They spend a lot of weekends at my place, including this one when I get back. I pick them up after school and take ’em to the gym to shoot hoops every Wednesday when they don’t have any other commitments.”
“Josh is good,” she said, homing in on what he’d left out.
She was good at that. Good at reading between the lines, good at sensing the things people didn’t say. He’d never seen anything like the way she could tell when someone was lying and read the emotions behind their words.
“But Jeremy, not so much?” she asked.
“He’s seventeen.” He said it as if that said it all, but then reminded himself that Rachel had nieces, not nephews, and it might not be quite the same. “He’s not bouncing back like Josh. He’s morose. Brooding. Quiet. Withdrawn. Didn’t even go out for basketball this year. Would’ve been his first year playing varsity, too.”
“Sounds like he’s depressed.”
“Marie thinks he’s been drinking. Said she smelled it on his breath when he came in late one night.”
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Mason.”
“It is what it is. They’ll come back around. It just takes time.”
Then he lifted his head and tried to do the same to his mood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I should be focusing on the positive, right? That’s what your books would tell me to do.”
“It’s hard when there’s so little positive to find,” she said. Then she stabbed him with those insightful eyes of hers. “What about you? How are you doing, Mason?”
He had to think about his answer. “Work’s been busy as hell. We just had a local vet murdered, his office torched with him in it.”
“I read about that. You have any suspects?”
He shrugged. “He and his wife were both having affairs, heading for divorce. The drug cabinet was demolished, no way to tell if anything was missing. Who the hell knows?”
She nodded. “But that’s work. I didn’t ask how work is, I asked how you are.”
He lowered his head. “I don’t know, Rache. I feel like I’m in some kind of limbo. Waiting for something really big and really bad.” He met her eyes again. “Like it’s not finished yet.” He knew that she knew what he was talking about.
“It’s got to be finished,” she said, and she said it really softly. Like she was afraid to press their luck by saying it out loud.
A waitress brought their sandwiches, each accompanied by homemade chips and a six-inch pickle spear. They dug in, ate for a while. She started with the chips. He remembered a line from one of her books. Eat dessert first in case you’re going to choke to death on your broccoli. It made him smile to see her living by those words.
When he was half finished, he rinsed his mouth with coffee and said, “So...about this case. It’s a missing person. The name was familiar, and I realized it was one of Eric’s organ recipients.”
She went still, but only for an instant. Then she just shrugged and kept on eating. “Coincidence.”
“There’s no such thing as coincidence. You wrote that yourself.”
“Every self-help author spews that line. No one even knows who came up with it first. It’s universal. Doesn’t make it true.”
“I kind of think it does.” But he took another bite as he contemplated, and then said, “I figured I should at least ask if you’d had any dreams. Like before.”
“Before, when I was riding along inside the head of a killer, you mean?”
“Inside the head of another person who got one of my brother’s organs. If you can see them when they’re committing crimes, maybe you can see them when they’re the victim of one. Right?”
She bit, chewed, swallowed, taking her time. Delaying her answer. “It was so traumatic before that I think my mind’s kind of...taken over.”
“In what way?”
“Every time I start to dream, I wake up. I have the same startle response you have when you dream you’re falling, you know what I mean?”
He did. “So is it any time you dream at all, or only when it’s one of those...psychic connection dreams?”
“How the hell would I know? The dreams never play out.”
“No dreams ever play out?”
She averted her eyes, and her cheeks turned cherry-red. “Well, sure. Some do.”
Was it crazy for him to hope that blush was because those dreams were about him? And that they were sexy as hell? Like the ones he’d been having about her since he’d seen her last?
“But I can say for sure that I haven’t had any dreams about any harm being done to any people. Besides, you said this was a missing person, not a murder victim, right?”
“Right. It’s a missing person. But...”
“But what?”
“According to the family, this isn’t someone who would just up and vanish. Housewife. Soccer mom. PTA, all that. You know?” He got an idea and ran with it before his brain told him not to. “It would be like if your sister Sandra suddenly just up and vanished. You wouldn’t think she did it voluntarily, right?”
“No, I wouldn’t. Not like when my transient addict brother up and vanished and I assumed he’d just turn up after a while, like he always did. Until he didn’t.”
“I’m sorry. That was a bad— I’m sorry, Rachel.” He covered her hand with his.
She nodded, then twisted her arm to look at her watch. “I have to go.”
“How are you getting back?” he asked.
“Alone, Mason. I’m getting back alone.” She pushed the final chip into her mouth and left half the sandwich on her plate, along with the entire pickle. “Thanks for lunch. I hope things get better for your family soon.”
He nodded. “Thanks. Merry Christmas, Rache.”
“Merry Christmas, Mason.”
2
Friday, December 15
I would never get tired of seeing my home. Not just because I hadn’t been able to see it until this past August, but because it was so freaking beautiful. All steep peaks and those half-round clay shingles on the roof like broken flowerpots. It was partly rich maple wood planks and partly cobblestone, and it always reminded me of a fairy-tale cottage. Only bigger. Way bigger. It sat near the dead end of a long dirt road that bordered the Whitney Point Reservoir, which really looked more like a great big lake. The road and my wrought iron fence were the only things between my place and the shore. There were woods all around me and the giant meadow where the house sat, rising up
