Broken (Will Trent 4)

She waved him into the kitchen. “Come on in.” Sara put the dish liquid on the counter. Will hovered in the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Your sister let me in. I was staring through the window in the door trying to figure out if y’all were still awake. I know it’s late.” He stopped, his throat working as he swallowed. “It’s really late.”

“Is everything okay?”

He nervously moved his briefcase from one hand to the other, then back again. “Please tell your mother I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to dinner. We had a lot to do, and I—”

“It’s all right. She understands.”

“Did the autopsies—” He stopped again, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was wet from the rain. “I was thinking while I was driving over here that maybe Jason’s murder was a copycat.”

“No,” she told him. “The wounds were identical.” Sara paused. Obviously, something awful had happened. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

“That’s all right, I—”

She sat down at the table. “Come on. What’s wrong?”

He glanced back toward the front door. She could tell he didn’t want to be here, but he seemed incapable of leaving.

Sara finally took his hand and pulled him to the chair. He sat, the briefcase in his lap. “I’m sorry about this.”

She leaned forward, resisting the urge to hold his hand. “Sorry for what?”

He swallowed again. She let him speak in his own time. His voice was low in the large room: “Faith had her baby.”

Sara put her hand to her mouth. “Is she all right?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Both of them are fine.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and showed her a picture of a red-faced newborn in a pink knit hat. “I guess it’s a girl.”

Faith had given the baby’s weight as well as her name in the message. Sara told him, “‘Emma Lee.’”

“Eight pounds, six ounces.”

“Will—”

“I found this.” He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. “I tried to clean it up,” he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. “I’m sorry. It was in Allison’s car and I …” He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”

She realized that Will hadn’t looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain.

Sara’s purse was on the counter. She got up and found her reading glasses. She told Will, “Mama fixed a plate for you. Why don’t you eat something and I’ll start on this?”

He stared at the notebook in front of him. “I’m not really hungry.”

“You’ve already missed supper. If you don’t eat that food, my mother will never forgive you.”

“I really can’t—”

Sara opened the warming drawer. Her mother had cooked for an army again, this time roast beef, potatoes, collards, green beans, and snap peas. The cornbread was wrapped in aluminum foil. Sara put the plate in front of Will, then went back to get silverware and a napkin. She poured a glass of iced tea and found some lemon in the refrigerator. While she was up, she turned on the oven so that she could warm the cherry cobbler sitting on the counter.

She sat down across from Will and opened the notebook. She looked at him over her glasses. He hadn’t moved. “Eat,” she said.

“I really—”

“That’s the deal,” she told him. “You eat. I read.” She stared at him, making it clear that she wasn’t going to back down.

Reluctantly, Will picked up the fork. She waited until he had taken a bite of potatoes to open the spiral-bound notebook.

“Her name’s on the inside of the cover with the date, August first.” Sara went to the first page. “‘August first. Day one.’” She thumbed through the pages. “Each entry has the same format. Day two, day three …” She flipped to the back. “All the way to day one hundred four.”

Will didn’t comment. He was eating, but she could tell he was having difficulty swallowing. Sara could not imagine his frustration over having to have the journal read to him. He clearly took it as a personal failure. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but obviously, asking for Sara’s help had taken so much out of him that she couldn’t risk pushing him any further.

She returned to the first page. “‘Day one,’” she repeated. “‘Prof. C was sarcastic today. Cried later for about twenty minutes. Just couldn’t stop. Was really annoyed in Dr. K’s class because D behind me kept passing notes to V and I couldn’t concentrate because they kept laughing.’”

She turned the page. “‘Day two. Cut myself shaving my leg pretty bad. Hurt all day. Was two minutes late for work but L didn’t say anything. Felt paranoid all day that he was going to yell at me. Can’t take him being mad.’”

Sara kept reading, page after page of Allison’s thoughts on L at the diner and J who had forgotten that they were supposed to meet for lunch. Every notation described Allison’s feelings about the situation, but never in florid detail. She was either happy or sad or depressed. She cried, usually for a period of time that seemed unusually long given the circumstances. Despite the emotional revelations, there was something clinical about the telling, as if the girl was an observer watching her life go by.

Getting through the entire journal took over an hour. Will finished his supper, then ate most of the cobbler. He folded his hands on the table and stared straight ahead at the wall. He paced until he realized the distraction slowed down her reading. When Sara’s voice started to falter, he got her a glass of ice water. Eventually, he noticed the dishes in the sink, and she read over her shame as he turned on the faucet and started cleaning. Her legs started to cramp from sitting so long. Sara ended up standing by him at the sink, so at least there was the appearance of her helping. Will had made it through all the pots and pans and was starting on the china when Sara finally reached the last entry.

“‘Day one hundred four. Work was all right. Concentration bad all day. Slept nine hours last night. Took a two-hour nap during lunch. Should have studied. Felt guilty and depressed all day. No word from J. I guess he hates me now. Can’t blame him.’” She looked up at Will. “That’s it.”

He glanced up from the bread plate in his hands. “I counted all the pages. There are two hundred fifty.”

She checked the front cover, noting the page count. The girl hadn’t torn out any pages. Sara told him, “She stopped writing two weeks before she died.”

“Something happened two weeks ago that she didn’t want to write down.”

Sara put the notebook on the table and grabbed a towel. Will was doing a much more thorough job than Sara ever had. He changed out the water often and dried everything as he went along. There wasn’t much space left on the counters, so he’d made educated guesses about where things went. Sara would have to go back through and put the pots and pans in their proper place, but she didn’t want to do that in front of Will now.