No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [89]
I popped my head into the study, found it empty, went down to the kitchen.
It looked as it had the night before. Everything cleaned up and put away. No one had had an early breakfast before departing.
I opened the door to the basement, and this time I felt comfortable shouting. “Cyn!” It was dumb, I know, given that her car was not in the driveway, but because that didn’t make sense, at some level I must have been operating on the theory that it had been stolen. “You down there?” I waited a beat, then, “Grace!”
When I opened the front door, the morning newspaper was there waiting for me.
It was hard, at that moment, not to shake the feeling that I was living out an episode from Cynthia’s life.
But this time, unlike that morning twenty-five years ago, there was a note.
It was folded and standing on its side, on the kitchen table, tucked in between the salt and pepper shakers. I reached for it, unfolded it. It was handwritten, and the writing was unmistakably Cynthia’s. It read:
Terry:
I’m going away.
I don’t know where, or for how long. I just know I can’t stay here another minute.
I don’t hate you. But when I see the doubt in your eyes, it tears me apart. I feel like I’m losing my mind, that no one believes me. I know Wedmore still doesn’t know what to think.
What’s going to happen next? Who will break in to our house? Who will be watching it from the street? Who will be next to die?
I don’t want it to be Grace. So I’m taking her with me. I figure you have the smarts to look after yourself. Who knows? Maybe with me out of the house, you’ll actually feel safer.
I want to look for my father, but I don’t have any idea where to start. I believe he’s alive. Maybe that’s what Mr. Abagnall discovered after he went to see Vince. I just don’t know.
All I do know is I need some space. Grace and I need to be a mother and daughter, who don’t have to worry about anything else except being a mother and daughter.
I won’t have my cell on very often. I know they can do that thing, triangulate, to find people. But I’ll check it once in a while for messages. Maybe, at some point, I’ll feel like talking to you. Just not right now.
Call the school, tell them Grace will be gone for a while. I’m not calling the shop. Let Pamela think what she wants.
Don’t look for me.
I still love you, but I don’t need you to find me right now.
L, Cyn
I read it three, maybe four times. Then I picked up the phone and called her cell, despite what she’d written. It went straight to message, and I left one. “Cyn. Jesus. Call me.”
And then I slammed the phone down. “Shit!” I shouted. “Shit!”
I paced the kitchen a few times, unsure what to do. I opened the door, walked down to the end of the drive, still in nothing but my jeans, and looked up and down the street, as if somehow I could magically divine which way Cynthia and Grace had gone. I went back into the house, grabbed the phone again, and, as if in a trance, dialed the number I always did when I needed to talk to someone who loved Cynthia as much as I did.
I had dialed Tess.
And when the phone rang a third time and no one picked up, I realized what I’d done, the incredible mistake I had made. I hung up and sat at the kitchen table and began to cry. With my elbows on the table, I put my head in my hands and let it all come out.
I don’t know quite how long I sat there, alone, at my kitchen table, letting the tears run down my cheeks. Long enough until there weren’t any left, I guess. Once I’d exhausted the supply, I had no choice but to come up with another course of action.
I went back upstairs, finished dressing. I had to keep telling myself a few things.
The first was that Cynthia and Grace were okay. It wasn’t as though they’d been kidnapped or anything. And second, I couldn’t imagine