directly.” Micah looked down at his mug and suddenly smiled. “You’ll never know how many of the problems of life Faith and I solved over a cup of coffee.”
Ethan answered with a similar smile. “Good time to talk.”
“Especially when winter is howling outside. But back to Connie. She talks like it’s all in the past and she’s long over it. But I can tell you from my experience with Faith, she’s not over it. She’s buried it. That woman hasn’t dated in all the time she’s been here. Tells you something, because there are plenty of men around here who have asked.”
Ethan nodded. “I got the feeling her rendition was more cover than fact.”
“It is. When we did her background check before hiring her, I discovered the story was a lot uglier than the way she tells it. She sort of does the outline thing, like she’s reading from a list of all the abused-spouse indicators. It doesn’t get personal. But trust me, Ethan, it was personal. Very personal and very ugly.”
“Kid gloves, then.”
“That would be my advice.” Micah leaned back and sighed heavily.
“You think this has something to do with Sophie?”
“It might. You know what evil men are capable of. You don’t need me to draw you a picture. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I can tell you, men are worse. Far worse. And if this guy is still p.o.’d that Connie got away, there’s no telling what he might do to get even.”
“But why wait seven years?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He went to prison for what he did. And the judge really slammed him, because she was a police officer.”
Ethan lowered his head a moment. “When did he get out?”
“About seven months ago.”
“Does Connie know that?”
“I don’t know. Probably. We got a routine notice through the office, because she lives here now.”
“She never mentioned it. She doesn’t even seem worried about that.”
“Then maybe she doesn’t know. Or maybe she thinks she covered her tracks well enough. She changed her last name, for one thing, after she got here. The post office has long since stopped making forwarding addresses available to the general public because of the danger. It may not have entered her head that after all this time he might come after her.”
“And maybe he hasn’t.”
Micah nodded. “Maybe he hasn’t. But I’ll tell you, Ethan, I don’t like that this guy knew Sophie’s name. And I don’t like that she disappeared today.”
“Just briefly.”
“Briefly is too long, under the circumstances.”
Ethan sipped his coffee, thinking, reordering the pieces of the puzzle he’d been working with. “Okay. That helps.”
“Maybe.” Micah straightened and sipped his own coffee. “So tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.”
The question couldn’t have been unexpected. Indeed, it wasn’t. But Ethan had learned to compartmentalize his life in units he could handle. After a minute or so, he replied, “I think you know.”
Micah waited, then nodded. “I guess I do. The hard part is figuring out how to forgive yourself.”
Those words struck a chord in Ethan, seeming to crystallize a whole bunch of emotional and mental baggage. “Yeah. Have you?”
“There comes a point,” Micah said slowly, “where you realize that the past is past. I’m not saying all of it was right, or even that any of it was right—or, for that matter, wrong—but it’s the past, and you can’t change it. So what you do, what you have to do, is understand that all that matters now is how you live today. If you’re looking for atonement, that’s the only kind you’ll find. And the only way to get rid of nightmares is to build new dreams.” Then he said, “I’m glad you came looking for me, son.”
At that, Ethan smiled. “So am I.”
It was Friday evening, so one of Julia’s friends picked her up for their usual “girls’ night.” Julia and her friends would dine at one or another’s house, then go to a movie or play cards. Connie found it hard now to believe that once she had worried that her mother’s confinement to a wheelchair would turn her into a shut-in.
Ethan and Micah made their appearance rather later than she expected. Sophie and she had already dined, and Sophie had vanished into her room with her cell phone. The ticker in Connie’s head was already making her wonder if she’d bought enough minutes on her cell plan.
But all that faded to insignificance when the two men arrived.
“Sorry we’re late,” Micah said. “We went to do a little nosing around.”
“Did you find anything?
“Unfortunately, no.”
They gravitated to the kitchen table with their coffee, as far out of Sophie’s hearing as they could get.
Connie, her nerves already shredded by Sophie’s behavior after school, asked, “What did you mean by ‘Little Miss Lost’?”
The men exchanged glances.
“I lost sight of her,” Ethan said. “I was watching the kids come out of school, waiting for her. She came out with her friends. I moved farther down the street, trying not to be too obvious, and the next thing I knew, she wasn’t there.”
Connie bit out a word she rarely used.
“Exactly,” said Ethan. “So I started looking. I found Micah, and we fanned out. She couldn’t have been out of sight more than a minute or two, Connie. Honestly. Then I saw her walking alone along a different street toward home. I followed at a distance until she ran into you.”
Connie nodded, aware that she was about to begin shaking. “She lied to me. She said she didn’t know where her friends went.”
“A kid’s lie,” Micah said. “Whatever happened in those couple of minutes, she probably did lose sight of her friends. You know, it might be nothing at all. She might have chased a squirrel, seen a dog.” He shook his head. “It’s obvious nothing happened to her.”
“Except she’s not telling me something.”
“Maybe she’s embarrassed because she didn’t follow instructions, even scared because she lost sight of her friends.”
Connie
