The Moon Pool (43 page)

They found him

BRITTANY HAD PICKED
up right away but was interrupted before Shay could tell her the news. “I'll call you right back, Mom, I just need two minutes to find this invoice before Nan leaves for the day.”

So Shay was left with this heavy, strangling knowledge, barely able to breathe. She had been gluing pale pink crystals in a swirl pattern on a box decorated with tiny decoupaged images of ballet slippers, and her fingertips were crusted with dried glue. She ought to clean them. She had bottles of solvent and lotion on her workbench. At the very least she should put the cap on the glue. It dried so fast.

She sat motionless, the phone dangling from her hand. Through the window she could hear the Cho boys kicking a soccer ball against the side of their garage next door, a sure sign their mom had left them home alone.

Shay had known this day was coming, known that as the lake warmed and the ice thinned, things buried for the winter would break free and come to the surface. She'd set the weather app on her phone for Lawton, and every day—every balmy, sunny central California morning—she stared at the forecast and thought about Taylor, finding his way home.

But now it was real and she was here and he was there and everything that had to happen next felt like a slab of marble pressing her down. She didn't feel the relief she'd expected. She felt dead. She felt like a better alternative would have been for her to wade into the lake herself and join Taylor in the mud-bottom tomb.

Just yesterday Paul had sent her a prayer he had found somewhere on the Internet. One line of the three verses had stayed with her, echoing in her mind as she dried the dishes last night:
Make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset
.

Paul had taken to signing his emails
love.
As in, “Love, Paul and Elizabeth.” She had stared at the word for a long time, wondering if she had a right to it. Or if she even wanted it. Besides the prayers and inspirational quotes he sent, he always said the same thing. He prayed for Taylor and for her every day. He was studying hard—Shay knew that was a reference to his promise to make his life mean something. In the last email he had reported that the baby was a boy, adding that neither he nor Elizabeth cared as long as he was healthy.

Paul was Colleen's son, not hers. Shay hadn't lured him away, not on purpose. She never took his side, never discussed his parents, never did anything but remind him that he was strong enough to get through each day. Shay couldn't help it if Colleen had learned nothing from everything that had happened. Her job was not to teach. Her job had only been to raise her son to be a man, a good man, and she had done that, and she had earned her peace. And if some days peace came in the form of Paul's brief emails, then she would be a fool to question the gift.

She had stood at the sink last night, the evening breeze carrying the scent of star jasmine, and dried the plate that Leila had made for her at day care. Leila's tiny handprint was surrounded by colorful scribbles; one of the staff had lettered her name and “I Love Grandma” around the rim.

This
, Shay had thought, setting the plate down carefully on the counter,
this
is precious. This is what I have.

Now she waited for her daughter to call back so she could tell her about Taylor's body. Another difficult task, and Shay would get through it, but she would not feel sorry. Not about Paul, not about Colleen. Let Colleen sit in that echoing mansion, with no one for company but her husk of a husband and a son who had finally found a way to leave her.

COLLEEN WAS ALREADY
looking up flights before it occurred to her to tell Andy. His response: “Have you told Paul yet?”

He said he'd finish with the airlines and line up a car for her. A hotel would have been a challenge, but in the last months, more housing had been completed and more man camps erected—and besides, over his last few visits to investigate Hunter-Cole, Andy had forged a relationship with the manager of the Hyatt with generous amounts of cash.

Colleen went up the stairs slowly, her hand on the polished railing. The television was off. Music was playing. She cleared her throat, self-conscious. The “media room” was an oversize landing at the top of the stairs, big enough for a sectional sofa, a few tables, an entertainment wall with a television in the middle of it. When they bought the house, Colleen envisioned Paul and his friends as teen-agers, drinking sodas and joking around, playing foosball and video games. Needless to say, that had never happened.

Paul was hunched over his laptop. Elizabeth was stretched out on the chaise, one hand resting on her stomach, her feet in the fuzzy slipper socks that Colleen had given her. Seeing that she was wearing the socks buoyed Colleen a little, despite everything.

“Paul.”

They both startled, Paul twisting around and Elizabeth scrambling to sit up, as though they'd been caught doing something wrong. Paul's expression quickly turned to annoyance, which he did his best to cover up. “Sorry. Didn't hear you.”

