Lake of Tears by Mary Logue

very beginning of an investigation. On the first day there was the franticness of securing the site, interviewing witnesses, taking photos, gathering evidence. Then they would be done, and all the bits that they had pulled together would go off to the experts. She so wished it was like it was on TV, that it would take only as long as a commercial break for the information to come back to them.
    The forensics were especially important, as they had a body with no name, no identity at all. No story. Wasn’t that the worst of it? No sense of what had happened to this person?
    Then there was the missing woman—Tammy Lee Johansen. Amy knew her from high school, said she was a bit of a flake, wouldn’t be surprised if she was just out partying. Still, they had to take the report seriously. And what if she turned out to be the bones?
    Claire looked down at her hands, seeing the bones push up against the skin more than they used to do when she was younger. Her nails were blunt cut so that she could work with them more easily. She wanted to get her hands dirty in this case, find out who those bones belonged to.
    The bones were haunting her.
    Andrew Stickler sauntered into the office, then came toward her desk, looking very happy with himself. She wondered what that was all about. He was generally pretty much a keep-your-head-down kind of guy. Behavior he’d probably learned in Afghanistan. Survival technique.
    He stopped right by her desk and she looked up at him, couldn’t help smiling back. “What’s up with you?” she asked.
    “I don’t know if Meg had a chance to tell you last night. I know she got in kinda late,” Andrew started, then stopped.
    “What about Meg? I was asleep when she got home, but I heard her. What do you know about it?”
    “Well, I was with her last night.”
    “Did you run into her some place?”
    “No, we went out.”
    She sat up straight and asked more sharply than she intended, “You went out with Meg?”
    “Yeah, it just happened. We met at that Burning Boat event. I didn’t know who she was. Just hit it off. Then I found out she was your daughter. I hope you don’t mind.”
    Claire didn’t know what to say. Her daughter was eighteen years old, way too young to be going out with the likes of Andrew Stickler, who was mature in the ways of the world that she didn’t want her daughter to know anything about, have anything to do with. At least, not yet. “I think I might mind.”
    “Oh.”
    “I mean, Andrew, what are you thinking? You’re way too old for her. She’s still a teenager.”
    “I didn’t realize how young she was when I asked her out. I thought she was in her twenties.”
    “I think you need to think twice about this, Andrew. She’s not even going to be here for much longer. She’s going off to school in Madison.” Claire hated that she was saying this, but the words came out of their own volition. “She’s not ready for someone like you.”
    “What does that mean?” Andrew’s body tightened up, his shoulders raised, his voice sharp.
    “Andrew, it’s nothing against you at all. My concerns are all about Meg. She’s a young eighteen. She’s hardly been away from home. You’ve traveled, you’ve seen things. My God, you’ve been to war.”
    “Yes, I have. I’ve served my country. And now I’m home, trying to find my way in this new life. Meg will have to decide. I’d like to see her again, but if she doesn’t think she’s ready for someone like me, then she can tell me that.”
    Claire watched him walk away. That had not gone well. Somehow she had said all the wrong things. She’d have to talk to Meg and make her see that going out with Andrew Stickler was probably not a good idea right now. Maybe later, after she had gone to college, met some guys her own age, done some living of her own.
    Right now, Andrew just seemed like too much man for Meg. Wasn’t a mother’s job to protect her daughter from the likes of such men? Who knows what he had seen or