Where They Found Her (2 page)

The sky through our large bay window was just beginning to brighten when I opened my eyes. Not quite morning. Not the alarm, not yet. When the noise came again, I realized it was my phone vibrating on the nightstand.
Erik Schinazy
glowed on the screen in the darkness.

“Is everything okay?” I answered without saying hello.

In the five months I’d been working at the tiny but respectable
Ridgedale Reader
, the paper’s contributing editor in chief had never once called me outside business hours. He’d had no reason to. As the
Reader
’s arts, lifestyle, and human-interest reporter, I covered stories that were hardly emergencies.

“Sorry to call so early.” Erik sounded tired or distracted. Or something.

I wondered for a second whether he’d been drinking. Erik was supposedly sober these days, but it was widely rumored that his drinking had gotten him fired from the
Wall Street Journal
. It was hard to imagine fastidious Erik, with his tall, rigid posture, swift military gait, and neat buzz cut, ever being sloppy drunk. But there had to be a better explanation for a reporter of his caliber landing at the
Reader
, editor in chief or not, than his wife, Nancy—a psychology professor at Ridgedale University—being tired of commuting to Ridgedale from New York City, where they’d lived when Erik was at the
Journal
.

Not that I was one to judge. I’d gotten the staff position at the
Reader
thanks to Nancy being on the faculty welcoming committee. I didn’t know how much Nancy had pressured Erik to hire me or how desperate Justin had made my situation sound, but from the exceedingly kind, almost therapeutic way Nancy regarded me, I had my suspicions. And with only a law degree and a decade of legislative public policy experience for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women on my résumé, I was fairly certain that I hadn’t been the most qualified candidate for the staff reporter position.

But Justin—now a tenured English professor, thanks to Ridgedale University—had been right to do whatever it took to get me a fresh start. And writing for the
Ridgedale Reader
had given me unexpected purpose. I had only recently come to accept—after much grueling therapy—that the grief, flowing from me unchecked since the baby died, would continue until I forcibly turned off the spigot.

“No, no, that’s okay, Erik,” I breathed, trying to get out of bed so I didn’t wake Justin. “Can you just hold on one second?”

It wasn’t until I tried to move that I realized Ella was in our bed, her body latched on to mine like a barnacle. I had a vague recollection of it now: her standing next to the bed—a bad dream, probably. Ella always had the most vivid night terrors, often shrieking into the darkness while dead asleep. I’d been the same as a child, but I’d assumed it was a side effect of life with my mother. More likely, the terrors were genetic, the pediatrician told me. But I could handle them better than my own mother did: earplugs, a lock on her door, her most angry shout. So Ella regularly ended the night tucked between us, something Justin had begun a gentle, but concerted, campaign to stop.

“Okay, sorry, go ahead, Erik,” I said once I’d managed to twist myself out from beneath Ella and made my way into the hallway.

“I was hoping you could help with something,” he began, his tone even more brusque than usual. Nancy was so warm by comparison. I often wondered how they’d ended up together. “I’ve had to leave town for a family emergency, and Elizabeth is on assignment in Trenton, and Richard is in the hospital, so that leaves—”

“Is he okay?” I felt a knee-jerk wave of guilt. I hadn’t wished an actual illness on Richard, but in my darker moments I’d come close.

Elizabeth and Richard, both in their late twenties, covered the actual news for the
Reader
, though they weren’t trying to compete with the national dailies or the twenty-four-hour online news cycle. Instead, the
Ridgedale Reader
prided itself on in-depth coverage with lots of local color. Occasionally, I got assignments from Erik—covering the new director of the university’s prestigious Stanton Theatre or the celebrated local spelling bee—but largely, I pitched my own stories, such as my recent profile of Community Outreach Tutoring, a program for local high school dropouts generously run by Ella’s kindergarten teacher, Rhea.

Elizabeth had been polite to me, at least, but Richard had made clear that he saw me as a washed-up mom unjustly handed a seat at the table. That his assessment was largely accurate did not make it more enjoyable.

“Is who okay?” Erik sounded confused.

“You said Richard was in the hospital?”

