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They had gone through the nightmare of Robbie’s addiction together at first, a united front. She, the dutiful doctor’s wife, had let her husband take the lead, going along with his ideas on treatmentfacilities and parenting style. Mr. Tough Love, taking the hard line, eventually cut their son off after one too many relapses, one too many transgressions. She had gone along with it, exhausted and at her wit’s end, ground down by the experience and by Robert’s domineering personality. If she lived to be a thousand, she would never forgive herself for it. And she would certainly never forgive him.
“I’ll need his contact information anyway,” Detective Broussard said, hitting the blinker and taking a left. “Does he live here in town?”
“No. He lives in Lafayette.”
He had established his career at Lafayette General Orthopedic Hospital when Robbie was small, but they had chosen to settle in Bayou Breaux, where B’Lynn had grown up, wanting to raise their kids in the sanity and security of a small town, where life was simpler and bad things didn’t happen—or so they had naively believed. But bad things didn’t require a minimum population or draw a line at a maximum income level.
“What kind of doctor is he?”
“Orthopedics.” Which had made the situation with Robbie’s injury and rehab ironically worse than if his dad had been an internist or a gastroenterologist or any other kind of doctor. Robert had been a specialist first and a father second at a time when his son had needed love and support and understanding more than expertise and judgment.
B’Lynn looked over at the detective. She was young—in her early thirties, maybe—with dark hair and dark eyes. Pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way.I looked like that once, she thought, not quite believing herself. It seemed so long ago in so many ways.
“You said you’re a mother, too,” she said.
Broussard nodded. “He’s five. Just started kindergarten this fall.”
B’Lynn immediately flashed back to Robbie’s first day of school, how cute he’d been in his new clothes, carrying a little dinosaur backpack that seemed almost as big as he was. So sweet, soinnocent. She pressed her lips together, afraid to open her mouth for fear of something grim and cynical tumbling out, likeEnjoy him while you can.
“Such a cute age,” she said at last.
Looking ahead, she could see the big, rusting corrugated metal warehouse looming off to the left in the distance. Her landmark for Robbie’s downtrodden neighborhood.
“It’s just up here on the left,” she said, pointing.
—
The street was narrow and badly in need of repaving, forgotten by the city long ago. The shabby, narrow shotgun houses squatted beneath the oak trees like toadstools in the weed-choked yards. Four in a row, side by side, with shedding paint and sagging porches and roofs that looked like they wouldn’t make it through the next big hurricane. Yet Annie knew the buildings had somehow managed to stand there since the days of hoopskirts and slave labor, when this land had been part of a long-gone plantation. Funny, the things that lasted to serve as reminders of the past.
“It’s the first one,” B’Lynn said.
Annie pulled into the two sparsely graveled tracks that denoted a driveway and cut the engine.
“I budgeted a certain amount of money toward his rent,” B’Lynn explained. “This is the place he picked. He said he liked the privacy—meaning he didn’t want to live anywhere I could easily spy on him.”
“Would you?” Annie asked as they got out of the car. “Spy on him?”
“That’s tempting after all we’ve been through,” B’Lynn admitted. “I mean, here we are. I looked away for a minute, and he’s gone.”
“Is the lease in your name or his?” she asked, thinking ahead to any procedural no-no’s of a search of the premises.
“Mine. Needless to say, Robbie’s credit score isn’t exactly stellar.”
Annie mounted the steps to the sad little porch. She stood a bit to one side and knocked, trying not to recall the deputy who hadgotten shotgunned through the door of a drug house some years before.
“Hello?” she called, knocking a second time, then listening for any sound of movement. She thought she heard a faint scraping sound, then instantly wondered if she had imagined it. “Hello? Sheriff’s office. Anybody home?”
A wave of anxiety rolled through her as she waited for an answer. Silly, she told herself. This was just a welfare check. No big deal.
Don’t go there without me.Nick’s text from the night of her attack flashed through her mind’s eye. She remembered feeling tired and impatient. She had just needed to make a quick stop to deliver some news, then head home. No big deal. What could go wrong?
Everything.
“Are you all right?”
B’Lynn Fontenot’s voice startled her back into the moment.
“I’m fine,” Annie said, but her hand was trembling a little as she put the key in the lock. The last time she had walked into a strange house, she had left it by ambulance.
