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Mettner was gone.
She stared at the desk and let the ache bloom in her chest. The hurt, like a toothache and the jab of a pin at the same time. Like her heart was stepping on one of Harris’s Legos. There was no help for it, and that was simply that. It would feel that way probably her whole life, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. There was no comfort. No salve. Only this pain where love used to be. So she let it exist. Let it ache and prick and jab and swell until she thought her eyes might water and then she turned away from it. Until next time.
This is what sitting with her feelings was truly like. Sandrine had taught her that. It wasn’t throwing up walls or barricades when the pain threatened to roll in. It wasn’t searching desperately for an oxygen tank when the hurt took her breath away. It was letting it come. It was standing in the path of the tornado without flinching. It was taking grief’s throat punch without trying to dodge it.
Because as big and overwhelming and impossible to withstand as the pain seemed, it wouldn’t kill her. It was a chronic pain she had to learn to manage.
“Quinn!” the Chief said. “Are you listening to me?”
“Sorry,” Josie said, tearing her eyes from Mettner’s old desk. “I didn’t know what the new guy drinks so I just got him a plain coffee.”
Gretchen said, “He’s late again.”
Noah had also told her that both he and Gretchen were not very pleased with the new guy. Neither was Josie, considering he’d hung up on her after answering Noah’s desk phone. But she was determined to give him the benefit of the doubt now that she was no longer roughing it on the top of a mountain under threat of death.
“I’m not staying,” she said. “I just came to pick up my husband.”
Noah shut his computer down and started to put his coat on. The stairwell door whooshed open. Josie turned just as the Chief gestured in the direction of the door. “Quinn, this is our new investigator, Detective Kyle Turner.”
Turner towered over her, long limbs, broad shoulders. His hair was thick and curly, brown shot through with gray. Mid-forties, Josie thought. Around Gretchen’s age. His beard and moustache were still all brown. Deep-set blue eyes stared down at her. When he smiled, only one corner of his mouth lifted. In his hand was a small plastic bottle containing an energy drink called Turbo Powr. Apparently, the creators had been so energized, they’d blown right past the E at the end of the word “power.”
“Well, well, well,” Turner said, studying Josie from head to toe. “The great Josie Quinn. Thought you’d be taller, honestly.” He leaned in, craning his neck to see behind her. “And have a cape. I don’t mind saying I’m disappointed.”
“Turner,” growled the Chief. “Play nice.”
Josie took a slow scan, starting at the top of his head, moving down to his shiny loafers, and back up to the crow’s feet gathering at the corners of his eyes. “That makes two of us,” she deadpanned.
Behind her, she heard Gretchen choke on her pecan latte.
Turner gave her a quizzical look, evidently decided not to respond and walked around her. “Parker,” he said. “What’ve we got?”
“It’s Palmer, you jackass,” Gretchen replied.
“Palmer,” said the Chief. “Don’t say jackass.”
“You can’t stop me from saying jackass to this jackass,” Gretchen said.
Josie felt Noah’s hand at her elbow. His breath was warm against her neck. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
FIFTY-SIX
The sun warmed Josie’s back as she knelt to leave flowers on Mettner’s grave. The ground beneath her was hard and cold even though the temperature was in the forties. Practically tropical compared to the blizzard at the retreat. She cleared away some of the old bouquets other family and friends had left, gathering them in her arms and standing up. She dumped them in the nearest trash can and looked around for Noah. When she didn’t see him, she walked over to the part of the cemetery where his mother was buried. She found him standing in front of Colette Fraley’s headstone, chin almost on his chest, staring down at it.
Josie put a hand on his back. He lifted his arm and she ducked under it, slipping both arms around his waist.
“I don’t think she’s here,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“My mom. Sometimes, it’s like I can feel her all around me. I like coming here, paying tribute, keeping her stone clean and flowers fresh, but it doesn’t feel like she’s here.”
Josie thought about her own losses. Ray. Lisette. Mettner. She’d had experiences in the past when it felt as though Ray or Lisette were there, guiding her, as sure as if they were physically standing beside her. She squeezed Noah hard. “I think you’re right.”
She lifted her face to his and he smiled at her. “Have you heard from Cooper?” she asked.
“Yeah, he had only minor injuries from the car accident. He wasn’t upset about me destroying his basement door. Turns out that he was worried about Cawley turning up at the retreat almost all week. Meg Cleary talked to him several times privately about it.”
That explained why Alice had seen Meg and Cooper together behind Meg’s cabin on more than one occasion. “She thought Cawley would find her?”