“Oh yeah, he’s fine,” he scoffed. “Gallbladder operation. You’d think he was having open-heart surgery from the way he’s complained, but he should be back in forty-eight hours. In the meantime, I just got a call. Someone reported a body up by the Essex Bridge.”

“A body?” It came out in a squeak I loathed myself for. “You mean a
dead
body?”

“That would be the implication.” Erik sounded skeptical of me now. He probably had been from the get-go, but I wasn’t
helping matters. “I need someone to head out and see what’s going on. And with Elizabeth at the Governor’s Round Table and Richard out of commission—I’d do it myself, but like I said, I have this family emergency. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Is everything okay? With your family, I mean.”

Why was I getting personal? Erik hated personal. When we’d arrived in town back in August, I’d been sure that Erik and Nancy would be our first friends. Justin and I hadn’t socialized in a long time, and we needed to. Justin already had the professorial connection with Nancy, and I’d been instantly drawn to her warmth, even if it was partly attributable to her view of me as a prospective patient. Erik was a little prickly, yes, but he was also incredibly bright and extremely interesting.

However, Erik and Nancy had politely spurned all our advances: brunch, barbecues, concert tickets. All of which had been outside my comfort zone, anyway. Perhaps it was Erik’s checkered history or Nancy’s fertility problems—ones she talked about with an emotional frankness I envied—that kept them at a distance. Or maybe they just didn’t like us. Regardless, it was as though Nancy and Erik were encased in very fine barbed wire, visible only upon close inspection. And my own skin was far too thin to risk pushing nearer.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Erik said with typical curtness. “Anyway, looks like you’re on this dead-body story for now. Assuming you’re up for it.”

“Of course, I’ll head out right now,” I said, relieved that I sounded so calm and efficient.

But I was already nervous. To everyone’s surprise, including my own, I’d done a pretty good job so far bringing my little corner of Ridgedale to life. Even Erik, once a prizewinning foreign affairs correspondent, had seemed impressed. But I’d never covered anything remotely like a dead body. In Ridgedale, those were a rarity. There hadn’t been a single one since we’d lived there.

“Good,” Erik said. There was still hesitation in his voice. “Have you, um, ever covered a crime scene?” He was being polite.
He knew I hadn’t.

“A crime scene? That seems to presuppose a murder. Do we know that?” I asked, pleased that I’d picked up on his jumping of the gun.

“Good point. I suppose we don’t,” Erik said. “Our source in the department was vague. All the more reason to tread lightly. Despite what they seem to think, the local police aren’t entitled to any sort of special treatment from us, but they’ll already be on the defensive with the university to contend with.”

“The university?”

“The wooded area near the Essex Bridge is outside campus proper, but it’s university property,” Erik said. “It’s my understanding that it was a Campus Safety officer who called in the body. As you can imagine, the university will be motivated to keep this quiet. Assuming any of this information is even accurate. There’s always the chance that we’ll find out the whole thing is a false alarm.”

The door creaked as Justin came out into the hallway, squinting his hazel eyes at me. His shaggy brown hair was sticking up in all directions like a little boy’s.
Who’s that?
he mouthed, pointing to the phone with a furrowed brow as he crossed his arms over the Ridgedale University T-shirt hugging his triathlete’s wiry frame. I held up a finger for him to wait.

“Okay, I’ll be careful.” Now I sounded so effortlessly confident that I was almost convincing myself. “I’ll text you an update once I’ve gotten down to the scene. I assume you’ll want something abbreviated for online, full-length for print tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Erik said, still hesitant. He was doing his best to buy into my confidence, but he wasn’t all the way there. “Okay, then. Good luck. Call if you need anything.”

“Erik?” Justin asked sleepily after I’d hung up. He scrubbed a hand over his beard, which, despite early resistance, I now felt weirdly attached to. It covered up much of Justin’s angular features, yet it managed to make him look even more handsome. “What did he want in the middle of the night?”

I looked down at my phone. It was a little past six a.m. “It’s not the middle of the night anymore,” I said, as though that were the relevant point. My voice sounded spacey and odd.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Justin pushed off the doorframe and put a concerned hand on my arm. Because I wasn’t allowed to be spacey, not even for a second. Not anymore. That’s what happens when you dove off the deep end: people got alarmed when you dared poke a toe back in the murky waters.

