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“That must have been hard,” Waylon says, shifting gears. “You two, trying to deal with this together… but, you know, on your own.”
I look up at him, that simple explanation tearing a hole through my chest. Because that’s exactly what it felt like: the two of us, together, but also completely alone.
“Yeah,” I say, my fingers hovering over Ben’s ring, still tucked discreetly beneath my shirt. “We just handled it differently, you know? I had a hard time sleeping. I had a hard time doing anything, really. All I wanted to do was be involved in the case, in every little detail. And Ben… well, I don’t know.”
I force myself to swallow, take a deep breath. I can feel my eyes tightening; the blood vessels squeezing.
“He thinks I could be doing more harm than good, going out on my own like this. And he isn’t alone, either. Other people think that, too.”
I think about Detective Dozier; the disapproval in his tone as he mentioned my keynote—no, myperformance.
“The detectives told us after a couple months that Mason probably wouldn’t be found alive,” I continue. “That, statistically speaking, they were more likely to find…remains, probably.”
Waylon is silent, an apology in his eyes.
“They advised we try to find a way to make peace with it, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t give up like that.”
“I don’t think anyone should expect you to.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t think so, either. But Ben wanted to try, you know. Try to make peace with it. Not move on from Mason, obviously, but move forward. He tried to throw us into therapy, grief-counseling groups, and I just wasn’t ready for that. I made it pretty hard for him.”
Waylon nods, glancing at the collage of pictures on the wall: my entire home a persistent and painful reminder of everything that was taken from us. Everything we lost.
“When did you start doing that?” he asks, gesturing to it.
“A few weeks after he was taken, I guess. When the official investigation started to slow down.”
I remember feeling surprised at how easy it was for everyone around me to move on. The first talk I gave was in a high school gymnasium, just days after the news had broken. Ben and I had set up the chairs ourselves, a couple dozen metal folding ones organized in rows, and it had been packed—the entire city showed up, bodies crammed tight as they leaned against the tumbling mats, leeching on to my every word. They were willing to do anything to help,anything, but when I held another one a week later, the crowd had visibly shrunk. We had volunteers who truly cared, for a while, manning tip lines and passing out fliers, but it only took a few months for the intrigue to fade for them, too. For them to tire, attach themselves to some other story, like ours had expired and suddenly made them sick. That was the first time I ever considered responding to the true crime requests piling up in my Inbox. Even though I didn’t understand it—their fascination with violence, with pain—at least they cared.
“It started small,” I say, standing up and walking closer. “Just moving a few things from the table to the wall, so I could see it all more clearly.”
And then it had spread, taking on a life of its own. Creeping toward the corners, mutating and expanding and growing like a tumor that had spiraled out of control.
“Has it gotten you anywhere?”
“Into trouble, mostly.”
“How so?”
I sigh as my eyes scan it all. The articles, the pictures. The giant map of the city, remembering the initial shock I felt when I finished sticking in those little ruby pins, stepped back, and took it all in.
“These are sex offenders,” I say, pointing to the pins. I’ll never forget the rising dread as I saw them sprawled out across our street, our neighborhood, like a swarm of insects erupting from a beaten hive. The way they seemed to multiply outward and spread like cancer until the entire thing was bleeding red. “Every single registered sex offender within thirty miles.”
“I imagine they were interviewed, right?”
“Sure, the serious ones,” I say, pointing to the spreadsheet printed out and tacked next to it. My eyes skim down the grid of names and addresses, page after page after page. “Criminal sexual misconduct with minors, child pornography, rape. But there are hundreds of them.Thousands. The cops barely even scratched the surface.”
Waylon stands up and steps closer, too, probably thinking the same thing I was the first time I let it truly sink in: the magnitude of it. They’re everywhere, it seems. Our neighbors, coworkers. Friends.
“What did you do?” he asks, barely a whisper.
I’m quiet, still eying those little red pins. My mind on Detective Dozier at the vigil and the way he had sunk back into the trees, watching.
“I would advise you not to do anything impulsive.”
“There was this older man who used to work at the grocery store,” I say at last, a cold detachment in my voice. “He always liked Mason. He used to keep these stickers in his apron pockets and hand them to the kids at checkout. He was sweet. I liked him. I always made it a point to get in his line, you know, make small talk… until I found his name on the list.”
Waylon is quiet, letting me continue.
