Page 10 of Face Her Fear

Maybe Sandrine was right. Maybe her fixation on the weather was just a way to distract herself from what awaited her at home. The week was nearing its end and the fact that she was going to have to face some difficult truths and discussions loomed large. Rather than think about that, it was easier to focus on a disaster of a different kind.

Sandrine read off the diagnoses. “Diminished ovarian reserve. Uterine septum. You’ve been trying to get pregnant?”

Josie closed her eyes. Snow pelted her cheeks. A wet flake landed on her eyelid. After taking two deep breaths, she wiped at it and opened her eyes to face Sandrine. “Yes. My husband and I decided earlier this year that we would try to have children. When I couldn’t conceive, I went to my OB/GYN and had some tests done. I don’t have a lot of eggs left. There’s still a slim chance I could get pregnant but even if I did, I would likely miscarry because the inside of my uterus is shaped weird. There’s a wall of tissue that shouldn’t be there. That septum thing.” Tears spilled from her eyes, in spite of her trying to hold them back. She gestured toward the page. “The septum doesn’t have a good enough blood supply for an embryo to implant. That’s what would lead to the miscarriages. I could have surgery to correct it but with how few eggs I’ve got left, I still might not ever get pregnant, even with fertility treatments—which are expensive. It’s possible to spend our life’s savings on this and still be left with nothing.”

Snow fell onto the page, blurring Josie’s scribbled words. Carefully, Sandrine folded it up and put it into her own pocket. Josie felt a strange sort of relief, as if some part of the burden that came with this horrible knowledge had been lifted.

“Have you and your husband discussed other options?” Sandrine asked.

“No. We didn’t get that far. He saw the notes I took from my conversation with the doctor. I told him what they meant. Then he—he had this look on his face.” In spite of the cold that cut through her entire body, a hot stab of pain punched into Josie’s abdomen as she remembered the crestfallen look on Noah’s face.

Sandrine said, “You didn’t expect him to be disappointed? He wanted children as well, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but he always told me that I was enough for him. Even if we never had children, he said, I was enough.” Josie pounded a gloved fist against her chest. Now the tears came fast and furious. “And I believed him. I believed him all this time. Then when I told him the news, I saw in his face that that was a lie.”

Sandrine pulled a clump of tissues from somewhere in her jacket pocket. Her hand shook with cold as she handed them to Josie. “I’m not sure that you can infer so much from just a look, Josie. What did he say?”

The words scraped raw across her throat. “That he was disappointed.”

Sandrine looked past her to where Cooper stood, glancing all around, likely checking for the bear. Returning her attention to Josie, she said, “People are very complex, Josie. I’m not sure you should take his initial reaction so much to heart. What else did he say?”

Josie dabbed at her face with the tissues. Her tears felt frozen to her skin. “Nothing.”

“Because there was nothing else he wanted to say or because you didn’t give him a chance to say anything else?” From anyone else’s mouth, the words might have sounded pointed, but Sandrine had an uncanny way of softening even the bluntest questions. When Josie didn’t answer, Sandrine smiled gently. “Don’t go home yet, Josie. Think about why your instinct was to flee rather than to talk it over with him. I know the answer but I’m not sure you do. I can tell it to you, but it won’t have the same impact as it will if you get there yourself. Stay here with us. I think it would be beneficial if you took the next day and a half to explore this issue before you go home and face reality. What do you say?”

Josie sniffed. “Sure.”

“Now let’s get out of this cold.”

SEVEN

DENTON, PA

In spite of the fact that he’d showered before he left his house, sweat dampened the back of Noah Fraley’s neck. His legs felt heavy from the run he’d taken earlier that day. He’d pushed himself, covering nearly double the miles he normally did. He’d run until his mind could no longer focus on anything but keeping oxygen in his lungs and his body upright. Until thoughts of his wife, Josie, and the way she’d stared at him in the days before she left for her retreat disappeared from his mind. Shattered. That’s how she’d looked. It hadn’t come to him until she was already gone. The right word for it. Or any of the right words, for that matter.

