attention.
“You don’t know? I just assumed, but no, you’re so young, so new, I suppose you wouldn’t know. Our son, Dashiell, died. SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He wasn’t even six months old. It was headline news for a few weeks, raising awareness for the condition, all that. Sutton didn’t handle it well.” Ethan’s voice cracked. “Neither of us did.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. When did he pass away?”
“Last year. It was in April. Tax day, April 15. We went to check on him, and he wasn’t breathing.”
He choked a little on the last word, suddenly having difficulty catching breath himself. God, he’d wanted that baby. When she fell pregnant, he was ecstatic. After all he’d done to help her get pregnant, after all their arguments, his cajoling, begging, her final agreement to have the child, to lose him in an unexplained death sometimes felt like punishment.
He knew Sutton had grown to love Dashiell. He’d seen the joy on her face when she didn’t think he was looking. And now he was gone. His perfect son had been taken from him. And his wife was missing.
Your wife is missing, your wife is missing.
“So she disappeared on the anniversary of your son’s death?” Moreno asked.
It hadn’t hit him, the significance. He’d been too caught up in his own unique brand of self-flagellating mourning to realize, and too worried about where she might be to look at the calendar. He hated to think back to that day. There was no such thing as an anniversary with grief this new, this raw. It was a daily, visceral, animal thing that ate at him constantly. He didn’t think in terms of dates, or months since, years since. There was just Before, Dashiell, After.
“Yes, that’s right. The anniversary.”
H. Graham looked to the older officer, then closed her notebook and stuffed it into her back pocket, like a professional golfer. “We’ll put together a report, sir, be on the lookout, check everything we can. But I think it’s safe to say your wife isn’t in any danger. I bet she comes home anytime now. People deal with grief in different ways. Sounds to me like things were just too much for her. An anniversary like this, it’s difficult. Add in complications from work? Sounds like she’s been having a really rough go of it.”
He felt relief. They believed him. They didn’t think he was involved.
Ivy came into the kitchen, so quietly they didn’t hear her until she said, “Ethan, you need to tell them everything.”
Ethan saw the cops both start slightly.
“Ma’am?” Graham asked.
“We are very concerned Sutton may have harmed herself. She has been having a hard time lately,” Ivy said.
“Mr. Montclair mentioned things have been tenuous with her.”
“Tenuous. That’s a good term. She’s been on edge, upset, angry, and crying.”
Ethan shot Ivy a glance. Whose side are you on here?
“What’s had her upset, ma’am?”
“What hasn’t? I mean really, can you blame her? First her baby, then her career? Anyone would be laid low. Sutton is a brilliant artist. She’s sensitive.”
Ethan stepped closer to Ivy, put his hand on her shoulder. “Ivy and Sutton are very close. She’s been helping me search for Sutton.”
Officer Graham looked at him again, this time with wariness on her lovely face. He dropped his hand, in case it looked bad. He wouldn’t want her to think there was anything untoward happening with Ivy.
“Was she suicidal? Being treated with medication?”
“Not now. No. Other than the incident with her publisher, she’s been fine.” A lame word, fine. What did it really mean?
“If she’s fine, recovered from these two blows, as Ms. Brookes calls them, why do you think she harmed herself? Why now? Why not right after the baby died, or when she lost her contract?”
He took a deep breath. “It’s confusing for me, too. Sutton went off the rails after Dashiell died. Not that I blamed her. She was very distraught.”
“And how were you after this unfortunate incident, Mr. Montclair? Did you cope well with your son’s death?”
The police officer had pretty eyes, hazel, changeable. They’d softened when she’d heard about Dashiell’s death. She wore the barest hint of pink lipstick. He wondered what she was like in the sack. She seemed like she might be a wild one. The sweet ones usually were; she had that look.
“I coped,” he said, cringing a bit at how sharp he sounded. “It was difficult, of course. You shouldn’t have to bury a child. Not only did I lose Dashiell, I lost Sutton, as well. After the baby...died, she went to a very dark place. We feared for her life. Then this fuss with the reviewer happened. We had to have her committed. Please keep that between us. She is very ashamed of her breakdown. Very upset. It’s been a difficult time. But she’d managed to pull herself back from the brink. She was getting better.”
Ivy shifted next to him. “I think we’re all simply concerned she wasn’t bouncing back the way we thought. She could hide her despair very well when she needed to.”
The young cop tapped her finger against her gun strap. Tap, tap, tap. It was the sergeant who said, “Mr. Montclair, please be straight with us. Do you think your wife is taking a break from the marriage, or are you reporting her missing because you’re afraid she may have harmed herself?”
Ethan heaved out a sigh. “Officers, let me be very clear. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
He cracked then, finally. The tears began. “I can’t lose her, Officers. Not after losing Dashiell, too. Please, help me find my wife.”
H. Graham held out a hand as if to touch him, to comfort him, but stopped, realizing it made her look unprofessional.
Robinson came to life in the corner. “I think this should cover it. What do you say, Roy? Should we mount a search? Might put everyone’s minds at ease.”
Moreno looked from Ethan to Robinson and back again. “We’ll look into this and get back to you. No sense wasting resources if the lady doesn’t want to be found.”
“Fair enough, fair enough.”
Hands were shaken, cards exchanged. They took Sutton’s laptop and datebook. Glanced around a few more times while they stood on the porch.
When the door shut on the cops, Robinson turned to Ethan. “You idiot. I told you. You’re completely screwed.”
“Tell me, Holly. Do you believe him?”
Sergeant Roy Moreno was head of the homicide unit, and Holly Graham’s current superior officer, about six times removed, seeing as she was a simple patrol officer, and he was in charge of homicide. He was her superior, in all ways. Moreno knew a lot about this town, about investigations, and lucky for her, had shown an interest in her from the beginning. Not in the creepy way some of her fellow cops had, but a sincere interest in her as a person and an investigator. It was her dad’s doing, probably.Derek Graham was a well-respected district attorney, but who cared? Holly was getting a chance to work with the old horse directly, and that was going to be nothing but good for her career.
The old horse in question was currently sucking on a toothpick, staring out of the windshield of the patrol car. The laptop between them glowed. They were parked in the lot of the five-star Mexican joint down the street from the Montclairs’ lovely home, having rolled away just as a news truck came sharking around the corner. She watched the truck pull to a stop at the curb. Heading to the Montclairs’ gorgeous Victorian mansion, perhaps? The media in Nashville were