed the phone harder against his ear.
Noah watched him.
“Dad?”
Deputy Harris came back on.
“We have an adult female. Conscious. She’s weak, but she’s talking.”
Ethan’s vision blurred.
“What’s her name?”
A pause.
Then, faintly, from somewhere beyond the deputy’s phone, he heard a woman shouting.
Not loudly.
Not even clearly.
But he knew the voice.
“Ethan?”
The cemetery disappeared.
He sat down on the wet edge of the grave because his legs simply stopped working.
Noah understood before anyone told him.
“Mom?”
Ethan nodded.
Noah’s entire body folded into him.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Around them, adults began reacting in different ways. Someone gasped. Ethan’s brother swore under his breath. A woman started crying. The priest sat down. The funeral attendant stared at the coffin as though it might open by itself.
Claire did not move.
Ethan lifted his head.
She was looking at Noah.
Not Ethan.
Noah.
There was something unbearable in that.
“Why?” Ethan said.
Claire’s eyes shifted to him.
She looked tired now.
Almost ordinary.
“I didn’t mean for any of this.”
The deputy beside her held up a hand.
“Ma’am, don’t say anything else right now.”
Claire laughed again.
This time the sound cracked.
“You think I don’t know that?”
Ethan stood.
He wanted to cross the distance between them.
He wanted to demand answers. He wanted to shake them out of her if necessary. He wanted to do a dozen things he would later be grateful he did not do.
Noah still had both arms around his waist.
That stopped him.
Claire looked down.
“Tell Lauren I’m sorry.”
Ethan felt something inside him turn hard.
“No.”
Claire’s face changed.
“You can tell her yourself.”
An ambulance took Lauren to St. Matthew’s Medical Center.
Ethan and Noah followed in his brother’s rental car because Ethan’s own sedan was still at Claire’s house, where they had been sleeping since the supposed death. Noah sat in the back seat wearing Ethan’s suit jacket over his soaked hoodie. It swallowed him to the knees.
Nobody played music.
Nobody discussed the coffin.
At the hospital, a nurse took Noah to a family room and brought him apple juice he did not drink. Ethan was allowed to see Lauren only after a physician warned him she was dehydrated, bruised, sedated by something not yet fully identified, and frightened enough that sudden contact might upset her.
“You need to let her decide if she wants you near her,” the physician said.
Ethan almost replied, I’m her husband.
He caught himself.
For three days, he had been a widower.
Lauren had spent those same three days locked underground.
The titles meant very different things now.
He entered her room alone.
Lauren was smaller than he remembered.
That was impossible, but it was his first thought.
Her dark hair had been washed and lay damp against the pillow. There was medical tape on one arm, bruising around both wrists, and a scrape along her left cheekbone. Her lips were cracked.
She looked at him.
He stopped inside the doorway.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Lauren said, “Your suit is terrible.”
A sound came out of Ethan that was half laugh and half sob.
He covered his mouth.
Lauren’s eyes filled.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He lowered his hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were—”
“I know.”
He approached the bed slowly.
She watched him the entire way.
“Can I touch you?”
That did it.
Lauren turned her face toward the window and cried without making a sound.
Ethan waited.
After a moment she held out two fingers.
He took them.
May you like
Her hand was cold.
They stayed like that until she asked for Noah.
