Just Let Me Die Here (A Serialized Novel) 23

When I return to The Scarlett House, the sky is dark and Ruth is waiting in the parlor. As I close the door behind me, she jumps from her chair and hurries over to wrap me in a hug. I am still not quite use to this overly familiar style of a person who was a complete stranger just days ago.

“Oh, dear. I was so worried about you,” she says, pushing me to her arm’s length to take a look at me, checking that everything is okay. “Where have you been? Have you talked to the police? What did they say?” Her stream of questions is hard to swallow. They bounce around in the swelling sea of my own thoughts and worries.

“The police have alerts out and they are still looking for them. I spent the day driving around, hoping to find something.” Obviously, she can tell my search was unsuccessful.

“Oh, you poor thing. I just don’t know what to do. I want to help.”

“Well, right now, I just want to sleep, if I can.” I feel the weight of worry pulling at the edges of my eyes.

A good mother wouldn’t want to sleep with her child missing.

“Of course. Of course. Just go right on up,” Ruth says. “There are fresh sheets on your bed. You try and get a good rest.” But as I guessed, I can’t sleep. And the fresh sheets are a large part of the problem. They don’t smell like anything or anyone familiar. The pillow case that used to have the slight scent of Tucker’s shampoo. Cleaned. The edge of the sheet where Millie spit-up and used to smell like sour milk. Now fresh and stain-free. It’s like everything and everyone that had previously been in this room is now washed away. If I woke up in this bed, in this room, I could easily believe that there had never been a Tucker or Millie in my life. But there was. Is.

I look over and see the crib, pushed up against the wall. Empty and waiting for a child. I imagine, soon, another family will come to stay in this room at The Scarlett House and Ruth will welcome them just as she welcomed us. For her, this will all become just a horrible memory that she will eventually forget. But for me, what will it become? Something I can soon move on from with my family returned or the start of the rest of my life?

Another day passes with nothing new to report. I visit the police station, but come away more frustrated and grasping for any crumb of hope I can imagine. At night, I fill the hours by pacing back and forth at the foot of my bed. Earlier, Ruth brought me a hot buttered rum. I tried to drink it, but halfway through, the emptiness of my stomach fought back, sending me racing into the bathroom. Now, I lie awake, waiting for daylight.

Each time I start to slip into sleep, my mind spins itself into a new train of thought and I am jarred awake with new worry. Suddenly, I am very aware that someone is watching me. The same feeling I had in the car strikes me again. I sit up in bed and look out the window. There is no one there. The room is empty. And yet, the feeling persists. Being on constant alert, looking for Tucker everywhere, has started to make me feel like I am being watched as well. What if Tucker is in fact following me? It sounded crazy at first, but so did the idea that my husband would run away and steal our child. If Tucker is always watching where I am going, then I can never find him.

Or, did Tucker run away because he was caught up in something? Was someone after him? And now is that someone after me? Either option seems perfectly plausible now.

Yesterday, I noticed a black Suburban parked across the street from The Scarlett House. It didn’t move for the entire evening. I watched it for a long time through the front window of the parlor, too afraid to open the curtain all the way. I checked again before I went to sleep and it was still there. When I peeked through the curtains this morning, in the safety of daylight, it drove away. Had someone been watching me? Waiting for me? They know I am here. What do they want?

Surely, I have to be imagining this. And if someone has been following me, they would have to know that I have no clue where Tucker is. That I haven’t heard from him in days. And that I would like to know where he is as much as they would. Unless that’s not why they are following me. It hits me again that maybe Tucker is behind this. That someone is out there ready to finish the job that the man on the mountain didn’t. Either way, I have become a little more aware of my surroundings.

I saw another black car with tinted windows in town, parked outside the coffee shop where I stopped this morning. And then the same car is across from the police station when I go to check on my case this afternoon. Officers Evans and Michaels are the only ones in the station’s front room. With it being New Year’s Eve, the place is nearly dead and neither of the men look too happy to be there.

“Where’s Detective Singh?” I ask.

“She’s got the night off,” Officer Evans says. “We’re two of the few single guys on the force and figured it was better to get some overtime than have a messy night. But it’s still going to be a long shift of drunks and noise disturbance calls. How can we help you?”

“I was wondering if there had been any breaks in that murder case? Those murder cases? The ones in Banff. Have any suspects been found yet?” Michaels looks at me sideways.

“We have a few leads, but nothing confirmed yet. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was thinking. What if my case is linked to those? I mean, what if my husband and daughter were murdered?”

“I thought you said he left you?”

“Yes, but I have to think he would have contacted someone by now. At least to let me know Millie is okay. What if the murderer got him? What if they got Millie?”

“It doesn’t seem likely. At this point, all the victims have been found in very public places. This guy wants his work seen. If he did get your husband, we would have found him by now.”

His words, while I’m sure they are intended to be comforting, do little to soothe my fears. My daughter is still out there. Alive, I hope.

Back in the empty parlor room of The Scarlett House, turning on the television proves that the police are indeed doing what they say. A news anchor is reminding viewers that there is still a baby missing along with her father. This upsets me a bit. I feel the explanation of the relationship gives the assumption of paternal protector, that it’s not too big of a worry if the baby is with her father. The anchor gives a description of Tucker and the screen flashes to a picture of Tucker that I took on Christmas two years ago. It feels like that moment was much further in the past. The anchor then warns that the police are unsure of the man’s motivations and thus could be considered dangerous. This is a new detail to me. “Viewers should not approach Mr. Logan, but alert police if he or the child are seen.” I turn off the television and let silence of the house wash over me.

With so much change in my life over the past few days, I need something stabilizing. Something that feels normal. And for me, it wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without fireworks. I saw a flyer in the coffee shop window this morning advertising the fireworks show this evening. ‘Party on the Pond,’ the flyer read. There will be skating, bon fires, food, and fireworks. This would be a lot of merriment, of which I am not sure I’m ready for. But I feel like I really need this break from my current reality.

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