Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave Read Free Book Online Page B

everything.
    “I don’t know,’ I say.
    Then what makes you think you can help her?’
    It’s interesting she has asked how I can help Rachel, and not her and her husband. Interesting isn’t the word. It’s devastating.
     
    This woman isn’t just holding out for the possibility that her daughter is alive; she’s holding on to the reality of it. But the question is more than that. It makes me think of exactly what
    I can do to help Rachel: nothing. Not now. I can’t even help the others who have followed.
    “I would imagine Rachel wants as many people helping her as
    she can get.’
    She nods, then starts telling me about her daughter, and
    I realise I could be anybody in the world and she’d still be happy to speak about Rachel. She’d probably be the same way if I was at the door selling encyclopaedias or God. She talks for nearly twenty minutes and I don’t interrupt her. I know what it’s like to have lost somebody. I know what it is like to hold out hope.
    False hope is cruel, but perhaps not as cruel as no hope at all. It’s a judgement only those who have been there can make.
    ‘And David?’ I ask, after she has told me what she can about
    Rachel’s life, including in detail the days before she disappeared.
    ‘What can you tell me about him?’
    “I thought he knew what happened,’ she says. ‘For those few
    weeks I was sure she was living with him. See, they were living together, but not really. All her things were here, are still here, but she wouldn’t come home for days on end. When we didn’t see
    her for a week we tried contacting her, then him, but he said he hadn’t seen her. I thought he was lying, and that he was shielding her from us for something we must have done. But I knew,
    I knew something wasn’t right. I don’t know how, but I just knew.
    So Michael, my husband, called the police. We filed a Missing
    Persons report. We hadn’t heard from her in nearly a week. It
    wasn’t like her.’
    ‘What happened when the police spoke to David?’
    ‘Nothing. They said they had no reason to believe he was lying.
    Still, I wasn’t convinced. I would go to his house at different times, but there was never any sign of her. I would knock on his door in the middle of the night. After a while I began to see that David was just as distraught as we were, and I started leaving him alone. I don’t know if he really believes Rachel is still alive.’
    I throw a couple of names at her. Bruce Alderman and Henry
    Martins. She shakes her head and tells me she’s never heard them, and asks me why. I tell her the names have come up but I’m
    not sure where they fit into it, and that it may be unlikely they even do. She gives me a list of Rachel’s friends, places she liked to go, photographs of her, people she worked with, David’s
    address. She’s giving it all some real serious thought, hoping for a connection, hoping she is going to mention a name that’s the key to getting her daughter back.
    She walks me to the door. She seems reluctant to let me go. I
    feel guilty I’ve deceived her, that I’ve given her more hope today than she had yesterday, and the guilt becomes a sickening feeling that makes the world sway a little as I make my way to the car. The police will identify Rachel Tyler. They will come here tomorrow or the next day, and they will tell Patricia that her daughter is dead. I can’t stop it from happening. I can’t prepare her for it.
    It’s getting close to eight o’clock and within the next twenty minutes it will be dark, the thick clouds bringing the night earlier than usual for this time of year. The flowers in the front seat still look fresh enough to keep on growing. I start my car and pull
    away, the small voice inside my head questioning what in the hell I am doing, and the bigger voice, the one I use every day to justify my actions, telling me I have no idea.

chapter eight
    Perception is a funny thing. Especially when you’re dealing with luck. Somebody who