Page 59 of Crossfire

I squeezed her hand, understanding the unspoken question that haunted us both. “Why do you think he did it?”

I couldn’t believe I’d finally asked her this. A better person would never ask a mother to explain why her son ended his life. A better person would be her rock.

“I’ve asked myself that many times,” Grams admitted. She was silent for a long time, and then almost to herself, she added, “Perhaps he wrote the reason in his journal.”

My heart jolted. I vaguely remembered Dad scribbling in a worn, leather-bound book, but I never knew it to be a journal per se. He’d said it was his gratitude book, part of his daily habit to express thanks for at least three things in his life. Maybe he wrote other things in it, too?

The problem was, I had no idea what happened to it after his death. We’d cleaned out his belongings in a fog of sorrow; I’d grabbed things like pictures, but I couldn’t recall if I’d ever seen that ratty journal. If I had it, it would be in the box in my closet. At home.

If there were answers to be found, they might be hidden within those pages.

I felt a renewed sense of determination that maybe, just maybe, today was the day I’d get the answers I’d been searching for.

After I finished my shift and had the quick meeting with Detective Mitchell, I’d go home and hunt for the thing.

If I found it, the question remained: would it have the answers I hoped for?

26

IVY

I shifted uneasily in my seat, my hands fidgeting in my lap. “Have you found any leads?”

Detective Mitchell leaned forward, his elbows resting on the desk. “My analyst is still scrubbing the texts you provided and attempting to track the data. Not surprisingly, they were sent from a burner phone.”

Yeah. That’s what Google said.

“How long do you think it will take to finish the analysis?” I pressed.

The detective remained silent, studying me intently. “It’s difficult to say. Sometimes, we get lucky and find something right away; sometimes, weeks can pass without any more intelligence. Sometimes longer.”

But there was something different in his facial expression today, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Was he onto something and didn’t want to tell me, didn’t want to get my hopes up?

When he’d tried to decline a meeting with me today, I assumed it was because he hadn’t had enough time to dig into this, or maybe he was still staunchly believing my attemptedmurder was “simply” a human trafficking thing gone wrong. But now, I wondered if something had changed.

Or maybe my mind was seeing something that wasn’t really there.

Detective Mitchell proceeded to go through everyone in my life one more time, confirming the status of relationships and last interactions. From close people, like my mom, to colleagues at work, he methodically checked off each person on his list. He even inquired about my mother’s ex-boyfriend, Steven Hackett, along with a neighbor who’d had a fleeting crush on me before moving out of state a month ago. The detective’s line of questioning seemed to linger longer than last time.

“Do you still think this was a stranger that tried to kill me?” I asked. “Human trafficking?”

Detective Mitchell closed the notebook in front of him.

“Let me do some more digging,” he hedged. “I’ll be in touch.”

Great. That wasn’t a no, and if it was someone in my life…what if they came back?

27

IVY

Found it…

Finally. When I’d gotten home, I started hunting through the boxes I had packed away of Dad’s things. I was worried his gratitude notebook might’ve been thrown away or perhaps packed up in the things that Mom had taken with her. But alas, at the bottom of one of the boxes, here it was.

The worn leather was cool to the touch. Holding something in my hand that my dad had touched every single day made my chest ache. This very leather, smooth against my skin, had been touched by my father.

I brought it into my living room, poured myself a cheap glass of wine, and stared at it as it sat on my coffee table.

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