I was shaking my head. “But I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Are you kidding?” Tom said, and then he was crying and I was crying and I didn’t know what was happening. “All the nights you let me talk about him even though I know you didn’t want to? All the times I didn’t even want to talk but I didn’t want to be alone? You always knew what to do.” He leaned toward me, so close our foreheads were almost touching. “I would not have made it without you. I feel like we went through a war together, Roxane, like I trusted you with my life. That matters more than anything. That’s bigger than everyone else. That’s why I always want you to call, and I always want to answer. It doesn’t matter why or where you are or where I am, okay?”
I squeezed my eyes closed. “No.”
“No what? No you don’t want somebody on your side?”
I was being ridiculous. I did need somebody on my side, probably now more than ever. “I’m sorry I’m impossible,” I said.
“You’re not. Sorry, that is,” he said with a smile in his voice, and we both laughed a little bit. “You’re impossible just like he was.”
“I always hated it when people said I was like him,” I said, “but it’s true.”
“It is true, Roxane. But that’s something you can be proud of. You can leave the parts you don’t like.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Says who?”
“I don’t know.” Over the last nine months, we had talked about my father a lot. But we hadn’t talked about me. I didn’t want to. I thought I could skip over that part and come out on the other side, already over it. But I couldn’t. Probably no one could. “I don’t even miss him but I feel like a part of me is gone,” I whispered. “So I guess I do miss him.”
“It’s okay to miss him,” Tom said.
We sat like that for a long time, until his tears stopped and then mine did and then he kissed me on the cheek and pulled away. “I’m going to hold you to it, about that drink,” he said. He rubbed his face like he could get the sadness off of him that way. “Soon.”
I nodded quickly. “Very soon.”
“And I want you to meet Pam.”
“You’re going to have to give me a minute for that,” I said. I wiped my eyes. “I hope she knows what a delicate flower you are.”
He grinned. “No, she thinks I’m stoic and tough. I guess that’s her type.”
“You’ll have to break it to her eventually.”
Tom shrugged. “I figure I can come find you when I need a good cry.”
I met his eye. It was hard to believe that less than a year ago, we’d barely known each other. Now it felt like I had known him forever. “Any time,” I said, and then I squeezed his shoulder and got out of the car.
The morning was bright and cold and it hurt my eyes and my lungs as I walked down the street to my brother’s car. Jack Derrow’s house was half gone, the garage a sagging black hole. I paused and stared at it for a second but then turned away, unwilling to give him another second of my attention.
THIRTY-SIX
There were reporters at the hospital too, but they didn’t appear to notice me. They were much more interested in who might be coming out of the hospital than who might be walking in. I passed a lot of cops as well, what looked like half the police in the county standing around with their arms crossed. Part of me was glad to see them, like it made the hospital somehow safer. The rest of me wanted to tell them to get back to work. I stopped in the gift shop, stared at the racks of balloons and teddy bears and magazines. But I hated all of the things they sold, so I just went up to the third floor empty-handed. A Belmont uniform was guarding the end of the hall where the women’s rooms were located. As I got closer, I saw that it was Shanahan, the guy who’d brought me the tampon. He nodded at me and gave me a sheepish smile before he stepped aside and let me pass.
I wondered if Veronica and Sarah would ever be able to look at a police officer again without fear.
No one could blame them if they couldn’t.
Veronica’s door was closed. I knocked, and Joshua Evans opened it and gasped. His wide face lit up and then crumpled almost at the same time as he dropped to his knees in front of me. “You’re an angel,” he whispered into my thigh.
I touched his arm. “Joshua, it’s okay.”
After a few seconds Joshua got to his feet and pulled me into Veronica’s room. She was asleep, clutching a fluffy pink teddy bear that someone who didn’t hate everything from the gift shop had purchased. Her mother was sitting beside the bed and she glanced up at me, stunned. She looked like she had no idea what to say to me, but that was all right. I smiled at her reassuringly. She didn’t need to say anything. I hoped that the absence of her jerk husband might be permanent, for her daughter’s sake.
“Veronica hasn’t talked much yet,” Joshua told me. “But the doctor, he said—he said she’s lucky. That she’ll get better. It just takes a bit of time, maybe.”
A bit of time. That seemed like the understatement of the year. Although Veronica looked peaceful sleeping there in the hospital bed, I couldn’t shake the hollow-eyed expression she had in that house. “I’m glad to hear it,” I said anyway. “Is Shelby around?”
“Yeah, she was just here. Want me to call her and get her back in here? I know she can’t wait to talk to you.”
This man is Shelby’s father, I repeated. “No, it’s okay, I’ll be around for a while,” I said.
Joshua nodded. We looked at each other. “How did you know?” he said finally. “About him. He’s so, he just seems like the nicest guy. He was one of the officers who responded when I reported her missing—Mallory—I just—”
I embraced him and let him cry on my shoulder for a minute while that sank in. That Derrow had been the officer to take Mallory’s missing-persons report, after he had taken her. It almost made me wish I’d shot him in the head. “I know, Joshua,” I said. “Derrow fooled a lot of people.”
“But not you,” he said. “You’re amazing.”
I didn’t feel amazing. I felt lucky. And Derrow had fooled me at first. But I supposed I should take the compliment. “I’m going to check in on the other woman,” I said. “You ever need anything, though, you call me. That goes for you, Shelby, Veronica, or her mom, okay?”
He nodded. “People say that,” he said, “but I actually believe you mean it.”
“That’s because I do.”
When I got to Sarah’s room, I was surprised to see Shelby Evans sitting next to her bed. They weren’t speaking, and Sarah was just staring at the wall, her arms resting over her stomach. When Shelby saw me she jumped up and ran over and threw her arms around me.
“How did you know?” she whispered into my shoulder, just like Joshua had. Behind her, Sarah didn’t even look up.
I wiped my eyes. “You helped me figure it out,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without you. How come you’re down here?”