Page 39 of Stay Away from Him

Thomas laughed, but it sounded forced and mirthless. “God, listen to you! You should’ve been a cop. Look, Rose and I were having problems, okay? It’s true, you may as well know it sooner or later. We were having problems, and Rose had told me that she was thinking of taking a break, to think things over. She went missing that Friday, before I left. The girls got home from school that day and couldn’t find her. When I got home from work, they told me she was gone. I thought maybe she’d gone up to the cabin for some time alone.”

Melissa squinted. Something didn’t make sense. “She’d just leave like that? And why’d you head up to the cabin—was it to clear brush or to look for your wife?”

Thomas’s jaw tightened again, and Melissa took a sharp breath, realizing she was making him angry with these questions.

“Rose could be rash,” Thomas said, his words slow, measured, cold. “She was emotional. It was like her to just pick up and go, leave me behind to take care of things. I couldn’t reach her by cell, but that felt like an indication that she’d gone up north—service could be spotty at the cabin. I wasn’t worried. Not right away. And I’d been planning on doing some work up there for weeks. So I figured, why not kill two birds with one stone?”

Melissa held back a grimace at Thomas’s choice of words.

“My plan was to head up there and find her,” Thomas said. “We’d kiss and make up—this was my hope—then I’d spend some time doing the work I’d been planning on, and we’d head back the next day. So I asked Amelia if she could host the girls for a night. I bought the shovel and tarp, then went north.”

“When did you decide to get the house cleaned?” Melissa asked. “Before you realized Rose wasn’t at the cabin, or after?”

“Before. I had the idea to bring in the cleaners while everyone was gone about halfway. I sent the email from my phone at a gas station, then turned it off. I don’t like the distraction while I drive. It was only when I got there that I realized Rose wasn’t there after all. But it was too late at night to head back; I was afraid I’d fall asleep at the wheel. So I got a few hours of shut-eye, then came back to the Twin Cities. After checking a few more places, calling a few folks,thenI finally called the cops and reported her missing.”

Melissa was silent a moment, thinking it through. Trying to put herself in Thomas’s shoes. The behavior of a husband whose wife has gone missing must always seem illogical and suspicious in retrospect—but in the moment? She could see how Thomas might have liked to believe that nothing was actually wrong, might have been hesitant to call the police for fear of seeming foolish after Rose turned up fine, gone for a completely logical reason. Only the fact that Rosewasn’tfound—that she was eventually presumed dead—cast Thomas’s actions in a different light.

“Okay?” Thomas prodded. “Are you happy?”

His explanations made sense—but Melissa wouldn’t have said she was happy. Thomas was right the night before: There was something humiliating about having to talk like this. Melissa didn’t like interrogating him any more than he liked to be interrogated. It wasn’t fair. They’d only just started getting to know each other. This was supposed to be the fun part of the relationship, the part where they obsessed over each other, wanted to see each otherevery waking moment. The part where they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. And that had all been true, the past couple days. But their time together had also been troubled bythis, these questions, these uncertainties and suspicions.

Thomas had answered all Melissa’s questions. And now she felt worse than ever. A sick feeling had taken root in the pit of her stomach. She wondered if simply talking like this—asking questions, demanding explanations—had broken something between them. If this thing was already doomed to fail, when it had only barely started.

Then a cry came to her ears on the breeze, something familiar in the sound. She sat up straight, adrenaline surging in her veins.

“Where’s Bradley?”

“He was right there,” Thomas said, standing, striding forward.

Still on the bench, Melissa glanced back and forth, trying to remember what Bradley had been wearing. Blue jeans, red shirt. She didn’t see him.

Then there was another cry, and her eyes snapped to where it had come from. It was Bradley, in a distant part of the park, a separate structure set atop a small hill, with a stone retaining wall running along the side.

Suddenly Melissa was standing, her feet carrying her forward.

“Bradley!” she said, her voice sharp to cut through the chatter in the air. Melissa willed her son to turn his head toward her. “Bradley!” He still didn’t look.

Then she saw that there was a woman kneeling next to him. Blond hair, a ponytail, black leggings, white shirt. She had her hands on Melissa’s son, grabbing him by the shoulders. That was why he wasn’t turning toward her.

Because he couldn’t. Because he was being held, restrained.

Melissa couldn’t see the woman’s face from where she stood, but somehow she knew it was Kelli Walker.

Now she was running, her feet pounding hard beneath her, her heart roaring in her ears.

“Get away from him!” Melissa shouted. “Get your hands off him!”

The woman looked up, and now Melissa could see clearly that it was Kelli. Melissa recognized her from her Facebook profile photo. She was halfway to Kelli, halfway to Bradley, and at her sides, her fingers hardened into claws, her vision going blurry. It was impossible to know what she’d do when she reached them. Snatch Bradley away? Or attack Kelli?

Kelli stood, let go of Bradley, but he was already leaning away from her, and as she loosened her grip on his body, he lost his balance, stumbled backward toward the retaining wall. It was only a five-foot drop, but the way he was listing, falling head first—

“No!”

Kelli Walker leapt back, drew her hands to her mouth as Bradley fell. Melissa’s stomach gave a sickening lurch when his feet left the ground. He fell backward toward the ground below, to some landscaped mulch and rocks, and on the way down he twisted his body, put out his arms to break his fall—

Too late. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he planted right on his face. Melissa thundered across the grass toward him. When she reached him, he wasn’t moving.

“Bradley? Bradley!” Melissa sank to her knees next to him, pulled at his shoulders. She felt him squirm, his chest rise and fall—thank God. He was dazed but breathing. But when she got him turned over, his face looked terrible, his forehead bright red with a smear of blood that stopped hers cold in her veins. Bradley’s eyes opened, and for a second, he was calm.

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