Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

“I love her,” Alan said. “I love her more than I’ve loved anyone in my life. Well, except maybe for her daughter… our daughter.”

“Tell us about the day she disappeared.”

Alan gazed down at the table, then told them about the afternoon in Tijuana. When he was through, Logan took a moment before he asked the next question.

“Who do you think took the bags out of your car?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Alan said, frowning. “But I have no idea.”

“Could it have been one of her friends?”

“Sara didn’t have a lot of friends. Just a couple of the women here in the neighborhood, and a few people at the office. My accounting agency is small, but we do a good business. Sara worked there part-time, office management stuff.”

“What about the people she was with when you met her that first time?”

“She’d actually only met them at another lecture, and were just sitting together. After we started dating, she didn’t really see them much anymore.”

“But did you check them out?”

“Of course I did,” Alan said angrily. He paused. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s just…I’ve talked to everyone I’ve ever seen her with. No one knows what happened to her.”

“Could be one of them is lying.”

“I guess so, but I never got that sense.”

“Was there anyone you couldn’t find? A friend or acquaintance you haven’t been able to talk to?”

Alan shook his head. “I’ve talked to everyone I can remember. I realize someone must have helped her. I just have no idea who that could be.”

“Can you show me the note?” Logan asked.

Standing, Alan said, “It’s in my bedroom. I’ll be right back.”

“Why don’t I come with you?” Logan suggested. He wanted to take a look at the rest of the house, and try to get a sense of what Sara’s place had been within it.

Alan nodded. “Sure, okay.”

Logan followed him into a hallway, and up some stairs to the second floor. The upstairs hallway was lined with framed photographs, or rather, it would have been if not for the dozen or so empty nails spaced sporadically among the pictures that were left. Remembering what Callie had told him, Logan guessed the blank spots were places where photos Sara had been in once hung. Six weeks on, and Alan had not replaced them with anything. Was he hoping she’d come back and everything would return to the way it was, including the wall? Or did he want the physical reminder that his wife was gone? Most likely, the emotional wound was still so raw he didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

The master suite took up the whole south end of the floor. In addition to the normal things a bedroom had, there was also a sitting area and a sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony.

Logan waited near one of the chairs while Alan stepped into a walk-in closet. A moment later, he reemerged holding a wooden jewelry box.

“This was my mother’s,” he said. “I gave it to Sara right after we got married.”

He opened it, revealing an empty, black velvet-lined tray. He lifted this out and put it on the chair. Underneath, sitting on more velvet, was a folded envelope.

Alan removed it and handed it to Logan.

Carefully, Logan pulled out the letter and read it. Nothing in it seemed to shed any new light on the situation.

“This was the only thing left in the car?”

Alan was looking wistfully at the letter. “Yes. Everything else was gone.”

“Callie told me about the missing pictures.”

Alan’s face dropped. “You saw the hallway.”

“Yeah.”

“She cleaned out the photo albums, too. Even the computers.”

“I assume they weren’t gone before you left on your trip.”

“No. At least not the ones on the wall. The photos in the albums could have already been gone, and maybe the ones on the computer, too. I didn’t regularly check those.”

Someone had come into the house while Alan and Sara were gone. The same person who’d taken Sara’s luggage? Or were there more than one other person involved?

“So everything she was in?”

“All but one with Sara in the background. It isn’t great, but…”

“Callie mentioned that.”

“It wasn’t mine. It was my sister’s. I had her email it to me after Sara left.”

“Could you forward it to me?”

“Of course.”

“Besides the photos, what else did she take?”

Alan absently glanced at the closet. “Not much. She left most of her things here.”

“Really?” Logan asked, surprised. “What about the stuff from the place where she lived before moving in with you?”

“She was in a furnished apartment. None of it was hers.” They were both quiet for a moment, then Alan said, “Yeah, I know. I guess that should have been a red flag, huh? But she said she was new to the area, and didn’t have any stuff yet.”

A red flag, yes, but… “Don’t beat yourself up about it. I don’t think anyone would have thought twice about it. I wouldn’t have. Where did she say she’d moved from?”

“Back east. Philadelphia.”

“Did you meet any of her family? Old friends?”

Alan shook his head. “Said she was an only child, and that her mother had died a few months earlier. That was the reason she’d moved out here, you know, to start fresh.”

“What about her father?”

“She said he left when she was young, never really knew him. So it was just her and Emily.”

“Well, then, what about Emily’s father?”

“Sara told me he was a guy she’d gone out with a few times, but it didn’t work out. She never even told him about Emily.”

All nice and neat and packaged so that it sounded believable while being extremely difficult to disprove.

Logan handed back the note. “Thanks for letting me see this.”

Alan returned it to the bottom of the jewelry box, and put the box back into the closet. When he came out, he hesitated in the doorway. “There was something else she left.”

“What?”

Looking like he really didn’t wand to discuss it, Alan said, “It’s…in Emily’s room.”

Without another word, he headed into the hallway.

Emily’s room was near the top of the staircase. There was a dresser and a toy chest and a kid-sized bed, but the star was the walls. They had been turned into a giant mural of rolling hills and rivers and castles. There were knights on horses, a prince and princess in a carriage, and kids playing in a field. This wasn’t some amateur job done by a person with limited skill. This was a beautiful, detailed work of art.

“Sara painted it,” Alan said, as if reading the question on Logan’s mind. “Took her three months to finish.”

“It’s amazing.”

“It is, isn’t it?” For a few seconds it seemed that Alan had forgotten about everything else, and was simply enjoying what his wife had created.

To Logan it was more than just a mural on a child’s wall. It was an attempt by a mother who knew she wouldn’t be around for long to leave something lasting for her little girl.

About two feet down from the ceiling, a narrow shelf ringed the room. On it were dozens of small stuffed animals. Dragons and bunnies and bears and turtles and several other creatures looked down into the room, guarding it from some imaginary evil. Alan used the frame of Emily’s bed to step up and reach between two of the animals. When he came back down, he was holding a small, square box.

“This was at the foot of the bed when I got home,” he said.

He opened it. The first thing Logan saw was a photograph of Alan holding a younger Emily in his lap. They both appeared to be laughing. Alan pulled the picture out, revealing a ring underneath. Turning the photo over, he held it so Logan could read the message scrawled on the back.