Page 9 of The Guilty One

“Can you blame her?” Daphne balks. “What are we supposed to do? The police aren’t telling us anything! You heard that detective. They all but blamed Tate for disappearing, as if he kidnapped himself.”

Dad flattens his hands on the table, his voice level. “We need to stay calm. We’ll make a list of everyone you haven’t talked to already who might have heard from Tate. There has to be someone else. His clients, maybe? Tonight, we can start calling them, and in the morning, we’ll visit his office and?—”

“No. We can’t call his clients.” My tone is harsher than I mean for it to be.

“Why not?” Mom asks.

“First of all, because all of their information is in his phone, which I don’t have. There might be some at the office, but I couldn’t legally access it. And, second of all, because it would look wholly unprofessional?—”

“Who cares?” Mom’s eyes wrinkle in the corners as she studies me, and finally, her chest puffs with a deep breath.

“Tate would care,” I say firmly. “He does care. He’s worked so hard for his career. We can’t embarrass him.” I know there’s so much unspoken in the room right now. None of us know if Tate will come back for the career he’s worked so hard for, but I have to believe I’m right about this. If I embarrass him in front of his clients or bring them into our family drama, he might never forgive me. “The police will contact them if they think it’s necessary, but for now, we have to come up with something else.”

“There’s no one else to contact,” Lane says with a broken, exhausted tone. “Nowhere else to go. We have to talk to his boss. Find out more about this vacation he took. When did he ask for it off? What did he tell him?”

I lick my lips and pull out my phone, grateful for any sort of plan. I don’t have Tate’s boss’s phone number saved in my contacts, but a quick internet search gives it to me, and I click on it, placing the call. It rings once and goes to voicemail.

I sigh. It’s late. I hadn’t expected any different, but still. I leave a quick message and ask him to call me back. I have no idea if any of this is allowed. Am I interfering with a police investigation somehow? Will I get into trouble?

Interrupting my racing thoughts, Mom speaks up. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’re exhausted. There’s nothing else that can be done tonight, and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I can’t go to bed,” I tell her, shaking my head. “My husband is missing. Tate is…he’s missing.” My voice cracks, and I feel the last bit of my resolve crumbling. Tate isn’t coming home tonight. He may not be coming home ever. He’s just gone. He’s really, truly gone.

Mom stands up from the table, gathering me in her arms without a word, and I rest my head against her, silent tears streaming down my cheeks. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel or what I’m supposed to say. I just want answers. I just want to understand.

“Lane and I will start calling around to hospitals,” Daphne says, her voice soft and mousy through tears of her own. “Just in case, you know? Someone has to know something.” With that, they stand and back out of the room, leaving me alone with my parents.

When they’ve left, Mom pulls away from me slightly, clasping my cheeks between her hands. She just stares at me for a long while, her eyes glassy and unreadable, and I know she’s trying desperately to be strong for me like she always has. “There’s nothing you can do tonight, Celine,” she says finally. “The police are doing all they can, and if you want, we can get up at dawn and start searching, make more phone calls, but for now…for now you have to sleep.” When I start to argue, she holds up a hand, cutting me off. “You have to rest, even if you can’t sleep.”

“Is that what you’d do if it were me? If I were missing, would you guys just go to bed?” There is nothing hateful in my tone. Even if I felt angry with my parents—which I don’t—I don’t have the strength to summon anything but emptiness.

She doesn’t seem to have an answer to that, so she releases my cheeks and exchanges a worried glance with my father. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing else you can do. It’s late. People aren’t answering their phones. It’s too dark to see to search, too late to bother neighbors. I know you’re worried, and we are too, but you’ve done absolutely everything you can do tonight. I have to believe Tate would want you to take care of yourself and the boys. You can’t run yourself ragged when nothing else can be done tonight. The police are working. You need to rest.”

“Fine,” I say softly, rubbing my eyes. “I’ll go to bed.”

Their eyes dart back toward me.

“I’ll go to bed and try to come up with a plan for tomorrow. I’m not saying I’ll sleep because we all know I won’t, but I need to think and run through everything in my head. Process. I know him. If I think about it hard enough, surely I can come up with a few places we haven’t already thought to look for him, people we haven’t called.”

Dad nods, moving toward us and putting a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “I think that’s a smart plan. Do you want us to stay?”

“No,” I tell him as gently as I can. “Thank you for offering. I love you, and I appreciate it, but I just…I need to be alone right now.”

Dad starts to say something, probably to argue, but Mom cuts him off. “We’ll let Lane and Daphne know. And we’ll be back in the morning. You call us if you need anything, okay? We can be back over here in twenty minutes. I’ll keep my phone on.” Mom always sleeps with her phone on Do Not Disturb because the slightest sound or light wakes her, so I know she’s saying she won’t be sleeping much either. Somehow, that makes me feel a little better. I hug them both. Then, completely wiped out by exhaustion, I disappear down the hall and into our bedroom without a word to my in-laws. I don’t want to have to explain to them why I’m going to bed. I don’t have the strength to hold the weight of their judgment right now, but I also won’t blame them if they do judge me. They should. Going to bed is the last thing I should be doing, yet my body refuses to do anything else.

When I hear their car doors shut moments later and then spot their headlights shining through the curtains, I breathe a sigh of relief. Then, just as quickly, the tears begin to fall.

I curl up in my bed, trying my hardest to stifle the sounds of my sobs so I don’t wake the boys, covering my mouth so hard I feel as if I’m suffocating myself. My body hurts from holding in the pain, but I have to be strong for them, even if I’m faking every second of the display.

After an hour has passed, and I’m no longer crying, just lying on my side across the bed with cool tears cascading across my nose and onto my temple, I hear a noise. A sound draws me from the trance I’m in, though it takes several seconds for me to recognize what it is.

In my purse on the floor, my phone is vibrating.

I assume it’s my mother, calling to say good night or check in, but when I see the words on the screen, my heart stalls.

Unknown Caller

I consider not answering it for a split second, toying with the idea of letting it go to voicemail, but even if the situation with Tate didn’t have my interest, the late hour would. As many spam calls as I get, none of them come in the middle of the night.

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