Page 91 of Love Me Fierce

“Dreadful weather,” she says, but it sounds so fake I wince. Ihang my hat and jacket on the rack so I don’t drip water all over their carpet, then follow Ashley into the living room.

The house hasn’t changed since my last visit, but there’s a stillness to it, like the rooms are holding their breath. Though waiting for what, I don’t know.

Marin is never coming home.

“Please have a seat,” Ashley says, indicating the overstuffed couch in the tidy room. She takes the easy chair opposite, perching on the edge like she might need to jump up in a hurry. Ted stands to her right and reaches for his wife’s hand.

I choose the left side of the couch so I can take notes without jabbing Zach with my elbow. My duty belt squeaks as I lower down.

“Thanks for talking with us today,” Zach says, settling in.

I flip my notebook open to a fresh page and add the details—date, time, subjects.

“Of course,” Ted says, his face a mask, placing his other hand over his wife’s.

That they’ve stayed together after the death of their child means they’ve beat some of the toughest odds. I hope they can continue to find solace and support from each other as we push their grief into the red zone yet again.

“Has something changed?” Ashley asks.

“We have new evidence that we’d like to share,” I say, looking both of them in the eye.

Ted pulls the other easy chair closer and sinks to the edge of it, taking his wife’s hand again. “How can we help?”

Gratitude for his strength and ability to focus on forwarding our investigation instead of unleashing his very justifiable anger on us for our failures softens the ache in my chest and renews my dedication to producing answers.

I pull out my phone and open the picture of the pendant we removed from Marin’s neck. It’s a shot taken of the necklace on a plain white paper background, when it entered evidence. “Do you remember this?”

Ashley takes the phone and she and her husband stare at it. “She was wearing it, when we—” Ashley presses her lips together. She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. I know Marin was wearing the necklace when they identified their daughter.

“Do you remember when she started wearing it?” Zach asks.

“We never saw it before,” Ted says, shaking his head.

“Could it have been tucked below the neckline of a shirt?” Zach asks. “Hidden from view?”

Ashley glances at the phone screen again. “I suppose. That morning, she was wearing her Bear Mountain Hay & Feed hoody.”

“I know this is painful,” I say. “But if you’re willing, could you pull up your photos from that time, let us have a glance?”

“Sure,” Ashley says. From the rough edge in her tone and the way her gaze turns hollow, I know she’s starting to shut down.

“Let me,” Ted says, pulling out his phone.

We wait for him to scroll, the planes of his face tense in the reflection. “This is a week before…”

I offer to take the phone so he doesn’t have to finish that sentence.

He complies, his face turning pale.

Zach and I huddle over the screen, flicking through the snapshots one by one. There are only a few of Marin. In the first, she’s hunkered over a bowl of cereal and scowling at the camera, as if her dad has just said something she finds unimpressive. Or maybe he’s just teased her. It’s a look I’ve been seeing from my own son lately.

“Huh,” Zach says when we flip to the next one. I zoom in, focusing on the edge of Marin’s sweater and the part of her neck that’s visible. There’s no gold necklace there.

“That was the day before,” Ted says. “We had that snowstorm. She and Theo spent an hour making a snowman, even though it was supposed to warm up.”

I flip back to the previous picture of Marin. She’s wearing a loose, V-neck sweater, her brown hair cascading in long, dark waves.There’s no necklace in this one either. I check the dates of both photos.

The morning of her death, Marin was wearing a hoody. Nobody knows if she had on the necklace. But the day before, and three days before, it hadn’t been there.

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