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At the sound of it, the hovering tension finally pops, and time resumes at a more normal pace.
“Mason,” Ray says thickly. “Waylon.”
Off to my side, Waylon straightens against the wall, but doesn’t unfurl his limbs. Against my thighs, I curl my hands into tight fists. So tight, I feel my nails pushing into my skin.
“Detective Morris came to, uh, break the news.”
No. Nonononono?—
“They’re…they’re—” Ray stumbles for words, his face rippling, threatening to break.
He rubs at his head forcefully, almost like he’s trying to soothe some deep ache. Or perhaps untangle the thoughts he can’t seem to put to words.
A burning sensation forms behind my eyes , and it distantly occurs to me that in all the years I’ve known Ray—particularly these last twenty-two months—I’ve never seen the man so overcome with emotion that he can’t speak.
And when he breaks down in tears a second later, unchecked and unashamed, I find tears of my own taking shape, blurring my vision. My throat closes with a choked sob, and with it, somewhere in the back of my head, a memory sparks.
My dad—that piece of shit, good-for-nothing, poor excuse of a father…
Telling me to toughen up.
Be a man.
Boys don’t cry.
Did he ever cry for me?
A throat clears, then?—
“We will no longer be actively looking for Isobel,” Detective Morris says gently.
It takes a second for his words to register. And when they do, a frown slams over my brows, all thoughts of my dad coming to a grinding halt. “Wait. You didn’t find her?”
His hesitation is all the answer I need, and suddenly, as if someone took paddles to my chest, the shock and resignation and…and relief I’d felt a moment ago…
It shatters.
Who knew relief could be so double-edged? Equally sharp whichever way it slices you.
“She could still be alive?” The words wrench roughly from some deep well inside me, and I find myself taking a step further into the too small, too tight kitchen.
My heart’s racing, and my chest expands with what feels like the first real breath I’ve taken since I got that text. Maybe the first full, unencumbered breath I’ve taken in months.
Hope surges forward—more hope than I’ve felt in a long time. The kind of hope that throttles me out of this weird, dissociative state I’ve been in for what feels like forever.
It’s a high not unlike the initial rush I get from Vicodin, swirling in my system, plucking gently at my nerve-endings, making things feel not so shitty and hopeless, but okay.
Bearable.
“No…no, Mason,” Detective Morris says in a careful voice. “That’s not what this is.”
And just like that, my heart sinks to my feet.
“Her body has not been recovered.”
A sob erupts out of Eva, and she buries her face in her hands on the table.
Body.