“Dammit,” he muttered to himself, heaving up one more short flight of steps. It was only two floors. Why did it feel like an eternity today? And why the hell was it so hot? Was it always this hot in the stairwell?

He paused on the first landing to peel off his coat. A uniformed officer came flying out of the first-floor door, hitting Noah like a wall. He fell backward, almost toppling down the steps. His hands caught the railing just in time. His coat tumbled down the stairs. The officer muttered a sorry and disappeared below, hopping over the coat without a glance. Seconds later, the ground-floor door to the municipal parking lot banged open and a gust of cold air rushed upward, lifting the lock of thick dark hair that had fallen across Noah’s forehead.

With a sigh, Noah went back to the lower landing and picked up his coat. This time, as he passed the first floor, he kept his distance from the door. He’d never given much thought to the fact that the building had no elevators, but now he wondered why none had ever been installed. Probably because the Denton Historic Society wouldn’t allow it. Housed in a massive three-story stone building that boasted a bell tower, it had once been the town hall. Nearly seventy years ago, it was converted into police headquarters. The second-floor great room was where Noah and the other investigators spent most of their time. It was a huge open-concept area just outside the office of the Chief of Police, filled with desks for officers to make calls and complete paperwork. Only five of those desks had been permanently assigned to specific people on the force. One belonged to their press liaison, Amber Watts. The other four, pushed together to make a large rectangle in the center of the room, belonged to the investigative team: Josie, Gretchen, Noah, and their fallen colleague, Finn Mettner. Although Mett had died ten months earlier, the Chief had not replaced him right away, and no one had touched his desk other than to access official files needed for police business. The Chief had left it up to Amber, Finn’s girlfriend, to remove his personal effects. It had taken about six months before they noticed that she’d begun, little by little, to remove a few things. Framed photos of his extended family. The fishing mug he used as a pen holder which saidThe Rodfatheron it. A badly painted ceramic bass his nephew had made for him.

But it still held many of Mett’s things. In Noah’s mind, it was still Mett’s desk.

Which was probably why he completely lost his shit when he walked into the great room and saw Chief Chitwood putting the remaining contents of the desk into a box. Before Noah’s rational mind could impress upon him that it was a terrible idea, his body sprinted around the desks, hip-checking Chief Chitwood out of the way, and snatching up the box. The files inside jostled around, a few pages slipping out of the one on top.

The Chief stumbled backward, gripping the back of Mettner’s chair to stay upright. From behind him, seated at her own desk, Gretchen stared at him, stunned.

Red suffused the Chief’s acne-pitted cheeks and crept all the way up to his scalp, where strands of thin white hair floated. One bushy eyebrow shot upward. He crossed his arms over his thin chest. As he drew in a long breath, Noah knew he was in deep shit. “Fraley!” the Chief boomed. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Noah looked down at the box, then back at Amber’s desk. Empty. The sweat at the back of his neck increased, pouring down the column of his spine and wicking his Denton PD polo shirt to his skin. “This is Mett’s desk,” he blurted.

Some of the Chief’s bluster seemed to dissipate. “No,” he said. “ThiswasMett’s desk. You three have been up my ass for months to hire a fourth investigator, and so I did. He starts tomorrow.”

Gretchen’s chair creaked as she stood up. In her late forties, with more experience than any of them, having worked fifteen years on Philadelphia’s homicide squad, she was often a calming force. Moving around the Chief, she gently reached out for the box. Noah’s knuckles ached as he tightened his grip on it. He was being childish. He knew it. He was glad Josie wasn’t here to see this. If she had been here, maybe he wouldn’t be acting this way.

“Fraley,” said Gretchen. “This day was always going to come.”

He swallowed hard and then let her take the box from his hands. She placed it back on the desk, pushed both hands through her short, spiked salt-and-pepper hair, sighed, and then picked up where the Chief had left off.

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