“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
I glance over at the thermostat glowing in the corner, watching as the degrees tick upward—eighty-four, eighty-five, eighty-six—wondering how high it could go. How much more we could possibly take.
Then I look back over at Margaret, her eyes still shut.
“If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
My mother smiles, kisses us on our foreheads, and clicks off my bedside lamp before standing up and walking into the hallway. The room is enveloped in darkness now, the shroud of night, but I’m still looking at Margaret. At the way the moonlight is streaming in through the window like a spotlight, casting its glow directly on her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NOW
At first, my house felt strange with Waylon in it, the comfortable companionship we built up this week seeming to dissolve as soon as he stepped through the door. We spent the first couple of hours dancing around each other, sidestepping one another, like late-night lovers who forgot each other’s names.
He’s offered to cook dinner tonight, a thank-you, I think, for opening up my home. He went out for groceries earlier, and now that he’s started cooking, we’ve slipped back into that easy camaraderie I’ve felt all week. I think it’s the way I’m kicked back in the kitchen, watching as he hops around, tending to the bubbling skillets and boiling water. Cooking feels like a chore when it’s done out of necessity—not for the taste or presentation, but for survival alone—but when you throw another person into the mix, it turns into an activity, a pastime. Enjoyable, even. An intimacy in the mundane.
“Red or white?”
Waylon pulls two bottles of wine out of a large paper bag, hoisting both into the air. I point to the red, and he nods, uncorks the bottle, and glugs a healthy amount into an empty wineglass, pushing it in my direction.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it by the stem. A relaxed silence settles between us as he unloads the rest of the groceries, and I can’t help but think about how we met on that airplane; the bizarre juxtaposition of then and now. I never would have imagined that in just one week, we’d somehow find ourselves here: no longer strangers, but partners. Maybe even friends.
“What was the case you solved?” I ask, suddenly remembering. “You mentioned that you solved a cold case. On the plane.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Another missing child.”
He diverts his eyes as he chops a few cloves of garlic, and I wonder if he’s avoiding my gaze for a reason. If he knows that whatever comes next is something I won’t want to hear.
“The case was going on thirty years,” he continues after a prolonged silence. “The family had no answers. I mean, none. No clue what happened. But we were able to find out.”
“And what happened?”
He looks at me, finally, an apology in his eyes.
“She died,” he says in matter-of-fact numbness. “She was taken by a town crossing guard. Kept in his basement for a few months before he killed her and buried her in the woods.”
I swallow, my eyes darting over to the window, in the direction of my neighbor’s house.
“How did you find him?”
“We found a witness,” Waylon says, pouring himself a glass now, too. “Another kid who actually saw her get taken. He was terrified at the time—he was, like, seven—so he never came forward. I talked to everybody in that town, everybody, and finally, I found him.”
“So, what, the cops just believed the thirty-year-old testimony of a second-grader?”
“No,” he says, sighing. “But I gave them the tip, and they were able to get a warrant. They searched his house—Guy Rooney, was his name. He’d been living in the same place his entire adult life, ever since he got divorced in the seventies, and they found some of her … things … in his basement. Things he was keeping.”
I nod, chewing on the inside of my cheek, still staring out the window. The sky is beginning to morph colors now, a slathering of black and blue, like a juicy bruise.
“He confessed on the spot,” Waylon continues. “Brought the cops to the woods, almost like he was relieved to get caught. Get it off his chest. All those years later, he remembered exactly where she was. Where he buried her.”
“And nobody had any idea?” I ask. “That that was going on in his house?”
“None at all,” Waylon says. “That’s what’s so terrifying. He and his ex were on great terms, co-parented their kids. She evens remembers being over there once and noticing that the basement door was padlocked. The girl was probably still down there … but, you know, she never thought anything of it.”