Lake of Tears by Mary Logue Read Free Book Online Page B

noted that I don’t trust that boyfriend of poor Tammy Lee. I wonder if she’s really missing. I think she’s run away. I wouldn’t blame her. He seems like a creep. I’m going over to talk to her parents tomorrow. Didn’t have a chance today.”
    “I can see I’m going to have to try drastic measures,” John said and then pushed her down on the pillow and nuzzled her neck. His hands wrapped around her, then moved downward. Suddenly, he pulled back. “What’re you wearing?”
    “My flannel PJs.”
    He pulled back and looked down at her. “Flannel? Already? It’s not winter. It’s barely cold out.”
    “Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to wear them if you were more generous with the covers.”
    He started to unbutton her top. “I’ll keep you warm.”
    “So if it turns out that the boyfriend had something to do with her missing, I want you to be my witness that I suspected him all along.”
    He opened up her pajama top and wrapped his arms around her. He stretched out on top of her. “Warm enough?”
    “Mmm,” she said. Amy could feel his heart beating in her own chest. Like they were one creature.
    “I know some ways to make things even a little hotter,” he murmured.

    Rich fell asleep right after they had made love. Not so unusual for him, but for some reason, tonight Claire wanted him to be awake next to her as she was worrying about so many things: the sheriff, his job, the bones, her daughter. Somehow she felt shaken by life lately, like something really bad was going to happen and it was going to rip everything she knew apart.
    She twitched and turned, sticking a foot out from under the covers, then pulling it back in, lying on one side, then shifting to the other. No position was comfortable, no temperature felt right. Thoughts pulsed through her head with a dangerous energy. There was no gentle drifting to sleep.
    This unease was unusual for her these days. Since she had moved through menopause, Claire had reclaimed her previous easy sleep patterns, maybe sleeping a little less, but falling asleep quickly and waking up with the alarm, not the middle-of-the-night sweats.
    What was getting to her? She had had bad anxiety years ago, after her husband had been killed, but then she’d seemed to get over it, be able to rock and roll with the best of them.
    Claire thought her anxiety had to do with seeing the bones. There had been something so vulnerable about them. Lying in the ashes, bereft of the protection of their skin, they seemed delicate and fragile.
    For most of the day, she had sat on a log by the shore watching as Dr. Pinkers gently lifted bone after bone, putting them in individual plastic bags, labeling them. There was no hurrying him. Somehow his work felt sacred, the lifting of the bones, the naming of them. Maybe she should have left him to it, but she felt like she needed to be there—both for the legality of chain of possession and for the honoring of the dead.
    But watching the doctor work with the bones made her feel like she had seen what was inside herself, just this delicate necklace of ivory trinkets, too insignificant to carry the weight of a body. How did one manage to continue to move in this world, day after day, carrying on?

CHAPTER 7
    Claire hated waiting for the forensic evidence to come in. When Dr. Pinkers left, the bones all safely packed in bags and then tucked into a foam container, he said he’d call her as soon as he knew anything. When she pushed him and asked when that might be, he squinted his eyes as if looking far off into the future. “I’ll know something before the week’s out.”
    She sat at her desk, not really waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it might, and at the same time getting some of her mountains of paperwork done. While Annette had suggested she move into Sheriff Talbert’s office, that felt too uncomfortable—she told the secretary just to route all his calls her way.
    There was always this weird lag time that happened after the