Despite the fact that by now she had realized this might be the call she’d waited for for so long, Susan knew she still couldn’t afford to let down the emotional barriers she’d struggled so hard to put into place. Not yet. Not until she was sure this was somehow connected to Emma.
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she repeated, her voice sounding remarkably steady, “Johnson County? And where is that, please?”
“Mississippi. Johnson County, Mississippi. Sorry, ma’am. You get used to folks you’re calling knowing that, I guess.” A hint of amusement, clearly self-directed, colored the words.
Amusement. Then in all probability…
“What’s your call in relation to, Mr. Adams?”
“Sheriff Adams,” the caller corrected a little pompously. “You are Mrs. Kaiser, then? Mrs. Richard Kaiser?”
“That’s right.”
She didn’t bother to explain the divorce she had finally obtained four years ago, granted on the grounds of desertion. If she mentioned she was no longer Mrs. Kaiser, there was always the possibility he might hang up without giving her whatever information he had.
She needed to hear what he had to say, but she also needed to maintain a tight rein on her emotions until she had. Too many times in the past she’d anticipated being told something positive, only to be devastated when that didn’t occur.
“Then…I’m afraid I have some bad news, ma’am.”
“Bad news” wasn’t one of the phrases she’d been preparing for. Not after his previous tone. Her heart rate accelerated, its too-rapid beating filling her throat and sending blood rushing to her brain until she was almost light-headed.
“What kind of bad news?”
“There’s been an accident.”
When she had first walked into that eerily empty house seven years ago and gone from room to room, calling their names, that had been one of the first things she’d thought of. There’s been an accident. Something terrible has happened to them….
Even later, during the long, sleepless nights after they’d told her what Richard had done, she had paced the floor, trying to work out some other explanation. Something that would explain the nightmare she was living.
She licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “What kind of accident?”
“It’s your husband, ma’am. We found his car submerged in the Escatawpa River. Looks like he must have run past the entrance to the bridge in the dark. It’s a tricky turn if you don’t know the road.”
“Richard?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. His body was in the car. I should have told you that at the first.”
“He’s dead.”
Her voice was too flat. Unemotional. She could imagine what the sheriff in Mississippi must be thinking. Even so, she was unable to summon up any regret that Richard’s life had ended. After all he’d put her through—
With that thought came another. A terrifying one.
“Was there anyone in the car with him?” Her heart now hesitated, refusing to beat again as she waited for the answer.
“No, ma’am, there wasn’t. There was no one else inside.”
He probably thought she was concerned about another woman. And at one time she might have been. Long before she understood there were anxieties far more compelling than those.
“As a courtesy, we asked the Atlanta PD to go to the address on his license,” the sheriff went on. “The folks living there now didn’t recognize the name, so we ran it through the national databases and found…Well, I expect you know what we found. I wasn’t sure this number would still be active after all these years. There hadn’t been any updates since the initial report was filed, but I figured it was worth a shot.”
She’d had to sell the house almost immediately, but due to the circumstances, the phone company had allowed her to keep this number. It wasn’t as if Emma had known it, but they told her it was customary with cases involving missing children.
Only then, in thinking back to those first terrible weeks, did she realize the significance of what the sheriff had just said. “Are you saying Richard had identification on him? That his driver’s license gave that name and address?”
She had long believed Richard was living somewhere under an assumed name. That’s why they hadn’t been able to locate him. How could he have escaped those countless inquiries if he’d kept his real name? Especially if he were still in the South?
“His wallet was in the car. Surprisingly, despite all the time it had been in the water, most of the things it contained were in pretty good shape. Of course, his license was the easiest to read since it was laminated.”
There was a disconnect between the sheriff’s words and what she’d been thinking. It wasn’t until she allowed them to replay in her mind that their import began to dawn.
“I don’t understand. You said it was an accident.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The uncertainty was back in his voice.
From what Adams had said, she’d been operating under the assumption that the accident he referred to had just occurred. Obviously, that assumption was wrong.
“Just how long do you believe my husband’s body has been in the water?”
There was a long beat of silence.
“Actually, the coroner can’t tell us that for sure—not yet. Given the condition of the car and the body…We’re guessing shortly after you notified law enforcement he was missing.”
Shortly after you notified law enforcement…
The words seemed to exist in some parallel universe. All the months she’d spent searching for him—and for Emma—Richard had already been dead, his car submerged, his body slowly decomposing.
Images of the black SUV sinking into the murky water of some Mississippi river were suddenly in her head, despite her near desperation to keep them out. Refusing to allow herself to entertain those kinds of thoughts was an art she had believed she’d perfected. She’d been wrong.
Despite the endless number of times she had attempted to imagine what Emma would look like now, it was always her daughter’s face the last time she’d seen her that was forever in her mind’s eye. A picture as clear as the August morning she’d left for the airport and the children’s literature conference. She’d had an appointment with an editor who had shown an interest in her illustrations—an appointment which had led to her first freelance assignment with the publisher she still worked for.
Emma had been fourteen months old then. Her hair slightly curling and dark blond. Her eyes, almost the same clear, dark blue as her father’s, were surrounded by impossibly long lashes that spiked, jeweled with tears, whenever she cried.
She had cried that morning.
