The Missing Place by Sophie Littlefield Page A

as she could before eating. She had lost thirty pounds on Weight Watchers three—or was it four?—years ago, but all but five were back, and she had been vaguely planning to try again to lose it this spring.
    She took another bite.
    â€œYou wanted to go to the police station this morning, right?” Shay asked. “They open at nine. We can go straight from here.”
    â€œI just thought an in-person visit might, uh, underscore . . .”
    â€œYes. Definitely. We want to be a burr on their ass. Then I want to go back to Black Creek. When I was there the other day I couldn’tget anywhere with the desk girls. Dumb as stumps. The manager’s supposed to be there today, and we can get the boys’ things. You got your ID, right?”
    â€œShower for Capp . . . Capp . . .” a female voice came on the intercom.
    â€œCapparelli,” Shay said. “It’s not that hard! Listen, you go ahead and take the first shower if you want. Finish eating, though, let them wait a few minutes, they won’t give it away.”
    Colleen crammed down the eggs and a single triangle of toast. She took her things and headed back to the counter, where the clerk pointed down the hall. “Number four.”
    Inside was much better than she had expected. It was like a hotel bathroom, except that every surface but the ceiling was tiled. On the floor, one corner dampened and stuck to the tile, was a rectangle of paper labeled BATH MAT in blue lettering. A blue plastic trash can with a fresh liner was the only other industrial touch. A long counter held a folded towel with a paper-wrapped bar of soap on top.
    Colleen took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. The past few days had taken a toll on her. The bulb in the motor home bathroom had been blessedly dim, so she’d been able to pretend the dark circles and sunken flesh were the result of bad lighting. Here, under the bright fluorescents, every wrinkle and pore was on display. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, the lids puffy, the lines at the corners like her mother’s before she died. Her skin looked like it had been carved from wax, yellowish and sagging. Her lips had no color, disappearing into her face like an old woman’s.
    Was this what grief looked like? Colleen reached out and touched her image with her fingers, leaving a smudge. She took the washcloth Shay had given her and wiped the glass. She was a wiperof smudges. A cleaner of countertops. A vacuumer of crumbs. Only . . . it was Paul’s fingerprints, his jam smears, the remains of his pizza crusts to which she had devoted herself for so long. Since the day he left for Syracuse a year and a half ago, his absence had withered her, scouring out what was left inside and draining any traces of youth that remained on the outside. She’d been fifty when he graduated from high school, Zumba-fit and pampered, the envy of her friends, the recipient—still!—of the occasional drunken pass at neighborhood dinner parties. Now she was . . . this.
    And if he was really gone? Forever? What then?
    Colleen gasped, doubling over, elbows on the cold countertop, unable to breathe. She closed her eyes and murmured no, no, no. Because she didn’t mean gone. She meant dead.
    Dead.
    She hadn’t allowed herself to think the shape of the word until now. It had hovered, slinking around the edge of her consciousness, ever since the missed Sunday call. A mere shadowy wraith first, as the hours and days passed, it had become more insistent, waiting for her to slip, to forget for one second, to fall into incautious sleep. But she’d been so careful. So careful! Under her clothes her thighs and inner arms were bruised from where she pinched herself. Because that’s what she did. Every time that cursed thought threatened— dead —she punished herself until the pain forced it to recede.
    But here, in the mirror, was