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We take off in pairs. Dad and Anna stay on Main Street, hoping Izzy shows up in one of the stores. Tara and Hunter are at the school while Will travels the highway. Tyler and I climb over fallen trees and walk around mounds of prickly bushes as we feel the sun setting at our backs and the clock running out.
We call out our daughter’s name and listen as the sound echoes against the trees. We walk for what feels like an eternity, shouting for her and listening for any sign of footsteps and look down for clues.
“I think she heard you yelling in the living room. That’s why she left,” Tyler surmises, and I cast him an evil glare.
“This was a culmination of two years of heartache for her. I’ve tried so hard to act like everything is going to be okay, that this new life is a good one, and then you tried to act like the past never happened. We moved on, and you pulled us all back into the past.”
“Stop acting like you have it all together. You’ve been acting rash, getting arrested. Breaking into the salon. If it wasn’t to get back at me, then I don’t know what—”
“I was sick of everything being taken away, including my fucking hair.” I turn to him and nearly fall over a prickly bush. I right myself and get my bearings while he just stands there with his phone in his hand and a perplexed look on his face. “I broke into the salon because, for once, I was taking back what was mine. I wanted a part of my life back. My mother left me, and then you left, and it’s taken me a long time to heal a fraction of the hole that was left. Hell, I can’t even hold a decent conversation with my father’s girlfriend because it’s just a reminder that we’re all replaceable.”
“You’re not replaceable. Not in any way. In fact, you’re really hard to forget.” He shines his flashlight on my legs, creating a halo around us. “I know my actions don’t show it, but you are still one of the most important people in my life.”
I turn away from him and run my hands over my head, looking up to the trees and their bare branches that show through the dusk. His words are like a vise that squeezes around my neck. A year ago—heck, six months ago—I might have welcomed this conversation. Today, I can’t even catch my breath.
“What is going on with you? You fell in love with another woman, and lately, you’re acting like … it almost feels like … like you want to get back together, and I know you don’t.”
He grips his neck and lets out a growl in frustration. As he lowers his hand, he holds out his arm in explanation. “I love Maisie. I know you hate hearing that, but I do. She’s about to move in, and everyone is talking about marriage. I hadn’t thought about the fact that she might want children until we were at dinner, and she saw a baby, and she melted. All of a sudden, I realized that I was about to do it all over again—get married, have kids. The cycle is going to continue, and all I’ve been thinking about is … I already did that. I had that. No, Ihavethat. I had a wife and children and bills, and fights, and memories, and I gave that all away. It was selfish. I disrupted my children’s lives all so I could do it all over again with someone else, and …” He sighs, looking at me with downcast eyes. “It makes me wonder if I threw away our family for the right reasons. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m sorry, Lyss. I’m so damn sorry.”
That vise around me is squeezing so tight that I lose my breath. Every woman who has ever been wronged wants to hear the words my ex-husband just spoke to me.
Validation though groveling is good for the ego.
As for my heart, it’s no secret that I still love Tyler Landish.
I wipe my cheek and cross my arms, taking a shaky breath as I stare at him. That boyish charm he once had still peeks through the masculine demeanor he adapted as he aged. Sheer bravado is overshadowed by the vulnerable posture of a man.
It’s the same man who held my hand and kissed my head as our babes were born. The man who rubbed my feet when we watched our favorite shows after the kids went to bed. The man who helped the kids make me breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day and sang my favorite songs when he was in the shower because he knew it made me laugh.
I love Tyler Landish. The problem is, the Tyler Landish I love doesn’t exist anymore.
“You’re scared,” I state, and he looks up with a crease in his forehead. “I can imagine how the thought of starting over at thirty-four years old is frightening, but it’s not so crazy. A lot of people get married for the first time in their thirties and have kids close to forty. We just did everything so young. We were defiant, which is probably where Izzy gets it from. And we were in love. Blissfully so. We were also very lucky that the teenagers we were grew up to be adults who still wanted to be with one another. High school Tyler and Melissa were different than college Tyler and Melissa and so very different from the parents we became in our twenties. Marriage isn’t about putting in the work to love one another. It’s about still liking the person your spouse is growing up to be. And we never stop growing up. Hell, I’m still as lost as I was twenty years ago. I’m even sleeping in my parents’ house and getting reprimanded by my father, but that’s a different story.”
Tyler shrugs in agreement. “Your dad always has been a hard nut to crack.”
I nod and then exhale. “It wasn’t right of me to fall apart on you the way I did without knowing how to pick up the pieces. And it wasn’t fair to me when you threw them away. When you walked away from our family, you grew to be a man I couldn’t love even if I tried. That love is gone. Same for you. The old version of me is someone I can’t pretend to be anymore. I’ve changed. I’m pretty sure it’s for the better, but this version of me is not for you. That’s why you walked away.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, and he looks down. As he looks up, it’s with a small, sad smile. “You know what’s the worst part about knowing someone since you were a kid?”
“That they know everything about you. Yeah. Tell me about it. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“You’re right. I’m scared. I love Maisie. She’s who I want to be with. I don’t ever want the kids to think I love anything more than them.”
“You won’t, Ty. Just promise if you move on with Maisie, you won’t give up on her. Our children need to know a good marriage exists.”
I give him a moment and start to walk again, calling out for Izzy, and he soon follows. Our flashlights are both on as we travel deeper into the woods. With the sun nearly down, it’s freezing, and I can’t help the chattering in my teeth—both from cold and from nerves. When we see the lights of the highway just beyond the pines, my stomach drops.
The light from the highway guides us to the edge of the woods, and we circle back, walking to the house on a new path. We use Tyler’s phone navigation to see where we are in the woods. His battery is dying quickly.
We shout out Izzy’s name again and listen as the sounds of silence answer us back. The fear of my child being alone in the woods is crippling. I start to cry as I think of the many horrible things that could possibly happen to her out here in the cold, dark night—the horrific, frightening things that could happen to a child, period. With a shiver, I curl my arms around myself.
It’s been three hours since Izzy climbed out her bedroom window. My feelings are going from intense worry to sheer panic.
This can’t be happening in real life.
“This is too much. I don’t know where she could have gone. By now, someone should have found her, heard from her … anything!”
He places a hand on my shoulder. “We won’t stop until we find her. I promise.”
