7

Emily was wakened from a deep sleep by her phone ringing. Bleary-eyed, she pulled it out from between the couch cushions and checked the caller. It was Dr. Claiborne, the supervising doctor she had been working with in Chicago since she began her residency.

“Hello, Dr. Claiborne,” she said, clearing her throat. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Emily. But I’m quite concerned about you.” His tone held genuine care, and she immediately felt soothed by the familiar sound of his voice. He had been a father figure to her during the last three years of her residency. “How are you doing? I am sorry to hear about what happened with your father. The medical community lost a great one.”

“Thank you. Yes. It’s been rough.” She couldn’t pretend with him. He would see right through it.

“I suppose you have a good deal of things to take care of now in Freeport?”

“Um, yes, I suppose I do. Although I don’t think I know the half of it yet.”

“Do you know when you’re planning to return to Chicago?”

She paused to clear the cobwebs from her sleepy brain. “Oh, I don’t really … have any idea. It’s been a whirlwind around here. I’m still adjusting to the fact that he’s gone.”

“Yes. I’m sure. And … well, I hate to be the bearer of any more distressing news, but unfortunately I am compelled by the hospital’s human resources department to remind you that you’ve used up your sick time and vacation days since you’ve been gone. Your paychecks will stop at the end of this week. Of course, you can apply for family medical leave. Up to twelve weeks.”

“Okay. Yes. I could … I guess I’m not sure if that’s enough time.”

“I thought that might be the case. You realize that will put you behind in your residency. Maybe longer if you have to wait for a spot to open up.”

It was a very good possibility. Dr. Claiborne’s mentorship was always in high demand.

“Oh? Yes, of course.” A little panic rose in Emily. She still had two years left.

“And if you’re not coming back for a while, I’m going to need to fill your spot as soon as possible.”

“Right.”

A gnarled pit grumbled from the base of Emily’s stomach. Is that nerves? Or hunger?

“When do you need to know?” she asked.

“The sooner the better.”

Emily didn’t have the brain energy to process the dilemma that had just been thrown into her path. She felt she needed more clarity about her father’s estate, the secret about her mom’s death, and the Pinetree Slopes case before she could answer intelligibly. Her silence prompted Dr. Claiborne to jump in with a solution.

“Emily, why don’t you do this. Apply for short-term leave. That’ll give you thirty days to figure this out and you won’t lose your spot. Reach out to me in a week or so after things settle and you have a better picture, and we’ll go from there. Sound good?”

“Yes,” she answered immediately. “You always know how to keep things simple.”

Emily hung up the phone and slipped on her tennis shoes. She needed fresh air. And something to eat. She headed to her father’s small orchard to search for a late-harvest treat. She had picked a few small apples and wandered back toward the front porch when Nick’s squad car pulled up the drive.

He joined her, and she handed him an apple. They sat in silence, gnawing away at the crisp fruit. Emily didn’t have the vigor to start a conversation, so she was grateful when Nick spoke first.

“I think I may have found an anthropologist. Dr. Charles Payton,” he said. “He’s available to come up day after tomorrow.”

She thought the name sounded like it belonged to an older, distinguished gentleman. “He’s from the University of Michigan?”

“Yeah. At first he was going to send up a grad student. But after I told him a bit more about the circumstances, he offered to do the examination himself. He’s a tenured professor, and he’s got a ton of credentials. Not that I understand any of them.”

Emily smiled. “Great. You’re getting the best, then,” she said, eating her apple down to the core. “Dr. Payton will do the official autopsy and help you make an ID. Then you and one of your detectives can take it from there.”

“You’ll stay on this case, right?”

“There’s not much I can do.”

“It’s not every day we find bones in the woods,” he said, and Emily could read the tension and urgency in his tone. “You’re good at this. I want all hands on deck for this kind of situation.”

“It may not be a criminal case, Nick. It’s very possible it could be Native American remains. Or an early settler who first logged those woods. They were here long before us.”

“Please, Em. Just stick with me for a bit on this one?”

She studied the pleading crease forming above his brows.

“You didn’t sleep a wink last night, did you?”

He shook his head.

“You believe strongly that those bones belong to Sandi Parkman, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Be straight with me. Why?”

“I talked to Shirley Parkman about it.” Emily didn’t like the sound of involving a family member just yet, but she knew Nick could be a loose cannon when he was nervous.

“You have to keep this under wraps. What did you say?”

“I told her they were human, that we didn’t know anything, and that if we discovered anything connected to Sandi’s case, we would contact her.”

“And of course she said, ‘Thank you, Officer,’ and skipped out of there?” Emily couldn’t hold back on the sarcasm.

“Em, she thinks about her daughter every single day. Bones turn up in a deserted forest ten years after Sandi disappears and yeah, she’s gonna be a touch curious.”

Emily relented. He had a point. Who was she to judge a grieving parent’s motives?

“However, I did ask Mrs. Parkman to submit a DNA sample. If those bones belong to Sandi, we’re going to need to get a DNA match.”

“And did she?”

“Readily. I did a buccal swab.”

Talk about getting ahead of one’s skis! Emily held back her comment, realizing how emotional this case was for Nick. She didn’t want to make him feel bad just because he was overexerting his compassion and sense of justice. And if Shirley Parkman was willing to give up some cheek cells because it made her feel better, what harm was it? This led her mind to twist around one of Nick’s comments about Sandi when they’d been digging under the tent.

“Did you tell anyone else?” she pressed.

