One minute Grace was running along 25th Street. The next it appeared she was plucked out of thin air. And at present, Laurie had no idea how or why.
Chapter Eight
How Laurie ended up outside the house in the Strand was a mystery even to herself. Filmore had insisted she leave the station at 9.30 p.m. after she’d spent the evening scanning all available camera footage for a sight of Grace Harrington. They now had a video of the young woman running along the seawall toward the pier and heading up 25th Street, where she faded out of sight as she moved toward Sealy Avenue.
Too restless to do anything else, Laurie had changed into her running gear, desperate for a slice of time solely for herself. Soon she’d reached the Zen-like state where her body took over and she became merely a passenger. But as she trawled the island’s streets, she soon found herself near Offatts Bayou, following the route Grace had taken the previous evening. After reaching Sealy Avenue, she’d continued running, stopping a few minutes later, breathless.
As her pulse dwindled to her resting rate, she glanced at the old Victorian house with its white-paneled wooden front and knew exactly where she’d arrived. The subconscious was a mysterious thing. Her counselor had explained as much to her in those weekly meetings after Milly’s death, and here was the proof. She’d spent the day focusing so intently on Grace Harrington and her distraught family that she’d barely thought about David and the woman until now, yet here she was standing outside the woman’s house like some deranged bunny boiler.
She shouldn’t even have looked the woman up, but it hadn’t been that hard to track her down. David had befriended her on Facebook, and Laurie discovered the woman was Rebecca Whitehead, Head of HR at the oil company where David worked as an engineer. The extra clicks she’d taken on the database to find the woman’s address had been a mistake, and she’d shut the search down with shaking hands as soon as the address had appeared on the screen. But her subconscious hadn’t forgotten, guiding her to this affluent area as efficiently as the satnav system in her car.
What she’d hoped to find here was anyone’s guess. Had she really expected to see David through the gap in the downstairs curtains? He was supposed to be in Texas City, but what if he’d come here instead? What if that was what he always did when he claimed to be working in Texas City?
Laurie pretended to stretch as a couple with a black Labrador crossed the street to within feet of where she was standing. She was being ludicrous, acting in a way she detested seeing in others: without thought and full of emotion rather than reason. Of course David hadn’t been coming here instead of working. The money he brought in from his work was good, but it was also a necessity. Her salary alone would never be enough to maintain their lifestyle. That didn’t mean she was wrong to wonder if he was having an affair—the name Rebecca Whitehead had never once been brought up in conversation before—but it did make it wrong for her to be here now.
She started running again, heading toward the sound of the gulf, her limbs working in perfect unison as she fled the scene of her crime. Her thoughts turned to Grace Harrington as she tried to ignore the fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach. She imagined the sleepless nights the girl’s parents would soon be experiencing, and it made her feel all the more guilty for wasting this last hour running to Rebecca Whitehead’s house.
The tide was high as she ran along the seawall, with its perilous drops. How easy it would be to slip off the edge into the shifting sand, she thought, and run those last few yards to the waiting gulf waters.
She began running faster as the fluttering feeling resumed. Laurie understood the cause of the sensation. It was her body reminding her of when it was pregnant, the feeling akin to the kicking she’d experienced when Milly was growing inside her. And while she hated the cruel reminder, she conceded it was something she deserved. Despite what David, her family, and her counselor had told her, she needed to be reminded of her failings; of how she’d failed Milly.
If she could have closed her eyes, she would have. The scenery blurred past her as she moved her body at a speed she would have once thought impossible. There was a tension in the air that reminded her of the seconds of peace before a storm would unleash itself. It made her think that she was too attuned to everything—to the weather, to the sound of the waves, to the pain and worry of Grace’s parents, even to David’s possible need for infidelity. She’d failed him and couldn’t really blame him for seeking solace elsewhere. As she sprinted the last hundred yards to her apartment building, she wondered if this was all for the best. Being together was a constant reminder of Milly. What if every time David looked at her, he recalled those terrible moments at the hospital? Who in their right mind would want to be reminded of that? Laurie was content to carry the weight of that burden every time she looked in the mirror, but she couldn’t expect David to have to do the same.
It was late but she couldn’t face the empty apartment alone. She rushed in and changed tops, grabbing a banana and her car keys before the emptiness threatened to engulf her. Heat oozed from her body as she sat behind the wheel of the car. Her fresh top was already damp from perspiration, her jogging bottoms wet and clingy like a second skin. She started the engine and began to drive, again allowing her subconscious to guide her.
Once again, she sensed the tension as she found herself back on Seawall Boulevard. It was probably all in her imagination, but the inside of the car felt pressurized, as if there was a great weight pushing down on it. She shifted in her seat as the shoreline blurred by, finding herself driving along Stewart Road toward the small property where Frank Randall lived.
Just as she’d arrived earlier outside Rebecca Whitehead’s house without any forethought, Laurie couldn’t recall the decision-making process that had led her back to her father-in-law’s house. She’d visited him on a number of occasions since his return, neither of them ever discussing his conviction. She’d done so out of a sense of duty. They didn’t know each other, but he was David’s father, and would have been Milly’s grandfather. She’d been surprised at how easily she was able to put his sins to the side of her thoughts. When she saw him, she didn’t think about the savage killer he’d once been. All she saw was a weak and vulnerable old man who didn’t have a single person in the world looking after him.
She parked and walked the narrow road, which was now much clearer than before. For the second time that evening, she was loitering outside someone else’s property, the focus of her attention once more connected to David. A light was on in the old house, a beacon in the darkness that made the modest structure look like a place out of time.
The distance between the access road and the front door played tricks on her as she walked toward the building. All at once, sounds of wildlife and the roaring gulf reached her ears as if for a few seconds time had stood still. Her shoulders slumped as she hit the hard wood of the front door, the fatigue from her earlier run beginning to register.
The door creaked open, Frank Randall sticking his head out from behind the screen. “Hello?”
“Frank, it’s me, Laurie. I’m so sorry to visit so late.”