Making Her Way Home

“Your car isn’t in the garage.”

Another pool of silence fell, but he didn’t make the mistake this time of thinking she wasn’t there. This time he could feel her, all of that tension stretched quivering and tight beneath the surface.

“I’m at the park.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t do nothing but sit there. I’d have gone crazy. Knowing that no one was looking for her…” Beth’s voice cracked.

“It’s pitch-dark!”

“I brought a flashlight,” she said defensively.

“How long have you been there?”

“I left not that long after you did.”

He slammed his door and turned the key in the ignition with a jerk. The engine had barely roared to life before he gunned away from the curb. “You thought you’d find her in the dark when twenty trained search-and-rescue personnel couldn’t find her in daylight.”

“No.” She said it so softly he strained to hear. “But I had to try. I didn’t today, you know, not once…after everyone else started looking. All I did was sit there and wait. I can’t do that anymore.”

Pity joined the anger and frustration crowding him. He could imagine all too easily how she felt. If she were sincere and this wasn’t all an act for his benefit. If she were actually at the park at all.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

“Um…on the beach. I keep thinking she could have fallen and been knocked out. And now it’s dark. If she woke up and it was completely dark…”

Something in her voice told him she wasn’t entirely talking about the missing child. “Darkness can be comforting,” he said. “It can hide you.” He didn’t even know why he said that.

“Yes.” She sounded calmer. “I know that. You’re right.”

“Are you ready to come home?”

“No. I feel better being here.”

He growled an obscenity under his breath, but she must have heard because she said stiffly, “It’s my choice. The park isn’t closed. I can answer the phone here, as well as at home. I can’t sleep anyway.”

“She’s not there, Ms. Greenway.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think we both know that.”

“No! No, we don’t. And if I want to keep looking for her, that’s my business. If you need to talk to me in the morning, you know where to find me.” She ended the call.

He reached the freeway and got on. Traffic was sparse at this time of night, so he’d make good time. Once he’d maneuvered into the inside lane and was pushing the speed limit, he hit redial on his phone. She didn’t answer.

* * *

THE NIGHT WAS SO QUIET, SHE heard the powerful engine when a vehicle pulled into the parking lot up above. Beth knew who it was. For a moment, guilt squeezed her throat, but it subsided when she remembered that he was here not out of concern for her, but because he thought…what? That she was taking dinner to Sicily, wherever she’d stowed her? Was visiting the grave? Who knew? He’d already have seen her car, which confirmed that she was here. That didn’t mean she had to go to meet him. He’d never find her if she didn’t want him to.

Which would be childish and completely ridiculous. She should reassure him and send him on his way. Maybe even give up and go home, if that would allow him to go home, too.

His voice roared from up above, “Ms. Greenway? Beth?”

“Down here,” she called, but felt the night swallow up her too-small voice. She tried again, cupping her hands. “Down here.”

It took her some scrambling to get back to the beach proper. She’d had this image of Sicily having fallen down the bluff, bouncing off a driftwood log, ending up wedged behind it and hidden by some of the shrubby growth that had taken root in the red soil of the bluff. The whole time, she knew her search was futile. Of course, others had looked in the same places today. Probably over and over.

The sweep of a powerful beam of light and the crunch of beach pebbles heralded his arrival. “Beth?”

“Right here.” Suddenly exhausted, she wasn’t paying enough attention and her foot skidded on the last log as she scrambled over it. She teetered and fell, landing painfully on her hands and knees. Exactly, of course, at the moment the beam of light found her.

“Damn it,” he said, and reached her while she was still blinking back tears of pain. As angry as he sounded, his hands were gentle when he picked her up and set her down on the log. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

Determined to regain her dignity, Beth said, “Nothing permanent. I slipped, that’s all.” Blinded by his light, she couldn’t make out his face at all. Her own flashlight had fallen and gone out. She lifted an arm to protect her eyes. “Do you mind?”

The detective sighed and turned the light away from her. He found and picked up her flashlight, fiddled with it for a moment until it came back on and then switched it off before handing it to her.

She hurt, and was mad at herself. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say.

He sat down next to her and turned off his own flashlight. They sat quietly for a minute, the soft shush of small waves the only sound. It wasn’t really totally dark, either, not the way it might be on a cloudy night. The moon was only a quarter full, but the stars were bright. Beth found that to be comforting.

When I hid, I would have liked to be able to have seen the moon and stars.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I’m all right.”

“You shouldn’t be here alone. Why didn’t you call someone if you were determined to come?”

She almost said, “Who?” But that sounded—and was—pathetic. And she did have friends, of a sort. It hadn’t occurred to her to call any of them. They weren’t those kinds of friends. If Rachel were still alive, if this were Beth’s daughter missing… No, she thought sadly, I wouldn’t have called Rachel, either. She’d failed her sister too devastatingly to expect her to feel any obligation.

“I met your parents.”

She was already tense; now she went rigid.

He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he continued, “I was a little surprised when your mother said she hadn’t seen Sicily since your sister’s funeral.”

Beth shrugged, guessing he’d feel the movement even though they weren’t touching.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I told you we don’t have a good relationship.”

“But she’s their granddaughter.” His tone sharpened. “Or is it not them? Did you refuse to let them spend time with Sicily?”

“The issue hasn’t arisen.”

“But if it did?” he persisted.