“No, of course not.” He was earnest.

“Nick, I’ll help you with this case, but if these bones do turn out to be Sandi’s, I need to know something right now.”

“Anything.”

“What’s haunting you? There’s no way you could have known this would happen to Sandi.”

He leaned his forearms on his thighs and put his head between his hands. He drew in a long breath, and as he exhaled, he looked out across the lawn.

“James VanDerMuellen and I were on the baseball team together. Do you remember him? He would’ve been a senior when you were a sophomore.”

“Vaguely.” Her sophomore year of high school had been a blur until she had run away to Chicago late second semester to live with Aunt Laura.

“Well, Sandi had been seeing him for at least a year, maybe longer. And I got the feeling he was filming her … you know … having sex.”

“You got a feeling? Nick, no one gets that as a feeling. Either you know or you don’t.”

“Okay … I heard some guys talking about it in the locker room.”

“Talking about what, exactly?”

“That there were sex videos of her.”

Videos? Plural? Disgusting!

“I hope you said something to someone.”

Nick shook his head. “The day she disappeared, she asked for a ride home from school. I said fine. We were neighbors, and it wasn’t unusual for me to drive her home. She was pretty quiet on the ride home, which I just chalked up to a bad day or the fact that her stepfather had just gotten out of prison. I felt bad for her. I always got the feeling no one was really looking out for her or her younger sister, Tiffani. I always felt like I played the role of older brother for her.”

Emily nodded. She didn’t recall hearing too much about the Parkman girls when she was younger and living at home. And she didn’t remember Nick mentioning much about them either. But then again, she hadn’t frequented Nick’s part of town even when they were dating—he usually came over to her house.

“I asked her about the videos. Just, you know, did she know about them. That I had heard they were circulating the school. She acted really, really shocked.”

“What do you mean?” asked Emily.

“She said she didn’t know about them.”

“How could she not know?”

“James is a snake!”

“Do you think she was lying?”

“It didn’t seem like it. She seemed really scared and upset.”

Emily couldn’t move a muscle as Nick revealed his final conversation with Sandi.

“I asked her if I could do anything.”

“What did she say?”

“She begged me not to do anything. She had already testified against her stepfather and put him in prison for sexual abuse. How would it look if she were caught starring in sex videos?”

“But she said she didn’t know? Was she being forced?”

“I don’t know. She begged me to leave it alone.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her it wasn’t her fault and that I would help her figure something out. When we got to her house, I pulled in and she jumped out of the car before I had even stopped it. She ran to the house and slammed the door.”

“And that was the last time you saw her,” Emily said in a hushed voice as Nick’s regret came together in her mind.

“I sat there for a minute in my car. I thought about going to the door. But I didn’t. I just backed up out of the driveway and went home. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to help her. The next day she didn’t show up for school. And then the next, and … then …”

Emily stared at Nick, not sure how to react to his confession. She had so many questions. But now was not the time to interrogate him. He was stinging from the memory.

“You’ve been holding this in all these years?”

Nick nodded and stood up. He shook his body in an odd little jig, like he was trying to brush off a layer of sawdust from his legs. He clapped his hands together and turned to her with a forced smile that showed Emily he was trying to ignore the images his brain was conjuring up.

“Look, we still don’t know if those are her bones. But either way, I’ll help you. Okay?”

“Thank you.” Nick cranked his head left and right as if stretching out a sore muscle in his neck and then turned to Emily with a lighter tone. “So, hey, I didn’t come here to stir up bad memories. What I really want to know is if I can I take you to dinner. You need more to eat than an apple.”

“Nick, I’m really beat. I won’t be much good for company.”

“We don’t have to talk. I just want to … to do something nice for you.”

“Dropping by was nice,” she said.

“I want to do more. Let’s grab a bite.”

“Look at me. I’m a mess. And I have no intentions of changing or brushing my hair,” she said in her stretched out in yoga pants and sweat shirt.

“In that case, we could order in?”

“That actually sounds kinda nice. I’d love a good ramen bowl.”

“Pizza or Chinese? We’re still very limited here in Freeport.”

“Pizza. Everything.”

“Even mushrooms? You used to hate mushrooms.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Yes, you have.” Nick pulled out his phone to order. “But Em, sometime when you’re feeling more up to it, I’d really like to take you out.”

Out? Like out-out? Was he asking to date her?

He broke into her thoughts. “I was hoping we would maybe …”

“Pick up where we left off?” she offered, wanting to air this out.

“No. Start over. Fresh.”

“I like the sound of leaving the past in the past. But I come with a lot of baggage right now.” She smiled, trying to redirect the old feelings for him that were beginning to arise.

“Twelve years is a long time. I may have racked up some baggage myself,” he said with a sly look.

“I think we just unpacked a little,” she said, thinking of Sandi and knowing there was probably a whole nother suitcase full of non-Sandi stuff.

“I guess we find out if you’re willing to try,” Nick said.

“Slowly.”

“Slowly. So, Friday then. Let’s head to Rock River.”

Rock River was the biggest city near Freeport, an hour away, with shopping malls, several universities, a sporting arena, and a world-class symphony.

“Can we go for ramen?”

“I have no idea what that is, but as long as it’s not from the sea, I’ll try it.”

Emily couldn’t help but let out a laugh. His palette hadn’t changed a bit in twelve years. Meat with a side of meat. Good ole midwestern fare. Good ole midwestern Nick. It was nice to be home.