Page 41 of The Whisper Place
The previews ended and a commercial for the theater came on, the one they always played before the film finally started. Nostalgia caught me low and hard in the gut as all the years we’d spent here came flooding back, from the time I’d thought my mother could do anything, that she was an oracle showing me the secrets andhidden shortcuts through this world, to the last years when things shifted between us. She was struggling to put her life back together, trying to pretend things were okay and that she wasn’t a little bit broken, but I didn’t need her to be the oracle by then. She was my best friend, and for as much as I loved Blake and Charlie, I knew she always would be.
The movie started—all bright colors and happy music with the kind of beautiful, well-tended celebrities that made you feel like you could step into their world, if only for a few hours.
Next to me, Mom sighed. “When will George Clooney stop being gorgeous?”
“When the Earth stops rotating.”
I looked around again, subtly checking out the other moviegoers. I’d been so focused on Mom, I hadn’t paid any attention to who was in the theater with us. No one looked familiar, and no one noticed us. They were too wrapped up in the Clooney of it all. I settled back in my seat, relaxing into this stolen moment. If nothing else, I would see her on her birthday next year, and the next one after that. I could keep this much of her.
As the meet-cute played out on-screen, something tapped my elbow. I looked down to see a box of Milk Duds—my favorite—sliding across the arm of the chair with my name scrawled on them. My real name. Smiling, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a box of Junior Mints, her favorite, and handed them to her.
We looked at each other, unshed tears shining with flickering movie lights in her eyes and mine.
“Happy Birthday, Mom.”
A few days later, I was manning the front counter while Blake went to the bathroom. The students I’d just helped gathered their to-go cups and bags of pastries, chatting as they wandered out. The bell on the front door chimed again and a man appeared in the doorway, wearing a hoodie and a ball cap. As soon as his gaze landed on me, his thin lips stretched back over yellowing teeth.
It was impossible. He was impossible. Dirt clogged my throat and nose, the dirt I’d shoveled into a grave two hundred miles away. My body froze. My heart stopped.
The man moved to the counter, filling the dirt-choked room until there was nothing but him.
“Hello, Kate.”
Max
Other than paying for the privilege of driving on the freeway every ten miles, western Illinois wasn’t that different from eastern Iowa. The hills rolled easy and long into the horizon, punctuated by cattle, crops, and the occasional church steeple or truck stop sign on the horizon. Jonah drove, which meant it took a lot less time than it should have to reach Peoria, a tidy city on the banks of the Illinois River.
We hadn’t said much on the drive and nothing about the two hundred thousand dollars of illegal money I’d accepted and used for the business. It was probably better we weren’t talking.
He’d texted this morning with a photograph of Kate’s license plate, which came up as being owned by a Katherine Barker. I’d gotten excited about the name until I pulled the record and found it belonged to a ninety-five-year-old woman living in Peoria. Still, it was a lead, the first solid lead we’d gotten into Kate’s past, and neither one of us was letting the other take it solo. Fifty fucking fifty.
It starting raining as we pulled onto a narrow residential street lined with oak trees and aging brick duplexes. We parkedand walked up the sidewalk to a front door crowded with pots, their flowers dipping under the weight of raindrops. Jonah rang the bell and we waited until the door was opened by a woman who looked about as substantial as crepe paper origami. Huge red glasses perched on her tiny, wrinkled face.
“I’m not buying any.” She thwacked theNo Solicitingsign taped up in faded letters on her door.
“We’re not selling any.” I flashed my PI license. “Are you Katherine Barker?”
She made us stand out in the rain while we explained we were looking for the owner of a gray 2008 Mazda.
“I sold that car. She said she’d take care of all the paperwork.”
“Who?”
Jonah was already turning around, peering through the rain.
“The girl across the street.”
We were two yards short of the door to the opposite duplex when Jonah slowed. He looked apprehensive.
“What?”
“She’s watching us.”
I didn’t know if he meant the old lady behind us or whoever lived inside this place. Was it Kate? Could she have left Iowa City and fled back here? For all the technology and resources we had, sometimes it was as simple as tracking a license plate. I didn’t have to wait long. Before we could knock, deadbolts clicked and the door opened two inches—another thick chain still attaching the door to the frame. A slice of a petite woman with short dark hair and a single blue eye peered out at us. She didn’t speak and somethingabout her face made me want to see her hands, to reach for my nonexistent holster. Instead, I went through the same spiel.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re looking for someone.” Jonah held up his phone, showing the woman the picture of Kate on the couch. “She may be in trouble.”
