She’d sent Anissa off with the sheriff, insisting they didn’t need her there while they made phone calls and prepared for the press conference. She and Daniel promised they’d avoid the press as they ran the gauntlet to their car, that they’d meet her at the station later. Once the girl drove away, Tabitha went in search of Thaddeus, who’d fled the house when Pastor Rivera arrived. She hadn’t blamed him, half wishing she could do the same thing. She scanned the front yard, then went to check the back and saw him there, though not alone.
She watched from the window as Thaddeus and Larkin stepped apart from what must have been a long embrace. She scolded herself for watching them like a voyeur, but she couldn’t look away from the picture of them there, together. There was something about the way they’d held each other, less like an embrace and more like they were keeping each other upright. When they parted, the air around them shimmered with sadness and something else. Loss. And not just the loss of Davy.
Though there had been a brief spark when they were kids, she’d never really thought there were real feelings between them. She’d clearly missed it, like she’d missed so much about her remaining two children. It was obvious to her now, the truth glinting before her like the morning sun bouncing off Larkin’s diamond wedding ring as she lifted her hand to wipe tears from her eyes. Tabitha felt suddenly, irrationally angry at Thaddeus, leaping to the conclusion that he’d been the one to blow it with Larkin back when he’d had a chance. She and Marie could’ve been grandmothers together.
She felt the tears begin to fall, uninvited and unwelcome, over a grandchild that would never be. She ran to her room to hide, closing the door behind her as she threw herself on the bed and sobbed into her pillow. Even as she cried, she knew she was grieving over the wrong loss. She could not cry for Davy—not yet—but she could grieve all the things she didn’t get after he went missing. These tears were good, cleansing, normal. But she’d wanted to save them for later, till after the press conference, till everyone went home.
Now, she coached herself, was not the time to fall apart. She forced herself to stop thinking about fairy-tale grandchildren, to sit up, and to squeeze her eyes shut so no more tears could fall. A light knock sounded at the door just before Daniel peeked in.
“You ok?” he asked, his voice creaky and uncertain as he studied her there, sitting on the bed, her feet planted on the floor, but her face tear-streaked. She looked back at him and gave a weak nod.
She could’ve sworn he’d aged since they stood in the doorway listening to the sheriff. He’d always been youthful-looking; people often remarked that he didn’t look his age. But somehow in the past hour he’d leapt past the age he hadn’t seemed to be and into an old man he wasn’t yet meant to be. Even the way he walked over and sank next to her on the bed seemed like the movement of an elderly person. Or maybe it was the weight of the news they’d received acting as its own kind of gravitational pull, a force too great for the human body to withstand internally without external change.
She wondered then what she looked like, though she didn’t really care. She had cared the night Davy disappeared, before they went to the party. She’d taken her time selecting the right clothes, applying makeup. She had wanted to feel beautiful, to be more than someone’s mother for one evening.
“All this time,” she said aloud as she stared at the floor. “I told myself I knew how it was going to end. I told everyone not to get their hopes up. I cited statistics. I spoke of closure, of needing to know because it would help us move forward.”
With hesitance Daniel rested his hand on her leg, much like he’d done at the movie theater on their first date. Would she have gone on a second date with him if she’d known that marrying him would lead to all this?
“I told myself I was ready for it to be over—that we just needed to know already, so we could . . . what? Live? We’ve been doing that. But I thought . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“You thought that knowing would be better than not knowing. You thought answers would bring peace,” Daniel finished for her, his voice cracking on the word peace. They turned toward each other.
“I thought I was ready,” she said, the tears threatening. “I wasn’t ready.”
“How can you ever be ready for news like this?” He put his arm around her, pulling her toward him. At first she felt panic—they weren’t supposed to be doing this. Divorced people didn’t do this. But the rules no longer applied, she decided, so she let herself be held. Both of their bodies radiated heat, as if they were trying to burn off the pain that filled them. Together they breathed in and out, in and out.
The odds had been stacked against them from the moment Davy went missing. “Most marriages don’t survive,” the experts said. And the experts had been right, even as she and Danny attempted to defy the odds. But there just hadn’t been enough left of either of them to fight the inevitable drift that pulled them apart. They’d handled their grief so differently, so individually, that it had been too hard to come back together. Yet here, now, it felt natural to cling to each other, to cross the great divide, if only for a moment.
They let go at the same time, silently deciding in unison that it was time to get up, to set the grief and pain aside, and get on with the business of being the Malcor family, the public version. They had a press conference to prepare for, a memorial service to plan, friends and family to notify before they heard the news from the press. She would need to tell Marie soon, before Larkin did, if she hadn’t already. And Kristyn.
Daniel squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll call Kristyn.”
She gave him the side-eye. “How did you know I was thinking about her?”
He gave her a little half smile. “I’ve known you for a very long time.” He stood and walked out of their room, and she watched him go.
“Yes, you have,” she said quietly. “Yes, you have.”