Just One Look by Harlan Coben Page A

“Mom?”
    It was Emma. “Hi, sweetheart.”
    “You were screaming.”
    “I’m okay. Even moms have bad dreams sometimes.”
    Emma stayed in the shadows. “Where’s Daddy?”
    Grace checked the bedside clock. It was nearly 4:45 A.M. How long had she been asleep? No more than ten, fifteen minutes. “He’ll be home soon.”
    Emma did not move.
    “You okay?” Grace asked.
    “Can I sleep with you?”
    Plenty of bad dreams tonight, Grace thought. She pulled back the blanket. “Sure, honey.”
    Emma crawled onto Jack’s side of the bed. Grace threw the blanket back over her and held tight. She kept her eyes on the bedside clock. At exactly 7 A.M.-she watched the digital clock switch from 6:59 A.M.-she let panic in.
    Jack had never done anything like this before. If it had been a normal night, if he had come up and told her that he was going grocery shopping, if he had made some clumsy double entendre before leaving, something about melons or bananas, something funny and stupid like that, she’d have been on the phone with the police already.
    But last night had not been normal. There had been that photograph. There had been his reaction. And there had been no kiss good-bye.
    Emma stirred beside her. Max entered in mid-eye rub a few minutes later. Jack was usually the one who made breakfast. He was more the early riser. Grace managed to whip up the morning meal-Cap’n Crunch with sliced banana-and deflected their questions about their father’s absence. While they were busy wolfing down breakfast, she slid into the den and tried Jack’s office, but nobody picked up the line. Still too early.
    She threw on a pair of Jack’s Adidas sweats and walked them to the bus stop. Emma used to hug her before she boarded, but she was too old for that. She hurried aboard, before Grace could mumble something idiotically parental about Emma being too old for hugs but not too old to visit Mom when she was scared at night. Max still gave her a hug but it was quick and with a serious lack of enthusiasm. They both stepped inside, the bus door swooshing to a close as though swallowing them whole.
    Grace blocked the sun with her hand and, as always, watched the bus until it turned down Bryden Road. Even now, even after all this time, she still longed to hop in her car and follow just to be sure that that seemingly fragile box of yellow tin made it safely to school.
    What had happened to Jack?
    She started back toward the house, but then, thinking better of it, she sprinted toward her car and took off. Grace caught up to the bus on Heights Road and followed it the rest of the way to Willard School. She shifted into park and watched the children disembark. When Emma and Max appeared, weighed down by their backpacks, she felt the familiar flutter. She sat and waited until they both headed up the path, up the stairs, and disappeared through the school doors.
    And then, for the first time in a long time, Grace cried.
     
    ***
     
    Grace expected cops in plainclothes. And she expected two of them. That was how it always worked on television. One would be the gruff veteran. The other would be young and handsome. So much for TV. The town police had sent one officer in the regulation stop-you-for-speeding uniform and matching car.
    He had introduced himself as Officer Daley. He was indeed young, very young, with a smattering of acne on his shiny baby face. He was gym muscular. His short sleeves worked like tourniquets on his bloated biceps. Officer Daley spoke with annoying patience, a suburban-cop monotone, as if addressing a class of first graders on bike safety.
    He had arrived ten minutes after her call on the non-emergency police line. Normally, the dispatcher told her, they would ask her to come in and fill out a report on her own. But it just so happened that Officer Daley was in the area, so he’d be able to swing by. Lucky her.
    Daley took a letter-size sheet of paper and placed it out on the coffee table. He clicked his pen and