“One moment. I’ll check.”
I stretched the phone cord, walking to the stove and to the fridge and the front door, circling the small space again.
“I’m sorry, sir. There were no other reservations made by that name. I tried several different spellings, and nothing came up.”
“Thank you,” I said and hung up, hurrying into Gran’s room.
I knelt on the floor right next to her bed, so she could hear me.
“Is everything all right, honey? Were you able to get in touch with Pearl?”
I didn’t want to alarm her, so I kept my voice calm and asked, “Did Pearl leave you the number to where she was staying?”
“It’s on a piece of paper on the table out there.”
Before she could say another word, I went into the living room, lifting the small note into my hands. Pearl’s writing covered the whole sheet, where she’d jotted down the same hotel I’d booked for us and the phone number I had just called.
My stomach was in my fucking throat as I moved back over to Gran’s bed. I rubbed my sweaty hands over my shorts, trying to breathe. “I don’t know how to tell you this …” My chest pounded every time I inhaled. “But Pearl never checked into the hotel in New York.”
The lines in her brow deepened. “Where is she, then?”
I shook my head, the worry now eating its way into my arms and legs, my entire body feeling weak. “I don’t know.”
Fifty-Three
After
Ashe
Most of my days were a blur, each one marked by a number that signified how many had passed since Dylan’s death. I no longer called them Monday, Tuesday, or even Wednesday. They were day six, twelve, eighteen. Somewhere in there was his funeral, and I immediately went to Dylan’s parents’ house after the service.
It felt impossible to be there without him.
A strange silence that he would have always filled.
I held his mother while she broke down in my arms. As soon as Alix saw her crying, she was next. I couldn’t get her to stop. I couldn’t even get her to the bathroom in time before she vomited all over my suit jacket. Once she emptied her stomach, the panic attack set in. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.
That was one of the hardest moments of my life.
I was surrounded by mourning. I’d been to his gravesite; I’d traced my fingers over the engraved letters of his headstone.
Still, it hadn’t hit me because in my mind, there was no way he could really be gone forever.
Dylan had been invincible.
The pilot who had flown through storms. Who had loved to be in the air, who could survive anything.
Even a bombing.
So, every time my phone rang, I expected him to be on the other end. When I looked at our pictures in my condo, I reminded myself to buy more frames for the trips we would have in the future. Every time I checked his last text, my mind created new conversations to fill in the gap of days.
I knew the reality.
I knew it would slam into me.
And when it did, I reached for the bottle, or I went into work to bury myself a little deeper.
Just like I had done this morning—sleep, once again, something I no longer had in my life.
But caffeine and carbohydrates were what I could fill myself with to keep me going, so I stopped at the bodega on the way to the police station to buy their largest coffee and a toasted bagel.
As I got out of the elevator on our floor, rounding the corner into the main space, the captain was heading down the same hallway, several files gripped in her hand.
“Morning,” I said, stopping a few steps into the unit, leaning against the wall as she caught up.
“How’s everything going, Detective Flynn?”
I wondered if she was referring to the dark circles under my eyes that had become a permanent fixture or the booze breath I’d tried to brush away this morning. “I’m all right.”
She crossed her arms, pushing her shoulder into the wall once she reached me. “Are you?” Her eyes told me she had seen straight through my lie. “You know, you did excellent work in Watertown. I couldn’t be prouder of you and my entire Boston team. But since the bombing and the loss of your friend, you’ve been”—her stare turned harder, as though she was assessing which word would better describe me—“off, and in our line of work, that can be extremely detrimental. I want to make sure you’re where you need to be or if you need some time off to let things settle.”
Time off would lead to more sitting around with the shades drawn, covering the pain in morning hangovers. I knew what that would eventually look like after a few weeks—boxes of takeout piling high that wouldn’t make it into the trash, the stench of unwashed skin, empty liquor bottles on every surface, as though my condo were a giant game of booze pong.
But she wasn’t out of line for questioning me. Just because I was here, in this office, on the road, at crime scenes, it didn’t mean my brain was. Parts of me were missing, and I wasn’t sure when I would get them back.
Or if they would ever return.
I sighed, shifting my posture, and the paper that was taped to the wall, underneath where my arm was resting, threatened to tear.
Printouts had lined this area of the department for as long as I had worked here. Ten rows high, running almost the entire length of the unit, were white pieces of paper, spaced less than an inch apart. On each one was a most recent photograph, their name, identifying characteristics, and where they had last been seen.
The missing persons wall.
An area that everyone passed when they came on and off our floor.
A place that every detective, including myself, looked at weekly as a reminder that we weren’t doing our job if these papers continued to grow.
I went to fix the printout that I’d almost torn, and the photo in the center caught my attention. I couldn’t stop staring at it, the face suddenly so familiar. I tried to remember where I’d last seen those eyes, that blonde hair, the look of innocence on her face.
I dug through my brain, trying to locate this girl in my memory.
When it clicked, a chill ran through my entire body.
“Detective?” the captain said.
My gaze slowly met hers again, and my feet started to move. “I have to go. I’ll stop by your office later, and we can talk about this.” I tossed the coffee and bagel into the nearest trash can and jogged to Rivera’s desk, the top of it as unorganized and chaotic as my own.
I took out my phone and pressed his number.
“Are you all right, buddy?” he asked, answering after a few rings, his voice scratchy from waking up.
I used my shoulder to hold my cell against my face and started looking through the pile of folders on the side of his desk. “Where do you keep your old files?”
He yawned. “Which one?”
Not having luck there, I switched to a new section, checking the names on those. “The young girl who went missing from Dorchester several months ago.”
“Bottom drawer, right side. Last name is—”
“Mills,” I said, bending down to be eye-level, sifting through until I reached the Ms and found hers.
I took it out, and a picture of Mills was stapled to the inside flap, all of Rivera’s notes written below.