“Listen, honey.” She took a breath. “They've found Taylor's body. Shay will be able to take him home now.”

For a second, his face was completely bereft of expression. He blinked, then put his hand on the edge of the coffee table, as if for support. “When? How?”

“I don't know any details. I'm assuming it's the thaw, like they predicted... he probably just washed up somewhere.”

“You haven't talked to her?” His voice sharper now.

“No, honey, I... she just texted me. Dad's trying to get me a flight now.”

“I'm going.” He went back to his laptop and began typing furiously.

“Paul, that's not a good idea.” The tightening of the chest, the girding for an argument. When he'd been younger, she had learned to physically steel herself—for the tantrum of a five-year-old, the stomping of a nine-year-old, the slamming doors of a thirteen-year-old. Now he just typed faster.

“You've been doing so well,” Colleen tried. “You've got As in your classes. There's a test Friday, right? You can't risk jeopardizing those grades, or you might not get your core classes in the fall.”

“I'm fine,” he said tightly. “It's under control.”

It was true that Paul seemed to have gotten through the worst of it. His torso had healed, a shiny knotted scar the only evidence of the infection that kept him in the hospital for three days, and he'd been to the half dozen therapy sessions Andy and Colleen had asked him to attend. Their own counselor had suggested they take his lead and not bring up anything from the past unless he initiated the conversation. Give him time to process and heal, while dealing with the new realities of his life, was the idea.

Who knew what this could bring up for him, how far back it would set him?

Colleen was trying to find another objection, when she glanced at Elizabeth. The girl's expression stopped her. She was staring at Paul with her eyes narrowed and a calculating frown on her face. “Honey,” she said softly, putting her hand on his arm. “Please. Don't go. I need you here.”

His fingers went still on the keys. He took a breath and let it out slowly. Then he stopped typing and took Elizabeth's hand between his.

He wouldn't be going. That much was clear.

But Colleen had lost anyway. Paul no longer belonged to her.

IT WAS FOUR
o'clock in the morning when they pulled out of the driveway, Andy at the wheel. Neither of them spoke on the way to the airport.

Colleen had seen Vicki exactly once since returning home, in the cleaning products aisle at Target, and Vicki had turned on her heel and walked away, pretending not to see her. Colleen wasn't sure if she and Andy were still doing whatever they had been doing. She wasn't sure what they had been doing, for that matter. Her name no longer came up in conversation, and Andy had been waging his war on Hunter-Cole alone.

When he leaned across the seat in the departure lane at the airport, his kiss barely brushed her cheek. “Text when you land,” he said. She got out of the car without answering.

The plane touched down in Lawton at one thirty in the afternoon. Unlike last time, Colleen had fallen asleep and had missed the descent with its bird's-eye view of the rolling hills, the rigs.

Andy had navigated the terse conversations with Lisa Weyant, and Colleen was grateful for that. She'd rather spend the night on the bench in the gas station parking lot than in their guest room, but Andy said all the right things.
It was so good of the Weyants to offer, but perhaps it would be best if Colleen were to stay at the hotel where she could be near Shay.
There were no more objections after that, no exhortations to come for a home-cooked meal.

They were a long way from a cozy relationship with their future daughter-in-law's family, but now wasn't the time to work on that. Especially given the nature of the trip. In the calculus of blame, it was their daughter who had knocked over the first domino.

Colleen had no idea if Shay blamed the Weyants. Shay had ignored her calls and letters. Not that there had been many. For every time Colleen actually wrote an email, put pen to paper, dialed Shay's number, there were a dozen times that she couldn't face the challenge, that she didn't feel strong enough.

She filed off the plane along with the men in their work boots and faded T-shirts. Waited in line for her suitcase. Walked to the rental car counter with only her dread for company.

THE CONNECTING FLIGHT
was delayed, and Shay spent the time in the air trying to distract herself. Robert and Brittany, at a joyless dinner to celebrate her birthday three weeks earlier, had given her the newest iPad, smaller and lighter and faster than the one they'd given her two years ago. Robert downloaded a few games and showed her how to play them, and Shay popped bubbles on a spinning disk by tapping with her finger and wordlessly willed the women sitting on either side of her to keep their eyes on their
Redbook
s and leave her alone.