Table For Five

Lily lifted her hand to chew on her nail, then seemed to think better of it and tucked it under her leg. “I wouldn’t say ‘contentious.’ Strained, maybe. Listen, if you’re trying to figure out if they were apt to harm each other—physically—the answer is no. Absolutely not.”

“You’re sure of that.”

It was creepy as hell, Cameron thought, the way these cops assumed the worst of his parents. It must be such a drag, being a cop. You had to deal with people at the worst moments of their lives, and you never got to see their good side.

“As sure as I can be,” Lily said. “I told you, I’ve known Crystal since she was thirteen and I was eight. We’re as close as sisters, maybe closer. I’m her children’s godmother and she is a gentle, loving, reasonable person.”

Cameron sensed his uncle’s skepticism. He didn’t exactly roll his eyes but shifted in his chair and let out a restless sigh. He tried as hard as he could to feel absolutely nothing, just a cool sense of wait-and-see. It was getting tougher by the minute, though. He was starting to wish he hadn’t eaten so much pizza earlier. The way his stomach felt, it was threatening to make an encore appearance.

The cops stayed focused on Lily, like maybe she was holding something back. “Miss Robinson, how long have you known Derek Holloway?”

“Since they got engaged about seventeen years ago. I can’t say I was ever close to him, and since the divorce, I’ve only seen him in my role as Charlie’s teacher.”

“What was your opinion of him?”

Go ahead and say it, Cameron thought. You hated his guts.

“He adores his children,” Lily said. “I don’t believe he would ever harm Crystal.”

“And you have no idea where they might be right now.”

“None,” said Lily. “It’s completely unlike Crystal to fail to come home to her kids.” There was a hitch in Lily’s voice, and the sound of it stabbed into Cameron.

He felt defensive, prodded to speak up. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.

Everyone swung to face him. You could hear the shush of the dishwasher in the stillness. Cameron felt his ears turning red. “She blew us off last month when her flight from Denver was delayed.”

“She called to say she would be late,” Lily stated in her know-it-all teacher voice.

“Yeah, but only after she was like four hours late, and Dad had already left town, too, for a tournament.” Cameron bristled with resentment. “I had to give the girls their supper and put them to bed.” He couldn’t help it. He glanced at the clock over the stove. Way more than four hours had passed. He wondered if he should say anything more. As the one person who had witnessed his parents’ marriage from a front-row seat, he knew things no one else possibly could.

“That’s completely different.” Uncle Sean spoke up, sounding more calm and reasonable than any of them. “Someone knew where they both were.”

Then it was his turn to be interviewed. “Mr. Maguire, can you characterize your relationship with your brother?”

Cameron ground his teeth in frustration. Here they were reviewing the history of his wacko family when they should be out searching for his parents. But where? Where?

Sean’s jaw developed a tic and Cameron sensed his impatience, too. He took a deep breath. “We’re half brothers. We have the same mother. His father passed away in the sixties and our mother married my father. We both grew up right here in Comfort. Both played golf, both went pro. I joined the Asian Tour and Derek kept his PGA card. I moved back here and I’m working at the country club.”

Cameron knew there was a lot more to that story. A whole lot more. Like the fact that Dad’s father had never been married to his mother and was broke when he died. And the fact that Grandma had married Patrick Maguire just six months later. And Uncle Sean was born just a few months after that. But that was all ancient history. It probably wouldn’t help them figure out where his parents had gone.

Something not so ancient burned inside him like a bleeding ulcer. He was never meant to know about Ashley, but he’d found out and now the weight of that crushed him. It wasn’t his to tell, he reminded himself, especially to a room full of strangers.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” the cop asked Sean.

“Last night. He came into the clubhouse for a drink, and we talked.”

“Did you get any sense that there was a problem?” asked Officer Franklin. “Any issues between your brother and his ex-wife?”

Just that they hated each other, Cameron thought bitterly. Just that they kept secrets from each other.

“None at all,” said Sean. “Crystal is the mother of his children, and he’s always been good to her.”

It was on the tip of Cameron’s tongue to address that statement, but he said nothing. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about stuff he barely let himself think about. Besides, he could be wrong.

Now it was Lily’s turn to get skeptical. She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she pursed her lips as if thinking, “Uh-huh. I’m so sure.”

The kitchen phone shrilled suddenly. Cameron’s heart leaped. Everybody around the table jumped at the handset. Cameron grabbed it first. He was the one who lived here, after all.

“Hello.”

“Cameron, it’s Jane.”

Great, he thought. He looked at the four expectant faces around the table. “Jane,” he said.

“Derek’s girlfriend,” Uncle Sean explained to the cops.

“Do you know where my dad is?” Cameron asked her.

“Actually,” she said, “I was calling you with the same question.”

Cameron felt his hopes deflate like a pricked balloon. “I think you should probably come over,” he told her in a dull voice. “He and my mom haven’t come home and the police are here asking questions.”

There was a brief, fragile silence, and then she made a terrible sound, like there was something caught in her throat.

“Jane?” Cameron asked.

“I—um, I’ll come right over.”

“Girlfriend?” asked Officer Franklin.

“They’re very close,” Uncle Sean explained. He glanced at Cameron.

“You can talk about it in front of me. It’s not like I didn’t know,” Cameron said, trying to regain his equilibrium after the phone call. He preferred bored impatience to sick dread any day. “She was going to move in with him.”

“Does your mother know this?” asked Lily in an edgy voice.

Cameron shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I guess Dad was going to eventually.”

A short while later, Jane burst in without knocking. She had really short blond hair and sharp features, and at the moment she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She never smoked around Cameron and the girls.

Cameron knew his mother smoked sometimes, too. Last fall, as they were finalizing the divorce, he found her on the back steps late one night, smoking a Marlboro and flicking a lighter on and off, watching the flame.

She’d turned to him with the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “Don’t ever smoke, baby,” she’d said to him in a tired, husky voice. “It just tells people when you’re unhappy.”

“Got it, Mom. Never let on when you’re unhappy. Check.”

He remembered realizing the sting of his sarcasm hit home. Though it was dark outside, he could see her wince as if in pain.