Stride went to the bedroom window and checked the driveway. He’d been right. Serena’s car was still there. Bare-chested and barefoot, he went into the living room, where the lights were off. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Serena sitting on the brick hearth of the fireplace. Her chin was balanced on her hands, her head down, her black hair mostly covering her face.
“What’s going on?” he asked quietly. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move at all.
“Serena?”
She finally looked up stiffly, like a statue coming to life. “Samantha’s dead.”
Stride took a long, slow breath in silence. He hadn’t expected that news, but he realized what it meant. Samantha dying created a labyrinth of emotions for Serena, and a Minotaur was hiding in those dark corridors.
When he went and sat down beside her, he didn’t tell her he was sorry. She wouldn’t have wanted to hear that. He also didn’t try to comfort her. Given the history between Serena and her mother, this loss was prickly and precarious, and she didn’t need empty gestures from him.
“Was it an overdose?” he asked.
“You’d think, right?” Serena replied in a flat, calm voice. “But no. Heart attack, they said. Although I’m sure all those years of addiction played a part.”
“I imagine so.”
“She was homeless again,” Serena added. “They found her in a park south of the airport.”
“Do you need to go out there?”
“It’s not my responsibility,” she retorted sharply.
“I didn’t say it was.”
Serena shut her mouth, as if regretting her outburst. He watched her foot tapping sporadically on the floor, a nervous tic like Morse code.
“The body’s in the county morgue,” she went on in a softer tone. “I told them I’d find somebody to pick it up and arrange for cremation.”
“Okay.”
“I really don’t care what they do with her ashes.”
“Okay.”
“I could hear it in the cop’s voice,” she added with a little jerk of her head, like electricity had shot through her neck. “He was thinking, what kind of daughter lets her mother end up homeless?”
“I doubt he was thinking that.”
“Oh, he was.”
“You didn’t owe Samantha anything, not after what she did to you.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. Believe me, I know.”
“How long has it been since the last time?” Stride asked.
“I don’t remember. Seven or eight years now. I figured she was probably already dead. The last time, I told the cops to let her know I was done with her forever. No more bail money. No more anything, never again. She was on her own. And that’s how it worked out. She ended up dying alone in a park.”
Stride said nothing.
“The cops found my name and number folded up inside a cheap locket,” Serena went on. “That’s how they located me. She still had my number, but she never called. I guess she got the message, huh? I didn’t want to hear from her anymore. The cop also said there was a photo of a little girl in the locket. Jet-black hair, green eyes. Guess who?”
Stride exhaled sharply. He couldn’t stop himself from saying it. “I’m sorry.”
“Samantha,” Serena hissed, like the name was poison on her tongue. “Did she think keeping my picture would somehow change my mind? That I’d forget what she did? I swear, I will never forgive her. Not ever.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
Serena wiped her face, as if she should have been crying, but there were no tears. Then she got up from the hearth with another electric twitch of her head. “Anyway, I have to go. Maggie needs me on a case.”
“Take the day off,” Stride suggested. “Mags can get by without you. She’s got Guppo.”
“I’d rather work.”
“Come on, we’ll go for an early breakfast somewhere. Just you and me. Then we can drive up the north shore to Split Rock.”
“I said no.” She breathed raggedly, her chest swelling. “Right now, I just want to forget all about this, okay? Samantha’s dead. That sorry chapter of my life is finally over. I can move on.”
He stood up beside her. “Are you going to call Alice?”
Alice Frye was a therapist. Serena hadn’t had good luck with therapists for most of her life, but Alice was different — a seventy-something ex-hippie who told filthy jokes and didn’t treat Serena like a busted toy. For months, Serena had kept her visits to Alice a secret, but eventually she’d admitted that she’d been seeing her. That was a big part of how Serena, who’d been a closed door when he first met her, had finally opened up and let out the things she’d gone through as a child. But she’d concluded more than a year ago that she didn’t go to therapy anymore. She was done. Cured. That was what she’d told him. Stride thought she was making a mistake.
“Samantha has been out of my life for years,” Serena insisted. “This doesn’t change anything. I’m fine.”
“Maybe so, but talking to Alice couldn’t hurt.”
“I appreciate the concern, Jonny, but I’m fine. Why don’t you go back to bed? I’ll text you later.”
“Sure.”
He watched her go. At the back of the house, he heard the slam of the door as usual, then the crunch of her footsteps as usual, and then the roar of her Mustang as usual. She sped away with a squeal of her tires the way she always did.
She wasn’t fine.
Maggie sipped coffee in the deserted breakfast area of the Comfort Suites tourist hotel in Canal Park. Gavin sat across the table from her with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He stirred hot chocolate that he’d made from a powder packet. A gas fireplace beside them gave off a little heat, but she still felt the chill of her wet hair and the dampness that had made its way inside her clothes. Outside, rain continued to pound the boardwalk. All she could see in the lakeside windows were their own blurry reflections.
“We’ll be mounting a search for your wife,” she told him, “but I need to know what happened. Tell me everything, right from the beginning.”
Gavin worked the stirring stick around the cup without drinking any of the hot chocolate. “What day is it?” he asked, with the vacant stare of someone overwhelmed by the smallest details. “Is it Friday?”
“Yes. Early Friday morning.”
“I got home late on Tuesday. It was after ten o’clock. I’d been with my parents in Rice Lake for a couple of days, and I drove home after dinner. It took about two hours.”
“Why didn’t Chelsey go with you to Rice Lake?” Maggie asked.
Gavin shrugged. “Spending time with the in-laws? That wasn’t her thing.”
“When did you last talk to her?”
“I called her before I drove home, to tell her I was on my way. That was around eight fifteen or eight thirty.”
“Did she sound okay?”
“Yes.”
“She was home?”
“Yes, she said she was watching a movie.”
“Where do you live?”
“We have a little house on 5th Street on Observation Hill. We used to have a place on Skyline, but we sold it and got this place instead. It’s a lot cheaper, but it still has a view.”
“Do you have neighbors close by?”
“A few. One next door, plus some houses on the north side of the hill. They look down on our place.”
“Okay, go on,” Maggie said.
“I got home and parked in the driveway. We have a one-car garage, and Chelsey usually parks her car there. I went inside the house through the downstairs door and called out to let her know I was home. She didn’t answer, which surprised me. Usually, she’s up late. I checked the garage, and I saw her car was there, so I called again, but she still didn’t respond. So I went upstairs to the main level of the house. The front door was open and the window shattered. There was a lot of damage in the hallway, furniture overturned, pictures off the wall, like there’d been some kind of fight. When I turned on the light, I saw... I saw blood, too. Not much, but some on the wall and the floor. Chelsey was gone.”