Page 59 of To Have and to Hold

Dinner was a necessary affair. As storybook moms always said, if you don’t eat, your brain won’t work.

I heated up a low calorie, frozen dinner Noelle—a flicker of sadness at the thought of her name—stocked the freezer with, pulling it out of the microwave and chewing reflexively while leaning against the kitchen countertop. My thoughts were, as always, directed inward and scrolling through the hundreds of pages of information Knox had compiled. My gaze cut to the office, a sliver of light escaping through the cracked door and into the main room.

Knox’s notes had a few interesting facts. I crunched down on soggy green beans too aggressively, nicking the inside of my cheek, but the metallic pain mixed with the bland taste of dinner and I didn’t flinch.

He’d done a background check on almost all of Emme’s friends. Becca Reese. Jade Montague. A slew of other acquaintances and work connections Emme’d made in the last two years. Dave’s friends and partners and work connections.

Emme was a lot more social than I remembered, often accompanying Dave to his work events and mingling with money and oil. She’d always been personable, especially when passionate about something, and a part of me was reluctantly impressed that Dave had blossomed her further out of her chosen group of close friends. When the three were together—Becca, Jade, Emme—it was impossible to separate them, and it was obvious they didn’t need anyone else to bust open their circle.

Unless your aim was to break them apart so you could have one isolated and focusing on what you wanted them to focus on.

A question for Dave.

It was expected they’d be considered and equally assumed Jade and Becca would be written off as suspects. So were their significant others, as Jade’s was stationed on a military ship as a SEAL and therefore way far away, and Becca was currently single.

I finished my mealy cardboard supper, grazed my face and hands with a paper towel, popped the cap of a beer and corralled myself in front of my laptop again.

This time, I read about Emme’s parents. Knox did an incredibly detailed checkup on them and I made a sound in my throat at the multiple pages. As far as I remembered, Emme’s mom and dad were the regular, happy homebodies in Jackson, Wyoming, raising their only child in the quiet country life where the greatest threat was coyotes eating the corn. The only thing fancy about them was their last name. When I met the Beauregards, they were as jovial and accepting as my conditioned mind thought they wouldn’t be. Jack slapped me on the shoulder then challenged me to an indoor basketball game with him and some of his buddies. I joked I’d do it, but only if he joined me in spin class. He didn’t laugh.

Emme’s mother Parasol (who hated her self-proclaimed “dumb umbrella name” as much as anyone), with wrists and ankles the size of a bird’s, embraced me like a linebacker and demanded I test my worth by baking a pie from scratch because, in her words, “a real man knows how to make his woman dessert.” I was covered in flour, and my skin would never be so moisturized and soft again from all the butter grease, but I ended up baking the best damned pie she ever tasted and I sent thanks to the Google gods as we sat at the dinner table. Emme caught my eye with a kind of warmth and appreciation I couldn’t possibly deserve until those gorgeous blues arrowed clean through my ribs. She brushed a smear of flour from my cheek with her thumb and mouthed, I love you.

It took a minute for the next paragraphs I scrolled through to make any kind of sense.

“What?” I muttered, leaning over the keyboard. I clicked the arrow button, reading the additional information, then rereading it to make sure I was comprehending what I was seeing. “Holy shit.”

Knox’s next paragraphs were about Jack Beauregard and the fact that when he was thirty-five, he quit his successful job as an associate at a top-dollar litigation firm in New York City.

If I was told four years ago that Jack was an established, hungry lawyer who constantly mowed down opposing counsel and had more wins than any other lawyer at his firm, I’d grin and ask what spin class studio he went to, because fuck if they weren’t talking about my dream job.

But here he was on paper, not so much climbing as shredding the corporate ladder on the fast track to becoming the youngest partner at Klitchfield, Pattinson & Mitchell. Yet abruptly, his resume stopped. He quit the practice, married Perry, and settled into the anonymity of the country.

I frowned, taking a long pull of my beer. Usually there are only so many reasons why someone wants to be made anonymous. But that was the problem. Despite Knox’s pained research, he couldn’t discover why Jack decided to up and quit a lucrative career that would’ve had him and his family cushioned for life, other than falling in love with a beautiful Southern lady named Parasol and deciding she was worth the sacrifice.

The glass rim of the bottle rested on my lower lip as I studied the screen. Jack deserved a ton of respect. To have met him and not had any inkling of his past…the conversations we could’ve had, it was almost mind-boggling. He was an interesting man to begin with, often engaging in debates and challenging me to back up my views, but this was straight up intrigue. Did Emme know about her father? She never mentioned he was a lawyer, and it seemed she would’ve when her boyfriend announced he was going to law school.

I could believe Jack’s purpose for leaving, because sometimes a person comes along who suddenly becomes the only reason worth living. And Jack and Perry were as in love as they were then twenty-six years later. Perry drew Jack to her with nothing but a quick smile, his hand resting on hers as he nipped at her chin and she guffawed with mirth.

I made a note to investigate further, but if Knox didn’t get far, it was unlikely I’d find anything additional.

A few hours ago, Knox mentioned Emme’s parents had flown in, and I made a face at what they were feeling and the type of phone call that was required to tell them their daughter had disappeared under violent means. I wrote in the margins of my notes, talk to Jack.

There was nothing to solve now, so I moved on to the next on Knox’s list, Emme’s ex before me, Trevor Knowles.

The usual bullshit followed. He was a dick then, causing fights, cheating, not making much of himself, and he continued the trend years later. The only difference was he’d moved back to Wyoming three years ago and hadn’t been back to New York since—at least not officially. Couldn’t assume someone wouldn’t get to where they wanted to go simply because there wasn’t a paper trail.

The next name on Knox’s list gave me pause. Ed Carver, the guy in college who couldn’t take a hint after noticing Emme where she worked as a bartender at a place called Oliver’s. Back then, I wanted to square off with him, but Emme talked me out of it and New and Improved Spence backed up her arguments. Solving problems with fists wasn’t my M.O. anymore—but if he laid a hand on Emme? To hell with that, then and now.

Why would Knox look into a guy who gave Emme problems something like six years ago? Weren’t there more current people who were better suspects?

Then I read further. Ed had continued to be busy enough with other females that Knox wanted to take a second look at him.

Knox wrote about Ed’s current events and previous transgressions. In college, he was a straight-A student but had a few complaints by female co-eds of “following,” them, i.e. stalking, but under threat of suit the college would gladly label it as a little innocent traveling on foot. Nothing much came of it due to the evidence comprising mostly of he said, she said. The women described Ed as “creepy,” “quiet,” and “stared too long and kept too still, like he was some kind of ghost.” Emme had chatted with him because she was sure he was a nice guy and he didn’t deserve the kind of negative, often cruel attention he received.

His one altercation with Emme outside the bar was also described and my consequent finding his address and scaring the shit out of him with knuckles undercutting his ribs if he ever so much as grazed a pinkie against the ends of Emme’s hair again. I set my beer down. Knox really was a stickler for detail.

This was nothing I didn’t already know, so I skipped to Ed’s present situation. He moved around a lot, never staying at a rented apartment for more than four months. He held down jobs even less frequently, choosing to live off food stamps and become a busker instead. Ed had an amateur hold on guitar skills but decided to focus on that as a career. A few failed applications to American Idol and The Voice later, he was still determined to make it. And…

Not much else.

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