in Dylan’s baby book upstairs. I’ll get it.”
“I’ll go with you,” Grace said.
The Colsons’ renovated master bedroom had oak flooring, soft green walls, and a handmade quilt over the queen-size bed. This was Maria’s sanctuary and today it offered a reprieve from the intense activity in the rest of the house.
A female FBI agent was standing near Maria’s closet, flipping through photo albums and old high-school yearbooks. It sickened Lee the way the tragedy had engulfed them with white-gloved strangers pawing through every intimate corner of their lives.
“Could you give us a minute alone here,” Grace said, waiting until the agent closed the door before telling Lee, “Believe me, I know Dupree might come off as a jerk but he’s just doing his job.”
“What’s this? Good cop, bad cop?”
“He’s led a lot of kidnapping investigations for the bureau. Some have had parental involvement. Lee, he’s got to push every angle as quickly and as far as possible. It’s standard police work.”
“So is remembering who the victims are.”
She let him have that. He was entitled. “After the news conference we’ll take you to the hospital.”
He didn’t say anything; he was looking at his wife’s clothes, the Seahawks shirt she wore to bed, her hairbrush on her dresser. The lotion she used. He breathed in Maria’s scent, as if she were still here.
It took him back to Lincoln High.
That Friday night dance and Maria all alone against the wall. A slow song had started. He wasn’t much of a dancer, never even went to school dances. He was more comfortable working on cars and trucks, pretending they were more important than girls. But sometimes the loneliness ate at him, until he couldn’t take any more and suddenly found himself standing in the school gym in front of a teenage girl named Maria.
She was wearing a blue dress and a tiny pearl necklace, and seemed a little nervous herself.
His pulse had upshifted and even though he’d showered and shaved without nicking his chin, he knew there was still a bit of grease on his knuckles, enough to make him painfully self-conscious as he faced the moment of truth.
“Want to dance?”
“Sure.”
He took her into his arms and something happened.
Holding her so close, she felt so right as “Ruby Tuesday” echoed and a thousand points of light rained on them from the mirror ball. When the song ended they knew that the rest of their lives together had just begun.
Noises pulled Lee from the gym to the bedroom.
Shouting, then a hydraulic whir. Through the window he saw the TV trucks positioning their satellite dishes. The street was lined with a growing number of police vehicles, news crews, reporters, neighbors, kids on skateboards, bikes.
God.
“Is this it?” Grace pointed to a pastel-shaded book labeled “Baby’s First Year.” The kind you can get at most department stores.
Lee opened it to the first few pages, coming to the one with the inky black swirls and whorls, impressions of his son’s tiny feet taken by a nurse shortly after he was born.
He turned to Maria’s entry for Dylan’s birth. “Today God granted me a miracle,” she’d written in her neat script. “I’m bursting with love for him, my answered prayer.”
As he traced the letters, the words began to blur. He rubbed his eyes, then saw the snapshot of the three of them taken at the hospital. Dylan, barely an hour old, his little face scrunched. Maria, radiant as she held him. And there was Lee: the proud father, so happy he wasn’t sure his feet were touching the earth.
Why was this happening? Hadn’t they been through enough?
He turned to read more of Maria’s words, her love letter to their son: “To Mommy’s Angel, No one believed we would have you, except me. I always believed you would come to me.”
11
J ason Wade paced outside the Better Price Supermart.
He was outside because the bow-tied assistant manager, “Mitch Decoli,” according to his
“I’ll go with you,” Grace said.
The Colsons’ renovated master bedroom had oak flooring, soft green walls, and a handmade quilt over the queen-size bed. This was Maria’s sanctuary and today it offered a reprieve from the intense activity in the rest of the house.
A female FBI agent was standing near Maria’s closet, flipping through photo albums and old high-school yearbooks. It sickened Lee the way the tragedy had engulfed them with white-gloved strangers pawing through every intimate corner of their lives.
“Could you give us a minute alone here,” Grace said, waiting until the agent closed the door before telling Lee, “Believe me, I know Dupree might come off as a jerk but he’s just doing his job.”
“What’s this? Good cop, bad cop?”
“He’s led a lot of kidnapping investigations for the bureau. Some have had parental involvement. Lee, he’s got to push every angle as quickly and as far as possible. It’s standard police work.”
“So is remembering who the victims are.”
She let him have that. He was entitled. “After the news conference we’ll take you to the hospital.”
He didn’t say anything; he was looking at his wife’s clothes, the Seahawks shirt she wore to bed, her hairbrush on her dresser. The lotion she used. He breathed in Maria’s scent, as if she were still here.
It took him back to Lincoln High.
That Friday night dance and Maria all alone against the wall. A slow song had started. He wasn’t much of a dancer, never even went to school dances. He was more comfortable working on cars and trucks, pretending they were more important than girls. But sometimes the loneliness ate at him, until he couldn’t take any more and suddenly found himself standing in the school gym in front of a teenage girl named Maria.
She was wearing a blue dress and a tiny pearl necklace, and seemed a little nervous herself.
His pulse had upshifted and even though he’d showered and shaved without nicking his chin, he knew there was still a bit of grease on his knuckles, enough to make him painfully self-conscious as he faced the moment of truth.
“Want to dance?”
“Sure.”
He took her into his arms and something happened.
Holding her so close, she felt so right as “Ruby Tuesday” echoed and a thousand points of light rained on them from the mirror ball. When the song ended they knew that the rest of their lives together had just begun.
Noises pulled Lee from the gym to the bedroom.
Shouting, then a hydraulic whir. Through the window he saw the TV trucks positioning their satellite dishes. The street was lined with a growing number of police vehicles, news crews, reporters, neighbors, kids on skateboards, bikes.
God.
“Is this it?” Grace pointed to a pastel-shaded book labeled “Baby’s First Year.” The kind you can get at most department stores.
Lee opened it to the first few pages, coming to the one with the inky black swirls and whorls, impressions of his son’s tiny feet taken by a nurse shortly after he was born.
He turned to Maria’s entry for Dylan’s birth. “Today God granted me a miracle,” she’d written in her neat script. “I’m bursting with love for him, my answered prayer.”
As he traced the letters, the words began to blur. He rubbed his eyes, then saw the snapshot of the three of them taken at the hospital. Dylan, barely an hour old, his little face scrunched. Maria, radiant as she held him. And there was Lee: the proud father, so happy he wasn’t sure his feet were touching the earth.
Why was this happening? Hadn’t they been through enough?
He turned to read more of Maria’s words, her love letter to their son: “To Mommy’s Angel, No one believed we would have you, except me. I always believed you would come to me.”
11
J ason Wade paced outside the Better Price Supermart.
He was outside because the bow-tied assistant manager, “Mitch Decoli,” according to his
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