“Nothing’s wrong. Erik just wants me to go out to the Essex Bridge for a story,” I said. “They found a— Someone reported a body.”

“Jesus, a body, really? That’s terrible. Do they know what happened?”

“That’s what I’m supposed to find out. Apparently, I’m the temporary substitute features reporter for the
Ridgedale Reader.
”

“
You?
Really?” I watched Justin realize he’d stuck his foot in his mouth. “I mean, great, I guess. That seems weird to say if someone’s dead.”

The bedroom door opened wider behind us, and Ella padded out in her red-and-white-striped pajamas, brown curls twisting out in every direction like a bouquet of springs. She was squinting exactly the way Justin had, with her matching hazel eyes. Apart from her hair—which was a chocolate-hued replica of my own reddish curls—Ella was a miniature version of Justin. From her oversize eyes and full ruddy lips to the way she smiled with her whole face, Ella was living proof of the power of genetics.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to wake you.” I reached down and hoisted a heavier-than-ever Ella up on my hip. “Let me put you back to bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed.” Ella pouted into my neck. “I want to be ready.”

“Ready?” I laughed, rubbing a hand over her back as I carried her down the hall toward her room. “Ready for what, Peanut?”

“For the show, Mommy.”

Shit, the show
. A kindergarten reenactment of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
in which Ella was to be that crucial “one green leaf.” The show was at eleven a.m. There was no telling if I’d make it.

“You’ll be too tired for the show if you stay up, Peanut. It’s way too early,” I said, pushing her door open with my foot. “You’ll need more sleep or you’ll forget all your lines.”

Ella’s eyes were already half closed by the time I was tucking her back under her pink-and-white-checked duvet and her massive, colorful menagerie of stuffed animals. Reading to Ella in that bed had always made me feel like the little girl I’d never been. And on a good day, it could almost convince me that I was the mother I’d always hoped I’d be.

“Mommy?” Ella said as she snuggled up against her huge red frog.

“What, sweetheart?” I smiled hard, trying not to think about how crushed she’d be when she realized that I wouldn’t make her show.

“I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too, Peanut.”

Now that I was
finally
back—not perfect, not by a long shot, but much, much better—I did everything I could to avoid disappointing her. I was about to say something else, to apologize for missing her show, to make promises or offer bribes. But it was already too late to plead for forgiveness: Ella was fast asleep.

Justin was back in bed by the time I returned to our bedroom. I could tell he was not yet asleep despite his best efforts.

“Ella’s show is at eleven today. It won’t take long, fifteen minutes,
maybe. Tape it for me, okay?” I headed for my bureau. Nice but practical, that was what I needed to wear. Or maybe professional but unafraid to tramp through the woods was closer to the mark. Yes, that was it: intrepid. “I didn’t get a chance to warn her I was going to miss it. You don’t think I should wake her up to tell her, do you? I hate to think of her being surprised that way.”

I could feel Justin watching me move around the room getting dressed. I pulled on my nicest sweater—the pale blue cashmere that Justin’s mother had bought me, that set off my eyes—then tugged on a pair of my best non-mom jeans.

“I have to teach at ten, babe,” Justin said. When I turned, he was propped up on an elbow. “I can take Ella to school, but I can’t do the performance. I’m sorry, Molly, but you know how the university president has been about professors missing class lately—he’s on a personal crusade.”

“One of us
has
to be there, Justin,” I said with irrational force. I knew he couldn’t miss a class unless there was a true emergency, and despite how I was feeling, a kindergarten performance didn’t qualify. “I’ll have to stay at the bridge until I have what I need for the story. Assuming I can figure out what that is. This may be an all-day thing.”

“I agree completely,” Justin said. “You need to go out there and report on this story to the best of your ability. This could be a real opportunity, Molly, and you need to seriously nail it. My guess is, Erik’s not big on second chances. Today, you chasing this story is more important than even
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
.”

Because for me, this wasn’t just a story, of course. Everything I did these days was another plank in the bridge to a better me. I had become what I once would have despised: the living embodiment of a self-help book.