Page 28 of To Have and to Hold

I lowered my hand, blinking my rapidly swelling eye carefully. “I’m sorry…”

“Jesus Christ,” Noelle said, her eyes tearing up. But she rallied herself. “I’ll get some ice for both of you. You’re not helping her, you know. Neither of you Neanderthals are by brawling in a makeshift office in a Brooklyn bedroom.”

She strode out of the room before we could get a word in edgewise, but maybe that was for the best. Noelle wasn’t wrong.

“Knox, I…” I shook my head, clearing out some of the remaining sparkle.

Knox exhaled so hard his ribcage must’ve hit his lungs. “The Emme you knew…you have to understand. She may not exist anymore.”

The truth descended over me with a ripple, starting at the back of my head before pooling heavily over my brain.

Emme’s friends, her acquaintances, co-workers, benefactors, lovers…all people I no longer knew. Her two best friends were inseparable, but that was years ago. Back then I could recite everything about Emme, her likes, what pissed her off, her habits. But that was Emme at twenty-four. She was twenty-seven now, and the same way I’d risen in the years between, so could she. I was not the guy I was, down on one knee and proposing to her with a ring I saved up for a year to give her in a t-shirt and torn jeans. I was leaner, stronger. Harder.

“There’s a new guy in her life,” Knox said, but didn’t try to add anything else.

“Just like there’s a new girl in mine,” I said with tight fists, then backed away from the wall. “I get it.”

Knox sighed. “I want to keep you apprised as much as I can, but from this point on, considering it’s been twenty-four hours, I gotta do what’s best for her, and that could mean I won’t be able to provide you with all the information you need. Or expect.”

“Do whatever you need to,” I said, trying for calm now. “The last thing I’ll do is impede the investigation.”

“I didn’t say—”

“No, I mean it,” I said. “What’s most important is Emme, not me, or our past, or my ability to stroke out on you. So go, hit the streets. Get her back.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets before turning out of the office. I hoped his knuckles throbbed as much as my eye socket did. Knox turned and said, “I’ll keep updating you. I’m not trying to cut you out.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I was speaking to his back.

I waited until I heard the front door close, grateful that my friend was so invested in Emme and prepared to never sleep again before he found her. But he was a fool to believe I’d stand idly by without using every single resource at my disposal. I was a prosecutor, trained to seek out the truth and discover enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. But my access and experience aside, I would still tip the earth on its axis if it meant saving Emme.

Pivoting back to the whiteboard, I scanned the articles with my one good eye, the arrows, the musings and suppositions. I paused at Trevor’s streaked name but moved on quickly to the picture of Emme I’d blown up and stuck to the right-hand corner. A close-up of her smiling, not simply with her mouth but with her entire face. I’d zoomed in, so I was cropped out of the picture, but knew that somewhere along the ghosted edges I was holding her, her head neatly tucked under my chin.

“I won’t stop searching,” I said to her, and all at once, she blurred. Her features went watery and I could no longer make out the distinctness of her, the very things that made her human.

It had to be the swelling. My vision blurred and I was blacking out because I’d just been decked. I’d convinced myself of this until a hand stopped my slow descent to the floor.

Noelle was standing behind me, and sweet girl that she was, tried to hold onto me before I slithered down.

Her efforts were valiant and I let her steady me. Her hand slipped around my back, the other one gently holding frozen peas to my eye, and while she guided me to a chair, real and warm and there, I didn’t have the heart to tell her my devastation couldn’t be caught.

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