CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
It was 6:33 p.m. when Rachel arrived home. After the car pulled away, she stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at her house. The living room curtains were open and she could see Grandma Tate moving around. Rachel had no idea how the tension between them would play out. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the phone call they’d had earlier in the day, Rachel couldn’t recall any time she and her grandmother had exchanged cross words.
She knew that she was going to have to work hard to make sure she was completely present this evening. She needed to show Paige that she really was trying to make her a priority and to show Grandma Tate that her career wasn’t as important as her family. It would be difficult because her mind already wanted to pull in the direction of Stephen Ayer. She wished she could be there in the interrogation room to hear all of the details—to know what the hell was happening with Jack and all that he was learning from the man. After what she’d found down in his basement, it was borderline torture for her to have to come home and put on the domestic mask.
But her daughter was worth it. And as long as she could keep Paige’s face front and center in her mind, she’d be fine. It was usually even easier when she was actually with Paige, spending time with her, seeing her smile and listening to her stories that just seemed to go on and on.
Rachel slowly made her way to the front door. Just before she reached it, she received a text message from Jack. She read it twice because it wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. And it put an entirely new spin on the case.
Ayer’s victim is a woman named Becka Follin. Not on the LF waiting list but was reported missing in Lynchburg four months ago. Will call with details when interrogation is over.
It was a bit of a bombshell and while it connected Ayer to a different crime, she knew it didn’t automatically rule him out as their killer. But even then, as she opened the front door, she felt Ayer slipping away. She knew that the sort of mind that dwelled on things like kidnapping could sometimes be completely different from a mind that fixated on murder—especially the type of mind that fixated on murdering people with recently diagnosed terminal illnesses.
What a mess, she thought.
As she closed the door behind her, Rachel smelled what she thought was pepperoni. And as she crossed the living room into the kitchen, she saw that she was right. Grandma Tate and Paige were sitting at the kitchen table with a large pizza between them. When Paige turned and saw her mother headed her way, she jumped out of her seat and came running over. They hugged right between the living room and kitchen, Paige planting a big, wet kiss on her cheek.
“You came home!” Paige said.
“Well, of course I came home, silly.”
“Yeah, but Grandma said she wasn’t sure when you’d be home. She said I might be asleep when you got home.”
“Well, here I am! Did you save me any pizza?”
“Yeah. We got the extra large because Grandma wanted you to have something to eat when you got home.”
Rachel looked over at Grandma Tate and, making sure their eyes connected, said, “Well, that was very kind of Grandma, wasn’t it?”
She joined them at the table and as she ate a slice of pizza, there was an obvious tension between her and Grandma Tate, but Paige seemed unaware of it. She went on and on, telling them both about her day and then telling them how much she wanted to see the new Disney movie that she’d seen a preview for.
Rachel gave Paige her undivided attention. She did her best to stay in the zone, making sure she didn’t miss a word or a smile. Rachel had never decided what she thought happened when people died. A lot of the time, she just assumed it was like a very big sleep and you just never wake up. You don’t know you’re dead, therefore, you don’t miss being alive. But sitting there and looking at how animated and in love with just about everything her daughter seemed to be, she could not imagine death. She could not imagine any state of being (or, rather, not being) where she would not get to see that smile, to not hear those giggles, to not see those bright eyes. It had her thinking of Dr. Emerson’s treatments again and it was the first time since receiving her diagnosis that she felt the strong urge to fight her ailment.
They finished dinner, cleaned up, and sat out on the back porch as the sun set, playing Uno. Rachel then marched upstairs with Paige as bedtime came around and snuggled into bed with her.
“Hey, Mommy, can I ask you something?” Paige asked. The room was lit only by her Paw Patrol nightlight and she looked beautiful in the dimness of it.
“Of course you can.”
“When you told me about how you were sick, you said you were going to stop working so much. But you haven’t. Did you change your mind?”
The question hurt a bit, but she knew she deserved it. And she figured if her daughter was brave enough to ask such a question, she deserved the truth. “No, I haven’t changed my mind. But sometimes there are things that happen—really bad things that happen to good people. And with my job, I’m supposed to help those good people. I’m supposed to keep them safe. And yes…I said I would stop working so much. But right now, I really need to help keep some people safe.”
“So it’s an important case?”
“Yes, it’s a very important case.”
“How much longer will it take you to catch the bad people?”
“I don’t know, baby. Hopefully not too long.”
“And what about after that? Ae you still going to work?”
“I just don’t know, sweetie. We’ll see. But even if I do work for a bit longer, I’m going to do my best to make sure I’m here more than I have been in the past. Okay?”
Paige nodded, but her expression showed that she either didn’t fully understand the answer or understood it perfectly fine but didn’t like it.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”