Going to see Brock in person. Still searching for Humphrey’s contact info. When I get updates, will notify you ASAP.
The first part of the text was easy. Brock had moved to Atlanta when his mother had needed more care than he could give her. He’d sold the family business and used the proceeds to put her in one of the best assisted-living homes in the state. Brock’s work was a twenty-minute drive south from GBI headquarters. Sara caught up with him a couple of times a year for lunch or dinner. He would be eager to help, especially when he found out which cases she was working on.
The Tommi part of the text filled Sara with apprehension. She was still incredibly conflicted about reaching out to the girl.
Girl.
Tommi Humphrey would be thirty years old now, nearly a decade out from the brutal rape that had almost taken her life. Sara wanted to imagine Tommi as healed, possibly married, maybe adopting a child or perhaps, if fate worked in her favor, of being able to give birth to a child on her own.
The prospect of finding out that none of these things was true felt overwhelming. Especially the last piece. Sara’s own rape had robbed her of the ability to carry a child. She did not want to look at Tommi Humphrey and see her own unspeakable loss reflected back at her.
Sara looked up at the sky. Rain was in the forecast, which felt about right. She let out a long breath when she saw Will’s car parked in his usual space beside her own. She touched the hood as she walked by. She climbed behind the wheel of her Porsche Cayenne. Her BMW X5 had been totaled a few months ago. She had bought the Porsche because Will loved Porsches, the same way she had bought a Z4 to piss off Jeffrey.
It seemed Sara’s feminism came to a screeching halt inside of car dealerships.
She pressed the ignition. The engine growled to life. She looked over at Will’s car, then she admonished herself for being so emotional. Will would eventually forgive her. Things would go back to normal. Intellectually, Sara knew this, but she still fought the urge to run back into the building like a forlorn lover.
Or a batshit crazy one.
She dialed her parents’ phone number as she was pulling out of the parking space. Sara instantly visualized her mother cooking in the kitchen, her father reading aloud from the newspaper. The phone on the wall had a cord that had been overstretched from Sara and Tessa pulling it out onto the deck so they could have some privacy.
“I’m not talking to you,” Tessa said by way of a hello. “What do you want?”
Sara felt her eyes threatening to roll. She really hated caller ID. “I was calling Mom. I need to get in touch with Tommi Humphrey.”
“Delilah moved somewhere out of state after Adam died. No idea where Tommi is.”
“Does Mama have Delilah’s number?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“That’s what I was trying to—” Sara stopped herself. “Tess, I need a pass. I’m full up with people being mad at me right now.”
“I thought you were perfect,” Tessa quipped. “Who else could possibly be mad at you?”
Unexpectedly, Sara felt tears edge into the corners of her eyes.
Tessa gave a put-upon sigh. “All right, you’ve got your pass. What’s wrong?”
Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Will and I got into a fight.”
“About?”
Sara took a shaky breath. “I mentally cheated with Jeffrey all day, and then when I realized Will knew exactly what I was doing, I made it worse and he walked out on me.”
“Wait, Will walked out on you?” Surprise had drained the bitchiness out of Tessa’s tone. “And then what?”
“I left him one voicemail.”
“If you’re gonna nut up, don’t leave a record.” Tessa was quoting advice from their mother. “And then?”
“And then—” Sara had given Will last night’s highlights. Only her sister could have the humiliating details. “I waited for him to come back, and when he didn’t come back, I drove to his house. Then I drove back to my apartment, but he still wasn’t there. So I drove to the YMCA, then to Wendy’s and McDonald’s and Dairy Queen and the gas station where he buys burritos. Then I drove to Buckhead to see if he was at Amanda’s. Then I drove back to his house in case I missed him. Then I drove back to my apartment.”
“But you didn’t stay at your apartment?”
“No, I did not.” Sara wiped her eyes again. “I drove to Faith’s, and his car was in the driveway and they were playing Grand Theft Auto on the couch like nothing happened. So I drove back home. Then I waited for him some more. Then I drove to his house and waited for him to come home to get ready for work. But he didn’t come home. So I went back to my place and slapped on some make-up and drove to work and found him in his office and threw myself at his feet and begged him to forgive me, and I think he’s going to but until he does, I feel like a ball of rubber bands is stuck inside my chest.”
Tessa was quiet for a few moments.
Sara gripped the steering wheel. She had to remind herself why she was in the car, where she was going.
“Grand Theft Auto on the couch,” Tessa said. “That’s very specific.”
Sara admitted, “I looked through Faith’s living room window.”
“Back of the house or front of the house?”
“Back.”
“When did you put it together that she’s a cop who carries a gun and you were technically trespassing in the middle of the night?”
“When I tripped over the plastic cover to Emma’s sandbox and fell flat on my face.”
Tessa laughed.
Sara let her.
“Oh, Sissy,” Tessa said. “He’s really got you.”
“He does.” Sara could barely get out the worst part. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You’re just going to have to wait it out,” Tessa said. “Time is the best tincture.”
Another piece of advice from their mother.
Tessa added, “Or, you could buy something from Ikea and pretend like you don’t know how to put it together.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work.” Sara looked for the exit signs. She had another ten minutes. “He’s really hurt. And he has a right to be.”
“You can’t make it better with a hand job?”
“No.”
“Blow job?”
“If only.”
“Rim job?”
“How was your interview with the midwife this morning?”
“Meh,” Tessa said. “She made exactly one interesting observation. I was telling her about my know-it-all big sister the fancy doctor, and she reminded me that amateurs built the Ark, but engineers built the Titanic.”
“You know the Ark is about genocide, right?” Sara merged into the next lane so that a semi could pass. “Noah and a handful of his pals got to live while the rest of the world’s population was wiped off the face of the earth.”
“The story is a metaphor.”
“For genocide.”
“Your pass has expired,” Tessa said. “I’ll inform our mother of your request.”
The call disconnected.
Sara reached into her purse for a tissue. She blew her nose. A quick glance in the rearview mirror told her that her waterproof mascara was not living up to its promise. She still felt shaky and anxious. Telling her sister all of the insane things she had done the night before had only made her feel more insane. Sara had never in her existence let a man get to her this way. Even when she was certain Jeffrey was cheating, it was Tessa who had taped together shredded hotel receipts and followed him around town like a demented Nancy Drew so that Sara could take the high road.
She was so far off that road right now that she might as well be at the bottom of the ocean.
The speedometer had somehow inched up to ninety. Sara backed off, slipping into the slow lane. She coasted behind a pick-up truck with a faded NO MALARKEY! sticker on the bumper. Her mind traced over the well-worn lines of recrimination from the last twenty-four hours. Beckey Caterino. Tommi Humphrey. Jeffrey. Will. She added Tessa to the list, because she wasn’t being fair to her baby sister. Tessa was a grown woman, a mother, a soon-to-be divorcee. She was clearly going through a life crisis. Instead of teasing her, Sara should be holding her up.
Another relationship she had to fix.
Brock’s exit came up sooner than Sara had anticipated. An angry woman in a Mercedes treated Sara to a one-finger salute as she swerved around the Porsche. Sara took a right onto the main road. Fast-food restaurants littered the strip. She was in an industrial area filled with warehouses, car dealerships and auto-parts stores.
Over the years, Sara had met Brock at work half a dozen times, but not recently enough to remember the exact location. She used the Porsche’s voice control to access the street number from her address book. According to the GPS, AllCare AfterLife Services was one mile away.