Page 23 of Tracking Safety

Then he’d read it again.

Then he’d sat down on the floor with his back against the wall because his legs wouldn’t hold him.

I’m sorry. Take care of them.

That was all it said.

He’d immediately called the number back. It was already disconnected.

The message had let him know that Jenna was alive. That she’d chosen to go. And that she wasn’t coming back.

He’d been stunned. More than stunned. He’d been unable to make things compute.

Jenna had truly been a good mother. She’d let Cora “help” make pancakes every single Saturday, batter on the ceiling, twenty extra minutes added to a ten-minute job, never once taking the spatula back just to get it done faster.

She’d knelt on bathroom tile in the middle of the night, sponging a fever down with a washcloth and singing the same four lines of a lullaby until Liam’s fever finally broke.

She’d loved their children with everything she had. He’d watched her love them and knew what that looked like.

For a while, he’d wondered if she might have postpartum depression. Jonah had only been two, and it wasn’t unheard of for PPD to surface late.

He’d called Jenna’s doctor, who couldn’t tell him anything. He’d looked up the symptoms at two in the morning on his phone while Jonah slept on his chest. He’d told himself this wasn’t her fault, that she’d been struggling and he’d missed the signs. He’d been convinced that if he’d paid closer attention he might have been able to stop it all before it came to this.

He’d beaten himself up about it for the better part of a year, though he had no proof that the narrative he’d developed was true.

Then the guilt had curdled into something harder.

Jenna had left her children. Whatever the reason, whatever the explanation she’d been carrying, the fact remained that she’d walked out of their house and driven away from three kids who needed their mother.

The mountains rose blue and distant ahead of him as he came around the last long curve before town.

He tightened his hands on the wheel and prayed for strength to get through this conversation, to act like a man of integrity and not an injured animal lashing out.

CHAPTER 7

Luke pulled into an empty space in front of Hollow House and paused.

Jenna sat on the front steps waiting for him.

At the sight of her, his hand froze on the gearshift, the truck still in Drive.

He didn’t want that reaction.

Anger surged through him—anger at himself for feeling anything.

Yet his mind tumbled back in time. He remembered the first time he’d ever seen her.

He’d been at a fundraiser in Charlottesville when he noticed a woman laughing at something across the room. Her whole face had lit up, unguarded and completely unself-conscious.

He’d never in his life seen anyone look so alive. He knew before he crossed the room that he had to talk to her.

At first, she’d been standoffish. Politely and pleasantly standoffish, which was somehow worse than if she’d been rude. When he’d offered his number, she hadn’t taken it.

He’d thought about her for two weeks afterward. Then, as if fate had intervened, he’d walked into a restaurant to pick up some dinner and found her sitting alone.

He’d taken that as a sign.

She’d been standoffish that time too. But after some banter, she’d finally loosened up. By the end of the evening, she gave him her number.