Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

I’m telling you—”
    “No, Dad, I have to do it. You can’t stop me.”
    She recalled how he’d gripped her arm, how it almost hurt. How he’d looked into her eyes. “I’m telling you, it would be a mistake.”
    “If I don’t do it,” she’d said, “people will think I don’t care.”
    And so, reluctantly, he had relented. But he was very firm with her. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want you saying
anything
, you understand? You can cry all you want, but you’re not going to say one damn thing.”
    So she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she could have, anyway. Just as he’d guessed, she started bawling her eyes out. And those tears were the real deal. She hadn’t been able to stop. She was so incredibly sad. And not just sad.
    She was scared.
    She knew her father loved her very much. She believed that in her heart. But it didn’t give her comfort. Not now.
    He’d told her what to say. He’d rehearsed it with her.
    “Your mother went shopping and that’s all we know,” he’d said. “She went off like she always did. Anything could have happened. Maybe she ran off to be with another man, or—”
    “Mom would never do that,” Melissa had said, sniffing. She wondered if she’d put a little too much emphasis on the word “Mom,” that maybe her father would pick something up in that. She’d seen him that one night, coming out of the Day’s Inn with some woman, getting into the car together. But she’d never said a thing to him, never let on that she knew what he’d been up to.
    If he’d noticed anything in her tone, he didn’t show it. He was too preoccupied getting ready for the news conference. He kept drilling into her what her story was going to be when the police talked to her. Because the police were going to want to talk to her, she could be sure of that.
    “—or maybe it’s that guy who’s been going around doing carjackings, maybe he did this. It could have been any number of things. The world is full of sick people. The police will have all sorts of theories, and if they never solve it, they never solve it.”
    “Okay.”
    “The main thing is, you just don’t know. You have no idea. You were home by yourself that night. That’s all you know. Are we clear on that?”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    She crawled into the bed, lay on her side, rested her head on the pillow. She grabbed a couple of tissues from the box on her bedside table and dabbed her eyes.
    The phone rang.
    She thought it might be her father, so she reached for the receiver without looking at the call display.
    “Hello?”
    “Oh my God, Mel? Is that you?” Her roommate, Olivia.
    “It’s me.”
    “I just got this message on Facebook about your mom, oh my God what’s happened?”
    “She’s gone,” Melissa said, and instantly realized it would have been better to have said she was missing.
    “Gone where?” Olivia asked.
    “Don’t know. She went shopping Thursday night and we haven’t seen her since. I was home by myself so I don’t know anything about it.”
    Saying it just like her dad told her to.
    “Like, what do they think happened?” Olivia persisted. “Did she have an accident? Did her car go down a hill or something and they haven’t found it yet?”
    “I don’t know, okay? We just don’t know. We’re just, we just hope the police will find her.”
    “What can I do? What I can do for you? I feel awful I’m not there. How’s your dad? How’s he coping?”
    Oh, he’s fine
, Melissa thought.
    “I can’t talk any more,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
    “Yeah, but what about—”
    Melissa hung up.
    “I can’t do this,” she said to herself.
    If she couldn’t handle a few questions from her roommate, how did she expect to hold up over the long term? How long could she keep this secret? How long could she hold back from telling what really happened?
    What was it her mother used to tell her?
    You have to live your life like someone’s watching you all the time. Behave in a way that you can never be ashamed of.
    She rolled over onto her other side, then back. It was so hard to get comfortable because of the baby. Finally she threw back the covers and put her feet on the floor, sat there on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.
    “I can’t do this,” she said again. “I have to do what’s right. No matter who it hurts.”
    She wondered whether should she call a lawyer, but she didn’t know any. She didn’t want to pick one at random out of the phone book.